Cement Girl

This morning I left our house at 5:30am. I had worried that my track jacket would not be enough to keep me cozy, but I was wrong. I stepped out from the garage and was hit by a warm air. Summer is coming. In light of this, I shall make this list:

Things I hate about summer:
Sitting and sweating while waiting in traffic, messed up hair because without a/c in my car my windows are always open, shorts, again- the hot weather, when it's too hot to want to do anything, that feeling of having so much time and not anything to do.

Things I love about summer:
Warm nights to sit outside, BBQs, no school, short hair, Mexico, flip flops, lemonade, and vacations.

So I read a lot of books in Mexico and decided that I needed to write them down so I can keep track. I just transferred it onto my computer from my journal, and just for the fun of it, here is that list of ten weeks of reading:

Nickle and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich
Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser
All Families are Psychotic by Douglas Coupland
Fight Club by Chuck Palanhuik
Certain Women by Madelein L’Engle
Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Motorcycle Diaries by Che Guevara
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
On the Road by Jack Kerouac
Our Hearts were Young and Gay by Cornelia Otis Skinner
Catch me If You Can by Frank w. Abagnale
Gangs of New York by.. ?
This is where I ran out of my own books and started taking from the place's library)
My Side of the Mountain by Jean George
Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh
The Rainmaker by John Grisham (as well as the next four)
Runaway Jury
The Client
The Testament
The Street Lawyer
A Hardy Boys mystery
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Weight of Water by Anita Shreve
Many Mexicos by Lesley Byrd Simpson
(since being back, at the end of March, pathetic, huh?):
Land Girls by Angela Bluth
in the middle of:
Poisonwood Bible by Barabara Kingsolver.

And speaking of Barbara Kingsolver. I love this book (have read it before. It's just so wonderful, and I'd like to share a little excerpt with you.

"He also spent some time at the diamond mines down south in Katanga, where he says one-quarter of all the world's diamonds come from. When he spoke of diamonds I naturally thought of Marilyn Monroe in her long gloves and pursey lips whispering "diamonds are a girl's best friend". My best friend Dee Dee Baker and I have snuck off to see M.M. and Brigitte Bardot both at the matinee (Father would flat-out kill me if he knew), so you see I know a thing or two about diamonds. But when I looked at Anatole's wrinkled brown knuckles and pinkish palms, I pictured hands like those digging diamonds out of the Congo dirt and got to thinking, Gee, does Marilyn Monroe even know where they come from? Just picturing her in her satin gown and a Congolese diamond digger in the same universe gave me the weebie jeebies. So I didn't think about it anymore."- Rachel Price, daughter of a baptist missionary, Congo, 1960's. (fictional story)

It's a wonderful book, told by the women in the life of a baptist missionary (who is a little off his rocker). If you haven't read it, you should.

I didn't take my cds to Mexico. I spent ten weeks only listening to Mexican music blaring down the street, and church songs. And the songs that were stuck in my head. Every so often (and more toward the end of my time) i would listen to music at the internet cafe. Most of it consisted of listening to Copeland's purevolume site.

So select songs from the Copeland cd became my soundtrack to Mexico. Listening to the cd in the car I realized that I have not been this into a cd in a long time. It has a defined a time in my life for me. The only other cd that has impressed itself into my life at this point is the Mates of State ep "All Day". Four songs I played a lot right before leaving for Mexico, as I owned it less than a week before I left.

Just thoughts. Lots of thoughts.