The many colors of Antigua

Preface: Travelling comes with a slew of emotions, especially for an extended amount of time. Antigua is a truly beautiful city, full of life and soooo many wonderful colors and languages and tastes and lives. It is an amazing place to be and my overall experience really is a positive one. My brain has been pounded for hours on end every single day for the past week though, and at times I really have been tired but reassured by the colors and things around me. This post is not really about anything. It was me forcing myself to be a little more creative, and to give the language-learning part of my brain a break. It’s not necessarily a finished, polished work but it’s a practice in association and observation and just putting general feeling on paper without regard for a lot of rules. So here it is. Enjoy.

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Grey, a sad color to start with, maybe, but a good one. It means rain. It reminds me of home. Not in a sad way, but in a way that tastes like love. The clouds and thunder roll in in the afternoons, building around and in front of the volcanoes. Grey cobble stone streets in every direction, could trip you up, but can take you back to a time you can’t remember. Slow down! It’s easier on the eyes and the spirit. Grey, an easy color, and tired—or maybe a different word, pleasantly cansada. Yes. Not quite seeing in the colors of the rising sun but not tired or weary of the world.

Red!  Sudden salsa, a beat you want to swing your hips to, or maybe just tap your toe today. Maybe it’s a little much, like too much picante in your rice. But then, a little bite never hurt anybody too badly. We live in a red house at the end of the street and we stand on the roof to see the rest of the world while the laundry billows or something like that on the breeze that rolls down of the backs of those volcanoes. Fuego. I guess you could erupt…and I carry my books in a bright red bag but that doesn’t mean anything. I haven’t felt much like dancing anyway.

But don’t get me wrong. I’m not azul—I’m not the blue that you might think of lonely. I’d like to say I’m the blue of the Café Sky, or the sky above as we walk to class each day. Oh, or maybe the color of that one house just down the block a bit. There is no blue like the one I left behind, no blue like mountain lakes but that’s ok. I’ll lift my proverbial glass of “Agua Pura” and may it ever be half full, overflowing with a hope the color a song I heard in a coffee shop one time.

Augusta sings in the streets and the trees, green, lean in to listen. This is life. It’s Guacamole, or the avocado picked right off the tree. Green like the parks and the pictures on postcards. Here’s what you’re missing out, not going yourself. Gringo in a foreign land. I want to learn this language so, but I’m still green you might say. Verde. Verdad. Pais de la eterna primavera. My green eyes shining in the rain.

Amarillo, not a town in Texas. I’ve never loved the color yellow before, and no, I don’t love it now. It belongs here though. The arch, La Merced, so many beautiful buildings in shades of marigold and golden rod. See, now I’m smiling, lighter at just the thought. Sonreír. Such a word for smile, you have to smile to say it. I’ll make it here, just fine, between gold-plated decorations and a hint of yellow thread woven through the tapestries.

Purple. A funny color. I feel like the color purple sometimes, or like the word “purple”. A little awkward, like nothing quite rhymes with me but I’m not completely cast out of the color wheel. Woven purple earrings, purple bags in the crowded market. It’s a rich color, and full of flavor like the food we are fed each day. It can stutter though, and trip up like my Spanish. It’s endearing right? It’s meeting new people from around the world, a mix of red and blue. What’s a rainbow without it?

White. A blank slate. Starting over again in a whole new place. All the colors are here to fill my soul and make me whole. Welcome to Antigua, Guatemala.

Kind of, but not quite, my first day in Antigua

(beyond chronology, this has little semblance to anything constituting order…sorry)

This was not my first day in Antigua…but it was pretty much my first day in Antigua. I woke up at 5 (I don’t know why…don’t worry about it). I showered. No. I didn’t. The water in the hotel shower wouldn’t ever heat up. I stuck my head under the sink and washed my hair and called it good.

I can’t really say that I know exactly what I did to kill the time between then and about 8:30 when I left to look for…well anything really. There was some breakfast in there somewhere. But then I went to look for anything. I just started walking. I walked past the Plaza Mayor and took a right. Why not? When you are looking for anything how can you make a wrong turn? I found an organic grocery story, an organic café, a book store and a market. All on one street in a matter of a few blocks. Neat. I bought dental floss and cue tips. Cool huh?

