I really did overdo myself sunday. After sleeping for something like 12 hours I woke up at 3:30am sunday morning. After milling around the room for a few hours, I gathered the gumption to go do some laundry. Sitting in my car in front of the laundromat was a unique experience; while the laundry was going, I sat out there and just soaked in the quiet of a sunday-morning dawn. I don’t know what it is about morning hues, but it always puts me at peace. I hungered for a good camera and decent photographic skills.
After laundry, I returned to the apartment just in time to meet up with my roomate when he got home from work. We had set aside the day to go to McGregor Park, also known as Hippy Hollow, the only clothing-optional state park in Texas. We headed out and got there around 9am, and it was quiet, calm, and peaceful. After settling down in a nice shady spot with a good view, we stripped down to our naturals and just chilled out. I was quite surprised with how not-modest I was about the whole nudity thing. It just felt O.K.
I crawled down the rocks to the water and took a swim for about fifteen minutes – my first swim in a year. Since I usually take showers only, being surrounded by water has become a new sensation, but after a few short minutes I got accustomed to it. For the lack of any kind of flotational device (note to self: get a floatie before next time), I got tired and crawled out to go back up to our stoop under the shade tree to air dry. Heart racing and dripping wet, I felt so good. I finally understood the joy of skinny dipping.
We left around 1:30pm, tired, hot, and a little baked from the sun. I managed to get a little too red from relying on nothing more than the solar protection equivalent of SPF-shadetree. The hot car didn’t make it that much easier, but we weathered it like troopers and headed back into town.
On the way in, my car suffered a bad mechanical failure: during a hard-braking event to stop at a traffic signal between Hwy 360 and MoPac I heard a pop and a crunch coming from my left-front wheel. After driving the way to MoPac, then to Burnet, then to Lamar, the crunch and the grinding got worse – I was hearing grinding while driving, and the braking action was tough and chunky. This was not good. Being sunday afternoon, my chances for a mechanic’s help were slim to none, but I had to try anyway; we headed down Lamar towards two brake shops. The first was closed, but 3 miles down, with my hand on the emergency-brake handle just in case, we found the other shop was opened until 3pm; it was 2 o’clock. A true blessing.
We got the car into the shop, they pulled the wheels off, and after inspection of all the brakes, the mechanics confirmed what I had suspected: the outside brake pad on my front-left wheel had gotten so thin that during that hard-brake the pad had snapped in half and was caught in the clamp so the the clamp itself was grinding into my rotor. The situation wasn’t pretty. So, after a hundred bucks and two hours of time I was driving away with brand new brake pads and newly-machined rotors on my front wheels.
:sighs: At least my brakes work better. :)
So, after dealing with all that, we head over to a local fried-fish chain restaurant (grease in a sunburned body = bad idea), and we finally get home, take turns with the shower, and I discovered just how red I turned from the beach. Youch! Aloe vera felt so good. Roomate went to take a nap, I tool around online, and head out to grab a friend to go hang out at Mojo’s. By that time, the heat, sunburn, and heavy heavy grease did their number on my stomach, and I got nauseous again.
My friend and I opt for walking around for a little bit to get my stomach settled, thereby overstretching myself again, and we head home to freshen up and rendezvous back to my apartment for a planned dinner and movies. He and his girlfriend show up, my roomate prepares dinner, and by the time dinner’s ready, I’m about to heave-hork again. I had to excuse myself and go to bed.
If you’ve noticed, nausea is becoming a recurring theme. I beseech the gods of medical technology to make my stomach whole again. This morning I still wasn’t A-OK, but I went to work like a trooper and stuck it out. Finally, around mid-afternoon, I was ok to eat something, so I heated the charity-plate my roomate had made for me and picked at it for an hour. Damn was it good. I only wish I could’ve eaten it last night. Huh.
Saturday was short, sunday morning was sweet, and the rest of the day was sweaty, sour, and more sour.
I woke up this morning with a really bizarre dream involving a girl I know; it’s quite apparent to me how I feel for her, because in the dream we were making love and I felt the heat, the pressure, the holding, the whole thing. Love-dreams always unsettle me, but it’s a sweetness that I can carry with me throughout the day. Little things like that make my life better.
And it all starts with holding someone’s hand.