Family on Loan

Yesterday I was adopted for the day by a nice family. Makes me sound like a puppy, I know. Yesterday I was invited over to a friend’s house to hang out with the family and just enjoy a day by the pool and watch fireworks. It was so nice of them to include me and make me feel so welcome.

I started off the day feeling restless which happens a lot when I am depressed. I feel the need to do things that allow me to get outside of my own head. I thought a good solution was to do something that would nourish my soul a little and decided to head to an art museum. The Venetian has a Guggenheim museum and I looked them up online to see what exhibits they were showing. It looked good (I think a play-do exhibit would have looked good at that point) so I got ready and headed out to the Strip.

Once I got there I was dismayed to find that it was closed for some sort of renovation. Now I was in some dangerous territory. A bad habit I have when feeling depressed is retail therapy. There I was with no simple (and economical) distraction, and smack dab in the middle of a lot of mindless shopping opportunities. I want to tell you that turned around and left immediately. I could lie and tell you that is exactly what I did. I didn’t. However, I did manage to buy someone a birthday present and I also have a Christmas present ready to go. THEN, I got the Hell out of there.

I headed over to Heidi’s moms house later that afternoon. It was still really hot (high of 114), so it was really great to be in the pool. Later we had a barbeque and watched the crazy neighbors near and far shooting off fireworks. It was a lot like being in the middle of a war zone. There were explosions coming from all directions. Some people had obviously splurged and bought the illegal professional fireworks. It’s a whole different ballgame when they are going off right over your head instead of a saner distance away. At one point there were some ashes that drifted down into the pool. Scary.

All in all, it was a great way to spend the evening and there were no probing questions to answer and no pressure to do anything except enjoy myself. There were some young kids there and I of course had to be all over them. I played a really fun game of “I Spy” with a 4 year old. We also tried to play some checkers, but I think the finer nuances of the game were lost on him and the 7yr old rightfully beat the pants off of us. It was also fun to watch them enjoy the fireworks. Even the baby would point and clap at the pretty colors in the sky after she would jump at the big noise.