i know. i'm blushing.

Two more hours have passed, and Bryant has moved no more than a couple miles. He’s been on the bus tonight almost as long as he spent at work today.

(I wish I had thought to take a screen shot of the road an hour ago, when the back up was even worse.)

Someone needs to give Seattle some snow plows for Christmas.

All I’m going to say is Bryant has been sitting on his bus for the past five hours, and he’s still not home.

Yes, that’s what I said. Five hours.

His commute home from work is normally a 40-minute bus ride. Seriously, forty minutes. He’s now been on the bus for 300 minutes. No really. THREE-HUNDRED MINUTES. How is that even possible??

This is just one example of how Seattle and snow don’t mix.

But at least it’s pretty.

When I was a little girl, I was fascinated with my parent’s wedding rings. Any chance I could get, I’d pull their rings off and put them on my tiny fingers, twirl them around on my thumbs, run my fingers over their once-sharp edges, now smooth after decades of living.

What intrigued me even more, however, was my parents’ actual fingers. I couldn’t believe the imprint left behind once the ring was removed. The skin there was so smooth, with a deep ridge where the ring stopped and the rest of the finger continued. I was amazed at how a simple piece of jewelry could actually change a person, or at the very least, change the shape of a person.

I remember sitting next to Mom in church, clutching her wedding ring in one hand and examining her fingers with the other. I remember feeling amazed at how her skin, already so soft, could be even smoother where her wedding ring lived. My dad’s imprint was particularly impressive to me, since his hands were so big and rough (my mom always says he uses his hands like hammers). There on these thick, strong hands, hidden away on my dad’s ring finger, was this incredibly smooth patch. Soft, as if nothing harsh had ever touched it. Protected for years and years by his wedding ring.

I’m not exactly sure why these indents on my parents’ fingers captivated me so much, but there was something enchanting about it. It gave me this feeling of permanence, endurance, and safety. I liked that.

A couple weeks ago Bryant and I celebrated our three-year anniversary. Yesterday I slipped off my wedding rings to give them a little scrubbing, and I noticed something on my hand.

Can you see it? It seems I’m working on an imprint of my own. Three years and counting. I feel pretty happy about that little patch of skin. I’m excited to see what it looks like a few decades from now.

I know what I said earlier, but I realized today that I can indeed do small talk, when needed.

Sometimes it’s simply more needed than others.

It’s pretty funny to learn something new about yourself. It happened today. Actually, it wasn’t that I learned something new, but someone finally put words to a part of me that didn’t have a label.

I’m enrolled in a Medical Assisting program, and today a large number of my classmates graduated. I was saying goodbye to a lady who always could make me laugh. Mid hug, I told her something like, “I’m going to miss you, you’re always so funny.” And she said, “You’re funny too, Kelly. You’re funny without even knowing it because you’re so serious.” I laughed and said, “Yeah I probably am too serious.” We finished our goodbyes and away we went.

I keep thinking about what she said, though. It was not something I expected her to say. This classmate with whom I hardly spent any time—and the little time we did spend together was spent joking around—thought I was funny because she thinks I take things seriously. I didn’t realize I had ever acted particularly serious around her, especially not enough for her to find it amusing. And I didn’t realize that it was so easy for other people to notice that about me. Am I really that serious about life?

I was trying to figure out what, in our limited time together, had given her that opinion.

The best answer I can drum up happened last week. Our class was planning on dressing up for Halloween with a “geriatric” theme. She asked if I was going to dress up, and I told her that I wasn’t because it seemed mildly offensive; I didn’t want to feel like I was making fun of the people at my work. (I work at a retirement home.) Maybe this is it? Me being a little overly serious about a very nonsensical topic. The truth is even though I do think it had potential to be a tiny bit offensive, mostly I just don’t care a thing about having school spirit, especially when it means exerting energy to put together a costume for a holiday I don’t even like.

Anyway, I thought about this the whole car ride home (the mark of someone with a serious personality?) and have come to grips with the fact that I probably do come off as serious, even to those who don’t know me well.

There are times when I get silly, times when I’m the farthest thing from serious. But the truth is that even then I always have my critical lens within reach. I think about things a lot. …”Things” meaning everything. And I normally think about these “things” with a serious perspective. I think about society and how people treat each other and what our actions mean below the surface and the origin of our words and our traditions and world religions and conflicting view points and the point of life and yada yada yada. I sometimes have a hard time with small talk, and my preoccupation with these thoughts is probably why. I’d rather sit and talk about heavy things than be entertained with lighthearted topics. Isn’t that kind of messed up? But truthfully, the big, heavy things are what entertain me.

I don’t think it’s a good thing, necessarily. Sometimes I wish I were different. Sometimes I think it’d be easier for everyone around (myself included) if I just didn’t take things so seriously. But, Kermit said it, and I ought to listen: “When green is all there is to be, it could make you wonder why, but why wonder why wonder? I am green and it’ll do fine…”

So I’ll keep to it. I’ll just be here writing long, serious analyses of why people perceive me as serious. And all will be right with the world.

(Title from Indigo Girls’ Galileo.)

Poor October. Didn’t get one measly post.