I wish that my bank account or possibilities at world peace or something else equally worthwhile would swell in accordance with my stress and anxiety levels on this trip. Calling it a vacation would be overstating the experience thus far. Day two was...better? --was less explosive than day one. I have been accused of an endless number of shortcomings and told how to correct them. I have been warned of the immanent failure these character flaws will bring to all hopes of a successful future with The Staff Sergeant, who is inconveniently otherwise unacknowledged.

Two summers ago when Dad and I set off for 3000 miles in his suburban, I worried that it would be like pitting two angry dogs against each other, in a tiny ring, to fight to the death. I was pleasantly surprised that we only had one small tiff in Canada over driving tunes. Outside of that secluded incident (due to having almost no taste at all in music and the insistence in his never failing rightness) the trip was great. So when he asked about Savannah and Charleston this summer, I agreed.

It has been trying, to say the least. I found that today flowed much more smoothly after my mint julep at lunch...and then again after my early evening glass of pinot grigio. At some point, on this great disaster of a southern journey, I hope that he finds something other than my grades to be proud of or to agree with or to simply just accept.

Tomorrow we see Charleston.

on to something new [ready or not]

I have so much to say and so little energy and liberty to etch it all across this screen.  Christmas left something to be desired, new year's eve, however was perfect -- more perfect than perfect.  This life has a way of letting one glaze every moment with high-gloss hyper-perfection, given the right timing and circumstance.  Each breath and smile is caught and archived, pinned like fragile specimens behind glassy walls, slow motion memories with over-pronounced dialogue and historical inaccuracy.  

I err most often on optimism -- foolish, really.  I imagine the still frames more richly colored, sugary and scripted.  For example, I omit certain attempts at death-by-Dorito-consumption and possible engagement rings (on my mother's finger), large life-engulfing trunks, drunken welcome-homes, all consuming guilt, the kind of "good bye" that truly has the power to grind one's heart to dust.  I have added brightly adorned Christmas trees, comfort and relaxation, smiles, security.  Next year will be just long enough for my mind to fully buy into all of those forged memories and I will probably be surprised when it plays out just the same.  

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night

I'm home for Christmas and just like last year it isn't what I had hoped for.  I've had to cut my trip short and neither parent is pleased with the abbreviated visits.  There is no tree at my Dad's, no empathy at Mom's.  It seems more probable that this is the going rate now, the status quo, expected.  I had wanted so much more from the holidays this year -- a roaring fire and the twinkle of tiny lights descending from a tree's peak in woven spirals and that intangible, indescribable feeling of comfort and rightness.  I hate that my muscles now clench as the oddities of others become irritants that mark the Christmas season, for example, the 62 inch projection of an exclusive musak channel.  

My father reminded me on the way home from the big family dinner that I do have much for which to be thankful.  And I do, though it really is difficult to clear away the fog of Murphy's Law long enough to give appropriate praise for physical health and economic security.  I have the pleasure of loving an amazing man who treats me like a princess.  I take a lot of things for granted, nevertheless I'm tired of fighting battles.  Maybe I ask for too much or expect too much.  Maybe I outgrew Christmas with age.  Maybe I actually am lost in a sea of raging idiots.  I'm leaning toward the latter and it chips away daily at my usual disposition and temperament.  I want one day to pass without a major trial, and to forget for one day the notions of deployment and war and divorce and wrong-doers.  I want a simple task to be effortlessly executed.

Perhaps tomorrow will be the day, a Christmas miracle, if you will.

a deviation from the common rule, type, arrangement, or form

I call my mother to tell her how well the classes are going. Grinning, I boast of my successes that somehow seem to exceed most others in the class [mom's are really good at also bragging on the accomplishments of their offspring]. Unbeknown to me, she has been drinking and proves the point with the confession that she now lays in the floor as she chats on the phone. By now, I can hear the inconsistency of her speech. No less, I ignorantly continue to drivel on about my pride, as I have never been a star student [especially at anything requiring athletic propensity], when suddenly her agreeing tone turns bitter:

Well, I'm just soooo sorry you got that from me. I'm real fucking sorry that all of your good qualities came from your father.

Soon after the rant's beginning, I tell her I have to go...it wrenches my interior with a choking fury.

Following the snide drama of last night's episode, I receive an email from my father. He has most certainly misspelled my name, which I received as a shortened version of his own...

[like all the others, these get filed away under "funny family stories," the ones I lean so heavily on to stave off tears and failure.]

On porches. [newly edited]

In the south, a home’s porch is a respected, sacred thing often attached to tales of tall glasses of iced tea or eras before air conditioning, when there was still such a thing as community. My parents have mostly been the vessels of this verbal legacy, instilling the value of a deep, wrap-around front porch.

I moved out of their house when I was 18, when it was still theirs and not yet his. Then, it was sky blue with a meager aggregate stoop at the front door. It wasn’t until their marriage had truly come unglued, every stitch pulled from its seam, and nothing but a shaky façade remaining, that my mother decided the house needed revamping. Blue was no longer sufficient and it needed a porch. Some people acquire a new pet, take up a hobby, or actually go through with the divorce. None of these options seemed quite as fitting to her as a complete overhaul of the worn vinyl siding and outer structure of my childhood home. She commissioned not one, but two levels of hopeful architecture. Much like the grandeur of a church lady’s hat or the carat weight of a woman’s rock, my mother must have believed that her stately double porches would somehow declare a picture of greatness.

I can remember going home in the last year of their matrimonial tolerance. I would usually arrive on a Friday evening and wake to the upstairs door as it wooshed open around eight or nine on Saturday morning. Before cracking open my eyes I could already imagine my mother in her gauzy pajamas rocking slowly in the wicker porch swing, and my father sitting stoically in the chair against the wall, now a golden yellow. They would both be sipping black coffee, probably not speaking, but somehow finding solace in the silence of the waking world. Once I joined them, one would inevitably suggest that I grab a cup of my own from downstairs. I would be assured that the pot was still warm and that my fancy creamer was somewhere, although I’d have to dig a little in the fridge to find it.

I could not have known that those would be the last meaningful memories of the three of us as a family, after all, their undulating threats of leaving and staying had been a part of my life for just as long as the two of them, together, had. I sometimes wonder how much success, if any, those sweeping porches gained in her mind and heart, or if instead they played a simple role in my mother’s big scheme of gilding the truth. No matter their purpose or how they did or didn’t serve it, the presence of porches wasn’t enough to perpetuate the game of husband and wife.

Home is...not Memphis.

I said I'd post the back-logs, but I ended up journaling most of them. I'd recap the 4 days of holiday "bliss," if I wasn't exhausted just thinking about mentally reliving them. I saw some friends and family. I ate some good tasting, but not good for you Southern food. I wore skinny jeans and silver pumps to Christmas Eve's festivities. I received my grandmother's wedding set for the possible event of its [very future] intended use, and a fancy GPS, and some books, and lotion. I saw three movies. Drank one beer and two glasses of bubbly. And received 2 birthday presents a month early because my parents...I don't even know.

And it rained.

I'm glad to be home.

2007 December 23

The holiday festivities have officially begun. The Staff Sergeant and I swapped gifts last night, and this afternoon I carried him to the airport and with a quick kiss and “goodbye” he was headed home. I drove away and turned south to undertake my homeward journey, as well. I noticed the unusual volume of traffic, those kindred travelers also lured by tradition/obligation [and the promise of gifts], the sinking sun and the glowing blaze of whatever lies beyond the downward curve of the horizon…and the silhouettes of rolling hills lost in the shadows of such fiery effects.

I wondered if they [travelers] had families that felt like family. If they anticipated Christmas as Christmas had always been, or if maybe this year would be different for them also. I considered the ways my parents might try to overcompensate for the awkwardness of this first jostled season…and then let myself momentarily dwell on the reality of the thing.

::sigh::

I’m here now. I made it safely to Mom’s lake house. The water has been drained for Winter, leaving her lake-front property to boast only the undesirable view of a swampy, mud hole. Her man-friend is amiable as usual, making it impossible to dislike him on any justifiable grounds, and to perplex my unreasonable feelings even more, he gifted me with money – in a larger than appropriate sum. What do you do with that? Much less, how does one respond? He’s asleep upstairs “on the couch,” and I’m too worn down by the cacophony of holiday madness to really care.

Backing up, I don’t want to let last night’s lack of Christmas insanity to go undocumented: I received another pair of shoes that I had fancied but decided to bypass for at least a third time since first spotting them. They are small athletic-inspired shoes, the kind you’d wear beneath a pair of jeans with a cozy hoodie on a casual and comfortable day. In addition to footwear, I received the newest Post-Secret book to stand in for Cindy Sherman's Complete Untitled Film Stills that is en route amid the many other holiday gifts employing warehouses and delivery trucks across the nation. And he wrote me something...an account of his 22nd birthday. [He's an incredible writer, and this was my favorite gift of all.]

