I know, it's not even fully winter yet. But the weather today was peculiarly unseasonable, so gloriously temperate. Emily and I were out and about around 7:00 p.m. and were surprised that it was actually 74 degrees. I don't know if it's just me finally taking notice of the climate, but today felt like a turnaround in so many ways. And it took over me, as I felt a lightness in everything, and was in the best spirits than I have been in a long time. I've said this before, but it's just so odd that one day you'll just wake up, and everything's peachy.
Weather must be determinative of a good many things we are often unaware of. I credit most of today's positivity to being able to connect the environment around me to something I felt keenly in the spring of 1992. That was a time when everything was green and when my imagination was terribly alive. Whenever the weather now falls in sync with the spring of 1992, it feels like I've been whisked back in time. They were warm afternoons, when walking home was hell but the cool leather couch at home, heaven; when I read voraciously after school with a huge glass of Ovaltine malted chocolate milk; when piano lessons weren't that bad, and homework was easy-peasy; and when I had a crush on a boy, and girlfriends to giggle about that to. You're only thirteen once, after all.
So the weather energized me, and possesed me with a demonic will to clean. Dusty surfaces wiped clean and bags of clothes packed for Goodwill. Everything airing out, like my soul. I guess I should add that my run-around fervor may also have been the result of drinking a large iced mocha latte from The Coffee Bean around dinnertime.
I don't know how it came up this past weekend, but on a lark I checked up on EBay the My Little Pony that I had when I was a kid. Her name was Medley, she was a pegasus, she had glittery music notes on her rump, and a beautiful silky mane. We were the kind of little girls that had just one each of the compulsory toys, like one Barbie, one Cabbage Patch Kid, one pony, etc. OK, actually, those were the only three toys we had. They were huge luxuries anyway, because my dad didn't really like the sight of girly toys lying around. I remember how incredibly envious I was of my more "American" friends (and I don't mean as a race or nationality, but a culturally felt mindset), who could have a Barbie and a Ken, collateral dolls to create scenarios with, or a My Little Pony stable. I remember how my cousin Beulah had an adoption center's worth of Cabbage Patch Kids, and how the neighborhood brat Jenny had so many Barbies that they all just laid forlornly in a haphazard heap of frizzy synthetic hair in the corner of her playroom. Vicky and I cared for our dolls (that's plural for TWO), lovingly combing their hair and fashioning accessories for them ourselves. We had to get really damn creative, like the time we fashioned a Barbie convertible out of a McDonald's four-drink caddy.
Well, all this pent-up nostalgia and living without bred a deep, unaddressed sense of deprivation in me. It reared its ugly head when by Sunday's end I had bid and bought four My Little Ponies off of EBay. I obviously got a little carried away, with the bidding and indignation anytime someone outbid me, with the ponies being so pretty and the dumb sense that one or two ponies really couldn't stand alone on the shelf. I won't say what sort of investment I put in, but that in 1986 I probably could have bought forty ponies for that price. I would bid for sport, and then eventually the e-mails kept coming in. "Congratulations!..." Tracy said, "Well, now you know what this means! We gotta get a stable!"
I guess I'll be looking for those damn ponies in the mail this week.
posted by Lucy Sloan @ 1:50 AM
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