Color Story | April | Grass

April was hardly a vacation spent in Emerald City. I spent the first week or so in bed, sick beyond belief with a terrible headache and constant nausea. It was the vitamin D; I wasn’t absorbing it and it was collecting in my system at a rate our savings account only fantasizes about. After five days I stopped taking my prescribed dose. It took two more weeks for me to feel human, which means now I alternate between being productive and taking breaks next to the window in my reading chair.

I’m doing so much better now, truly. I visited a nutritionist and am slowly building up my tolerance for vitamins. Most importantly, the sun is finally making regular appearances. I try to spend 15-20 minutes a day outside, and it feels good.

A rough start, definitely, but things are back on track. My hip…it’s okay. Sometimes it hurts, sometimes not. When I met Emily, Andrea, and Rachel, it didn’t hurt once, not even when I got up and out of chairs or walked around the plaza. The other day I came back from tennis and felt great! No pain, no limping. Today I moved furniture, and I’m limping. I think I have it worked out. When I do things out of the ordinary or exciting, my brain is happy, too busy to pay attention (or create) ailments. It seems to me, then, that I need to have more fun to be in less pain.

As a teen, I wanted nothing more than to move to the mountains or Alaska, anywhere with cold weather. I hated the heat, especially since it gets so hot here in the Inland Empire during the summers. We aren’t the desert, but we easily hit 100 in August and September. It’s a dry heat, which is an old joke but trust me–it makes a difference. I’ve been to Cancun when it’s 80 and humid. I’ll take 100 and dry any day of the week, especially now. Because now? Now I seem to like the heat and have no tolerance for cold, wet weather.

I never thought I would, but I do love the heat. And on those days where it’s overcast and dim, I’m a bear. I wear despondency like a raincoat.

Thankfully, the warmer days are becoming regular–at least this past week. The Mister has been grilling up a storm, which he happily does to make things easier for me. I tease him more than anything around here, but secretly, I’d be lost without him. No, really. I have the worst sense of direction known to man kind. I could not make my way out of a paper bag with a map.

Which is fine, I guess. It’s not like I’m going anywhere. It’s not like most of southern California is going anywhere.

Not by car they’re not.

Maybe that’s a good thing. I pass two high schools on the way to pick up Mikey from school. I drive by dozens, maybe even hundreds, of teenagers and baring a few exceptions, I’ve never seen a larger group of unattractive people in one setting that didn’t involve a convention. And I went to school in the 80s. I am more than qualified to identify unattractive fashion and presentation. It’s not even the outfits that concern me, although the ill fitting spaghetti tank tops, over-plucked brows, and untied sneakers are enough to make me look back at my fluorescent shoulder pads fondly. It’s that everyone looks pasty, malnourished, and glassy-eyed, like they spend most of their days inside texting.

I want to lean out my car window and tell them they’re doing it all wrong. There’s a huge world outside their insulated high school existence, and it goes beyond iphones and computers and O.M.G. Facebook. Get out! Exercise! Have human interactions on a regular basis–and not in the backseat of a Scion belonging to a guy named Cody!

So says the middle-aged, out of shape mother with rickets.

This was a color story. Please leave a link to yours in the comments, if you are so inclined. Otherwise, will you join me in May? The theme is jacarandathat beautiful, gorgeous, breathtaking purple tree that annoys everyone in southern California because they destroy our yards and cars by shedding more than golden retrievers. But they sure are pretty! Purple, lavender, periwinkle, and everything in between around your home, your town, or your inspiration folder. Stuff you make, stuff you buy, stuff you photograph. No pressure. (Do it.)