It's 2am and I am not remotely ready to go to bed. I worked a full day today -- I even got a lot done: I completed the budget, which involved some serious analysis; I wrote the first four pages of the new staff guide; I went to a pointless meeting -- see, I did a lot. And I walked to and from work, so, in theory, I should be a little sleepy, right? I even stayed out last night, drinking wine. Yet here I am, avoiding my bedroom with every fiber of my being.
The night before last the dread kept me up until 5:30 in the morning. I forced myself to sleep on the couch for a couple of hours, just so that I could get an eensy bit of rest, and I did feel pretty good yesterday. But this is cannot go on long-term.
I think I know where the dread comes from. I miss someone. I can go all day without thinking about him, but then when I turn off the lamp on the nightstand and settle my head on my pillow, there he is. I keep replaying every moment that we were together and every word of our last conversation. It happens without fail every night, so much so that I can't bear to be in my bedroom...I can't think about it anymore. It preoccupies me and keeps me up, which is funny because here I am staying awake so that I won't have to be kept awake by my thoughts about Wes.
Every day when I come home from work I find a distraction, so that I won't have to think about eventually going to bed. I'll sit and write about inane things, like sweetsops and guineps, or I'll pace around the apartment, or watch a season of Queer as Folk, or read any number of books and magazines sitting around here, or watch CNN, or just stare.
I work too much at this point to think about having a life outside of work, to distract me in a socially acceptable way. Plus, I'm just not feeling good enough about myself to go meet new people. It's weird -- most of the people here came here for the lifestyle, not work, but I came here for work. I feel like I'm missing out, but, hey, at least I can finally pay my bills.
My bed is still made from yesterday. I think it might stay that way again tonight.
I realize I’m hardly the first person to write about their love of thunderstorms. Undoubtedly, somewhere in a dark cave, undiscovered by modern man, there is a pictograph among the hand-drawn herds of buffalo, showing a heart and a lightning bolt. I bet that Thor, the Norse god of thunder, had all kinds of storm groupies. I’m sure that if the necessary meteorological conditions were present (it was summer, after all), the founding fathers of the United States even took a break from drafting the Declaration of Independence to gaze at the storm. You could almost picture the honorable Stephen Hopkins, nine-time governor of Rhode Island, pausing mid-signature and whispering in awe, “Dude, check out that thunder. Wicked cool.” (Rhode Islanders say, wicked, right?).
I remember one particularly stormy morning in 11th grade American Literature and Composition class, as Mrs. Carman took note of how her class collectively gazed out the window during her lecture. Pausing just long enough for everyone’s eyes to drift back over to her, she asked, “Don’t you just love rainy days? They’re perfect for curling up with a good book…or making out.” Just as we had collectively watched the rain outside, we collectively were totally grossed out.
The thunderstorms I experienced in Montana were much different than those in the southern United States. In Georgia and Florida, thunderstorms occur nearly every hot and steamy summer afternoon. The humid air gets even thicker before the sky gets angry, turning black before unleashing one enormous bone-shaking thunder clap, at which point a torrential downpour would follow…for about six minutes. Then it was hot and sunny again!
Montana was different. Sure, we had afternoon thunderstorms in summer, but, for one, our afternoon started at about 6pm. Being at such a high latitude, our summer days were so long – it usually wasn’t “dark” until after 10pm. This totally throws off your perception of the day; I ended up eating more on summer days because I was awake for so many hours.
Actually, that’s not entirely the whole summer, that I ate more in summer. I ate a lot in the winter, too. I never could drive in snow and I was too chicken to participate in winter sports – skiing, snowboarding, snowmobiling (if that could be considered a sport) are all too high adrenaline for me. So, I had few options other than hang out and eat and drink until the spring thaw. Good times.
Surprisingly, my seasonal eating habits are related to the topic at hand. In Montana, we received the bulk of our precipitation in the winter in the form of snow. Summers were notably moisture-free. So, when our thunderstorms rolled in, they were just that – storms with roaring wind, deafening thunder, and blinding lightning. These storms were dreaded, not just because my dog, for lack of better wording, flips the fuck out during storms, but because each lightning strike spotted in the five valleys meant a new forest fire. Since rain seldom accompanied these storms, the fires just raged, incinerating all the dry fuel the forest had to offer. These fires would grow and grow and, sometimes, they’d meet forming one mammoth bitch of a fire. This is how the “Big Blowup” of the northwest wildfires of 1910 formed (I’m pretty sure that if you dig into forest service archives, they, too, call the 1910 fire “one mammoth bitch”). This fire burned 3 million acres in Idaho, Montana and Washington in two days, and was so huge that its light-smothering smoke and ash drifted cross-country, warranting New York City to turn on its streetlamps in the middle of the day. Only a late summer snowfall slowed the fire down enough so that it could be extinguished.
