Or when you wake up and your ribs are bruised thinking so hard on something. What do you call that?

Yesterday morning I fell asleep with a shirt on. If I had fully appreciated the joys of feeling shirtless in the night like I had every other night, I wouldn’t have woken up with such restricted breathing. And I wouldn’t have torn it off of my body and thrown it to the floor. And I wouldn’t have been sweating as much.

I absolutely hate this weather – the desert I have always detested. When I watched The Mummy in my youth, I never thought I might actually have to see sand for even two hours of my life. Instead, I got four…years.

I realize this blog will follow my day a tad, so bear in mind that you’re likely to laugh at its quirks.

I didn’t do much until we left for a Fourth of July Bash held at Edwards AFB. I read The Meaning of it All by Richard Feynman. I thought about Terry Tao and what I heard about him solving the Riemann Hypothesis. I don’t intend on becoming a mathematician, but that’s pretty much what you are when you’re a Theoretical Physicist – you do a lot of math and deal a lot with logic. I also thought about what my girlfriend was doing. I thought about her all day. Especially when I heard “Little Wonders” by Rob Thomas come clearly across on the way home. The radio waves were going shit on us while my dad drove us there. My dad blamed it on the forest fires. We’ve been able to see the smoke for a week or so now hampering our view. I don’t think it’s the smoke. I haven’t found anything confirming this. It’s probably just general shitty radio reception. We live in the fucking desert. That’s practically off the grid.

Well, we got there and my dad picked up on something I didn’t bother to recall. When we were being directed by the trafficker, he had blue surround his Captain bars. When I was fourteen I joined the Civil Air Patrol. Pretty much all we did was fly around in a Cessna all day or do some military drills. I didn’t thrive in that environment. I actually ended up quitting, much to the surprise of everyone because the previous day I had been cited as an example as the best cadet they had. The senior “officer” was part of a Civil Air Patrol sect.

I had no idea what these guys were thinking. A week earlier when my dad and I were in the library we saw a huge sign advertising the event. They didn’t have jack shit there like what was flaunted on the sign. We were walking around in 103 degrees of heat and I certainly wasn’t enjoying being in the heat anymore than girls that find out they have hair between their ass crack or something. What we found the most ironic was that when compared our 4th of July’s we had lived overseas to the ones we actually had in America, the other countries won. It’s a bit sad.

I was getting tired of hearing about the 24,000 boxes of popcorn they were trying to sell and tired of overhearing the dull conversations people brought up to waste their time outside. When we finally left, it took about 5 minutes just to leave. Oh, there was traffic alright! It wasn’t a car though. It was a slow ass woman who walked on the road and nothing was said or done about it. I wanted to reach over and honk my father’s car horn.
We went home. I figured Jess would be asleep by the time I got home, it was around 5-6 PM. So I just brought up a book from my stack and finally got to catch up on some reading I had been missing out on. That’s what happens when you’re in love or of course, if you’re bored. I got distracted like always. That really makes me mad. I don’t regret what I did though, although it is kind of inhumane. I know I shouldn’t of…

But it felt so good and so right. I was eating watermelon. It was amazing. It brought about this cooling effect when I’d be eating it. I didn’t feel like I had to splash cold water on my skin anymore. A few hours later we went out to see the fireworks.

It was nice. I thought of bombs, the speed of sound, the Chinese and how this “stuff” set us up for outer space exploration, Russians, October Sky, World War II, fires (the fire department got a lot of calls), and Jess. I wanted her to be there watching with me. I thought about our future. I thought about holding up one of our kids on my knee and her swinging an arm around me, resting her head on my shoulder, smiling down at our kid. We’d be seeing the fireworks as a family. When I think of the future, she’s always in it. Why? I want it and it needs to be that way. I love her to deeply to let her go and separate. And so what if we both fear losing each other? Fuck Yoda. I don’t give a shit if he says the fear of loss leads to the Dark Side. He’s computer generated. And has one of those pedophile old people voices.

I watched Cold Mountain after the fireworks exhibition was over. I have watched the movie over two thousand times literally; it is my favorite movie. I can’t bring myself to summarize. I won’t even give you a link. It would not do the film justice or the book.

There are a couple things I thought about during the film.

The first was that they barely knew each other, but through all of their tribulation, they found each other again and were able to continue where they left off.

The second was that he was walking home to her. She was his compass. She was home.

We all go through times that ail us and try to overcome them. During the film it was much like an odyssey. Whatever setbacks he had, whatever stood in his way, he would find a will and a way to get back to her. And through all of this and for all he felt for her, he hardly knew her and he even thought she wouldn’t remember him. He risked his life daily to just embrace her for a fleeting moment. In his mind, he kissed her every day of his walking. Likewise, I kiss her in my dreams and while I feel half-asleep in the morning, I think she’s been sleeping in bed the entire time with me.

Wherever she is, my heart is. And wherever my heart is, I will be.