Over the next few days I’ll be spending a lot of time with people I love, likely in a much better state of mind than I’ve been in over the last few weeks. Just the anticipation alone has made me about a billion percent easier to be around. For that, I apologize.  But I’m also thankful, because not only have I had some tremendous support, I get the privilege of being around my family and the joy of knowing that this actually makes me happy.  I know that isn’t the case for everyone and family can be very challenging.

As also is certainly not the case for everyone, I’ll be able to enjoy a meal with these people I love.  It’s always, and especially at Thanksgiving, a good idea to remember that.  In fact, if you’d like to remember that and help someone out—no money required—here’s what you do:  Go here and leave a comment for my friend, JACC (a.k.a. David).  ALL you have to do is register a user login with MetBlogs and leave a comment on that post. Then, JACC and Bernard Berrian will donate their money to Second Harvest Heartland and they’ll turn it into a lot of food for a lot of people. Quite the deal for merely leaving a comment, I think.  In fact, I might just go comment again because I really like spending my blog brother’s money for such a good cause.

Thanks to all of you who go over and comment.

I wish those of you celebrating Thanksgiving a wonderful day full of reasons to be thankful. And for my homies to the North, I know you already celebrated but I wish you just the same.

Looking back at the past few days, I just have to shake my head. I’ve been all over the place, and it’s really not over yet.  Internet, I long for the day when I can tell you the whole story, I do.  I’ve vascilated between happy and somewhat depressed a lot over the last few months and the best that’s come of that is all of you willing to go along with me.  Either you’re just being nice and my mother pays well, or I’m just very lucky.  I know sometimes I slack in the blogging world and don’t go out and pursue new sites or readers like I should, but I’m eternally grateful for the little bubble I’ve found here. The comments and emails I come home to (or read on my phone in the lobby of the restroom during the day (yes, this is how I live)) are such a big part of my day sometimes that I don’t ever think I could say enough about how appreciative I am.

I mean, look at that? I just wrote the longest sentence ever and I’ll bet no one even calls me on it.  Y’all are the best. Yes, y’all.  You know how waxing poetic about my Internet life always brings out the down-homeness in me.

I’m thinking a lot of this has to do with the season. Day after day I read that a lot of us are frustrated or feel “stuck” or, at the very least, wish we were doing things differently than we are right now. I have nothing but cliche solutions to that, I’m afraid. This morning as I drove to work I started thinking about that sailing trip I almost took earlier this year. No, it did not work out but sometime between then and now, I feel like I’ve lost that spark that told me it was possible.  I want it back.

I don’t know how I’m going to get it, but I want to believe that, too, will be revealed to me. I mean, if I can complain about my family and leave them at Thanksgiving (to visit other family, by the way) and threaten to do the same at Christmas only to have several offers of places to stay from Internet friends, then I’m pretty sure anything can happen. And besides, seeing the look on the faces of my family when I tell them I’m going to Nova Scotia, or Tampa, or Georgia for Chirstmas to stay with STRANGERS FROM THE INTERNET would be more fun than I could imagine. Some day, friends, we will have that kind of fun.

In the meantime, I have some real thinking to do.  Not because anything is requiring me to do it, but because I am. I have to find some way to get myself together enough to move forward. While I’m not so naive to expect a clear, unchanging plan to present itself over night, I do know enough to realize that I have to move in another direction. It’s that not-knowing-what-you-want-but-for-sure-knowing-what-you-don’t-want thing.  I never thought that, after nearly thirty years of life, I’d be contemplating it all over again, but that is how it works.  Who knows, I could take a huge chance and fall flat on my face and have to live in my mother’s basement until the end of time. But at least I’ll have fallen on my face and not just written about the possiblity of it.

Remember when you were a kid, and you had to sit through someone’s vacation slide show? And remember how utterly boring it was? Because who on earth had ever heard of a place called Yosemite anyway?

My uncle Joe used to do this. And it was especially torturous to my 10-year-old self because Uncle Joe is a forester. He is also WAY into bugs. This resulted in about eight hundred million pictures of leaves and trees and beetles and moss. MOSS!

I always thought to myself: I am never going to put anyone through that. Nope. Never. Not going to do it.

And then I discovered the islands. And you can bet Uncle Joe’s slides never ended with a fun frozen drink.

Like how I spared the details?

Happy Friday, everyone.

