Was it everything you wanted to find

          I seem to have managed to forget, in recent days, that alcohol is a depressant, but the knowledge has come back to me now. I mean, it's okay. It's something I needed to remember.

          I was sitting in the car with Fenn (oh, I need to mention this, a fantastic phrase that came out of her mouth the other day - "You aren't living life sexy enough!"), and Drops of Jupiter started playing on the radio. Okay. I don't care what anyone else says, that is a bitchin' song. Fenn knows every word of it. I was impressed.
          So now it's list time again (get excited).
Ridiculous songs that I'm not afraid to admit to loving:
    - Drops of Jupiter, by Train
    - Walking on Broken Glass, by Annie Lennox
    - Stars are Blind, by (yes, I know) Paris Hilton
    - Jessie's Girl, by Rick Springfield
    - Take On Me, by a-Ha
    - Stand By Me, by Ben E. King
    - Jet Plane, by John Denver
    - Wagon Wheel, by Old Crow Medicine Show
    - Superfreak (Rocasound Revamp), by Rick James
    - Closing Time, by Semisonic
    - Sunshine Superman, by Donovan
    - I Think We're Alone Now, by Tommy James and the Shondells
    - Praise You, by Fat Boy Slim
    - Sugar Sugar, by the Archies
    - Everybody's Free (Wear Sunscreen), by Baz Luhrmann

          And not nobody can make me feel ashamed.



          Also - it occurred to me this evening that I've neglected to mention that I've completed one small circle in my life.
          During my unexpected stay at home, I ventured away from suburbia and down into the city. I ended up watching the sun rise over the lake with a good friend, in perfect counterpoint to all those times as a child when I watched the sun set over that same lake, from the opposite shore.
          It struck me again the degree to which I love the lake. I'm always surprised by how happy - relieved, even - I am to be near water. I feel the muscles along my shoulder blades relax, letting go of tension I didn't know I was carrying, breathing deeply, comforted in ways I didn't know I needed by the sound of the waves.
          What I remember most about those sunsets from childhood is the light off the water. Wide, extravagant, lazy gold flakes of light just highlighting the crests of waves, more orange than yellow, like a banked fire. But the sunrise made me notice the water. It started out green, like jade or moss, but as the sun rose (the flakes off the waves were brighter, hotter, whiter than the slow oranges of sunset), it darkened to blue.
          I turned around and saw those golden sunset flakes - the buildings in the skyline were catching the light as the sun rose, and a few of them turned a glare as brilliant as the sunsets I remember.
          The breeze picked up as the light reached us, sitting on the end of a pier. I was warmed by the sun, but the wind won out - my teeth started chattering and I shivered. But it was beautiful. I was struck with a deep affection, a gratefulness, for everything around me - the light off the water, the shorebirds trawling the sand for waterbugs nearby, the city that swept along the shore behind me, the warmth of a kind hand at my back, the breeze and the heat on my cheeks as I turned my face to the sun, the taste of lake and wind and daylight in my lungs. It was all ... precious. Inestimably beautiful.