Nostalgia for July

I wrote this almost four months ago, but then everything in my life ground to a fairly immediate halt except for working and feeling sorry for myself. The references no longer make sense even to me and this blog has gone all cobwebby anyway, but I'm going to post it still. It's for the sake of the record, because this is how I spent my July:


July was a mixed month all the way around.


Thirty one days packed with drama and action.


We moved houses -- only about five miles away, but it seems like a different city. There was no Penske Party. I guess you could call it a UHauliday, but let's show some restraint.


We gained a pair of exceptionally high-quality roommates and lost them within the month (a preplanned move, but a damn shame nonetheless).


There was a wedding. At the reception, the bride and groom requested the guests each draw cute pictures to mark the occasion. Staggering around, weighted by gluttony and vice, bloated to the gills with miniature quiches and free drinks, I defaced the heartfelt drawing done by my friend's wife with a crayon picture of a troll.


I hung out with Arkansas royalty. It was my immense privilege, in fact, to be stuck in interstate traffic with Arkansas Royalty while she banged out songs on a miniature guitar and a kazoo.


I visited Ravendon, which is a tiny town home to an old high school friend of mine. I had always pictured Ravendon as a steep-walled chasm of dense, poisonous vapors, strewn with charred human skulls and the blasted remains of long-dead trees. It turned out to be a beautiful place filled with forests, hills, and fat little dogs. Nonetheless, I got covered in seed ticks.


There was a death.


I rode a train with a horde of goddamned Christian teenagers on their way to a goddamned "mission trip" to New Orleans.


I discovered an old friend switched sexual orientations several years ago (it's a semi-secret, so I'll let your respective imaginations run wild with this one).


In the towering shadow of high tension power lines, I picked swelling heaps of sweet grain from a patch of experimental corn at the hushed invitation of a rogue agronomist.


I introduced my mother to YouTube videos, to her endless delight.


At a wonderful BBQ put on by people who care about my feelings, I was savaged by ants out to ruin my friendships.


I got a real job again at a school.


The US Government decided to set itself on fire in protest of its policies.


The space shuttle program ended.


Arkansas still feels like home. I miss it.