Life is sort of crazy (general statement to say the least). For those who read my blog (which is frighteningly more people than I sometimes believe) you may remember my experience in Wisconsin where I met a man who was training hair stylists on coloring. I was lucky enough to be a hair model for him (because lord knows I would never be any other kind of model). So here I am in Iowa and who should call my cell, but LENNY!! The Master Colorist! He asks, “Katie! Where are you these days!” I answer, “Nowhere. I mean, Iowa.” He laughs, “So am I! Cedar Rapids! How far are you?” I answer, “Oh my god, only an hour from you.” And so my plans for my day off switch from me sitting around reading Harry Potter to me driving up to Cedar Rapids where, yes again, I get my hair done and enjoy a few great meals.
This time I had the courage to let him cut my hair even shorter and go darker. A lot of you won’t like it, but hey, it’s hair and I LIKE IT. (Lenny reminds me that my new hair cut requires that I learn to style it and I promise to do so even though we all know I’ll find some way to make it look like it always does. Damn the curse of being a Dellwo at heart.)
On my drive back down to Fairfield from Cedar Rapids at eleven o’clock at night, I listened to “Me Talk Pretty One Day” by David Sedaris and was reminded how much I love to drive. With either great music or an excellent book on tape/cd I could drive anywhere. To add to my enjoyment, out of the corner of my eye I kept seeing flashes. I would look to my right across the dark of the pastures and lone farmhouses and think “what was that?” Then five seconds later, another flash. Finally, on a straight stretch, I let myself look for a bit longer and sure enough, the sky was lit up by the most incredible lightning show I had ever seen. I pulled off on a gravel road and parked my car to watch for a bit. Imagine looking out into nothing, too dark to discern the fields of grass, barely able to make out that you are on a road at all, and then suddenly the entire sky is filled with lightning just like you used to draw as a child. Bright yellow jagged lines, maybe a few orange and pink, some behind clouds, turning the clouds into glowing pillows. It was truly beautiful. What really got me is the fact that here I am in the dry heat of an Iowa highway and just off in the distance someone is getting soaked. I always seem to be just along side of incredible storms. Only a few times have I been hit, but really I miss the worst of it by a hair. As if somehow I have been allowed to view, but not experience, nature at it’s worst. “Come closer Katie, see what nature can do, but keep your distance, you’re really just a visitor.”
When I arrived at my first library on this trip they said that the previous week they’d lost their electricity. I had just missed it. When I was working in New York some of my libraries couldn’t make it out of their town for FUT or Laptop because of the snow, but it was clear enough where I was. When I was in Kansas there were tornado warnings in every town around me, but my town was the only one in the clear. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had the occasional hailstorm where I’ve pulled off on the side of the road, but on the news later that night, my car was not one of the many whose windshields had crashed due to baseball size hail. I was snowed in at my skanky hotel in Cortland, New York, but I had a Denny’s attached that was still serving and it was the weekend so no worries about training.
When I was a little girl I always felt like nothing interesting ever happened to me, just to the people around me. As I grew older sometimes I would tell amazing stories about those people and I would be met with, “My God, you lead an interesting life,” to which I would respond, “Not really, these are things that happened to OTHER people, not me.” When I was on a plane with my younger cousin, Elena, she was really scared and I said, “Don’t worry, nothing really bad or interesting ever happens to me so you’re okay.” This seemed to allay her fears and we landed safely and uneventfully. Later that same trip when we were floating around in the Atlantic Ocean she said, “I used to be scared of sharks, but since you are out here with me I know I’m safe.” That made me giggle. (How horrible would it have been if I had been wrong.)
So I guess my drive last night along side of the incredible lightning storm made me appreciate for the first time what a sweet deal I have. I get to observe the most incredible and sometimes horrible experiences from a safe distance without ever having to feel the real burden of them. Some of you might be thinking, “what about that terrible car accident?” Well, let’s look at that. I’m alive and in perfect health again. How lucky can I be? If you ever saw the pictures of the car, you’d be shocked too.
The worst part about all this? Now that I’ve acknowledged it AND written it in my blog, I’ll be hit by an electrical storm tonight, my plane will crash, and my entire family will be devoured by sharks. Sorry about that.
Is it too late to knock on wood? knock…knock…knock?
