Small Pleasures

Sylvia (left) has decided to help me out with some of my art projects. In the mornings while I weed the back yard, before the sun gets up to its position in the desert sky all of the cats have been hanging out with me, my supervisors. The grass is slowly spreading out and gives off a great aroma after the daily monsoon rain. It's really amazing to see how much a bit of water can change everything. Yesterday I spread some grass seed and will see if that helps out.
I closed at the restaraunt last night. I think it was the most interesting night for customers, at least my tables were. There was one family on vacation from Italy that was looking for a place to develop some pictures and really just enjoyed them. Another family was wrapping up a two week road trip from Houston, TX and enjoyed our cream sodas. They had gone to the Grand Canyon and a few other national parks. Remebering those days growing up of the national parks and historical museums that I was conscious of their importance and that there was some significance to them that I should appreciate, but also conscious of the humidity and that summer laziness seeping into every limb on the long stretch of highway between hotels with my mom, step dad and step sister. I can remember one summer we went to the Oregon coast and I had hot chocolate and french toast every morning for breakfast: I was in heaven. Of course, we hadn't expected the typical ocean-coast weather of gray and slightly cold and foggy. So we all went swimming in the hotel pool and out for ice-cream in waffle cones and to the arcades and touristy spots.
Road trips now are a lot more energizing for me, or maybe they are just different. With friends from school and college, piling into someone's car and pooling money for gas. Hoping to get to the destination in one piece and enjoying the ride and company and opportunity to talk and give each other a raft of shit about anything, I think I will always enjoy these little pleasures.
Another of my small pleasures, rediscoved is in reading. For a long time now, I haven't been able to sit and really lose myself in a book. With in the last few weeks, I've become completely absorbed by a novel I am reading for a reading group of women. They sit around about once a month and drink wine and eat pastries and discuss the last novel. What a great way to connect, right? The pleasure of reading for me was always an excitement in catching a glimpse of another world. Maybe I can't afford a plane ticket to experience it first hand, but really, even if I could, there is no guaruntee that I would get the same impact from any external situation as someone else who is writing about it. It's a lot like getting to open a door into another person's life or world, inside their head. How often does that honestly happen? Who would you let into your own interior world voluntarily?