It was still a little early to check out of the hotel and go to my new home so I pulled the whole sitting in a park, people-watching stunt. Cliché, I know, but give me a break. It was almost, kind of not my first day in Antigua. It’s a pretty park. People are watchable. I actually didn’t get much silent contemplation in before a nice man came up and started trying to convince me his Spanish school was the best. It might be. I got 30 minutes of solid practice right there, for free, without even asking for it. I also got the inside scoop on the futbol game at 11. Cool. Something to do!

….passage of time here where a nice man lugs my nearly 50 pound duffle bag about four blocks to my new home and then up 3 flights of stairs to my rooftop room (and I was just going to call a taxi)…

Futbol! I bought my ticket, and found a seat all by myself! I felt a little left out of the general camaraderie but it was fun to watch. Then I heard it! English! And right behind me nonetheless. Great success! I then asked the question any lone English speaker asks when they hear their native tongue in a foreign land: “You speak English?” Sometimes it’s the obvious things that make the best ice breakers really. Why yes, that is a purple elephant in the corner. How nice of you to notice…anyway…I know very little about futbol except to clap and yell when everyone else does, and that the team with the most numbers at the end won. WE WON! Woo! (No I’m not really that clueless but I have no details for you)

My new friends were Swedish and Norwegian (Mark, Mike and Mateo)! Neato! I called Augusta (who also lives on the third floor with me) and we all wandered aimlessly in search of food. We found, we ate, we struggled over the ticked but successfully paid and we left.

The next two or three hours involved walking, taking pictures, walking, pointing, walking, oohing and aahing, walking, and saying good-bye, good night, maybe we’ll run into you guys again sometime.

So now I’m ‘home’. My bags are unpacked nicely into a dresser. The sounds of the city are floating in through my window on a cool evening breeze. I am happily in my pajamas, sitting on a real mattress that won’t deflate in the night, in a room with four walls and decent internet. I am ‘home’ for at least two weeks here in a city of unpaved, stone streets and buildings the colors of the rainbow; nestled beneath a few protective volcanoes (we’ll call them protective for my own personal comfort). I have a home and I have friends. What more could you ask for? (Well, having my old friends here in my new surroundings would be the ideal world but you can’t win them all). So here’s to talking to strangers, playing with volcanoes and singing in the catacombs.

So you want to change the world?

So you want to change the world? Well sometimes it doesn’t want to be changed. That doesn’t mean you should stop trying. It just means that your efforts won’t always be fruitful. Some children still grow up be murderers, some people still starve in the streets, and sometimes you just don’t strike water.

It’s easy to take clean water for granted in the United States. You can turn on almost any home faucet and voila! What if you live in a village on water though? That doesn’t sound so bad. But what if the water is salt water mixed with some fresh water, mixed with water that runs off the land where you and all of your animals use the bathroom? Hopefully you have a cistern or a filter or (best for larger quantities of people) a well.

We went, hoping to change a few lives. The village of Rosario has a 5 gallon sawyer filter (good to give 10 families clean water for one year…or at least that’s what I heard), but that’s hardly efficient for a village. There may have even been more than one filter. But still, this isn't a filter on your tap in your house. This is 5 gallons at a time for however many families assigned to it. No just turning on the faucet whenever you want. You may have to fill a bucket and trek it a mile or two back home.

A year or two ago another group tried to drill there. They drilled down 100 feet and never hit water. We were hoping to do better. We pulled onto shore and unloaded the boat and started hauling the rest of the drilling supplies 30-45 minutes up the muddy trail through the forest to Rosario. The drill itself was already there, carried up by the locals a day or two earlier. Unfortunately we arrived on Guatemala’s Independence Day. Who wants to work when there are celebrations to be had? So, we turned around and made the slippery hike back out. Good day for hammock-sitting.

Sunday morning: round two. We pulled on our mud-caked shoes and headed for the boat ramp. Ten minutes later we pulled up to shore and hiked back in. Now, what on earth is a white girl with no experience in drilling supposed to do to help all the wiry Guatemalan men set up a drill? Nothing. She is supposed to do nothing. But I digress. The point is. Only so many people can dig the two pools, and set up the tower, and make sure the water pump is good to go, and that there is water to run through the drill, and gas and diesel and oil in all their respective places. It sounds like a lot, but when the whole village is invested heart and soul into this thing improving their quality of life (if only a little) there is no shortage of helping hands.

