The Whole Wide World

After a doozy of a couple days, today was a pretty good day. I had deja vu typing that. I feel like I am up-down, up-down constantly down here lately and it’s kind of exhausting, but I got a good night’s sleep last night and slept in a bit this morning, too. Enough sleep always makes a difference. It’s also possible I am always in a better mood on Wednesdays (another bout of deja vu) since I have Thursdays off. Sometimes I forget that I work a 54-hour work week. It’s not like I am a stranger to that though. Even when I worked at the bank, I had a part-time job waiting tables in the evenings. But something about being down here really just sucks it out of you. Again with the deja vu.

I haven’t stopped craving nature. It’s going to be so amazing to hear the sound of running water, see all the colors, smell all the smells. I cannot wait to be in warm weather sleeping in my tent waking up to the sound of birds chirping. Speaking of warm weather, we had a couple of days this week where the temperature was around 0 Fahrenheit and there wasn’t much windchill, the way that feels warm now is uncanny. I don’t have to put my hood up or hat on and I leave my big red jacket unzipped. It’s practically tropical. Okay, maybe not tropical, but it truly feels warm relatively speaking.

Almost always when we are all discussing the things we miss, animals are high on the list. Laying in the grass and petting a dog is a popular answer. I always think about whether or not I am going to be grateful to have bugs reenter my life. Do I miss spiders, flies and creepy crawlers? I appreciate all creatures, but do I really miss mosquitos? Nah. Not a chance. It is bizarre to think that other than the seals, penguins and whales who passed through this summer, humans are the only form of life I’ve seen in seven months.

Other than us weirdos, who thought an adventure to the frozen bottom of the world sounded fun, nothing is alive. I think about the no bugs thing pretty often though. The last insect I saw was seven months ago when a stink bug crawled out of my suitcase in New Zealand after an 18-hour flight from Virginia. There were pamphlets in the airport in Auckland about stink bugs and making sure you don’t bring invasive species into their beautiful country. I was slightly horrified when I saw him and immediately flushed him down the toilet. Poor lil fella.