As was made unfortunately clear in my last post, uncertainty is not something I deal with especially well.  It looks like J will be living part-time in Richmond.  For real.  He wants to look at apartments, condos and the like once I get back from a much-needed vacation in August.  He wants me to move there, too; to find something new, and just start over. 

Sometimes that idea sounds really good.  Most of the time, actually; divorce myself from all the losers here at work, get out of the city (but still be close), and be in love and have some room to breathe. 

I do really well with ideas.  I get excited and plan and it’s all sunshine and lollipops.  It’s the looming certainty of it–and in fact the inherent uncertainty of it–that’s getting me drunk on irrationality (and, oh yeah, tequila). The grandiose ideas in the map of my mind don’t translate so well into reality, I have found.  What would I do there?  Where would I live? I won’t live with him–not until we’re at least engaged–but is now the right time?  And there I go again.  The idea of being Mrs. J is so, so lovely to me.  But I think the recent influx of so many friends getting engaged and married and this climate of Weddings! Weddings! Weddings! has gotten me all turned around.  I still like the idea of marrying him. It’s just the all-of-the-sudden very real prospect that’s got me cowering. 

Happily, some things do respond well to careful planning, and are known, and follow their course as they should.  Like the Nordstrom Sale.  Oh, the oasis of sale shoes and suits and back-to-school-ish clothes!  It’s been in my calendar since, well, since I got the calendar, which works out to slightly over six months ago. 

I think it’s genetic.  Mom used to plan our family vacations around the sale. 

Happily, the stores here aren’t near the warzones that they are in Seattle, so my shopping experience tonight resembled what one might find on an ordinary Saturday back home.  People, but not too many.  No lines for the dressing rooms.  No numbers handed out in the shoe department.  That sort of thing.   

Tonight’s goal was primarily to cruise through, and get the lay of the land.  I bought the MOST ADORABLE suit, here:

I’ll try to hit it up again next Monday because they bring out new things during the second week.  Not a lot.  But some.  I used to work there; I can confirm the truth of this chocolate morsel.  I might even be nice and invite my non-car-owning Seattle friend out for that last encounter.  Because really, it’s kind of too good to keep all to myself. 

And, I suppose, at the end of the day, a balance of certainty and uncertainty, planned shopping and spontaneous friendship, isn’t so bad at all.  It’s probably just about the way it should be. I can’t live my life with the precision of a well-executed shopping weekend, and if I’m honest, I don’t think I’d want to.  I’m working on being okay with whatever life brings.  It’s a process.

I love food.  Love.  I’m not really a cook, though I enjoy it, and though I’m not really a gourmet, I can pretend.  I think about food all the time, and it’s not uncommon for me to use thoughts of my pending dinner to get me through the day. 

I’ve always been a food girl, since the time I was small.  I often won’t remember parties or plane rides or meetings until I’m reminded of what we ate.  My mom first realized it, she says, when my sister and I were watching Parent Trap for the first time.  The old Haley Mills version; not the pre-trainwreck Linday Lohan update (though that was, I thought, pretty cute, too).  It was right at the part where the girls, away at camp, realize that they’re long lost sisters, just as the lunch bell rings. Mom notices us both going teary-eyed.  My sister: “it’s so sad, they both have the same mommy and they didn’t know!”  Me: “they’re going to miss lunch!”  She still gets a kick out of telling that story, my mom.

On the train ride home on this will-not-end Wednesday and en route to dinner with a friend, I found myself pressed against the bony shoulder of an obviously anorexic girl who was, I was horrified to read over her shoulder, devouring a diet book.  A diet book.  This girl with arms of a starving African and a spine puncturing angry scabs in her emaciated back was reading a chapter entitled “maintenance”; was studying a chart called “controlling the cravings”; was reading lists of “danger” foods. It was crowded.  I was curious.  What can I say.

Looking back on it now, my first thoughts are of the “how could she do that?” variety.  Not the starving, per se, but rather the consciously reading about food while starving.  I’m reading a fantastic book now—Julie and Julia, about a woman courageously working her way through Julia Child’s French cookbook (and blogging about it, before blogs were even big)—and seriously, just reading about someone else’s dinners, failed or not, makes me hungry.  I’m the only person I know who reads the “fit” portion of Tuesday’s Express with a big plate of snacks, inspired mostly by the portion on eating healthy. The power of persuasion and I, we go way back.

