Day one

The visitation and rosary and family hangout afterward all went really well this evening and tonight. I kind of only touched my emotions on the sad part of the emotional spectrum, and I feel like they might kind of explode outward tomorrow…, but I guess that’s okay. Hopefully, I’m able to make it through the reading reasonably well. I’ll be doing it in German, which was his first language and our extra special bond, just the two of us. So, I shared that I would like to do my reading in German, and print the English in the worship guide. It was approved with flying colors by the ones in charge. However, our cousin the priest, who’ll be saying Mass, told me to mention what I was doing and why I was doing it just before I began the German reading… that part might just be my emotional undoing…, so, we shall see on that part. Perhaps I’ll be so nervous about its being my first reading in a Mass, I won’t even notice the emotions that usually would arise for such a statement.

Anyway, at the family hangout tonight, after everyone had been eating a while, I went around and handed out the party favors, as I called them to myself. They were pains au chocolat, the French pastry that I usually call chocolatines, which is the name used in Southern France. As I passed them out to everyone, I said on repeat, “Because everything is better with chocolate, especially pain.”

Some of them got it immediately. Others took a few seconds or a couple minutes, and got it once they realized I was repeating the same phrase to everyone, which suggested something important in the message and word choice. A few definitely did not get it…, but they did like the pain au chocolat I offered to each of them.

(The irony, of course, is that I actually don’t like chocolate. I do love chocolatines, though [pain au chocolat]).

Post-a-day 2021

Food…

Have you ever had a strong physical reaction to food…?

I don’t mean like food poisoning or allergy, not at all.

I mean like… an arousing… reaction…

No?

Well, tonight, riding home through the cool, misty air, I passed underneath the train tracks, and hit the first wall of Sunbeam bread being freshly baked for the early morning send-off…

I inhaled deeply, sucking in the warm, glorious smell I always delight in crossing…

And I felt an instant, almost overpowering, reaction in my body… my muscles tensed, and an intense shiver, originating … well, yeah… below my belly, rose powerfully upward, through my belly, my spine, down my arms and spreading through the hair follicles on my entire body… in a sense, it was a moment of ecstasy…. It was deep and intense and thorough, though only for a few moments.

My whole body was suddenly tightly wound, and utterly warm, for just a moment…

As the shiver released through my body, its spread all-encompassing, it flowed out my finger tips and skull, and dissipated entirely, leaving only a questioning sense of ‘What the h*** just happened?’ in my mind…

I wasn’t opposed.

But I certainly was surprised.

I mean… wow.

Bread.

Not even… the scent of bread.

Just… wow.

So, that’s been on my mind since I arrived home tonight… haha 😛

Post-a-day 2020

Freshly Sliced

I am the epitome of sliced white bread, as I enter campus.  I have on my dance top and shorts and my hipster tie-dye Oakley sunglasses.  I am eating a Trader Joe’s snack bar and holding a large bottle of cold Trader Joe’s electrolyte water, and am walking with a cool green backpack on my back, and my dirty blonde hair in a messy bun on top of my head.

Two black guys are walking towards me.  The larger of the two, a very large and very dark guy, asks me how I’m doing and what I do here.  I tell him that I go to school.  He asks if I do any sports or anything, because I look like I do long-distance running; I look very thin and fit.  I say that I did.  He says that ‘you see there, I was right – you look like it’.  I notice that I’m also wearing running shoes – the ones I used to wear for all my walking and bike riding at my Japan job – and that I haven’t just been doing exercise, despite my complete outfit for it.  He hands me a flyer while saying that they hope I can join them on the 20th, and then I continue onward.  Based on the flyer, it looks like some sort of DJ dance party with stereotypical black advertising and expected attendees.  Not that I’m opposed to the party, but I’m not exactly the target audience of the flyer, making it surprising that this guy would have stopped to invite me…I mean, did he see me?  Again, not opposed to it.  I’m in full support of it.  I’m just a little surprised by it.  However, I recall that this is a college campus, so they’re probably inviting just about any girl they can find (who doesn’t look like a total nerd, that is), and my surprise lessens significantly.

After a few hundred yards of walking onward, I see what I originally think is a dead snake on the ground.  As I approach it, I see that it is a strand of weave, of false hair.  A gurgling chuckle rises within me.  This is definitely not my typical territory, and I feel as though my thoughts of being stereotypical white bread have just been proven by my surroundings of very much black culture  – not to mention the fact that almost everyone I can see is black to some degree – showing up in stark contrast to me.

And then I remember that I also am wearing a drape-y scarf, despite the fact that it is still technically summertime.  I’m even more white bread than I had thought.

Post-a-day 2018