Photo Credit: Real Mom Kitchen

You give me three choices and ask which I love the most.
August’s End, Blackberries or Words.
Why mess with life’s perfection by choosing one over another? I say.

But what I mean to say is that I’m perfectly happy on this first day of September, conversing with you over a blackberry breakfast.

Blackberry Eating

I love to go out in late September
among the fat, overripe, icy, black blackberries
to eat blackberries for breakfast,
the stalks very prickly, a penalty
they earn for knowing the black art
of blackberry-making; and as I stand among them
lifting the stalks to my mouth, the ripest berries
fall almost unbidden to my tongue,
as words sometimes do, certain peculiar words
like strengths or squinched,
many-lettered, one-syllabled lumps,
which I squeeze, squinch open, and splurge well
in the silent, startled, icy, black language
of blackberry-eating in late September.

-Galway Kinnell

And for those of you who haven’t the faintest idea who the person above is…

there you go.

On other news, a mosquito bit me last night.
8 times.
I tried my best to find him, but I couldn’t.
I don’t know how it could hide considering that by the time it was done with me, he probably weighed around 2 pounds.

I was so upset and angry that I insulted it, locked it in my room, and went to sleep on the couch.
Nature has never been my friend.

Here’s a song I’d like to dedicate to the mosquito.
And here’s the censored version, for those of you with sensitive ears.
I sang it last night though I substituted the lyrics with “I see you flying around town with the blood I love", etc.
You get the gist.

A while ago, I started drinking my tea from wine glasses.
It hadn’t occurred to me that some could consider it eccentric behavior until this morning.

At 8:16 A.M. my neighbor knocked on the door to tell me something about her dog and my yard and that she was sorry.

But before she said all of that, she stared at the glass I was holding, full of my orange vanilla tea, looked at her watch and then back to the glass.

Her rant about the dog began, followed by something about her mother also needing an eye opener, and the offering that if I ever needed to talk she would be glad to help.

I closed the door very confused.
Until it dawned on me that now she thinks I’m an alcoholic.

I guess I could resolve the issue this afternoon, inviting her to a cup glass of tea but then again, why not give the neighbors something to talk about?

Plus, it certainly explains my constantly wearing sunglasses…

Some days are so bad the only thing that can make them better is to apply sunscreen on yourself as if it were icing on a cake, draw your swimsuit on and swim until the sky goes dark.

Buying dresses online also helps.

And a hat, for good measure.

I bought the new pretties at ModCloth.

And now I’m going to get in the pool and swim until my muscles seize or I’m out of breath.
Hopefully chlorine can wash the ugliness of this day away.

For what it’s worth, I know a guy who could cheer me up by leaving work early-ish and bringing me an orange popsicle.

He always makes me feel like a kid in a candy store.
Heck, he always makes me feel like he’s the motherfucking candy and I’m the luckiest girl in the world.

He’s considering a position overseas.
Not really considering, more like entertaining the idea.

He asks: “Would you be ok living in another country?”
I stare at him with a half-cocked smile.

And then it dawns on him and he says: “Oh".
And my smile completes itself.