The Tory Party

About the Weather

This whole piece is about me. It’s not very funny. You might not want to read it.

The weather today in the Triangle was fantastic. Yesterday it was fantastic. Tomorrow it’s supposed to be fantastic as well. It’s been highs in the mid-eighties and lows in the mid-sixties, with dry air and light breezes, and this is after at least six weeks of unremitting soggy stagnant nineties, fog and gloom. Every time I’ve been outside — and in weather like this you can bet it’s been a lot — I’ve gotten this twinge of breathless joy and anticipation for the fall, which I love, I freakin` love, I freakin` freakin` love. Weatherlust. I got it. I get back from running and just sit on the front step thinking about how not sweaty I am and how I can see all the leaves on the trees so sharply and how good and peaceful and lucky my whole life is. Weatherlust makes me maudlin. Be advised.

My weekend was bitchin` as well. My social outlets were out of town, and I was at first alarmed at the prospect of my own devices, but they revealed themselves after weeks of demented activity to be blissfully mundane. Yesterday I had my eyes examined — part of a series of medical visits I`m making while my health insurance is going — and they’re nice and healthy and next week I`ll have splashy new lenses and glasses that are legal to drive in. My mom (ah, it’s 1992 again) took me around with dilated pupils and I pretended I was David Bowie and got a bunch of clothes on the cheap from Goodwill, and a bunch of CDs on the cheap from CD Warehouse (buying things new is for fools). Furthermore among these acquisitions were button-fly jeans (why they all aren’t boggles the mind) and Butterfly Boucher (so rockin`). I loafed at my parents` house, playing with the dogs and eating grapes and a wildly tasty hamburger, God save my not-so-vegetarian soul. Then I saw a mouvie by meself because by God I felt like it. I brought my own candy. The movie was good. The candy was good.

Next day I slept late, had a good run (the achilleses are both back up to snuff, I am thrilled to report), did the laundry and the dishes and cleaned my bathroom which had heretofore become the dirtiest it had ever been, which is to say very. Opened all the windows to slake my weatherlust. Ran out of work to do at 3 PM. Baffled by my surfeit of time and resources, I snarfed one of my new roommate’s novels and sprawled out on the couch with not one but TWO Diet Dr Peppers.

I was a couple of chapters into Part 2 when I realized: I am a lucky bastard.

Lucky, lucky, lucky bastard.

Generally I`m good about remembering this, even when things are aggravating me. The scale on which my aggravations exist is so small — to be measured in teaspoons, or carats — if you tossed them in the air they`d be too light to fall. If I`m worried about what job I can get while I`m in school, it’s only because 1) I have a job right now, and 2) its lifestyle permitted school in the first place. If I`m unhappy about a sports injury, it’s only because I`m healthy enough to have a sport. But I don’t even mean I`m lucky in a boring “you have your health” kind of way. I mean I am lucky to the hilt, the gills, the teeth. Sometimes sixty-degree weather comes blowing in and brings it to mind.