Login Incorrect
I woke up rather grudgingly this morning. I'm not sure why, but I haven't been falling asleep very easily the past few nights. Might be hormonal. Might be lonliness. Once I am asleep, I don't seem to be doing too much of interest. Pretty banal and nostalgic dreams... old corner stores, dusty roads, screen doors whose hinges squeak. Summer.

The reoccurring dreams are gone from me, an itch that I almost miss having. Give my mind something to wrap around. Let my sleeping self be challenged to think.

When I was attempting to nap yesterday, I did have a startling experience. As I was laying there, I started thinking about the corner store that Sian and my parents forbade us to go to when we were younger, the "Summit grocery." I think they told us not to go there because they sold alcohol/ tobacco to minors. Really, we didn't care, we weren't interested and we were probably TOO minor for them to even sell to us. We just wanted some damn candy. I thought about the few times we went and what we bought. Then my mind wandered across the street, to the field there in front of The Pool. That's what we called it, The Pool... I think it had a real name, but I don't remember what it was. Anyway, this is where I spent a few of my younger summers. Exclusively. I was either in the water or on the deck baking. That was when I did swim team. The only athletic activity until NOW that I was any good at. And proud of. I thought of the tennis courts next door, surrounded by high chain-link fences. I think I fell over the net of one of those courts once. Skinned both my knees.

Behind the courts was a field, short cut grass, sloped gently uphill to another residential area. Abbey Stauffer lived there. I barely knew her but I remember what she looked like and I remember her name. Come to think of it, I tried to sell girl scout cookies in that neighborhood once, but they were too yuppie.

Next to the Tennis Courts was Rec Park, the bane of our community. We were constantly having clean-ups and warned of needles in the dirt. I think that place scared me. But on the other side of the fence was Chapelle Elementary playground and Athoria. It was a blacktopped wonderland and we fervently defended it from evil. In my mind, I approached Chapelle from Wallace street, the street that intersected my own. I walked to school every day down that street but when I moved, I hadn't been back to Chapelle in some time. I remember the inside, I remember its L shape and how one of the Ls in the name plate by the front door 'dinged' when you smacked it. To my surprise, I couldn't remember what was down the street from Chapelle. My mind could take me everywhere else but not there. It was some place I didn't go. I was touring the whole city inside my head but when I came to Wallace beyong Chapelle... it was just... empty. I get the image of a residential area, maybe a busy street and... nothing. It was really confusing and very vivid. I wonder how different the whole place would look if I went back this summer. I'm thinking on it.

When I got up this morning, I went to check my Hotmail for some reason. I never check Hotmail... I've had the account forever but it's mostly a breeding ground for spam now. Anyway, the damn admin had disabled it for inactivity and because I didn't want to pay for unlimited access, they deleted all my files and wouldn't re-pop them. It's not new mail I care about, it's all the old stuff I had archived in there and visited every now and then. Messages from Sian, Lesley, Emilio, and Alex. Lots of them. Gone. Bastards. It's not that I looked at them all that often, it's just that they were THERE and I could read them and have them be REAL for a minute. And now I can't, ever again.