April Ramblings

Okay. I wrote the previous post on April 1st, posted it...didn't love it so I took it off and put it in my drafts to contemplate it and the reasons behind not loving it. I then decided to just post the thing, so it is all there in its original form. And I still don't love it.
NOW I don't love it because the title is 'April Fools Day'--I originally wrote it then--but since I posted it a different day it doesn't quite make sense anymore.
Originally, I decided I don't love it because I had wanted to write at more length about the interruptions my kids love to make at inopportune times. I had a lovely ramble in my head about that one.
You know the saying about giving talks that says something like, 'You write three talks before you give it, the one in your head, the one you write down, and the one you actually give'? Well, the ramble in my head about my kids was awesome. Funny, memorable. It had Norman Rockwell type tendencies. Pure genius.
You will notice I didn't get to the 'write it down' part. It might have had a few chuckles, but probably not as memorable as my ego wanted.
So I condensed the thoughts and shoved them in my April Fool's post.
I realize that I probably just can't get the hilarity of the post in my head out of...well, my head. So that is why I am not a fan of that post.
Enough said.

Today, to make it really special I thought I would ramble like the pro I could be--if someone would pay me for my ramblings. [Just a side: If someone pays you to NOT ramble..to not post due to eye strain and an aversion to sarcasm...would that make me a professional thinker? That wouldn't look too shabby on a business card....hmm....]

I've become a people watcher lately. When I served my mission in Portugal I used to walk down the cobblestone streets and see old Portuguese women in their houses, staring out their front windows and watching people as they passed by. I found it quaint to see them as life passed by their windows. Their faces were lined from years of hard work and they rarely smiled, unless a fellow widow would make her way past their house and they would lift gnarled hands in greeting and smile a mostly-toothless smile at one another while praising God, cursing dead husbands, and making their way to the market.
Fascinating exchange, that.
I used to find myself watching out my window too. It is different here in the States. In my neighborhood. My husband caught me staring out the window a few times and could never understand the draw.
So now I mostly watch people while I'm in my car. I will be at a stop light and I find myself looking at an older woman in the car next to me and begin to wonder what she looked like when she was young. I look at the man in the car behind me through my rearview mirror and wonder what he looked like when he had hair.
I wonder who the man in the suit is talking with on his phone--imagining he is making some big business deal when he almost blows through a red-light because of the cell phone distraction (when in reality, it is probably just him chatting with his wife and trying really hard to talk her out of having to going to her parents for dinner that night).
I laugh at the extremely well dressed 'beautiful people'--you know the ones: great hair, blindingly white teeth, hugely expensive car--who pick their nose when they think no one is looking.
And I feel a certain kinship to those I catch alone in their cars happily singing along to the radio.

I am a people watcher. We are interesting creatures.

And when I am old and have no teeth and white hair, I hope that instead of buying a black lace shawl and pulling up a window seat, I'll still be enjoying life instead of just watching it pass me by.