Today was the sort of October day that I live for. The perfect blue sky, the yellow leaves blowing in a nice breeze, temperature just right for long sleeves.
It occurred to me, while I was standing around on Beth's side of the back yard, that this is what normal is. I'd just finished carving a pumpkin with the boys, making faces with them as we scooped out the guts with our hands, saving the seeds aside to toast up later. I was watching the kids bounce on the trampoline while my new neighbor and I gossiped about the neighborhood. I was thinking about dinner and about how I needed to rake, but fuck it... it could wait until tomorrow. The raking, not the dinner.
How very ordinary, average American.
(If you scratched the surface of that moment, obviously, you would find a lot of not-exactly-Norman-Rockwell bits. Let's just ignore that and let me feel special for pulling off a normal fall afternoon, ok?)
---
I took a minute to mark my progress in metals today and feel proud of myself. In August annealing was terrifying and I could never manage it evenly. In September I had issues soldering the two ends of a ring together. Now I'm struggling with butt joints on larger pieces, but when I needed to solder a circle I just spent thirty seconds on it. Annealing is something I do with one hand while I'm texting with the other.
... not really. But I really don't pay that much attention to it because it's become second nature.
Today metals lab was full of upper level students making gods know what and rocking out to industrial. C was there as well, and we were newbie metals buddies, doubling up on torches and freaking out together about how things weren't working right. Freaking out sounds so much cooler when you're doing it with a French accent, let me tell you. I should work on getting one of those.
No comments:
Post a Comment