A Journal of Sorts

Wednesday, 31 March 1999

Waking up Naked

Jason controls the radio. He has his favorite, Radio Disney, but he also surfs a few other stations during some of the talk or commercials. He loves classic rock, and 50's top 40 stations. They all drive me nuts. He is actually quite informed and often gives me a music learning experience. That Radio Disney station is a trip, though. If you have never heard the Chipmonks singing Bad to the Bone or Cookie Monster singing I Want to Eat You then you are missing out (and should be thankful).

Needless to say, I can't wait until we pull up in front of his school and I toss him out of the van. Then, I push the button to ~my~ morning station. Rodney once programmed every button on my radio to KISS-FM -- back when I was electronically challenged, so I didn't know how to fix it. So, I got hooked. He did the same thing to Teresa, so she is hooked, too and we can compare notes.

This is a funny morning show; the DJ's are somewhat goofy. This morning, Kidd Kraddick had a list of ~strange~ questions and decided to ask the traffic person to answer them, since she was voted the strangest of the crowd. Of course, when I'm listening to this stuff, I have to come up with my own answers to the questions. The first one was -- Have you ever done something weird in a graveyard? Of course, both her answer and my answer are yes. I'll not write about that one. She didn't elaborate either.

The next question - where is the strangest place you ever woke up naked? She had a pretty lame answer to that one. I thought about it for a good while before I came up with ANY time of note that I've awakened naked. After all, I wake up naked every day.

Then it suddenly hit me and I had to laugh out loud. At this point, I'm sitting in the van out at the curb in front of my house. Some of the neighbors were out with their toddlers on bicycles or pulling weeds or whatever . . I got some funny looks.

One of my passions in life is to go camping. Although I'm usually camping with a lot of people (read kids) and can't indulge, one of the things I really, really, REALLY like is to be naked outside. I would make a good nudist, except I'm pretty shy when I'm naked.

I remember one of our family campouts at Cedar Lake. After dark, it doesn't really matter if you are running around naked, but it was off-season so I had more privacy than usual. After the kids were asleep, I took a blanket and spread it out on a tent pad a few campsites away where there was a clear view of the stars. I always feel such awe looking at the night skies, away from the city -- thousands and thousands of stars. I try to imagine being a cave man (cave person?), presented with this panoramic beauty every night, not knowing those were distant suns, but what, exactly, did they think?

I closed my eyes to better hear the night rustlings only found in the woods. I drifted off to sleep. Ed left me there.

I was awakened by the sounds of the morning birds and the park rangers making their rounds. I stretched, loving the warmth of the morning sun on my naked skin . . NAKED, oh shit!!!!

The park rangers waved at me as I was dashing back to my tent all wrapped up in my dew damp, sandy blanket. Ed laughed.

We had gruel for dinner tonight, but the table was lovely. Gruel is anything made with hamburger and something, noodles, rice, potatoes. If it is mixed with hamburger, it is gruel.

I left the Easter Lily on the table -- it now had four blooms and they smell sooo sweet. The night before, we had a nice dinner followed by a plastic-easter-egg opening where I presented the peeps to my family. Tom had furnished a nice candle.

Now, we have a new cactus. It is covered in red buds. I don't know what it is, but I'll sure be excited when it blooms.