Rules.

Hello.
How are you?
What are you doing?
Enjoying summer?
Cooling off with a cool glass of lemonade?
Lucky.
Here I am...sitting in this same freezing office. Doing the same boring filing. With the same effortless hair-do (aka: whispy-falling-out ponytail). Dreaming of the same summer wishes (you know the ones to do with hot cement, popsicles, and swimming pools...).
But today, I had an epiphany. An epiphany about rules.
Let me explain.
I just spent a week in Lake Powell with the best family a girl could ask for. I was busy...every. single. day. My skin was soaking up sun rays as fast as it could (considering I've been shunned from any sunlight whatsoever this summer). My toes were sifting through hot sand and swaying through shallow water. My hair was blowing in warm wind, tickling designs on my back.
And I was content. No, more than content. I was thrilled. At peace. Overjoyed.

One afternoon I was rekindling my love for the sun as my dripping swimsuit dried, when my 3 year old niece walked up the stairs. Up the stairs meaning to the top of the houseboat. She was singing and dancing and doing all the other wonderfully blissful habits of a princess, when she reached the edge of the houseboat. (Don't worry there's a gate- let your heart stop pounding)
She began unlatching the gate and as her little fingers began sliding the gate open every so quietly I quickly stopped her.
"No, no no Leah.." I said in a coaxing/loving-yet-startled/worried aunt-like way.
She stared at me with a blank face.
"We can't open the gate because you don't have your life jacket on remember? And its very dangerous when you don't have your life jacket on," I began. "Why don't you go put your life jacket on and then come back and I can help you open the gate?" I suggested.
She looked at me with big eyes and said, "Yes because we, we can't open da gate when we dont' have ouy (our) wife- jackets on because, because dat's da yules (rules)."
And with an exchanged warm smile between us, the conversation ended, and she was off to find her life jacket.
This experience is what triggered my thoughts today on rules.
Yes, my trip was incredible.
I couldn't have asked for a better way to spend my afternoons than watching my nephew search earnestly for dinosaur eggs in the sand. I couldn't have asked for a better way to wake up than to a "Rachie!!" followed by a long anticipated kiss from my 1 and a half year old niece.
I couldn't have asked for a better way to feel loved than hearing my mom say "You did awesome, I'm so proud of you" as I finished a ski. And I couldn't have asked for a more peaceful way to end a day than watching the sun tuck quietly behind the red rock as the boat glided through the last of the days waves.
So for all of that- I am grateful.
But that doesn't change the facts. I'm back. Here. In this betrothed office. No boats, no sun, no sand, no..... joys of summer.
Only rules.
So I sat today thinking about all the many rules I, like Leah, need to obey here at work, like she did on the houseboat.

I have rules like: Clock in at 8:30, No jeans or casual clothes, one hour lunch break- MAX, etc.)
But I started to think of other rules. Rules that make me chuckle a bit. Rules I've learned myself....unfortunately, through experience.

Let me shed a little light...

#1. Never bring a purse full of bit o' honeys to work. You will eat them all and want to vomit.
#2. Never bring a bag filled with wheat thins and cheese to work when you have Cafe Rio for lunch. Although you are stuffed, you will eat the whole bag out of boredom. (Already my first two have to do with eating uncontrollably....what's my problem?!)
#3. Never shave your legs and wear a skirt and short sleeve shirt to work on the same day. You will get chills from the unreasonably chilling temperature in the office and ask yourself why you even shaved.
#4. Always take lots of bathroom breaks.
#5. Always check the weather before dressing for work. Otherwise, you will always wear a skirt on the windiest day of the year.
#6. Never use the phrase "could this day get any worse?" Because it always can.
#7. Always spend time with those who matter most. Because you will always wish you could be with them instead of trapped in a freezing dungeon earning $9.80 an hour.
#8. Never misplace a terrifyingly intimidating attorney's files. You will always want to crawl under your desk and cry when you can't find them and they need them.
#9. Always smile at all of the office couriers and/or runners. Because the attorneys' never will.
#10. Always find joy in the little things. Like 'Doughnut Wednesdays' or the endless free drink supply in the break room. (Although that was a lot cooler when I was 6...) Or else you will go crazy from lack of entertainment.

Now I know these may not quite be applicable to all....however, when you stumble across one you cannot obey- think of me. Here. In this freezing building I call work. And smile. Because you have the chance to break those rules. And I will smile because I have the chance to make them.

So, until Rule #11,
I'm clocking out. Literally.
See you at 8: 30 tomorrow. Sharp.
"Because, because dat's da yules."
Chow.