Thank You, Helios

Coin depicting Helios, Greek Sun God, from here

First off, I’m sorry for the sporadic (and not all that entertaining) posts lately. I’ve been wallowing. However, now that the bright happy face of Apollo/Helios/Amaterasu/Lugh/Inti/Sol/etc decided to finally make an appearance through the nearly constant cloud cover that gives “the gray months” here their name, and I managed to relish in the Vitamin D yesterday afternoon, I’m thinking the period of wallowing is drawing to a close. Finally. Wallowing is all fine and dandy when I have time to find creative outlets for my emo-angst (do forgive, please), but definitely not so helpful when I’m trying to get things in order for graduation and BOLC and, apparently, Air Assault school. Yeaaaaa MPs :] I actually wanted Airborne, but since I’m not technically going to an Airborne unit, I don’t have priority as an officer. Speaking of preparations, I finally bought all my uniforms. The tailors are done sewing the braid and everything on the dress blues, but I still need to go pick them up. They called me Sunday afternoon saying they were complete, and I’d just dropped them off Saturday afternoon, so I was surprised that they finished them so quickly. I guess the alterations I needed weren’t that time consuming and that my stash must have somehow jumped to the front of the long line.

Friends in high places, I suppose.

Anyway, back to my sunshine. So. Yesterday we randomly had nice weather—and yes, here, especially in the months that should be filled with springtime and warmth and growing things, nice weather is always random—so I drove to a nearby lake with two guy friends and went tanning. Well, the sun periodically hid behind clouds, but it was still really nice when it wasn’t hidden and even warm when it was. The temperature was around low 80s or high 70s, and it was as windy as ever, but I still cracked out the bikini to attempt shedding some of my winter skin. I have a naturally tan/olive complexion, so when I don’t have at least a little bit of sunglow, I just look awful. Thus, New York winters wreck havoc for me. Once again: I can’t wait to go to Texas.

I parked on a hill and rolled out my lime-green beach towel on the moss and sticks by the lakeshore. It felt so ridiculously good to just bathe in the light, and the boys rotated between lying out with me during the sunnier patches, playing Frisbee in the field behind us, and running around taking pictures of snakes. Luckily no shots of my pale self in the hotpinkcheetahprint (don’t judge) bikini made it onto Facebook. I think the death threats might have had something to do with that. Even better, I managed to get about half a shade darker, so considering we only had three hours to kill for the whole trip including transportation time (20 min drive, 30 min walk to and from my car), I’ll take it. It’s not quite a tan, but it’s a start.

During one of the times when I was alone while the boys were off being boys, I stretched out my arms and felt the Sunshine and the Earth and got my hippie on. I remember thinking, lying there and communing with the lake next to me and the soil beneath me and the trees around me and the sky above me, I’m going to blog about this moment later. I whispered “Gaia,” and then, one of my favorite greetings inspired by some of prayers in Serith’s A Book of Pagan Prayer, “Wise Ones, Wild Ones, Spirits of this Place, I thank you for guarding and sheltering me here.” The wind stirred, the leaves scattered, and I felt my greeting answered.

Now, for some musical irony, a song: