I daydream a lot. A LOT. Most of the time, my brain is choreographing...always always choreographing, but when it isn't, it is daydreaming. Lately I've been thinking about Parker, obviously, but whenever I am feeling low or overwhelmed or sad, I let my brain take me to my happy place. And it is almost always the same place. It's a cabin in the woods somewhere not cold and not hot--a nice warm. Dirt paths for walking or biking. A big porch for sitting and drinking beer. Cooking, baking, listening to music, laughing with friends. I let myself feel that feeling of springtime--when it starts to get warm and life starts to feel less hopeless and miserably cold. I don't know if that experience of the thaw is one that I've always loved or one that has become so much more important in the almost 14 years I've lived in frozen Chicago. Sometimes the cabin in my mind is one that doesn't exist and that I've never been to, and sometimes it is a place where I've had the honor and joy of having been to in the past with friends. No matter what, it is that feeling of escape, of adventure. The other happy place I go to in my mind is Paris this past summer. I've had a few things lately transport me back to that week in June. When I listen to the Copenhagen CD, I am back in our room, in the comfy plush bed. Specifically, that takes me to the morning where C&K went to Versailles and Fuzzy and I didn't. He went for a run that morning, and I stayed in and slept and listened to music and laid in bed. It was a true vacation moment. Yesterday, I saw this amazing book called Paris in Color, and some of the photos in it were things that we saw, and it made me so happy. I am lucky that I was able to experience that week last year so that I can revisit it over and over again as long as I have my memories.
I think a lot about the future--I always have--and what is going to happen and where we will go. I don't know if we will ever move from Chicago, but I think about that a lot. I daydream about living in a warm climate again, and having a simpler and less stressful life. Granted, right now, I get to do what I love for a living, and that in itself is a gift, but there is something about escape that is just so appealing. Who knows when we will be able to take our next vacation, but for me, I will vacation daily in my dreams.
