I found serenity in my living room

I'm in a serene moment in time right now.

Ok, I'll level with you, I do have some Advil PM on board, but I'm not giving a couple of pills all the credit for this.

It's 0137 in the morning and I'm sitting in my living room at a 6 foot table covered with baby/Hawaiian scrapbooking supplies. There are 5 candles lit in the room filling the air with just enough frangrance to make you stop and wonder what the scent might be. Is it mango, rose, peach, melon something? At this point, I couldn't even tell you which one it is.

Always - always - always there is music. Right now it's the calm strum of Let Him Fly drifting out across the room. A second ago you would have caught me in a trance singing along with Bonnie Raitt. I love her voice. If I could sing and play with half of the talent she has, I would hit the road with my guitar in an instant.

It only took me about 4 months, but I finally figured that I could set up my external portable speakers to my ipod. So far there are just shy of 1800 songs on there. I think I know them all by heart. The reality is that I should be at work still, but not today. Not right now. Today, I took a day to myself - part recovering from this weekend's intestinal evacuation and part just because, well, mental health counts too.

I love moments like this.

I force myself to have a photographic memory on occasion. There are some moments in time that I tell myself to snap a picture of while I'm in them so I pull them out of my memory bank when I need a good thought.

There was the "Aretha Franklin" moment. That was a great one. :) Have you ever seen a 26 year old Filipino-Irish woman dressed up as Aretha Franklin? Yeah, imagine it. That's one of the reason's why I've become Karma's Punchline. Win the karaoke "contest" drunk early in the week, perform in the all-stars show sober at the end of the week.



I remember that moment right before I went out on the stage, dressed in full costume head-to-toe black wig and all, holding the mic in my right hand, holding on to Mateo's arm with my left, taking a deep breath, closing my eyes, tilting my head up to the sky, and asking myself with a smirk on my face, "Lauren. What. In the Hell. Are you doing?!? Well, it's too late now, you got yourself into this, now you gotta get yourself out." No one saw that...I was still standing behind the curtain then but I'll always remember that self-pep talk. Then in about 3 minutes...it was all over with, but that brief moment in time, standing behind the curtain, that moment was all mine.

Peacefulness escapes me on a regular basis. So when I do find it, I take note. I remember a day in late October, two years ago, and about an hour north of the Michigan/Ontario border. It was sunny, beautiful, cold day; but from where I sat in the driver's seat, you'd never know it. The sun was shining on me just strong enough that I could feel it's warmth on my skin. My passenger was sound asleep, which left me alone with the sunshine and Kenny Chesney's The Road and the Radio. I can still imagine what the flat green Earth looked like against the blue sky, it was simply beautiful. There were clouds too, but not the meacing ones. Remember that painter guy with the afro who used to be on PBS all the time? Bob Ross was it? The guy with the voice that was waaay too soft and waaaay to smooth...he used to say things like "ok, and now we're just gonna paint in a happy little cloud here, and a happy little cloud there. There you go, just some happy clouds." Those were the clouds, there were happy clouds all over the sky. Every once in a while there would be a few Cypress trees or a car would pass me by, but for the most part it was just me singing along to every song that played. Just about then, my passenger woke up just long enough to mention how ugly the "flat" scenery was before rolling over and going back to bed. Funny, beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder.


Somewhere in Ontario.

I have a picture of that moment somewhere. It was worth capturing. Right then, I didn't think about anything else but being in that car on that highway. I was completly wrapped up in that moment in time. It was like a band-aid for my soul and I clung to it as long as I could. I still remember thinking that I was so at peace with myself, I could feel myself breath and I could hear myself think. Clarity. It was an absolute moment of clarity. There were no smudges and marks from every day life in that moment. That was a good trip. No, actually that was a great trip.