474 steps

Thanks to my friend's hearty suggestion last year, my hair has become the longest it has ever been. Regardless of the occasional necessity to wash it twice a day, the overall experience is positive. I no longer need to struggle with presentation, as the hair looks borderline presentable if I just let it dry without doing anything. As I said once, it's way more relaxing to let hair style itself. If it looks bad, then it's because of the haircut rather than my incompetence at preening myself.

A few days ago I had the utmost pleasure of watching sunset at a beach with someone I most enjoy watching sunsets with. As we were leaving, we decided to count the number of steps between the beach area and the outside world. I discovered that I not only sucked at counting but also had the terrible tendency to whisper the numbers out loud. Having put more thoughts into it, I decided to convince myself that counting numbers and remembering exact dates use completely different parts of the brain.


Yesterday, I found myself driving with my friend towards the border. It was a little trip that would never have happened if I hadn't taken forever getting to her place, if I hadn't decided to take highway 91, and if a particular text chat didn't arrive just in time before a particular highway exit. I felt enveloped in warmth, gratitude, and happy recollection of two of the very, very best days in my life. Yesterday, I felt just as happy and as liberated as ever.

Today, I chatted with an old friend with whom I haven't been in touch lately. One of his friends is filing a restraining order against her husband, who has "lost it" after she asked for divorce and at the same time admitted that she had been cheating on him for the past 3 years. Apparently, the husband is a "nice guy just like me," as my friend put it. He thought I would have lost it too if I were involved in a similar situation.

"You don't like anything anymore these days," he said. "You must be either depressed, or happy."
"Somewhere in between," I responded.

He remarked that it's the best place to be. Whether that is true, I doubt it, but one thing I am sure is that the bear will always be urs in Romanian and ours in French.