Frog Queen

This is a tree frog nestled into the crack of our barn door. As a child, I used to rescue the frogs and toads from my grandma's window wells during the summer months.

It's my country's birthday today, but the heat kept us mostly in doors. I used the time to organize my room- my clothes are all put away, my closet has been rifled through, and my yarn stash is slightly (only so slightly) diminished. There's a pile of articles outside my door waiting to head out to Goodwill and people who might have more use of the clothes and books and yarn. My room is live-able again.

I rediscovered my old journals- there must be over a dozen now- starting back in.. I don't even know! Perhaps 1998, but 2002 is when I started journaling with more intensity. It's humorous, but at times poignant. I ran across a lovely poem on heartbreak and bleak entries also on this topic. I skipped ahead to 2009 when I had been back in the States for a year since my 6 months in Germany. I was lamenting about not being able to remember the names of the bus stops, since I had heard them nearly every day of those 6 months. How the daily things fade! Even now, I fear my Portuguese is leaving me. My last 6 months are fading into the present.

I found an entry from 10 years ago, July 4 2002, Day 25 of my, my Dad, and my Uncle's 5 week drive to Alaska. I read it to my Dad who then found his old journal. We've found our entries for every day on that trip line up very well. It was really funny to read through- I wrote so differently and with such painful detail to food! (IE: we had a pb and jelly sandwich again for lunch, yuck! The steak at the restaurant was DELICIOUS!)

Sandwiched into one of the journals, I also found a short paper I wrote for my high school English class the day after 9/11. We were asked to write about the previous day- just anything so that we could record our thoughts in that moment. It ends like this, "Yes, this is a terrible tragedy but I can see that time goes on and we keep tumbling through space. I pray we do not lose sight of our morals, our hope, our country as it was founded to be." I was 16.