floating.

I have never particularly liked islands. In fact, they've always made me nervous. I know better now, but it doesn't change my misperception as a child that an island was land that floated above the ocean -- you know, like a boat. A boat that could sink. Anyone who knows me knows I have issues with ocean water (as in, I won't get IN it), so the thought of walking around on dirt precariously floating above gilled dinosaur fish, aliens, and who knows what all else lurks in the bottom recesses of the ocean, was less than attractive. (I also have issues with lakes, thanks to Stephen King's The Mist. That story about a mysterious fog that rolls in over a lake and brings with it scary and horrifying and icky things scared the bejesus out of me in 9th grade, since I read it while on vacation at my Aunt and Uncle's -- you guessed it -- lakehouse.)

Ah yes, but back to my point. The point is that tonight, as I floated in my ginormous bathtub, I was doing my bathtub meditation thing and my gaze drifted down to the remaining bubbles floating on the water. I'd been in there about 20-25 minutes, so all that were left were the tiny, effervescent ones all joined together in different shapes that float along like...well, like islands. I leaned my head down and gently blew right onto Italy, and watched as a perfect circle formed in the middle and drifted, morphing, until it broke off into two little bubble islands.

I imagined that I was looking at the ocean from space. That I was an astronaut. Then I imagined that I was God, that I was watching the earth form over a period of time. I thought deeply about this for a moment, picturing how so many tiny people lived on the islands, musing, when my eyes drifted downward and rested on my feet in the bottom of the tub, barely discernible beneath the cloudy bathwater.

Damn, I thought, I really need a pedicure. My vacation is in a week... my vacation that is at a...............lake.