I'm good at pretending.

When I was little I used to watch Sleeping Beauty over and over. I never was very interested in the prince, or the fairies, or the magic spells. I wanted to wander through the woods and be able to sing with the birds; I wanted to have squirrels and rabbits be my friends; I wanted to be able to talk to the raccoons. I would steal the afghan my mother made in 1970 (I vividly remember the lime green and orange stripes), and wander around our backyard making up songs to entice the birds. I spent hours roaming what I thought was a forest behind our house, hoping to come across a talking animal or a friendly deer. It turns out that my "forest" was simply an empty lot, and the closest I ever got to talking with nature was the afternoon I spent sitting in an empty stump that I didn't notice was covered in ants. I continue to be much better at pretending than noticing little details like a stump covered in good old Texas fire ants.

You see, all that time I spent wandering around the backyard I was really looking for friends. I wanted someone to talk to, someone (or something) to make me feel special, to find a "kindred spirit" as Lucy Maude Montgomery would say. And now that I have friends, lots of people that I love and care about, I wonder if I forgot to stop imagining things. I think I've been in a lifetime habit of pretending that everything will be different in the future, and that by thinking about something hard enough I could make the world sing back to me. This is all a really round about way to say that I need to quit dreaming about how perfect everything will be once I graduate from school, or move to a big city, or have the perfect Christmas. I want to free up that part of my brain to notice the cool stuff happening today, yesterday, and tomorrow.

For instance, I had a great time this Thanksgiving break. There were lots of good friends (old and new), lots of decorating, lots of laughing, lots of good food, lots of music, and lots of excitement. I ate Thanksgiving breakfast with my sister while we watched the parade, had a great Thanksgiving dinner, watched every Thanksgiving episode of Friends with Erin, cleaned and decorated all day on Friday, spent too much money at Target on Christmas stuff, had an awesome 3rd annual after-Thanksgiving day party, and went to a Blue October concert with Amanda. All good things.

And now I am going to stop daydreaming about daydreaming and get to work writing a paper (which I really do enjoy doing once I get started).