After last night’s storm, the city has returned to its normal gorgeous self. The weather is as beautiful as it can be: no clouds can be seen in the sky, no matter how hard you look for them, birds are singing madly everywhere, and there are flowers, lots of them, because the heat reached us early this year, and all flowers bloomed a couple of weeks before spring had officially arrived.
           
          I woke up at 7, had a quick breakfast and headed to the lagoon for my daily walk. Just across the avenue there’s this grassed area under a couple of trees - not a grove, but something pretty much like it - and today the grass was covered in the pink flowers that must have showered from the trees when the wind blew last night. A pink, sweet-smelling, slippery carpet right under my feet. I felt like sitting there like Buddha and grinning until the day was over, but it would be a very strange sight indeed, a chubby girl and her dog, both with  shit-eating grins on their faces, sitting under the trees, doing absolutely nothing but waiting for time to go by. So I gave up my lovely idea and went out walking. It was not a day to go running; too warm, and too beautiful. So I slowed down my pace and walked and walked. Eventually I turned off the walkman, to hear the gulls and the other dogs and the kids around me. Beautiful.
           
          At one point during the walk, this gooooorgeous man runs by me. Tall, long legs, short brown hair, and a tanned body to drool after. If he had been wearing glasses I’d have turned on my heels and trailed after him for hours with my tongue lolling out. As it were, he wasn’t wearing glasses, and why would he look at me anyway, so I just mentally swooned and kept walking.
           
          I got home 2 hours later, thirsty as hell, my face as red as a chili pepper, and absurdly happy. I took a loooong, cool shower, singing to myself all the while, combed my hair and put some ‘super moisturizing conditioner for dry, frizzy or damaged hair’ on it (Sunday has always been the day for beauty tricks), got myself into a short flower dress, braided my hair and out I went again. This time I would take another route, walking with my brother to his friend’s. We chatted a lot, so I didn’t even look around, but when I left him there, and made the way back home alone with my dog, I started noticing little houses and lovely short buildings along the street that I had never noticed before, even though I’ve lived in that area since I was born. Tall trees, those lovely trees with tiny leaves, line the street in both sides. There’s this breeze blowing, and a constant shower of little dark green leaves falling from the sky. I’m entranced.
           
          I turn right and head to the ice-cream shop. You know, the day simply *required* ice-cream, so I bought myself a chocolate cone, since my favorite flavor, passion fruit, has for some reason been wiped off from the shelves. It was such a perfect moment to have an ice-cream that I didn’t even feel guilty, not even at the sight of those skinny girls parading around as they headed to the beach. I dismissed any thoughts of my oversized belly inside my flower dress, and headed back home.
           
          I guess I am happy after all, you know.
          Rio, 4 de outubro de 1998.