But my mind was elsewhere while gripping that handrail.  Sadness; sadness was really my only feeling.  Sadness and sorrow. “Doesn’t someone love you? Isn’t there someone to tell you to stop, to destroy that book, to get you help and to force-feed you a nice steak?” If she saw my judging glances, the trying-to-take-you-in, no-I’m-not-really-staring stares, her illness would have contorted them, and twisted them, and turned them into “oh god, she thinks I’m so fat.”  She was dying, right there on the blue line to Franconia-Springfield.  Dying alone.  And I don’t think there was anything I could have done. 

Someone should love her more.  It should probably start with her.  But someone, somewhere, should love her more.  

My mornings generally follow this synopsis: 7.15, alarm goes off.  It’s my iPod, with a playlist that I really need to change because I know all the songs and what order they come, so I usually just lay there and think about getting up when the next song starts.  Somewhere around 7.30, my cell phone goes off.  I’ll tell you that I set it to because I know all about my iPod habits.  That’s part of it.  The other part is that I have this gripping fear that the power just might suddenly go out over night, allowing me to sleep uninhibited till way past 9.  This has never ever happened, and the cell phone is my insurance that it never will. 

I feel like I do a lot of seemingly normal things for totally odd reasons.  Like I feel really bad when I leave my apartment a mess in the morning; I always make my bed and try to straighten things up.  Sure, I like to have things neat when I get home; a privilege of not having a roommate.  But the bigger (secret) reason is that I often get this really morbid outlook, and start wondering what my parents would think if something tragic happened to me and they had to come get all of my stuff.  The empty wine bottles littering the kitchen, and the laundry a far cry from the hamper?  Not the daughter we knew!  Strange.  I know.

But back to my mornings.  I stumble out of bed, put the water on for tea, and jump in the shower, where I usually  remain much longer than needed just because, well, I like long hot showers.  I also like postponing the inevitable.  Obviously.

I turn on the tv while I fix my hair, generally try on variations of approximately four outfits, and slide out the door just as the clock squeaks 8.40. 

I discovered today that just by adding one hour and a bit of dedication, a heck of a lot more can be accomplished.

Note the modified schedule du jour: 6.15, alarm goes off.  I get out of bed, and make tea while the rest of the playlist rolls on.  I shower quickly, long enough to rinse my hair and decide what to wear; I fix myself up, then head down to the garage, and drive my darling car to its 7am service appointment (I KNOW.  That’s so freaking early.  I tried to complain, but it was this or mid-day Saturday.  I don’t like disrupting the peace of a long and happy weekend with errands involving brightly lit service rooms and coffee out of styrofoam).

I’ll pick it up tonight, after they check it out and run their little tests.  In the meantime, I am the temporary owner of a sparkly loaner.  My dealership is cruelly kind, in that their loaners are all the newest, nicest cars with all the toys. 

The magical space pod in my parking spot right now has a push-button ignition—the keys only have to be in the car, which means I could physically attach them to my person and never ever lose them.  You push the dashboard button and the car just starts; smoothly, quietly, perfectly.  It has a totally high-tech computer system that is not only a fancy new GPS, but also will answer your phone and will play your iPod so long as if these things are somewhere in the car, in its little magical range. 

I realized pulling out of the grocery store on the way home that the screen turns into a camera showing the space behind the car the moment you go into reverse.  Parking in the garage, it beeped and showed me sensors and a diagram of dangerous things (i.e. the posts) near the car’s edges.  I fit all the week’s groceries in the efficient netted compartments in the trunk.

Driving it is an extraordinary experience.  Still, though—it’s not my car.  It hasn’t held my CDs, hasn’t driven those miles; its steering wheel hasn’t felt the splash of my tears, and its leather is missing those dents and flaws from moving furniture and other things of the “probably won’t fit in the backseat but darn it, it’s going in” variety.  It’s seductive.  It’s nice to think about for the day.  By tomorrow, though, I bet I’ll be ready to go back.

There’s something really comfortable about what’s yours.  No matter how shiny the alternatives seem, how quickly they start or how promising they purport to be at carrying baggage, concealing the ordinary, or taking the edge off of all the bad parts, there’s something missing.  The flaws and the quirks and the low-technology originals aren’t always bad. They’re what makes the experience yours at all, and what makes it an experience, not a vacation, a few hours in wonderland.