Like giant fires, I also don’t appreciate late summer snowfalls, which is one reason I left Montana.
Here in Grand Cayman, our thunderstorms are like those that I recall from Georgia and Florida. Here, though, we get to watch the progress of storms that never actually affect us. Just today, I sat at the bar and watched a heavy black cloud linger over Georgetown to the south. I think Georgetown always seems to get the nasty weather because it juts out into the Caribbean Sea – when storms come up from the south, they batter Georgetown before dissipating. I find this humorous because Georgetown is the port for all the big cruise ships. I wonder if many of the summer cruise ship people (what’s the word I’m looking for…ah, tourists) are even able to get off their ships so they can explore he wondrous wilds and splendor of Georgetown’s numerous duty-free jewelry stores.
Today’s storm was typical in that it seemed to roar over Georgetown, while it was sunny further up Seven Mile Beach at Calico Jack’s. As I sipped my Strongbow and watched folks much more fit than I, a massive knock-you-off-your-barstool clap of thunder tore through the Sunday afternoon calm. People enjoying the beach paused briefly, applauded the thunder, and then continued about their business. We’re not in Georgetown – nothing can hurt us all the way up here!
The next ten minutes brought more random thunder and scary lightning strikes in the distance. Well, I only found one of the strikes particularly frightening because I watched it strike my place of employment, and I kinda need this job. Even as the thunder thundered and the lightning…lightninged, everyone on the beach kept doing their thing. The volleyball players didn’t miss a serve, little kids frolicking near the shore continued to try their parents patience, and people just chilling on picnic tables continued to be cool. The only people I saw change their behavior was a table of frat-lookin’ dudes sucking on stogies. Smart dudes that they were moved from their table near the volleyball net to one with a nice tall, metal umbrella. Smart move, dudes, smart move. But, just as the storm seemed like it could affect us, just as itty bitty droplets of rain freckled my skin, I watched the giant gray mass move northwesterly over the Caribbean Sea. It’s too bad that’s what nearly all the storms do – lightning strikes have such great potential for thinning the herd. Perhaps that’s why I like storms so much…
In honor of the upcoming Olympics, what could you win a gold medal in?
Submitted by TheFiercestCalm.
Sweet QotD, TheFiercestCalm. Not to toot my own horn (I could totally win a medal for that, too), I'm fairly confident I could capture the gold in:
- Packing and moving
- Sentence diagramming
- Googling song lyrics from 80s power ballads
- Kickball
- Speed-purchase order-creating
- Worrying
- Making omelets
- Identifying butterflies
- Bulleting lists
I'm just waiting until these are added to the 2012 games, at which point I will totally kick some ass.
I wrote on a piece of paper from my purse the other night. It was a large piece of paper.
I’ve been in the Cayman Islands for three weeks now. I don’t know what compels me to keep moving to vacation destinations, but here I go again. Great Whitesnake tune. Anyway, first Fort Myers and its accompanying beaches, then the Florida Keys, and now here. It’s so vacationy that I can see cruiseships parked just a few miles away. Do I have some masochistic tendency that drives me to relocate somewhere for work just so I can I obsess over all the fun all the tourists are having that I’m not having? I don’t know. Maybe I jus like sand between my toes and sunshine.
Also on my mind – the fact that I’m at a bar alone, writing. Isn’t this what I did at Cabascas? Do I really want to go down that road again? Then again, what else am I going to do when I’m not working? Things will be awesomer (that’s right) when I have some cash and I can start diving.
Wow. I just noticed the pillar I’m sitting next to is covered with pictures of girls making out at the bar. Classy. And yet, this is the island that arrested two gay male tourists for kissing in a bar. Double standard. Why is it cool for girls to suck face with each other? I’m not down with this trend that won’t go away.
