In which the lamb overtakes the lion (at least for now)

What a fabulous week it's been! Sunny and 60º+ since Wednesday! Let's take a look at the highlights, shall we?

10. Eating ice cream makes sense again!
9. The grass is not white. The sky is not white. Everything feels less dead.
8. I can walk outside in just a sweatshirt without feeling compelled to curl up in fetal position.
7. Birds! Birds singing, birds flying around, yes, even birds pooping on the quad!
6. Grass. Smells. Amazing.
5. Peepers!! I can't even tell you how many winter nights I lulled myself to sleep just imagining their incessant cheep-cheeping, and now they're here!
4. BEAAAACHHH! Salty air, warm dunes, and best of all, SANDY FEET!
3. Ultimate Frisbee. If you don't know what it is, watch this.
2. Going barefoot everywhere!
1. People! Everyone's outside and sun-drunk, which makes finding things to do a no-brainer. Nobody wants to do work when it's like this. People simply don't go to classes. I was lucky to have my only class canceled today... and nothing can top the moment of epiphany when I realized it was canceled.

I must say my hopes were not high on Monday when my GPS took me on a wild goose chase through Medford in the pouring rain. After telling me to turn left at a No Left Turn sign, which it does at least once a trip (that or directing me down one way streets... the wrong way), it decided that the best route to the building I needed to get to was to go around 3.5 sides of a block, amounting to over a mile of walking in the wind and rain with an already-mangled umbrella. I was late for the interview I was conducting, looked like crap when I got there, and was so cold that once I got inside my nose started leaking, just to add to the embarrassment. BUT, the interview was way fun, and the article got picked up by TWO sections of the Boston Globe regionals.

And then the sun came out (hence my sudden Disapparation after I promised to post this week)! I spent a lot of time at the beach IN SPITE OF THE GODDAMN WIND and played my first game of ultimate frisbee in way-too-many-months. Can you say glorious?

But today was the best yet. I ran into a friend I hadn't hung out with since he helped me make a 30-second PSA for fair trade coffee last spring. I joined him and his friends for lunch on the grassy space outside of Lane, and then a few of us went out into the woods to take pictures. For a change, I was not the one wielding the camera (mine happens to be broken).

The trails were still quite messy from the rain on Monday (and the entire month preceding Monday). The two guys who were there went barefoot, and since I hadn't felt like going back to Ferrin for my galoshes, I did the same. It was delightfully icky! Playing in the mud was never something I did as a child. I was very clean. We do have a rainy season swamp behind our house where my friends and I used to play, but the point of the game was always to build bridges over the muck or find ways around it. Falling in always sucked. So at first I was quite displeased with my choice of footwear, but I quickly learned that mud is incredible. End of story.

On the way back, one of the boys caught a garter snake (note, I have no qualms about using the word "boys" for these twenty-year-old men; they were certainly acting as such, and that is not a negative statement). It was adorable! (The snake, that is. Not the boys.) I was so excited to pet it because earlier this semester I was going to get a pet snake before I found out you have to keep them in freaking climate-controlled terrariums. But the poor little guy was scared and did that smelly musk thing, and it made him feel all slimy. Ick.

All of the above have conspired to make me an incredibly happy person this week. And also a rather sunburnt and very tired one. But we have one sunny day left before the lion cows the lamb back into submission, and I shall not let a moment go to waste!

Peace, love and step-rock-step,
Miss Rex