The obvious

How do you introduce a blog? Do you have a theme? Do you just jump right in and start talking about your life right now? Do you give some details about yourself?

I have no idea. I'm just going to write what comes to me and see what happens.

I'm sure you can figure out where Blue Satin Sashes comes from. If not, then, well, I guess I have to educate you. The Sound of Music, which is one of my favorite movies and from which I can be found quote-singing on a regular basis, has a song called My Favorite Things. One of the things Maria lists is "girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes." I love that image. I would even venture to say that a blue satin sash is one of my favorite things, so what better title for a blog?

Today, to completely change the subject, I want to talk about grass.

I don't know why I suddenly decided to write some stuff about grass the other day - it just inspired me. So here are some rambly thoughts.

Actually, I know why I suddenly started thinking about grass: because we needed to mow ours. We got a...lawn guy? What is the title for a guy who is a professional lawn-mower? to come mow our paltry bits of grass, and it looks so much better. He even managed to do that cool stripey thing on one section of lawn. It smells good, it looks good, and there's something so homey about hearing a lawn mower out your window.

When I was maybe eleven years old, I visited my friend Emily, who at the time lived on a farm a little bit out of town. She and her sisters liked to sit under this tree outside their cottage and play pretend. I joined them in this, sitting in the grass and making up stories about what was going on around us, getting so into it that I started to believe what they were saying. Including the statement that the clover-ish grass we were sitting in was magical. And would help you see things you couldn't see before if you ate it.

This isn't going in quite as druggy a direction as you're probably expecting, but the end result was that I felt pretty stupid after eating this stuff steadily for about fifteen minutes. They all started giggling at me, and I tried to play it off, like I was just eating it 'cause it tasted good (it actually kinda did), but honestly I had just totally bought in to what they were saying, not realizing that maybe they didn't come out there every day and pretend and eat grass, that maybe they were doing it for my...benefit. If tricking me is really a benefit.

It totally wasn't a big deal, especially because Emily's sisters were both a good bit younger than we were, so it wasn't like I was ganged up upon, but I think this is when Emily and I started drifting apart. I realized that she liked to laugh AT me more than she liked to laugh WITH me, and I had felt something a little nasty in the way we had "played pretend" that day.

Wow, that got serious pretty fast. I still give her hugs when I see her, which is maybe once a year, and I still have mostly fond memories...okay, maybe not mostly fond memories, as I'm mentally riffling through them. But it doesn't bother me like it used to.

Anyway. I love the smell of fresh-cut grass, and I love that we have a yard now, even though it's stretched out in all these little random strips around our house, and most of it is covered with shrubs and trees and pine needles rather than grass. But still. It feels like home.