Take on me

So the things I hate about the picture above are:

a) the fact that everything looks really slow. This pack in this bout was a titch slower than the last, but we were never at the standing still pace this photo implies.

b) my foot is totally out of bounds which means I shouldn't be laying into Polly Apocalypse like that.

c) the Ethel Merman arm. That is pure awkward April and does nothing to improve my check.

So the thing I love about the picture:

a) It implies that I just dumped Luna Chicken on the ground. I know I gave her a time, so it may be truth--but I honestly don't remember putting anyone down in this bout.

I just got back from North Carolina. My mom and stepdad and sisters live there. (Though "the manliest man ever" was on a two week fishing trip in Alaska, so I didn't get to chat with him at all) My sisters are considerably younger than me, so it's taken them forever to reach the scary grown-up stage. Both are now firmly entrenched in their teens, and I gotta say it's a little spooky to see the children being erased and new adults being sketched into the blankness. In some ways it's gratifying because my mom kinda gets that ALL teenagers are crabs now, but in other ways it's weird to think that they're not really my 'little' sisters anymore. I mean, Lauren graduates this year for jeepers sake. I find this heartbreaking because I know that my only parental inclination is the desire to have a wee little April to follow me around. Not a child of my own (ew), but ME at, say, five or six. Mostly because, although I am still repugnantly childlike, there are aspects of myself that I have lost in transition. I feel having myself as a pint-sized advisor would come in handy. As I see my girls going through similar transitions, I want to collect the castoffs of their child selves and save them up for when, eight years down the road, they want them back. I guess it doesn't really work that way though.
Did I mention that I drove? By myself? It's like an eight hour drive! I listened to Assassination Vacation on the way down and was totally enthralled. American History, Sarah Vowell, and guest vocal appearances by the likes of Brad Bird, Conan O'Brian, David Rakoff, etc... as presidential assassins and their respective marks was eight hundred per cent up my alley. On the way home I listened to J-Pod, the new Douglas Coupland novel. Less enthralled. The post-modern trick of listmaking really takes on a different feel when vocalized. The other bits were all right, but Vowell is a tough act to follow.
I have that darned feeling of being on the precipice of something. If I were in a movie, the camera would be gathering visual clues in crescendoing succession and everything would be tied up into one A-Ha! moment. I seriously doubt that anything more than flaccid self-hatred will develop out of this feeling in the real world, but if I am building to a eureka, I hope it's not the dodgeball tourney I'm participating in this weekend. That would be lame.