one of those days...

My parents are on the beautiful island of Kauai this week... and next... and I am not. Not that I would expect them to take me, but still, I can't help but feel a little jealous.

I was in a foul mood yesterday, and left the office, ready to blow off steam. As I pulled out of our garage, the sun shining, the sky blue, I couldn't help but think of what a lovely time I had when my parents took me to Kauai with them nearly three years ago.

Pulling onto the street, I decided it was one of those days. A DMB day. With one hand on the steering wheel, I groped with my free hand to locate Crash, my favorite DMB album, and shoved it into my CD player.

I say my hell is the closet I'm stuck inside.

The warm sun poured through the car windows, too bright, but I didn't mind. It felt like Kauai, minus the palm trees swaying in the breeze along side the road, plus a few more layers of clothing than I'd care to wear in such a climate.

I find sometimes it's easy to be myself

I opened my window, a few inches, to let the fresh air in, and I was transported back to my trip to Kauai...

Sometimes I find it's better to be somebody else.

Just a year into college, my best friend and I were there as a part of my high school graduation gift, with my parents. They rented a 2002 black Ford Explorer. I loved driving the massive vehicle, so different from my little compact Ford Probe. And wearing, usually, nothing more than a tank top, sarong and sandles, we would leave the condo late in the evening, in search of adventure. The sun would set around 8pm, and most of the town closed down. But the drive was beautiful. We would hop in the car, bringing along Dave (DMB, but we just call him Dave), and usually a few BNL albums. We'd roll down the windows, and let the clean, ocean air fill our lungs, crank up the stereo and sing the lyrics as loud as we could. It was never cold. It was August, and it was Hawaii. It was warm, and muggy, and the fresh air pouring through our windows at 30 or 40 miles per hour felt cool. Over and over, we'd listen to this CD, sometimes letting Dave take 5, and adding another album into the mix. If one of us saw something, there was no need to turn the music down, we'd just point, and if something needed to be said, it was yelled over the music. There's only one major highway on Kauai, and it tracks 3/4 of the circumfrence of the island. Getting lost would be hard, so we just drove... Most of the territory, we'd recognize, and we'd only turn back when we thought we were getting a little too far from home.

'Cause here we have been standing for a long, long time.

This CD, the whole thing, brings back these memories. And while all of the memories are happy, part of me can't help but be sad... I'll never be that young again, I'll never have that youthfulness... Sure, I can still drive my car, with the windows down, and Dave threatening to blow out my back speakers, but I really only do that on a bad day. I don't want to associate these memories to bad days. I guess that's why I record them here... Write them down while they're still just great memories.

So much to say, so much to say.