Everything was set to go and the drilling began! Oh! Being the compulsive scribbler that I am, I did have pen and paper on hand. This turned out to be my contribution. I kept track of how deep we had gone and what we had drilled through on the way. Five feet. Clay. Ten feet. Clay. Fifty feet. Clay. One Hundred Feet. Clay. We ran out of pipe on Monday at 125 feet. Still Clay. The people of Rosario want clean water. We wanted to give it to them. That isn’t always enough though. The earth simply wasn’t willing to comply. We backed the pipe out, took the drill down and began hauling everything back out to the shore. *I’d like to comment here that by haul, I do literally mean carry. A tiny man (barely 5 feet tall) will strap a 100-pound tower, 7 feet tall) to his forehead and haul off through the forest at a pace I can almost comfortably keep without carrying anything. Yeah. My white girl problems felt pretty silly after seeing that.

The people of Rosario may find another spot to try to drill. They may be supplied with a few more filters. They have survived for this long and will undoubtedly persevere on. The earth has her own plans. We can’t be discouraged though. We can only keep trying and hope that one day our plans coincide with what the earth is willing to give. 

Amoebas, Mosquitos and Worms! ¡Dios mío!

Welcome to the rainforest, practically. Welcome to Sarstún, 1 hour by boat up the Atlantic coast between Guatemala and Belize. 1 hour that is, after having flown about 5 hours and ridden in a taxi van for 6 or 7. Actually, the boat ride is a breeze after all of that (unless it’s raining, then it’s a little more of a stinging gale. I recommend sunglasses and rain gear). But you have arrived at last at the Refuge International Clinic of Sartstún…Now what?

First, a few rules and notes:

1: Don’t drink the water! Actually, at the clinic it’s ok because they have a clean-water well supplying it, but generally, stick to the bottled stuff. If, though, you hate yourself and those you are traveling with and feel the need to expel from your body every last ounce of fluid life you have then go ahead. The giardia and amoebas are great!  Oh, and you are at a clinic so Soilya, the live-in nurse/doctor, can hook you up with an IV and some meds so you can at least live to remember the experience.

2:  Don’t forget your mosquito repellant! Or your mosquito netting to sleep under. They will find you. They will find you and they will feast. If you remembered to take your Malaria medicine you don’t have so much to worry about, except of course the itching. That can be ignored though if you get bit by the other bugs whose bites itch worse and swell more. My only recommendation for avoiding those is to stay out of the trees (sounds easy enough but I’ll get to that)

3: Stay out of the mud! I don’t know if you know anything about having worms (I actually don’t either) but I do know that you can get them through the soles of your feet. I also know that they tend to live in the mud, especially in the perpetual mud of this part of the world where it is constantly wet, and where cows and chickens and all sorts of other critters are dropping their digested lunches off all over the place. The whole ground surface is just crawling with tiny little fertilized life forms just waiting to jump on board the human digestive tract express! Mostly just wearing shoes is fine. If you do have to sit down though, because the well being drilled is taking forever and you are tired, opt for tearing off some large leaves for a cleaner seat. Trees might be a fun way to get off the ground, but the bug bites are not worth the view.

4: Don’t flush the toilet paper…if there is any. Actually, you might want to bring a little along with you to avoid any awkward catastrophes. But once you have taken care of your business put the paper in the trash. The plumbing isn’t ready for anything that didn’t come directly out of you. It’s way harder to remember than you might think. It’ll be ok if you forget once or twice (I hope), but try not to make a habit of it.

5: If you are girl with short hair and men’s clothes you will be stared at…a lot. There will probably be pointing and whispering, and little girls will definitely make fun of you. It’s ok. You know you’re a girl.

6: It will rain.

7: Your clothes might or might not ever dry…because it will rain.

