'Click your heels three times and say ..."

Dryers vent into the hallway of our apartment and it has the cleanest, freshest smell when any laundry is being done. It ranks right up there with rain and skin.

Today has been packing (again) and cleaning (again) and getting ready to go out of town. I loathe packing and love traveling. It seems there's always some Catch-22. Still, I'll take the packing if I can take the vacations. As it happens, I have been lucky enough since moving to have little reprieves at least once a month. The first 6 months I lived here was like one, big, extended vacation. We were talking about that last night. In truth, it's been a little difficult coming down from that high. It can be addictive.

Most of the time, I stay balanced right smack in between discouraged and elated. It's a tricky management sometimes, but I do try. My "career" and "professional" life is totally in the toilet, and I've just accepted that it probably will be until I graduate with my Master's, yet my "personal" and "home" life is not much short of completely amazing. Of course, I wouldn't mind having my friends and family physically around, but I seriously have to thank the beauty that is collectively the telephone, the car, and the plane ride.

So, most of the time I'm great, I'm golden, I'm keeping my chin up despite the frustrations. From time to time, however, the lower end drags me down a bit and the blues set in. Yesterday was one of those days. I couldn't seem to shake it. Finally, by evening's end, I was back to "normal" again. (But, really, what is normal? No one knows.) The point is that the impending visit home is making me one happy little lady. (Where are those dang ruby red slippers when you need 'em?!)

I've been burning CD's for the drive to and fro all day. If there is one thing that cheers me, it's definitely The Mixed CD/Tape! (I like the way "Mixed Tape" sounds way better than "Mixed CD," but since the tape is now obsolete, I feel strange keeping it in my repertoire.) I get tired of listening to the same, tired thing over and over and over, and I have to 100% agree that music shapes mood. Certainly, you can select music to fit mood, but what you listen to on a regular basis probably molds you a bit more. Something to do with chakra, I'm sure. ;)

But, really, that's a question I ponder quite a bit. I think that's why I had to shy away from the newer stuff for a bit and resort to the oldies. They tend to be a little more upbeat. "The stories, oh the stories, they were so much better then ..." (From a poem I wrote a while back called 1933.) Anyway, it's "the chicken or the egg?" debate, and, more specifically, "Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?" assertion. (Nick Hornby, High Fidelity.)

I think about the weirdest things! If you could go fishing inside my brain to hook a few thoughts out at random, you probably wouldn't believe what you discovered. Aren't we all like that, though? We're all freakin' crazy as bedbugs. The older I get, the more I believe it must be true.

Further affirming this belief was the marathon of Trading Spouses on CMT (of all stations) yesterday. While I was folding laundry and organizing photo albums, I flipped on the TV and there it was. The channel was the remnant of the previous night when we were watching Any Given Sunday before bed. I never watch CMT, not being the biggest country music fan in the world, so I had never seen the show. Talk about wonky! Those people were flat-out bizarre.

Given the name of the show, I'm sure you can assume that 2 couples switch a spouse/parent. In this case, it was the wives/mothers being swapped, most of the time completely across socio-economic, racial, cultural, religious, and geographic lines. The fireworks were quite huge, and the train wreck aspect of the show proved to be too much to pull away from. In the end, each family discovered how totally elated they were to be reconnected at the end of the week-long stint away from each other. The lesson, I'm sure, is supposed to be: "Be happy with what you have." I, myself, don't think I would need to wive/parent another family to realize it, but oh well.

It's time for me to load the car. I need to leave soon-ish. This is good news! I'll be back on Monday, usually with some good stories to tell. I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday weekend! I know I will!

In the words of Robert Louis Stevenson, "Take care of each other."