Back when I was attending community college out in California I took this communications class where our first assignment was to give a 10 minute speech on anything we wanted. I did mine on memory, how it worked and how best to remember things – it was good (obviously) because I still remember – I got an A+. I got a lot of A+s at community college. I would say that it’s because community college is pretty easy but I also got a lot of A+s in graduate school… which would make you think maybe I’m just really smart, but mostly I think it’s all about the bullshit – and I can bullshit really well.

Anyway, I digress. The reason I bring up this communication class is because right after I gave my very memorable memory speech the next woman to take the podium had just returned from her first trip to Hawaii. She spoke for 10 minutes on what she referred to as the ‘Aloha spirit.’ She talked about how in Hawaii everyone was so laid back and peaceful and she came away from there more relaxed and carefree than she ever had and wanted to cherish the ‘Aloha spirit’ and try to keep it as long as possible. I have never been to Hawaii but I imagine that you can capture this feeling anywhere, especially if you are on vacation and removed the normal stress and worry of your day to day life.

I feel like when I was in Maine I captured the essence of this. 99.9% of my stress comes from work, because I have a truly wonderful and patient husband and the best baby ever. When I first got my job here a friend who had just become my coworker said to me “Working here doesn’t involve diffusing bombs or operating on babies but it’s going to feel like that every day…” and he was right.

Being removed from work was like heaven. Away from the hostility and angst I was able to appreciate the fact that the little college I work for is not in fact the central pivotal access point on which the entire world rotates. I know many of my coworkers would disagree but I’m pretty sure I am right on this.

Since I have been back I have tried to hold on to this aloha spirit and not get sucked into other people’s aggression, so far so good. Yesterday I deleted several emails that were nothing but rants against the system that normally I would feed into. I even let some truly horrible and aggressive drivers in their giant gas guzzling SUVs cut in front of my on the way to work – even though they are ruining the earth and making me late – I decided that was their karmic dilemma not mine and since I’m not really sure what time I’m supposed to actually be at work – does it really matter if I’m a few minutes later?

I feel better – I’ve been sleeping better and even yesterday afternoon when Lucy dumped the dogs bowl full of food upside down for the third time I decided to just laugh instead of yelling at her.

I hope that I can continue to remember that what’s really important is not my bosses’ mood or the crises of the moment that our Dean has invented inside his head but my family and their health and happiness and safety (although she really shouldn’t be eating dog food).

Aloha.

When the world does finally come to a screeching halt and we are held accountable for our actions I hope that I am wearing something that requires a crinoline underskirt and a very sparkly headpiece. I mean I have seen a lot of movies and I have a feeling that I’ll be stuck in whatever fashion choice I made for a very very long time. Saturday I was wearing my favorite pair of Old Navy pants and a relatively cute top – but it wasn’t what I would have chosen for all eternity. I was however attending a family BBQ and thought it might be a bit weird if I showed up in my favorite brides maid dress and a tiara from Claire’s.

Needless to say I am pretty glad that current religious zealots were wrong. (Sorry to any religious zealots who frequent this blog – I am sure you are all exceptionally awesome – wrong but awesome). I remember when comet Hale-Bobb was supposed to signify the end of the world in 1997. In 1997 I was single and living alone – I had a lot of time on my hands to obsess about the possibility of judgment day.

So in order to prepare for the end of the world my underage friends (from Spanish class) and I decided that we should get dressed up and head to Tijuana to go drinking – because what’s more significant (and safer) than a  late night in Tijuana? We got all dressed up and headed for a night club south of the border.

In order to take the most advantage of underage American’s – you know keeping them drunk and alive – the locals have converted these great big windowless warehouses into all night dance clubs. They would charge you $10 to get in and then serve you all of the watered down tequila sunrises you could drink – served in plastic cups poured out of 5 gallon tubs.

They would pack hundreds of kids into these giant sweat lodges and lock the doors to keep out the criminal element. It would reach 120 degrees in there and there was no way to get out.  I don’t want to think about how many fire code violations were broken or how incredibly unsafe it was, but we went nonetheless – at least this way when the rapture came we would be in a big group of our new very best friends. We arrived sometime around 11:00pm and they didn’t opened the doors and let us go until the sun came up the following morning . We stumbled across the boarder, eating churros and bacon wrapped hot dog – restocking our supply of chicklets debating whether or not the rapture came and we had transported to the seventh level of hell or if we were, in fact, still in Tijuana.

Obviously I made it home safe and sound, but I did learn a valuable lesson – when preparing for the rapture you want to wear comfortable shoes – spending eternity in strappy sandals is simply not going to cut it.