As it turned out, we did have a moment before supper, and the fire camp and the body painting started. Clara needed a nap from the last of sleep, and to my surprise, my mother decided to have one too to prepare for the night. Clara didn't want her husband around, but my dad was welcomed to keep my mother warm.

So, when I left for Mindy's bedroom, everything was quieting down. Even Mindy was quiet enough with Billy and my new sister, Edith, as they raced on Mario Kart.

Introverted burn out. I like that. It wasn't my first time, and I can tell you, it wasn't my last.

Over the years, I managed to find ways to avoid getting there, and to recharge faster.

Just last week, I was at a party with textile friends, and I was on the verge of a meltdown. That's even worse!

I excused myself, went into the restroom, and just, well, took off my dress and took deep breaths, making eye contact with myself in the mirror.

Sadly, this crowd isn't nude-friendly, so I had to put my dress back on, but I've had parties where I was allowed to sit nude in a corner and only get dressed when I was feeling better.

Just to make it clear, I don't burn out because I am wearing clothes, it also occurs at nude parties and then, I don't have the ability to get more nude to unwind.

I took at look at Mindy's room. I knew it by heart. I've read the magazines, I've seen her photo albums. This room, has no secret for me, but I do find a notebook which doesn't belong.

It's a spiral notebook with 80 lines pages used for taking notes, with a pen in the spiral. It's not a notebook that Mindy uses, it's one of mine.

I pick it up, and remember why it's there. Right before Billy came into our lives and soon after, I had gone to Mindy's house after school, taking the bus a few times. If you think that all of my visits to her house outside the time jump were written about, I will disappoint you. Sometimes, we got to her home, just did homework, and my parents picked me up. End of story. Did you really want to hear about that?

Well, this notebook isn't about school. It's about naturism. We were reviewing various resorts she visited, and I realized that perhaps, one day. I wanted to do visit them.

I took one of the blank notebooks, I always had two or three in my backpack, and made lists and noted them down. I still have it, and I still intend to visit them, when I have the money to do so.

I'll stop with the present.

I found the notebook, and took out the pen, and decided to talk about my day, as if it was my personal diary. I spoke about the last few days, about the last few months, about how concerned I was with Edith, how glad I was to have Lucy and Mindy, and I even noted a few rules of cool.

Now, back to the present. Well, to 3 years ago.

I am going back home after a year at my college dorm, and I am taking my things from college back into my room.

I found a notebook I forgot about in a drawer, I opened it, and realized. "Hey, it's that notebook I wrote in at that first naturist Halloween party that went bad".

And I find that there is more than I remember, enough to bring back memories of that period of my life.

Add some convenient "Rules of cool" noted down along with examples of when I thought of them.

Back on that Halloween, months before my world came crumbling down to humble me, I was writing about what was recent in my life, trying to make sense of it all.

And now, I can use that as a reminder.

I can even remember a smudge on page 4, where I made a typo and made it worse while trying to fix it.

The layout of everything in Mindy's room feels fresh to me, and as I read the words I put on the paper, I cringe at how wrong several of them are.

"Lucy is the more confident, stable teenager I know. She is strong and wise", which makes me hurt a little inside, as without 24 hours of that, I would have learnt more.

There are moments in that book that didn't make it.

Like the fight with Edith earlier that week. I went on and on for almost a page, and none of it made it into the story you are reading. Why? Because the fight occurred before I was tired, and Edith was self-punishing herself for having accidentally broken a glass while helping empty the dishwasher.

My mother soon understood, stopped the fight, and managed to speak with Edith about how accidents are not punished in this house.

"But I broke one of your glasses"

My mother did something I didn't see coming. "One of those?", she said, picking one of the glasses, and throwing it in the sink, which broke the glass.

"But now you have two less"

"Wow, you are right, Edith. Want to go to the store to buy 6 more with me? I'll pay for 5, you pay for one from your allowance"

"I don't have an allowance"

"You don't have one yet. But Steven and I are talking about it, and for Julie too, obviously."

"Fine."

But my mother doesn't get dressed, and doesn't pick her purse. Instead, she brings Edith downstairs with me, and opens a cardboard box. From it, she takes out a box of six of those glasses, from a box with 7 other boxes of six.

"We imported them?", I asked.

"We imported them, sold enough to make a profit, and are stuck with this case of 8 boxes, and 4 or 5 other cases. Edith, things are not important. Not these at last. Your self-esteem is. You broke a glass. We have like about 300 other glasses. I am not saying you should break them, but that if you do, it's not the end of the world. Same with our plates, but those, we have less in stock. Still enough for your future apartment, and Julie's future apartment"

Edith looked at her.

"Edith, after Halloween, we will bring you shopping for clothes at our various warehouses. I don't know what size you wear, what styles or colors you like, but anything you find that you like, is yours. People are important, things, are not"

It did make Edith cry a lot, but I think she got to a better place.

In fact, she did go "shopping" for clothes at our warehouses and I think I'll tell you now, and skip that chapter which is less about me and more about her.

Edith did find a few things she liked that fitted her. She was a little plus size, so there is nothing my mother, or I could wear, but Edith liked a few coats that were enough out of style to be hip, quite a few long sleeve shirts in a style she liked, and even some pairs of jeans that were about 5 years olds, but jeans are jeans. Stores wouldn't want them, but Edith did.

What my mother did, however, was find an old box of the ugliest plates I ever saw. They were brown, for crying out loud.

She laughed, that wasn't something they imported. It was a box they found in one of the warehouses when they took possession of it, and no one wanted them, in part because they had metal engravings which might contain lead. You don't want that anywhere near your food.

Why my parents kept it, inventory after inventory, is a mystery, but what we did with them wasn't: we threw them like they were Frisbees, sending them breaking in pieces.

Cleaning up was less fun, but it's not like we were missing brooms: that too, they had imported and kept an extra supply.

But I had a better idea... we tied a few of the brooms to the front of the forklift, and each took turn using the forklift to clean the pieces. It was tricky because we didn't want the tires to roll on the shards, but with patiences, it was good practice.

That afternoon, I wrote fast summaries of things that occurred to me between the moment I found the photo albums and that evening, but don't think it's the only time I wrote in it.

There is stuff in it for about 6 more months because by then, I had used all 80 pages and needed another one, and the next year, another one.

Even today, I like to journal my days in one of those spiral notebooks which parents's company... didn't import. They don't import everything, you know?

I wrote until my hand hurt, and then, I realized that I was recharged. So, I joined my sister, my bestie and her boyfriend, grabbed a Wii remote, and kicked their asses at Mario Kart.

End of episode.

I said, end of the episode.

Fine, I didn't kick their asses, but I wasn't bad and won most of the races, except a few that Billy did.

Characters

Episodes