There’s a map of the Caribbean sitting under glass at my stretch of bar here. Fun fact: the Cayman Islands are very, very small. I had an English teacher who loathed the word ‘very,’ saying that it doesn’t add anything to the sentence stylistically or in meaning. So, I especially like using it multiple times in a sentence, separated by as many commas as possible. It makes me feel so rebellious. But I digress. The Caymans are tiny, like you’d try to wipe them off a map, thinking they’re crumbs from your breakfast Danish. My new country is pastry-bit small.
Another thing about Grand Cayman – or at least where I’m sitting right now – B.O. is just hanging in the air. Perhaps that’s because humidity hovers around 85% on a daily basis and rain just never comes. The aroma of others’ sweat contributes to the heaviness of the air, as if the sweat is actually the cause of the humidity and not the other way around. But it doesn’t faze anyone – people are still playing volleyball, running on the beach, drinking. Well, I guess that last one isn’t too hard, no matter the temperature, no matter the latitude.
Like any bar, this one has money taped to the wall. I don’t see any American cash, but there is a Canadian bill right in front of me. It has hockey players on it. I had no idea. I wonder if there are any Canadian bills that feature curling. Someone else has written all over a Cayman dollar, which somehow seems wrong since our currency features the Queen. I wonder what William and Harry would think if they saw Sharpie tarnishing grandma’s face.
Eh, they’re partiers. I’m sure they’ve seen it before.
The preponderance of scantily-clad chicks taped to nearly all surfaces here makes me wonder if the proprietors are aware that women also like to imbibe alcohol at bars and some may even like to see the strategically placed scantily-clad dude here and there.
Or so I’ve heard.
I used to handle wild animals like snakes, birds of prey, alligators, and the like. Now, I enter schedules into ADP TimeWasterSaver, complete daily labor analyses, and write P/L recaps. How did I make the leap from awesome to lame in such a short time?
I have a well-known fear of making left-hand turns while driving. It's true -- in both Missoula, Montana, and Fort Myers, Florida, I could drive anywhere in town using only right-hand turns at large intersections. Sure, I drove out of my way many times, but it was worth it so that I wouldn't have to cheat death. When I lived on Pigeon Key, where there was only one road, we used to joke that I when I needed to head north, I would first have to drive 48 miles down to Key West first so that I could turn around. Yeah, those were good times...and I was only slightly joking.
But things are different in Grand Cayman! Why? Because of Cool Thing About Grand Cayman #1:
On Grand Cayman, we drive on the left!
That means that left-hand turns are totally safe now and that right-hand turns are my new scary fear! How exciting!
I used to blog regularly; not here on vox, but on blogspot. Life got complicated, though, and I just couldn't write any more. Not necessarily because I didn't have time, but because I was too blue to write. I know -- the fact that I can't write through pain or that turmoil actually discourages me from putting pen to paper (or fingertip to keyboard, as the case may be) probably means that I have no career as A Serious Writer. "Tortured Artist" just doesn't suit me. I'd rather be "Happy, Non-Moody, Artist with Lots of Friends." I've been wanting to write for the last year or so, but I just haven't been able to suck it up and do it. Until today. Starting today -- which, by the way, is my 27 and 7/12 birthday -- I will try again (what? Do you not celebrate your fractional birthdays? Sucks to be you.).
I think I need an outlet now more than usual because I just moved out of the country. Granted, American money is accepted widely over the Cayman Islands and everyone speaks English, but it is still a different country. Things are different. We drive on the left here! Wait, scratch that -- I should say people drive on the left here because I most certainly have not behind the wheel yet, and I'm cool with that really. Also, instead of dead white men on our coins, we have wild animals. So, yeah -- totally different country.
Even though I work with 900 people, I feel really alone. I realize that I'm closer to my family in Tampa now than when I lived in Montana, but seeing them now involves a trip to the immigration department to make sure that I have the proper stamps in my passport to ensure that I can back into the country. Montana may be far away and remote, but I never had to involve the government in my comings and goings from the state. Also, before I left the country (I was living in Florida at the time), I stupidly started seeing someone. Ah, that's some good alliteration. Anyway, yeah, not only did I stupidly start seeing someone, I fell totally in love. How lame is that?
I'll have to delve into that last one at a later date. I think this is a good start for now; I don't want to use all my blogging juice at one time (because it's finite, you know. Fun fact). Until then, I'm going to worry about my man calling me and plan what to wear to work tomorrow. OH! WORK! I didn't even start blabbing about that yet! So many things to blab about!
Until then...I still think Dennis Quaid is hot.