8: The tortillas are to die for. Eat them! Flour. Corn. Fried to a puffy crisp. Any way you have them they are magical! The black soupy, runny stuff is just frijoles negros (black beans…pureed it seems), and it’s pretty tasty. Be aware though that you will eat them at every meal. That’s not an exaggeration. Fact. Every meal comes with black beans. (I lied. We had pasta once.) The fish still has a face. Just don’t look it in the eye and it tastes amazing! The chili isn’t to be trifled with. And I know, you are in Guatemala, but in Sarstún you drink instant coffee. It’s fine. Just do it. Sprinkle a little powdered milk in and a dash of sugar and you got it!

9: Don’t worry about using all the hot water…there isn’t any.

Well those are the basics. Everything else falls into place pretty well. You get used to slogging through mud if you want to walk anywhere, not that you can actually walk much of anywhere anyway. The hour boat ride was not just the short cut. There actually are no roads. There are boats and then there are foot paths…or there aren’t foot paths and you can walk wherever you dare.

So what to do? Well, if you want to go for a run, go for it! Be ready to shower as soon as you are done. You will be covered in mud. You could go out and play some soccer with the locals on the field. It’s muddy, and don’t be surprised if there are a few hills in your game.  Internet? Do you remember the dial-up days? It might be that fast. TV? Actually, there is one in the kitchen of the clinic. I never did check that out though. When I wasn’t sitting, watching, reading and writing at the drilling sight, I was sitting, watching, writing and reading in a hammock in the open-air sleeping area.

Ah, sleeping. You’ll do a little of that. You will probably get misted by rain in the night. It’s ok. You’re never really dry anyway. The mist is nice too because it cools things down. The rooster starts crowing at 4. No, the sun hasn’t even started thinking about rising yet, but the rooster doesn’t care. And neither should you. You probably went to bed at 8 because you woke up at 4 the previous morning. You get used to it. Or you don’t. The rooster doesn’t care. There is a 1 in 3 chance (in my experience) that your air mattress will stay inflated in the night. Congratulations if it does.

So that’s about it. The people are nice. The food is great. Oh! One more thing. When you get home, ease yourself back into the rich food. The black bean and tortilla diet leaves your stomach a little less tolerant to your usual burger and fries thing. Just a thought. Do you what you want. But whatever you do, don’t forget your worm pill, and the rest of your malaria medicine.

Enjoy your stay!

Ode to motel rooms

Motel rooms are oddly calming. You run around all day, packing your bags, checking and re-checking your checklist (that you almost definitely left at least 2 things off) navigating roads and emotions and hallways until it finally happens. You walk into a room that you have probably never seen before, and you may never see again, but it's familiar. It is clean. Still. Everything is exactly where it belongs, lined up in neat, even lines. It invites you to come in for a night or two, but never to stay. It will leave you alone, in silence while you unpack your bags and thoughts and realize just what it is you have gotten yourself into.

It has a bathroom where you can take a deep breath and tell yourself that everything will work out, as you splash your weary face with cleansing water. It has a TV to take you away from the world for a while and let you think you are back home on your couch just doing your usual thing. It has a bed or two that are too tightly made to be welcoming. Go ahead, lie down a while. Stare at the ceiling and pray for sleep. Motel rooms aren't magic though. They can't bring quiet to a moving mind but they can give it a quiet place to move.

The walls could be anywhere. If it helps, you can tell yourself you are still in the town you left. You can tell yourself you are headed back instead of away. Motel rooms, like blank pages, lend themselves to any story you want to give them. It's not until you leave in the morning that you have to face the fact that change is inevitable and you are being swept away.

So here's to quiet rooms. To time to think. To time to forget you have a 3:00AM wake-up call. To change. Here's to the future, and to all the motel rooms I will probably stay in, collect my thoughts in, and reassess my life in. Here's to life.

Living the dream...wait, I have a dream?

I fly away on Friday. It’s still too early to start in on the crazy packing process and a little late to be lamenting my losses in Durango. I’m in limbo. Really I’ve been in limbo for a while, dancing back and forth between the TV, whatever book I’m reading, and my phone. Of course the past few days I have had to be a little more responsible I guess. Fill prescriptions, go to the dentist, get my hair cut, and think really, really hard about packing all of my stuff into a duffle bag. Still not ready for that though.