It was a Monday night, I think, and we’d spent the afternoon at the beach followed by dollar drinks at happy hour. We followed that with seafood nachos during which the woman at the next table was “taking pictures for her MySpace” and letting us all know. So, if you see me on the MySpace page of a girl from Tennessee and I’m either eating nachos or helping myself to water behind the bar (gotta love the bartenders down there) or generally acting silly, you’ll know this was the night I referred to as The Night I Pretended I Was Still In College. All the dumb and carefree of twenty-one, but with more finances.

Around 9:00 we were ready to head back to the house. And I know 9:00 p.m. sounds early, but you have to consider that when happy hour starts at 3:00, you’ve been in the sun all day, and the fact that the entire island all but goes dark by 10:00, 9:00 is a perfectly acceptable time to head to your bed and, well, do whatever. But it’s generally safe to say that the wee hours of the morning are pretty quiet on small Caribbean islands. So we paid our bill and headed out.

“Wait! The bioluminescence!”

My friend shouted this, without reserve, in the middle of the road on a Monday night. And I’ll tell you right now that my first thought was “great, we’re going to be hauling someone up the stairs tonight” because the word bioluminescence is not just something that flies out of your mouth after a day like that. Too many syllables, for one thing. It took me a minute to realize that yes, I had actually heard this word before.

“We have to go see it! We may never see it again.”

Arm? Twisted. Which is a really tough thing to do when I’m down there, you know. I’m pretty much the most flexible, opportunistic version of myself once I get some salt water air in my lungs and sand between my toes. So off we went to the bay where we were most likely to see bioluminescence. And for those that don’t know what I’m talking about, luckily for all of us Wikipedia does. And here are a couple other sites that will help illustrate it, too. Basically, what we were about to see were tiny organisms in the water that, when agitated, give off a very noticeable glow.

So we pull up to the beach and park and though I’ve never once felt uneasy or afraid on this island, part of me could not get over how dark it was. And the sky down there, the stars, oh my. It is dark, dark, dark except the stars. But that’s above. In front of you, and on the ground beneath you there is nothing but pitch black. Which is actually the best way to step into the water and witness an immediate glow around your foot. Then both of your feet. Then your legs. Then the rest of you as you slide your way through the dark waters of the ocean and watch your every move appear in the water in a bright, green glow.

Oh. My. Heck.

I was amazed instantly. I moved through the water in a feeling of pure and utter astonishment like I haven’t felt in… I don’t know how long. I’m sure if someone would have taken a picture of me in those moments my jaw would have been dropped and my eyes wide. My friends and I splashed through the water, running backward to watch the glowing trail we’d leave in our wake. We laughed and yelled and I felt like I was a kid again. While it rarely takes much to amuse me, it takes a lot to amaze me. I was amazed.

We must have played in that water, like a bunch of bumbling idiots, for an hour. I just couldn’t get over it, and I didn’t want to. It was living, touchable proof of how those islands and, well, life continue to impress me. Though I’d spent the earlier part of that Monday evening pretending I was still in college, I went ahead and retitled this night as The Night of the Bioluminescence. If you ever get the chance to see it, or really just find yourself with any chance to genuinely feel like you’re ten-years-old again, DO IT.

When I was younger, I always thought the phrase “If you don’t like the weather, just wait five minutes” was only a Colorado phrase. After all, it is true here. Storms blow in and out in a matter of minutes, you can wake up to snow and then drive home later with your windows down. Parka in the morning, shorts in the afternoon.

It was only as I got older and started listening to what others said (read: started paying attention to someone other than myself) about where they lived that I realized this phrase counts for pretty much everywhere. While the Northeast is known for a consistently snowy winter, and the South is known for a consistently humid summer, and the Northwest for it’s consistent… uhhh? What? Clouds? Someone in each of those places will promise you that the weather is not something on which you can rely. One moment you’re blinking in the sun, the next you’re running for cover from the pouring rain.

As every place does have it’s “normal” weather patterns, I can remember always being thankful to live in Colorado and listing the bad-tempered weather as a reason why. Now, I know better. And really, it seems to be less about weather anymore, anyway. This makes my more logical—and perhaps reaching— adult mind come to the conclusion that if I’ve been waiting five minutes here, I could wait five minutes anywhere.

For the next few days, in fact, I’m going to be waiting five minutes in a place something like 3,000 miles from Colorado. And guess what? It’s true there, too. Five minutes, ten minutes… whatever. And maybe you don’t really need to run from the rain anyway, because where I’m going you really have no place to be.

So I’d like to pose a question (or two): What do you love about where you live? AND, do you think you could love somewhere else just as much?

I’m excited to see the answers to this. I’d like to believe I could make a life anywhere, regardless of surroundings, but I don’t know. (Though I would be lying if I said it wouldn’t always be a little about the weather.)