Aug 5, 2016 3 min read

I took a pool day this week. I forgot to take a book with me, but I’m a diligent journalist and took my notebook instead. Had I been reading, I would have spared you my observations. But, alas, you’re not that lucky.

I took a nap in the sun. I know a lot of people who love to sleep in the noon sun. They swear by it, but it is not as restful as you’d think. I woke up tired from my outdoor slumber. I had to take an indoor nap later that day to feel revitalized. That’s a nap to recover from a nap. That’s just way too much snoozing for me. File it under First World Problems.

I spent more time daydreaming than sleeping anyway.

The sun was bright and hot. Big, billowy, cauliflower clouds started to burn off, melt and dissipate. I enjoy playing with cumuliform clouds (they’re the fluffy white cotton ball clouds). I love trying to find a pattern, scene or animal in them. I saw a cloud that looked like a Scottish terrier. It quickly turned into an elephant with a vacuum cleaner. I thought, “An elephant with a Hoover makes no sense. Every fan of ‘The Flintstones’ knows they use their trunks to pick up lint.”

The elephant turned into two fish kissing before it disappeared completely. If I wanted to play another round of this game, I had to do it quickly. We were down to just the wispy cirrus clouds, and they never look like much of anything but feathers. When there are a lot of cumuliform clouds, I see a lot of horses and lions up there. What would Hermann Rorschach make of it? I never see anything sexual. Should I worry about that?

If I ever have to take the inkblot test, I’m going to lie anyway. I’m going to pretend I see all sorts of kinky stuff. Then, when the psychologist says, “Why do you have your mind in the gutter?” I’m going to say, “You’re the one showing me the dirty pictures!” Yes. I would risk my mental health to pull off a long-form joke. That’s how I roll.

But I digress, like I do. I couldn’t help but wonder about something. I was under the sun with a distinct set of clouds above me. Meanwhile in Atlanta and Florida, they had different clouds, or maybe no clouds at all. It seemed odd that one bright ball 38 million miles away was covering the entire half of the planet at the same time. I don’t get science. It’s easier to believe there’s a small sun over my head and only shining on the local vicinity.

Sometimes you need a day to stare aimlessly at clouds and imagine. It’s invigorating. After all, I’ve been doing this adult thing for quite a while now, and it doesn’t always work for me. It was high time to race horses in the sky, pull rabbits out of billowy white fluff and just pretend the afternoon away.