So yes, my car has some dents from those cursed posts.  I cried for each one.  But it’s made me more careful, and it’s made me better.  I’m pretty sure this goes for a lot more than cars.

I made it home, eggs and cheese in tow and feeling very Euro-posh, in time to send a quick e-mail to my mom, eat the banana I shanghaied from the dealership’s coffee bar, and head out—by 8.40.

All this, and the only difference an hour.  Amazing. 

Every once in awhile, I find myself in situations that make me stop and think, look around me and realize just what this life of mine involves at the more superficial level. The hot showers I take every day. The refrigerator where food molds because I’m just one person, I can’t eat everything! The eight-dollar sandwiches I buy at lunch, and charge it, please.

Back when J still worked in a law firm, he took a pro bono case, a man seeking asylum in the United States. The judge granted that asylum this week, and last night, we all met in the cramped apartment of his translator to celebrate.

It’s a studio apartment, situated directly across from the National Cathedral. The walls are brightly colored, and hung with tapestries; Arabic music plays softly in the background, and we’re all seated in low chairs and sofas around the coffee table while the ancient window air conditioner whirrs. The translator is from Iran, and this room is her sanctuary, her home-away-from-home. Just walking in, I feel like I’m crossing the divide into some magical realm; sitting there, I could be in an apartment in Karachi, in Baghdad, in Kabul. Not that I’ve been to any of these places. Only in my head, and the odd Thursday night.

I’m sitting on the blue sofa, neighbor to plates of hummus, of yogurt, of chicken. The lawyer’s wife to my left takes small portions; she’s pregnant, and her appetite has grown persnickety. Misunderstanding how much more is coming, I serve myself generously as the painted platters pass.

Across from us is the newly-minted asylee, speaking rapid French with his four African-born young cousins. Or second cousins? They’re in school in Maryland, we learn; they’ve been in the US for four years now, and won asylum on similar facts as the evening’s celebre.

Victims of oppression, of tribal clashes, of governments built on belief in black magic. Running from bounty hunters and convictions that the rains won’t come, the crops will die, the sky will open its wrath if certain conditions aren’t met, certain covenants aren’t fulfilled. A promise to a god a long time ago, silently whispered in a witchdoctor’s tent: he needs a baby, give me a baby, I don’t want to end up like the rest of them. Give me a baby and I’ll give him right back; I’ll offer him back, he’ll be my offering to you. A conception haled as an omen; a baby boy born, and revered, but predestined.

A baby boy grown up, and grown skeptical; a baby boy defected while on scholarship in Europe. A people enraged and death threats sent; curses cried out and the witchdoctor’s magic again sought. A mother shamed, and stoned. An asylum granted, an American greencard, and a celebration.

The lawyer’s wife strokes her belly, the diamond on her finger causing light refractions to dance across the children, systematically, just for a moment.

She yawns, and they stand to leave. We stay for tea; yes I’ll take sugar, and what grade will you be in? How do you like it here? Oh, wonderful; I liked that class too, and yes, it’s sad that summer is ending.

Back at the car it’s life as usual. The magic of all of us together, all the world under the happy tent of the evening, fades. J’s mad about something, and I’m anxious for another workday.

A workday where I sit, still full from dinner, and no longer particularly interested in studying petty disputes over domain names. I remind myself that the truth is in perspective, but I think I’m still suffering a bit of culture shock from my evening in such a faraway place.

Respect is:

• the very excellent song currently running through my head
• completely lacking in this office
• really important to any healthy relationship

Disrespect is:

• my boss’ pattern after returning from a two-week vacation: in at noon on Monday; failed to appear Tuesday; out at noon on Wednesday
• the miniskirt I am wearing today. Denim, cut-off; on sale in the junior’s department at Mervyns and originally purchased as a swimsuit coverup (HA)
• the hour and a half of company time I just spent in the dressing room at Victoria’s Secret

I feel like I’m in good company by deciding that my job is a joke, and I hate it, and it makes me miserable. I don’t know exactly when these feelings came; were they recent? Maybe my boss really was once the nice guy I remember. Or maybe I was just deluding myself, high on the accomplishment of starting a career, convinced that it was excellent and everything was perfect because it had to be, I’d put so much at stake.

Whatever it is, the shine has worn off.

The hardest thing for me right now is that facially, my job is still perfect. It’s a perfect blend of my education, interests, and aspirations. If I could run my day through a mesh colander and filter out the snark, and the attitude, and the laziness of the people around me? If I could take the action here and set it up in front of a green screen of goodness? I’d be set.

I can’t, obviously, so I’m sitting here with a couple of different options. I could keep this job, because really, at the end of the day, it isn’t bad. I don’t feel challenged nearly enough, and I think there’s a lot of bad energy—but it pays very well, allows me to spend the odd afternoon out at the mall and rattling away on the keyboard, pretending to work (cough), and while it frustrates me to no end some days, it’s a pretty cush way to live.

Or I could look for something else. Something related or something totally different; the jury’s still out on that one. I sometimes get in these moods where I decide that retraining—maybe as a teacher, or a nurse—would be loads of fun. Other days I’m not so sure I’m ready to give up on the law.

Short of sorting out these universal questions, I took a back-door approach and updated my resume last night; oh, my goodness it felt like I was slapping my boss just opening that dusty file. “I’m moving on, you see,” I said to his specter. “I’m turning all the skills I’ve learned under your dictatorship and am polishing them into something amazing. I’m planning a coup.”

I still couldn’t shake the skank feeling of writing about myself with the harsh brevity the resume demands, though. Hi, it’s me, knocking on your door in my barest, most revealing elements. Why don’t you let me in, and let me show you how I use these assets, and you can pay me? Yeah. It feels pretty much exactly how it sounds.

This was the first time I updated my resume since school, and I’m pleased to report that it’s looking a lot meatier. A lot less “obviously I needed to fill space so I stuck this in.” It totally got my confidence going, so I moved that blinking cursor on over to a cover letters file.

For inspiration, I started researching job postings. It started out as “let’s pretend” (yes, this is what I do for fun late at night), but I actually stumbled on an opening that I’d be perfect for. Except that it’s in New York. I don’t live in New York. J is starting a business in inland Virginia, which is the opposite direction of New York. Troubling.

I don’t know that I’ll apply, but I wrote myself a glowing cover letter just the same. It was such a positive exercise, actually sitting down and writing out how great I am and what a good job I’m doing, and why I’m ready to move on. I am excellent here, even if no one sees it. And won’t they be sorry when the girl behind all of those great things slips away?

The New York job is with a major competitor. And there are others out there. Game on, bitches.

I’ve become a real Internet junkie of late. I’m online seriously all the time. I check the news and weather before I head to work. Checking e-mail is the first thing I do when I get to the office.  And  when I get home, I move the laptop to the sofa and continue on.

It’s a little bit surprising to me that I was able to wean myself of the habit all weekend without any repercussion. Like debilitating withdrawal, or those anxious cravings that get you up in the night sleepwalking towards the glowing screen? No one? Right. Moving on.

From the moment my sister arrived Wednesday night, the macbook was snapped shut, save for a brief skype with our parents and some random recipe checks. No e-mail. No blogs. For four days. Really, it seemed like the longest of long weekends, back how it used to be before the wireless world was my world, too, keeping me informed and updated and positively always in the loop.

Part of that may have just been being with her. It’s hard to believe, looking back, that the same girl who I’m sitting with up at a rooftop bar, splitting a pitcher of margaritas and talking about her next year’s plans, her boyfriend’s MCAT worries, and the bills they’ve both got to pay is the same overalled kid I used to fight with over the “best” dollhouse, and whose barbies were best friends with mine. We’re still the same, and our conversations are just as freefalling … but something’s changed. Something so subtle that you don’t even notice it till you take a step back and say, hey wait a minute … weren’t we in elementary school, like, yesterday? It’s like a child growing up; you see her once a year, and WOW, you’ve grown so much! But every day? Every day it’s so slight, changes that miss detection; you buy her new pants because they’re old, and you don’t even realize that it’s because she’s growing, too.

We did some of the touristy things, my sister and I; we went to the mall for the folklife festival and fireworks, catching a capitol hill backyard barbeque in between. We toured the Library of Congress, and went shopping in Georgetown. My favorites, though, were the hours we spent in the living room, in a fort of sorts we built from her air mattress and my sofa, watching tv favorites from our childhood (composed primarily of I Dream of Jeannie and Bewitched … so excellent) and old movies of the Carey Grant / Doris Day variety.

