That One Thing

Everybody's got it.  That one thing they don't leave home without.  That one thing that you just don't feel dressed sans*.

(Smartasses, I am not talking literally here.)

For me, it's mascara.  I may be unshowered and unkempt, but I'm going to have the illusion of long lush lashes whenever I venture beyond my own mailbox. My hairdresser told of a client who could not leave home without polished fingernails.  For some, it's earrings; others, a baseball cap.  For a lot of us these days, it's a cell phone.

What's your thing?

*Pretentious French word tossed in to avoid using "without" twice.  Spent 5 minutes trying to think of the word "pretentious" and finally located it catty-corneredly through Thesaurus.com!

The Ides of August

well, technically that's over, but it's a grand summation of the growing sense of dread I feel today.  Or A summation.  I'm not terribly articulate and prone to exaggeration.

What I mean is, it's almost September.  And that chills my heart.  LITERALLY.  Weather-wise, this is a beautiful time of year:  warm days, cool nights, the humidity largely gone.  Psyche-wise, it sucks donkey balls.  Rancid donkey balls.

And I can't quite put my finger on why.  The end of summer, sure.  That's depressing.  Getting back in the rigid routine of the school calendar.  Fall - and winter - on the horizon.  I just feel so in flux, like everything is changing but in those old familiar ways.  I always feel a little reborn and new in the spring, so I guess this is the bookend - feeling a little bit dead and most def a lot old.  Yeah, I have a birthday coming up.  And it's going to turn cold and the days are going to get shorter and shorter until the night lasts forever and I go to work in the dark and come home in the dark and everything is black and gray and ugly.

Très dramatique, n'est-ce pas?

Oui.  I know, I know.  C'est vrai.

Stop me before I light up une Gauloise and look pensively out the window.

As much as I tell myself not to be silly and to get a gosh darn grip on it and to think sunshine and lollipops and other happy thoughts, I still feel it.  Despite the hostile environment, it persists.

Onwards, into the long dark teatime of the soul, peeps.  Onwards.