I have also been thinking a lot (aside from my empty bags) about what I’m about to be doing. I have never been one inclined toward passion. I have had so many friends and acquaintances along the way who have loved what they were doing or what they were striving toward, and they would attack their goals with the fervor and intensity of a hound on the chase and never let up or be distracted until success was achieved. I have always been a bit more passive. Ok, that’s an understatement. I would follow the path of least resistance to my grave if that’s where it wanted me to go. I hold fast that I am a cloud, and there is little I care to steer myself toward that doesn’t follow my same wind stream.

I have wanted to be everything from an archeologist to an interior decorator but never once have I taken my dreams seriously. I became a “writer” instead. At least I could make up stories about people who did the things I was too lazy for, or wasn’t drawn to beyond day-dreams. Until now.

I get to travel. I have always wanted to travel. All of the stories I made up as a child involved adventure. All of the jobs I wanted either required that I travel or at least gave me enough money and vacation time to travel on my own. It never occurred to me that travel could be the goal. I always thought it would just be a perk on the side of whatever I chose to do, not the thing I actually chose.

Now I can justify doing whatever as long as it takes me somewhere. I will teach English so I can live in Central America or Europe or Asia. I will learn Spanish (and hell, maybe more if I have the opportunity) so that I can become a marketable resource in more countries than just this one. I learned to write because I liked it and was relatively decent at it. Now though, I have a purpose for education beyond the degree. I have a goal. Dare I say I have a passion?

I have only ever traveled in small doses. I may be horribly allergic to travel and just not know it yet. I have to try it out though, because it’s about damn time I found something to get fired up about. 

Part 3 (My affair with the recliner)

So part 3 was going to be a big pity party about how I don’t get to dress like I don’t own a mirror anymore because people here will judge me. Then I remembered who is writing this thing, and who is reading it for that matter. I won’t be whining like a vain little princess today. You’re welcome.

Now that that’s cleared up let’s get to the other third thing I realized I miss. It happened while I was sitting there melting into the recliner. I vaguely remembered this world where I could go weeks on end without even seeing a recliner. Did I dream that? I wondered. No. In fact, in that world I could also go days at a time without driving my car. I walked everywhere. Whatever happened to those days?

I moved home. Don’t get me wrong, East Texas has its charm. It is lush and green (so many shades of green) with rolling hills that you can’t see for all the towering pines and oaks. You can’t walk anywhere though. You really wouldn’t want to for fear of dying of heat stroke between the front door and the mail box.  But even if it wasn’t so stiflingly hot, I still wouldn’t be able to walk to the grocery store or a coffee shop. It’s a 15 minute drive to the nearest town (and 30 to the nearest town that has anything in it worth driving to). I have tried doing laps around our porch but that gets monotonous after about 5 minutes, even if you walk backwards for parts. I joined a gym for the air conditioning where I can burn off at least a little energy while reading or listening to NPR (no, I’m not your grandmother, it’s fine). Mostly though, I have just entered into this really needy relationship with the recliner. I use him for comfort and to forget the world I left behind, and he just lets it happen because let’s face it, what is a recliner without someone to sit in it?

I really miss those days of thinking: What a slow day, I think I want a cup of coffee. I’ll just throw on some shoes and grab my purse and walk into town. It was perfect. I could kill some time, get my legs moving, read a few good pages, and soak up some fresh air and vitamin D. Once I got to town who knows what could happen. I might run into someone I know and we could head off on an adventure or just grab a beer or a cup of coffee (neither of which I would appreciate as much as I do now). I might stop in Maria’s and find a good book. I might get to town, realize I don’t have my wallet and turn around and walk home. Whatever. It didn’t matter. Home wasn’t that far and I could read on the way.

I guess there isn’t much more to say. I miss how close everything was, how close everyone was. But now that I'm done dwelling on the things that are gone, I think I’ll go climb back into the recliner and dream about this new life I’m about to be entering. It’s exciting and scary, and this time at home really is important. 

Part 2 (a close call with caffeine)

Coffee: or how I ended up incapacitated on the couch yesterday

Ok, so yesterday I established last that I am not a beer snob, but I somehow managed to actually miss ‘good’ beer (I’m being liberal with my use of the word “good”. So sue me). Now it’s time to cover how I’m not a coffee snob either, except that I kind of am. Turns out I miss a certain quality of coffee too. Here’s a hint, it’s not in a big orange and pink bag labeled DUNKIN’ DONUTS!