We complemented these silver screen spectaculars with unanimous favorites from the Childhood House of Us: macaroni and cheese, lil’ smokies (cheese injected, of course), and bagel bites. Just because we could.

I miss the time when that’s what summer was all about—being lazy, watching TV, and playing games till dinner time. My weekend was like playing house in reverse: instead of pretending we were the responsible adults going to work and running errands and driving the car, we were pretending that we had no worries, and could just stay in our pajamas all day doing nothing but changing out the DVDs. Honestly, we had just as much fun.

I’m always amused by the ads that pop up on my gmail. Privacy advocates like to cry about how I’m surrendering my liberties and being exploited by advertising magnates, but for me, it’s really pretty entertaining–what off-the-wall ads will I be served today? They must be successful, these crazy ads that appear, but I wonder what people are thinking when they click.  Are they really looking for something, or just bored? Or curious?

I’m looking at a sponsored link right now: Are You a Good Sister? Take our quiz and find out for sure!

I can’t think that anyone legitimately believes that the almighty Mr. Internet can make that determination. I also happen to know (thanks to some days of serious boredom) that Mr. Internet won’t likely reveal his secrets in any event without a valid e-mail address that just may be later used to sell you some discount online pharmaceuticals.  Satisfy her tonight!

It’s a diversion, though; a cosmo quiz for the less risqué and desk-bound. Like the love match? Where you match your astrological sign up with your other’s sign and see how you line up? Yeah, I’ve tried that. Compulsively. I might even have it bookmarked. Not that I believe it; it’s just fun.

If my sponsored links and my own time-wasters are a fair sampling, there’s a lot of garbage on the Internet. This makes me wonder if all the recent hype about expanding the namespace is really worth it. At the Paris conference I was meant to go to last week, the gears started moving to allow new top-level domain registrations more easily; to allow dot-whatever because, the argument goes, there’s so much demand for new names and .com is running out. Whether or not people agree kept me occupied for most of the day. It’s on my brain, what can I say.

I think I’ll get a faster answer to whether or not I’m a good sister come Wednesday, when my youngest sister comes down from New York to spend an extended Fourth of July weekend being a tourist in a city that really goes all out this time of year. She’s an intern up in NYC this summer, and I intend to visit her … soon? But until then, I’m busy plotting our exploits here. I’m so so so excited to see her; it’s been since Christmas, which really is too long. It’s a strange shift to go from seeing someone every day, rain or shine, to living states and miles and highways apart. 

I haven’t yet decided whether or not I’m glad that she’s 21 now. Yes, we can go out—fun, to order a drink with my baby sister! But since she can go out, I feel like we will, all the time, just for the novelty of it. My sister can drink. Being 21 hasn’t changed anything but the venue, which sometimes worries me. I remember being an intern, and going out in the city every night; all the time, every night—it’s just what you did. Drinking till crazy hours, and still getting up for work the next morning. Summertime, fun bars, cool people. Party on!

Now, I hate to say it, but something of that shine has worn off. Going out and getting trashed every night? Not exactly my agenda. [Aside: when did I get all old and uncool? When did I start dreading youth’s knock on my door? WTF, self?]

I think we’ll draw a good balance; she really is a good kid. Just to cover the bases, though, I have now in plentiful stock here apartment-side (a) white wine; (b) vodka; (c) kahlua; (d) malibu. All of her favorites. On the nights we stay in, she can pour hers strong and sleep it off, and I can just take a taste and still be functional at work. A win-win.

Who knows, maybe I’ll put in a bid for a new website: magda.awesomesister. HA. Ahahaha.

Retrospectively, my move to DC a year and half ago was pretty haphazard.  My newly-married sister volunteered to adopt the entire set of my really fantastic IKEA apartment furniture, and I didn’t really have enough stuff after that to get movers or arrange for anything really professional. 

This is the story of how I got really friendly with the UPS clerk. I mailed all of what I deemed “essential” in eighteen big boxes.  Yeah. That involved many, many trips down the hill in mom’s wagon, loading and unloading, shipping and signing.  Less a few casualties of the “fragile” variety, it all made it here, unpacked and added to over time.

I got spoiled living in Seattle.  My apartment was small, and I didn’t keep more than what I needed on a day-to-day basis.  Anything obscure that I needed?  Ski clothes, say, pictures of me as a child, or nice wine I’d stored in dad’s cellar? I’d just pop across the bridge and get it.  In my head, everything that I own—alongside most things I know my parents have somewhere—is chronicled in my head as “accessible.”

