on summer beginnings and avoiding Christian Bale

We must have had a relatively easy spring this year here in our little Cowboy Town in the Central Valley, because I remember this day came way back in April last year--but the day has finally come when I can walk outside onto the cement and burn my no-heat-tolerance feet in a split second. Now here comes the question: do I stay safe and keep my flops by the front door, or do I go out barefoot, baby steps, one more at a time, and build that tolerance which my feet have known in past years...?

Complications: Is there any point? Everything's cold and wet in San Francisco. I'm not going to be here much longer.

Counterargument: I don't leave until August. DUH. August is hot in Cowboy Town.

Best Friend and I have finally gotten started on our Summer Bucket List, and I think it might be me just being overly optimistic, but I think we've put a good dent into it so far, considering our resources. Prevalent on our list is some sort of sense of adventure, and I'm not sure if it was the both of us who instilled it in our plans or just me, because over the past couple of years I've been feeling it deep in my bones. We are perfectly poised in a wonderful place for adventuring, if you know how to do it and are going with the right people. Cowboy Town is like this little upper-middle class oasis, folded in amongst a grimy and seedy city, desolate farmland, and MOUNTAINS, beautiful, cool, clear mountains, and miles upon miles of golden foothills, probably riddled with rattlesnakes and their holes. That's the part that sucks. I've got this huge sense of adventure, but my city-girl, indoor-type survival instincts seem to be getting in the way.

In any case, we've started out small, and we're attempting to find every elementary school in our school district. This is no easy feat, because the district extends WELL past the city limits--and there are 32 of them. THIRTY-TWO, and five high schools. The town I grew up in had eight elementaries and ONE high school. Even five years later, this is still baffling to me. We've made some good headway, though--all the schools in our high school boundaries, plus a few extras. We just don't always have the car. And if we do, we don't always have the money to refill the gas we've used up on the way, since both of our cars are ridiculous gas guzzlers.

My good old 2001-ish white Chevy Malibu. He has a name--it's Ronald. Not after Ronald McDonald, which people tend to assume... After Ronald Weasley. I tried to name my Dad's car Sirius, but it didn't necessarily fly. Boyfriend calls Ronald "Fat Ronald", considering his weight and speed of acceleration (that is to say, he's not very speedy at all...), which I think makes him sound like a mob boss. I'm okay with that. The unfortuante thing is, Fat Ronald is so fat and so heavy and so very inefficient that he only gets about 17 mpg, and has a 12 gallon tank. He gets expensive, especially when my mom won't let me buy cheap gas and Chevron is charging $3.21, and Shell isn't much less. Cowboy Town is expensive.

One of the biggest goals on our list (to me, anyway) is avoiding Christian Bale, which we're doing well on so far... Ever since reading American Psycho, and watching just a few minutes of the movie, I've been scarred for life and scared out of moving to New York entirely... I keep having these nightmares, which is discouraging, though I don't necessarily classify that as not avoiding Christian Bale, since it's just a subconscious thing. It's unsettling, though. It's probably the most tricky item there, too--what if we're just randomly window-shopping in Target (another thing on the list) and all of a sudden he pops out of the kitchen appliance aisle?! Or what if I'm flipping through movie channels on the telie and suddenly I stumble across The Dark Knight??! Alas, Newsies, which used to be one of my favorite musicals--that's truly where I fell in love with Christian Bale--is out of the picture entirely. As is Howl's Moving Castle, in English anyway. It's so funny how one can be elevated so far in my eyes, and suddenly something so small ruins it--I mean, cutting up people with chainsaws and killing little boys at the Central Park Zoo and feeding kittens to ATMs and sending rats up a lady's.... Well, anyways, I'll probably be scared away for life. No question about it. and I don't even have a problem with this, because it's like a self-induced exile, or something.

All in all, I guess summer has finally arrived. It's time to get out of bed and stop recooperating from graduation and all the crap that went on from April all the way through the first two weeks of June. It's time to start eating right, and to exercise, and to boost my metabolism, which may have finally peaked and is beginning to fall down, just like I knew it would someday. I am an adult, and it's time to take responsibility for my actions and for myself. It doesn't sound too difficult... at least from where I'm standing right now, anyway.