While living in Durango, it wasn’t uncommon for me to frequent the local coffee shops. Ok, I went every day. The baristas at Durango Coffee Company knew me by name, and I always got the dark roast and drank it black. Yeah, I’m a purist. Well, I was a purist. Then I came home. (I was also not a purist when I drank the rocket fuel grade “coffee” produced by a few of my friends. These are also the friends who would turn a nose up at Blue Moon. I think they have some taste bud issues.)

So normally I drink one cup of coffee in the morning (maybe two if I’m feeling especially outrageous). My mom makes a really big pot of coffee though, weak DUNKIN’ DONUTS coffee (maybe two if there’s company). That being the case, it’s not unusual to see 3 or 4 cups go down. The key is that on top of the half-full cup of weak coffee, you have to pour milk, filling the rest of the cup. So now you have mildly coffee-flavored milk. You can see how a whole pot might go down pretty nicely, like cheap beer. You can also probably see how I easily help my mom through a couple of pots. After the rich, full, dark roasts I’m used to, the DD just really doesn’t do it for me. It’s like leaving Guinness for PBR. I have to pour on the milk for the coffee-flavored dairy effect (purism is overrated). It’s really not so bad, and it keeps the headaches at bay (I’m addicted. Whatever.  I’m moving to Costa Rica).

Yesterday though, mom and dad were gone to work. I woke up to an empty house, and an empty coffee pot. I wandered over to the pantry, one eye still working on that whole opening thing, the other navigating. I stared at the bag of DD coffee, and thought very seriously about how cool that whole breakfast tea thing is. They make breakfast blends you know, like Morning Thunder. In retrospect, I should have gone with the Morning Thunder. I opted instead for the sample packet of Starbucks Christmas espresso roast. It was sneakily hiding behind the bag of DD. The shiny purple package caught my eye, and I knew. Yes. Never mind that it was ‘best by January of 2012’. That’s not so long ago. I happily snatched the lonely French press off the back of the counter as I turned on the burners and started the tea pot to boiling. I opened the beautiful little purple package as if it contained flecks of gold and started measuring out the treasure into the press. After about 3 Tbsp I just dumped the whole thing in (about 6 Tbsp…espresso roast).

So, let’s recap. For the past month I have been drinking coffee-flavored milk. Before that I was drinking one little cup of dark roast coffee (that has the lower caffeine content). Today I dumped 6 heaping tablespoons of espresso roast coffee into a French press (which makes pretty strong coffee). I then drank all of it. Two full coffee cups (big coffee cups). It tasted like dark, spicy, coffee heaven. And then…that’s right, there’s an “and then”. This is getting a little long winded so I won’t go into every detail, but not only was my heart pounding like a hit parade and my hands shaking like a leaf in the wind, my stomach was doing something entirely new, and unpleasant at that. No words. But where coffee normally leaves one charged and ready to face the day, this left me curled up on the couch in something  that can only be described as shock. My mind wanted to run laps around the house, and my body was just shaken, a little nauseated, and mostly confused.

Moral of the story: When in doubt…no, when you are entirely sold heart and soul, go with the Morning Thunder anyway. Really. Oh and I guess ‘too much of a good thing’ really does exist.

Part 1 (I think I might be kind of a beer snob)

First, missing my friends and the wonderful people goes without saying. Second, I could have written a whole page listing things I used to do or see every day that I can’t or don’t anymore, but who wants to read that? Plus, I would get sad writing it and that’s not the point here. I’d rather think about how funny it is when you realize you miss certain things.

1: Good beer:

“Hot” doesn’t do justice to the temperature (nor to the general sense you are being slowly smothered by the air) in East Texas in the summer. Even the lake water turns from a refreshing splash to a disheartening splish by the end of a day in the sun. My cousins, aunt and uncle, and I sat on our life jackets in what was quickly becoming uncomfortably warm water. We laughed and shared stories from long ago, or days ago, and we downed our cold beers like water. The near-boiling lake water just wasn’t getting the job done so really beer was our only hope for survival.

