OK, all ready to go, to head out for my mini-break in Wales. Bag packed (probably with too much and/or inapproppriate layered clothing), passport and tickets at the ready. The weather here in Stockholm has been miserable and rainy all this week anyway, so I am looking forward to a change. Of rainy and dark weather in Wales. It seems to follow me everywhere.

A few last minute things to get straightened out. I need a haircut this morning, so that has to be done. I have quite long, very dark hair. My whole life I have had extremely long hair, then when I was sixteen I started dying it red. Since I am extremely pale with hazel eyes, it suited me. About five years ago, I chopped it all off a la Gewnyth Paltrow in "Sliding Doors". The same haircut, in fact. And I really loved having such a short do, however it made me realize one thing-short-haired people are brave. They have to be, there's no hair to hide behind. I then went back to my original color a year and a half ago (and I must confess I love having dark, dramatic hair). From time to time, the thought hits me to go back to that super-short cut I had five years back, but then I think about it and realize-I'm a long-haired person. It's just who I am.

Besides, nothing is worse than the "growing out" stage of hair.

I have been getting more in tune with who it is I am supposed to look like. Sometimes I look in the mirror and am startled by what I see-is that how others see me? With my rabid exercise rountine-affected figure, long hair, pale skin? I also recently got my navel pierced, perhaps that means I will finally get the gumption to show off my stomach (and in case you were wondering, yes-it did hurt. A lot.)

So I have been getting more familiar and comfortable with my exoskeleton. Still working on he insides, but then Rome wasn't built in a day.

Or so Ive heard.

See you Tuesday.

- H.

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Still July 3-

I just remembered-tomorrow is Independence Day. Happy birthday to my home country. Ironic that I will still be in the UK tomorrow, then.

I remember 4th of July parties when I was a kid. The whole block would get together, shut the streets down, and bring out tables of food. It was easy then-since we were in the military, we all moved around a lot, and everyone banded together for the holidays. Some people would be in your life for fours years, others finished their tours early and moved on. But it never mattered on those holidays. Independence Day, in particular. Maybe being in the military made it so much more of a patriotic event.

The adults would nurse beers, wine, and wine coolers. The kids (myself included) would be running around in bathing suits, taking turns wrecking each others sprinklers and Slip 'N Slides (and always ripping the skin off our arms at the end of those damn things, with the metal staple that held it in the ground. And it always took forever to adjust the hose to make sure it coated the whole surface of the banana yellow slide, but when it was aligned...ah...heaven). We had red Kool-Aid juice mustaches and sticky fingers from the popsicles that we would have eaten too many of. Most of us would drop the tip off the popsicle, and then sat on the curb in front of it, watching the ants swarm to the sticky purple saccharine goodness.

The barbecue grills were all alight, and once the dusk (and mosquitoes) came, then we would all trek together to watch the fireworks over the stadium, with the kids playing with Sparklers under close adult supervision, trying to see how many words we could write in the sky before the light went out of them. And at the end, in the dark, we would fall asleep on the grass or be carried into our beds, our stomachs full of food, with the adults talking on into the evening.

There are some moments in my life that I would give anything to bottle up and uncork when the going gets rough. The 4th of July parties are some of them.

- H.

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