I Enjoy Being a Girl

Mmm I feel pretty. I dyed my hair a little darker brown (somewhat unseasonal) this morning to fix some grown-out highlights, then grabbed the scissors and cut some more layers so my hair would flip better. Then I went out to lunch with my mom to Mimi's Cafe, and then we both got pedicures! I got "Season's Greetings" red (also quite unseasonal). I feel like this is the first time in my life that I've had pretty feet! Oh what running marathons will do to your toes. Glory, it feels good to get done up.

Home

Home is so healing, isn't it?! Its not like I've been lazy here; I've actually had my fair share of household responsibilities, seeing as my parents left for Germany for over a week. They always seem to conveniently leave town whenever I come home to visit :)

And so in taking the kids to swimming lessons, softball games, trumpet lessons, physical therapy, horse lessons, church, and doing the grocery shopping, gasing up the van, cooking meals, and dates every night with an old friend, I should be exhausted and long to get away. But I absolutely love it. Even the part where I had to take one of the twins into surgery yesterday to get a wood chunk out of his foot. I'm just glad kids come one at a time, and not 7 all at once.

But really, there's something about going back to where you came from that makes you see what you've become in the time you were gone. I'm surrounded by pictures and scrapbooks and videos and momentos of me from before I left for school, I know, a mere 4 years ago, but I feel like a completely different girl. Like that skinnier, more rebellious, simpler version of me had more of an idea of what she wanted than I do. And so the older and wiser me is just so intrigued by that frame of a girl who had her whole life planned. And some things happened just the way she wanted them, and some things, not at all.

Wow, I sound like I'm going through some mid-life crisis! Maybe its because another chapter of life ends this summer--that of being a silly college girl. And now I go off into the real world of having a real job and that small Ohio town "High-School-Camille" never thought she'd see the "College-Grad-Camille" as a single girl, a Home-ec teacher, settled in Provo, still the hopeless romantic she always was.

Garage Sale

What luck to be back home for the annual Autumn Creek neighborhood garage sale! Every year, the week after school gets out, the mothers of our neighborhood pull out the price tag stickers, the lawn chairs, and the fans, open their garage doors and set up camp. Then they'll sit for a solid 3 days, with their coke and iced tea, and chat with everyone and anyone who comes their way.

Garage sales are a wonder to me. We sit outside, in the humid and muggy Ohio-ness, melting in our garages, no less, selling what we don't have room for, what we should have thrown out years ago, things that we bought on mail order that didn't really work, things we forgot where they came from, things we don't want the kids to see we're trying to sell, and for junk change. For a mere quarter, for a dollar here or there.

And as I walked home this morning with the little ones, a bag full of eyelet lace and ribbon that I had paid $.25 for, I realized that its not about making any money at all. Its for the sense of Midwest community in walking the whole neighborhood over and seeing everyone that you haven't seen all winter. Its to catch up on everyone's life, to see how big their baby has gotten, to see what they've done with the house, to welcome in the summer after a whole season of staying indoors.

I guess its sweet how they've all kept up on my life, though I haven't really seen the neighborhood like this for atleast 4 years. I think I babysat for atleast half of the neighborhood; they've seen me outside getting pictures for Prom or Homecoming, they've heard me giggling on the phone on our porch swing for hours, seen me on the steps when I was dropped off after dates, after curfew. They've gratiously bought grapefruit and oranges when the choir was fundraising, and let us use their driveways when we hosted parties.

And with every friendly comment along the lines of "Camille, you know you have to get married soon, because your dad's almost done with the gazebo", I smile and think, "I know. I'm working on it. I'd love to be inviting you to my reception in the backyard, I'd love to settle down in the cute little house next to yours, and then I'd be buying all of your baby swings, and high chairs, and footie pajamas at next year's garage sale. "Do you have a boyfriend yet?", "I should set you up with my nephew while your in town", "You better get started soon if you want a big family too". Oh, dear neighbors of Fairborn Ohio, thank you for watching out for me. You're cute. And I just never get tired of hearing it, I guess!