Now, I have never been much of beer snob (or so I thought). I’d go to 2$ pint night and while many of my friends would “ooh” and “ahh” and drool a little over a good stout or an IPA that could make your eye-lids curl back, I would sip happily on my Blue Moon or whatever  local wheat beer was available. Every now and then I would step over into Guinness land or tiptoe around in Red Ale world. The really bitter beers weren’t so much my thing, but I could stomach one in a pinch. My only experience with “cheap beer” began and ended with Pabst Blue Ribbon. That was the party beer. You just chugged it and after about 3 you were at least tipsy enough not to care what it tasted like the rest of the night. That was two years ago though. I hadn’t voluntarily sipped anything that was better suited for beer bonging since before graduation.

Ok, so back to the lake: I mentioned we were downing beers like water. The only beer you can down like water (If you can down a Guinness like water, you should get that checked out) is what I previously referred to as cheap beer (Bud Lite, Budweiser, Keystone, PBR, Coors…anything else you might find in a gas station in Texas). That’s right, my family could probably be credited with funding a whole summer’s worth of Bud Lite production. I think they polished off at least a couple of 30-racks over the weekend. I drank 8 beers in two and a half days. It took another two days to drink another four. I just couldn’t bring myself to down the stuff.

Even after my sober weekend I didn’t really realize that I missed good beer. I just confirmed that I didn’t like cheap beer. I still had a blast with my family, and when I got home I just went back to drinking water all the time as usual. It wasn’t until a few weeks later when my parents took me to Ranger Ball Park for a baseball game that it happened. I hadn’t had another beer since the lake and hadn’t thought anything of it, but as we sat in the Captain Morgan Club looking over the menu “Blue Moon” just about jumped off the page and kissed me on the face. That was it. No pondering necessary. “I’ll have water and a Blue Moon please.” When the bottle appeared in front of me I might have gotten a little too excited (like Christmas morning to a 7-year-old excited as opposed to the appropriate confined satisfaction a 24-year-old should have when encountering a beer). I squeezed the orange slice down into the bottle and took a big refreshing swig. It tasted like home. It tasted like sitting out on a patio surrounded by my friends, laughing and making all kinds of crazy plans. It tasted like watching the sun set from the front steps or like floating the river in the sun.

I know Blue Moon isn’t great beer. I know plenty of people who would turn their noses up at the mere thought of it. You take what you can get though, and that Wednesday night, sitting in that Bar in East Texas, I took that Blue Moon and I enjoyed every last sip of it like I had enjoyed every last minute I spent in Durango.

[To be continued: I’ll cover coffee and fashion faux pas later. We’ll call it a series.]

If I were a smart phone...

Dear User,

I appreciate the attention. Really I do. But give it a rest already. Geez! I mean from the minute you wake up in the morning to the series of moments you spend fighting it until you actually just pass out, you never put me down. In fact, because you passed out with me in your hand, I’m even smothered by you as you sleep. I mean seriously, how would you like to be stared at and poked and prodded? All. Day. Long? If it’s not a text message it’s Facebook. If it’s not a picture it’s YouTube. It’s word feud and angry birds. It’s maps and navigators and sports updates. Do you even know what the actual weather is doing? No, not the weather on my screen, the actual weather. Look up every once in a while. Did you know your friend just asked you a question? Actually, what is she wearing today? Again, NO! Not what is she wearing in her profile picture on facebook. What is she wearing right now, today. She is standing right in front of you. No! Don’t take a picture of her. Just look up. Say hi! Interact. Give me a break! I realize that I’m fascinating, mesmerizing even, but there is still a physical world. Oh, and those commercials about not texting and driving apply to you too. In fact, I would go so far as to advise them to tell users not to even look at the phone and drive. Put me down. I’ll be right there, ready to go when you get where you are going. And speaking of where you are going, the next time you are in Paris or London or New York, or at the Grand Canyon I WILL power off if you dare spend more time looking at me than looking around, soaking up the experience. That AT&T commercial about getting service everywhere—Not my idea. Get a life!

Now, none of this is to say we can’t be friends. I just need some space. I know I’ve been a little harsh, I just get cranky when I’m being smothered. I’m sorry. I just want what’s best for you, so please try to find a little balance. Sure, check me out when you have a question or need to look something up, but don’t be afraid to interact with other people. I hope this can really make for a richer friendship for both of us.

Sincerely,

Your overused smart phone