summer songs

Is there another sound so indicative of summer as a mid-afternoon cicada chirp? Maybe a sprinkler or constant hum of an oscillating fan, but not quite.

I can remember the first time I heard a cicada, well maybe I should say my first memory of cicadas.

1988 in Brazos Bend St Park
It is another world to a little girl, something out of Star Wars, ancient oak trees dripping with Spanish Moss.
Be careful a gator doesn't eat you as an afternoon snack.

Leah and I were at Campfire camp. I think I was a Bluejay.
The cicadas sang their summer song in the hot still air.

I got the chicken pox during camp and missed most of it. I don't remember chicken pox at all. I'm guessing they were itchy.
I sculpted a small, clay bowl but got sick before I could glaze it. Leah finished it for me, pink and green, I was told. But a counselor painted over it in red and blue.

Still that chorus from the trees clung deep in my memory, tucked away in a file marked Summer Songs.

sorry, we are closed on mondays

I stopped writing a narrative of every weekend or birthdays in my blog because I find them tiresome in other blog's. But in my old age ;) I cannot distinguish one birthday from another, and some simply melt away. So this is for me and the public record - What I did on my 31st birthday.

Aren't weekend birthday's the best? Granted I'm not working outside the home right now, but still!

I woke up this year to my mommy texting me asking what I wanted to do. (Actually, I woke up at 630, turned off Wheel's nightlight, played with her, talked to the other kitties about what they were going to do today and sat in the sunroom with the ipad)

I thought about going to the contemporary art museum - Closed on Mondays
And then thought maybe MFAH - nope Closed on Mondays

So we drove to Columbus.
I consider long talks with my mom a gift in themselves. We drove around the little town and ate at a local joint, trying to imagine what it would be like to live there. And then we had to stop and visit my property. It is the second time I've seen it and it still "feels right."

For dinner I requested Pollo Campero tacos. Those tacos. The peruvian was extra spicy that night.
For dessert I wanted Mam's, I had a really cute instagram idea, you know the really important things in life. But alas - CLOSED ON MONDAYS

David and I drove to Ruggles in the Village and got a piece of chocolate truffle cake, and ordered a cappuccino (which turned out to be HUGE) and sat outside people watching, the truffle cake getting soft and eventually melting in the heat. We talked and sipped our coffees and laughed trying to get a birthday photo.

Do you feel older?
I think for the first time ever, I do feel older. I feel like I know myself a little more and that feels good.  I think 31 will be a grounded, happy year. Not because everything will go my way, but I be present, get out and see the world, and will be listening closely to what needs to be heard.

Three Thirty

It's the middle of the night. I don't have an interesting story. Just typing on my phone at three thirty hoping I don't die without some record of my odd death. Write a poem about me if I do. She was a brave lass....

I woke up with an itchy arm. A very itchy can't scratch enough until I have a bloody stump arm. And I try to ignore it until my mind starts to wonder and I've contracted some horrifying ailment seen only on campy medical dramadies.

So I get David to turn in the light. David. David. No not the overhead the lamp. No don't get up just turn on the light I need to see if I still have an arm. I relay the above paragraph to a still asleep David.

Might as well mention that when the light comes on I see King Rigby has negotiated a spot the length of my pillows and I have spilled over into the middle pressed against David. We are essentially sharing a twin mattresses at this point.

Think I might as well pee. In the bathroom light my arm is fairly red, probably not a flea bite or anything harmless. Maybe it is SARS or a flesh eating bacteria. Can't tell if it is swollen cause I'm so dang squishy. Why am I so squishy? Maybe my over-squishiness has something to do with my impending demise.

The great hunt for Benadryl commences. I grab a zantac for heartburn, what sorcery is this? See how fast I'm deteriorating?

I'm writing in bed. Fearing I could slip into anaphylactic shock and no one would notice. Oh of course David fell asleep and was snoring the instant after his head hit the pillow.

Check on me later.
Uhhhhh (sleep grunt)
Don't let me die.
Uhhhhh
Did you hear me? I could have been bitten by an Amazonian poisonous tree frog. David?

families

I want to take a moment to talk about family.

This weekend we drove to Flower Mound for a funeral. Grandma passed from this world June 29th. She wasn't my Grandma, but she was family.

I stood by Jeni as guests started to enter the church and offer condolences for her loss. They'd then turn to me and introduce myself, expecting to me to say I was a cousin or maybe an in-law of some kind.

"I'm Analee and I'm Navy family."

My Grammy always talks about Air Force families they still keep in contact with 40 years later and I never understood. When David and I were dating, his first deployment was so isolating. It was more than long distance. It was 9 months without a phone call, a few lines of email every 3 days saying he was safe and missed me. I was in it alone.

Moving to Washington was my first experience in a military community. We knew each other just a few days before we started helping plan weddings, drive sick kids to the emergency room in the middle of the night or spend the night in each others beds when the loneliness grew too great.

Navy family had to be best friends from back home, mom's, sisters, substitutes for husbands. You come together because there is no one else.
And you bond together.
We can not simply lose touch or drift apart.
You show up and hug and cry and love.

Because we are family.

nine

Twelve years ago I met a boy. I've thought a lot about our month long courtship and what specifically it was that knitted us together to survive long distance and the military and civilian life.

Nothing rings loud. When we drove each other nuts we couldn't seem to get rid of the other. During the everyday we'd talk endlessly on the phone... don't remind my daddy about the $2500 phone bill. oops

Nearly everyone of our major life decisions went like this:
David, what if we...
*got married in three months
*took the Washington command instead of San Diego
*got out of the Navy (this decision was made by email. that's military spousing)
*move to Houston without jobs
*buy a house 5 years earlier than we discussed
*start an olive ranch

David is not only my enormous best friend, lifter of heavy things, reacher of high things, rubber of feet
for whatever reason he has the ability to take my dreams and make them his own
my crazy, spontaneous, irrational, big big dreams

I don't feel like he simply tags along
he genuinely grabs hold of my passion and makes it reality with a commonly spoken sentence in our house

Ok, what do we need to do to make it happen

Maybe we didn't have an epic romance, but it seems to me, nine years later we are an unstoppable partnership. And I love that.

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