I got an email from a friend today, asking me to join her and some of her work colleagues on a hike tomorrow.  I like hiking; it’s something we did as a family a lot growing up.  I used to hate it.  Long weekends up at the mountain house were the bane of my existence as a child; while everyone else was sleeping in or sleeping over, shopping or hanging out, I was up at the crack of dawn, eating oatmeal (“sticks to your ribs,” mom would say), and getting dirty scaling a mountain.  I’m not and never have been a real nature girl, but I have warmed up to it over time. 

We’ll be hiking here, at Old Rag: http://www.hikingupward.com/snp/oldrag/  It’s supposed to be beautiful.

I came home from work and went to my closet.  “Hiking clothes,” I said, as if they’d just appear.  The hiking clothes did not cooperate.  I suspect that this is because they are on the west coast, in that pile of “I don’t need this enough to ship it”; labeled with the post-it saying “will call and ask for it if I need it.”  A bit late on that now, I’m afraid.

I do have my hiking shoes (I think I moved all of my shoes, howsoever impractical they were adjudged). They are grey and pink, and very adorable.  I have a lot of workout-y clothes, but nothing really attractive, and nothing that really coordinates with the shoes.

I also don’t have a backpack.  That’s a little bit troubling.  I know I must have three at home, at least, but all I come up with here is a dinky knapsack-thing that I got at a conference awhile back.  Unfortunately, it’s bright teal.  And says DIGITAL FREEDOM straight across it.

So, here’s me: pink shoes; black shorts; red tank top; teal bag.  Awesome!

I briefly considered going out and buying a whole hiking ensemble.  This friend I’m going with is a very manicured, always-put-together type of girl.  She’s a sweet girl, but honestly, it can get intimidating.  (And annoying when we meet up after work and, unbeknownst to me, she goes home and changes first.  This has happened twice.  So she’s all fresh and perky, and I’m there in my tired work clothes looking fatigued.  Boo).

I decided against a Friday night shopping excursion, though; if I haven’t needed them all this time, there’s no need to invest now.  If I think I really want to be outside all the time, I’ll pack some things back when I’m home in August.  And really, I’m kind of over the whole trying-to-be-perfect-to-please-others thing.

I have no idea who else is going—friends of hers from work, I think.  Ah.  IRS lawyers.  I’m still hating on the IRS, so if one, or maybe five of them don’t return?  Heh.

I invested a chunk of the forthcoming stimulus on a nice new addition to my kitchen, which arrived today.

Unfortunately, it arrived like this:

But, being something of a furniture-making genius, I transformed it into this:

Needs two adults, pish pish. 

Time for a celebratory glass of wine, I think.

Sometimes sympathetic coworkers and listening ears over beers after work are the best thing in the world.  Especially when said coworkers are the only contemporaries on a floor of “could be my parents”-style people.

Sometimes a last-minute email from an old friend saying “hey, meet me for dinner tonight” can be a lifesaver. 

Sometimes numbers lose meaning.  Bills involving pitchers of sangria, or tanks of gas? Those are numbers? Coming out of my bank account? Whatever, send me the receipt.

Sometimes empty trains and ipods full of emo music = bliss.

Sometimes having a boyfriend away for two entire weekends can seem impossible, but sometimes it (contradictorily) seems amazing; a chance to regain a bit of independence, and to remember how it used to be.  Weekends of empty agendas and poolside afternoons and museums with the self as the center and the stopwatch. 

Sometimes it feels amazing to outwit Bill Gates’ Word with words like “contradictorily.” (Should one draft posts in Word.  Which, um, I do.  That red underline? SO unnecessary.)

Sometimes it’s hard to have grown up in Bill Gates’ suburb. And to have his daughter attend your alma mater, now that she’s, you know, old enough to go to school.

Sometimes it’s hard to come from privilege, and to prove that you’re still making it on your own, and existing entirely independently of the world in which you’ve found yourself in by fortune of family circumstance.

Sometimes the happiest thing is to fall into bed, with the laptop, and type off thoughts and feelings to the world. 

Sometimes it’s just like that.  Just a moment of calm, where everything seems somehow aligned, and you know that, while it will certainly be short-lived, it’s something worth holding onto.