T, my modern day knight in shining armor…

A few days ago, I knew I needed to stop and get gas on the way home; the miles left count down on my dash must have zeroed out on my way home the night before, but typical me, I didn’t notice until on my way to work the next morning. And of course, also typical me, I didn’t have time to stop without risking being late to work. At least I remembered after work of my sad need of fuel. I stopped at a gas station and searched for my coin purse that holds my credit cards. While frantically looking in every corner of the bottomless pit known as my purse, I came to the sad realization that I had taken it out the day before and forgot to return it. Although the new commute home is much less than before, I knew I would surely run out of gas if I tried to make it back home. I did one last ditch effort search before looking up. When I came up for air, I couldn’t help but smile. There was my friend T from work with a smirk on his face and laughter in his eyes, as he sat in his car holding out a $20 for my fuel tank. He had just seen me at the gas station on his way home, and noticed me looking through my purse, so he figured something was wrong and he pulled off and waited. He must have been sitting there for three minutes or more while I had my head buried in my bag, then he just smiled and handed me the cash and went on his way. His ability to read me is so disconcerting. Nevertheless, he did save the day.

round and round we go, where we stop nobody knows…

“round and round we go, where we stop nobody knows… round and round we go…” this sing-song-y childhood chant has been niggling at my brain for months now. I seem to remember it from my days playing on the merry-go-round, or maybe it was a part of a duck-duck-goose kind of game; for some reason I can’t remember the specifics, but the phrase has been chasing around in my head intrinsically tied to how fast my legs could carry me in whatever merriment the words were born. There’s an image I have of my childhood self that’s tied to these words: face all aglow with an uncontainable joy, and laughter spilling out without any restraint while the dark green and brown of the trees and the light green of the new spring grass blurs in circles around me. The spinning vertigo rush leaves me breathless and flushed, while the addiction to that feeling requires me to submit to the twirling forces over and over again. The image makes me smile.

Recently my life has encompassed all of the vertigo-induced adrenaline from the figurative merry-go-round twirls, but with none of the laughter or smiles. I’m working to add the joy back into my life without the twists and turns I’ve been encountering; hopefully the twirling chaos isn’t an unknown addiction. While I still don’t know where I’ll be stopping (the nursery rhyme still holds true in real life) I’ll leave the twists and turns to the rollercoaster’s at Disneyland!