green mountains outside the window

We made it to Vermont a couple days ago. We're here with Amy and Pete this week and then we're heading back. While they're at work, I think about my mixed feelings of being excited to go back to a place I know, to be productive, to make some money instead of just spending it...and I'm also a little worried because I think it will feel strange. I'm going to want to leap back in but I'll have to wait since we're going to fly to visit Camille on Lummi Island and then fly to Wilmington for the Morrill family get-together. (Isn't it crazy that a multi-city ticket flying from Grand Rapids to Seattle and then to Wilmington was cheaper than a ticket from Grand Rapids to Wilmington? With ridiculosity like that, it's a sure sign that we're supposed to go.) Anyway...it'll only be once we drive back to Michigan with Tim's folks, get my car at their house, and then drive the Civic again for the first time since May back over to Grand Rapids that we'll really stop. Stop, stop, stop. That will be the first week of October -- two months later than originally semi-imagined. But isn't that the way things go?

Today I answered Amy and Pete's phone and it happened to be her dad on the other end. Mark is a cool guy who I liked immediately when I met him at Amy's wedding. We chatted on the phone for about 15 minutes and he asked me the ever-burning question of what I was planning to do after the trip. He mentioned that he'd had the impression from hanging out with me and from hearing about me from Amy that I was a mix of practical and idealistic. It cracked me up a little bit so I had to tell him about the Practical Wonderer title for Fourth Sector. I hear these same things from smart people with insights about who I am, and it makes me feel a little comforted that maybe there is some continuity here...that I'm not just a big blob of contradictions and likes and dislikes, swirling around in an amorphous puddle of blather.

And then again, from other smart people whose opinions I trust, I get the same advice: chill out and don't take every bleeding thing so seriously. And if you can manage that, try having some fun too. Amy told me this over tea and a wonderful molasses crinkle at the Langdon Street Cafe in beautiful Montpelier. It's the same advice Camille gave me about a month ago, and I know plenty of other people have. Maybe the best way for me to take this advice right now is to stop all the worrying about whether or not I'll have it all figured out by the time we get to Grand Rapids, and whether or not I'm letting anyone or myself down by not knowing, or if I'll wreck my entire future by not knowing. Why are these things always easier said than done?

Anyway...I'm going to head down to the kick-ass co-op and get some risotto fixins for dinner tonight. I also need to pick up a small canvas at the local art store so that I can paint a picture to send back to Bear and Honey at the AT hostel we stayed at before leaving Maine and crossing the White Mountains in New Hampshire. (P.S. Now that I've seen them, I definitely want to do the Presidential hike through there on some future vacation.) I did a stupid thing and painted my first picture ever and then couldn't say no when asked to give it away. So now I have to pay for it and do an even stupider thing, which is paint and mail them a different one and ask for my other painting back. It's a long story, but I feel like a real moron about it.