Night Musings

Why am I up at 2:48 in the morning? No, my children are not up because they aren't tired. It's me. I think I might be the only one in the family that cannot sleep right now. I laid in bed next to Jonathan wide awake. Ideas glided across my mind from left to right and were gone into the darkness. What to get so and so for Christmas? How to make Christmas more meaningful for the kids? When will I make the trek to Utah? What are the most important things I need to get here in the states to take back with me to Turkey? Will my mom actually come visit me in Turkey? And the list goes on. Now I'm at the keyboard tapping away and the letters while 1 1/2 cups of great northern beans boil on the stove behind me. I need my bean salad ya know. It's one of the constants in my fridge in Turkey. We'll see how it turns out here. The states doesn't have the parsley I need to make it but perhaps dried parsley won't be so bad. I'm not going to drive a half an hour to get to the nearest Wal-Mart just to get fresh parsley for a bean salad that only I will eat.
I know the answer to this question. Why do Americans have such glamorous lives? (from a foreigners perspective)
Because everyone's life can be like a montage in a movie. All you have to do is get dressed in clothes that are at least clean, jump in your car, turn it on, make sure the music is going slightly loud but not too loud to blot out your thoughts, put on your sunglasses (optional)and take a drive on the smooth, wide, tree lined streets or maybe the three to five laned freeways that criss cross our country, or maybe cruise a main street somewhere and watch other people on the street that have completely separate lives from your own. Think about it. You're in a comfortable car and the music takes you away from everything almost. You get to have a little escape whenever you want. Jonathan pointed out to me that Europeans have their MP3 players and use them all the time on the street. But I could never consider this glamorous because most likely they have to take public tranportation or drive in constant traffic. If you're walking and listening to music in a beautiful European city, that's nice, but when you're in the bus and it brakes suddenly and your earphone pops out as you reach for the handles that hang from the upper bars in the bus, then your escape has ended and you realize you have been living a lie and you can't deny it anymore.
Merry Christmas everyone!