Merry Christmas!

I wish that this was my photograph and that it looked like this here, but alas, Southern Christmas's rarely see snow. In fact, I have witnessed one in my lifetime.

I'm borrowing Dad's computer to check e-mail and such, and am back-logging blogs on my iBook. Once all of the holiday chaos dies down, expect a slew of new posts. I hope everyone is well and having a more merry season than mine with divorcing parents. I'm ready for Christmas to be over...it just seems to have lost all of it's magic this year.

Dear Self,

Today I took the time to write a letter. It will be sent to myself on my 26th birthday. I thought about copying and pasting the words here, awkwardly written in first person to me about me, but really to whom I will become. I reminded my future self of who I am in this moment today...struggling to keep it all together, whose family has unfurled, whose idea of Home is lost, lost, lost...wearing long, falsely-colored hair and bangs that I will probably look back on and question, "why?!" Intoxicated by new love and burned out on collegiate business studies, who has found a compulsive drive to write on anything about everything and wants nothing more than to find the niche of happiness that certainly must exist. I told my 26 year old self what I hope she has remedied. I told her about the dreams kept only in my head because, while I do tell almost anything, some prayers are too delicate, too sacred to expose. She will probably look back and laugh, being taken off guard by a composition she forgot she wrote on a bad day in her 23rd year. At least I hope, on some levels, that she does. I left her with the little-girls dreams, the "when I grow up" bulleted list, the idealistic goals that I hope she will have accomplished, while knowing that life rarely goes as planned.

Naturally this train of thought led me to reflect on the past year and all of the irony and craziness that carried me through these 11 months. Now, as 2007 dwindles to a wintry close, I am entertained by last year's hopes for this one. I am so very far from the person I was last December. I grew substantially this year, which, in general terms, is exactly what I predicted. On a micro level, though, wow...it's really astonishing sometimes to look back at the outline you planned and then veered from, but I learned from the short-cuts and scenic routes, and even the idle hours spent waiting in traffic. I learned specifically what I would never again settle for, and what I could and couldn't live with, and that I can survive on my own, but I don't like it. I swore to learn 25 new things...I'm assessing this goal and will have an accurate report of progress by December 31st.

I said I was coming back to Nashville, and I packed my car and did it. I said that I wouldn't date for 365 days, but I did, and I even fell in love, an event I was sure would be impossible for a very long time. I said I would graduate in December, and as it approaches I've known since August that it wasn't possible, and frankly, I wonder if I will even pass all of my Fall classes this semester. I've had four jobs, two roommates, one new bedroom wall color, finished one book, completed two pieces of art, written one commercial composition, started a blog, and been introduced to the lifestyle of the Army. I've lost and made friends, I've seen beauty in pure form and ugliness too. I've done a lot of aching, but haven't found reason enough to throw in the towel. I've left and returned. I've stumbled a lot with intermittent glimpses of grace. Although marked by scars, I now know how to avoid tripping sometimes. I'm better because of the falls and stronger because I eventually shake them off.

No, no one promised me a rose garden. In fact, my Mother always made it a point to assure me that life isn't fair. Keeping all of that in mind and where I've been and where I hope I'm going, maybe sooner than later I'll at least have a bed of tulips or daisy's.

CHECK THIS SITE: FutureMe.org

Baby, baby, baby, come on home.

I greatly dislike the unknown. The confused gray place between here and there agitates my concrete desire for sturdiness, clarity, being able to say, "this is why..." Likewise, I loathe the feeling of coming undone. The threads slip further away from the nucleus and grabbing at their illusive strings renders palms nothing more than rope burned and empty. The combination is exhausting and Mom's pending arrival has lit both hissing fuses in unison.

Would I really rather her not come at all? And home...home? Where the hell is this "home" to which she beckons my return? She is not home. The vacation house where she fled is not home...will never be home...with the boat man whose truth she hasn't the decency to unveil. Home is nowhere she could wrap her hands or mind around. Home exists between the lines of tangible things...

Happy Holidays!

I'm told that I will, without a doubt, survive until January and I can't help feeling slightly melodramatic in the initial inquiry. The weight of them and the inevitable defeat of disappointing one with whatever decision answers the question of , "yes, but what do yooou want?" overwhelms my true capabilities of knowing what I want.

...Christmas on the moon and/or lots of white wine.

So it is that space travel is not in the realm of possible things before she shows up at 5 o'clock, and it will be a requirement of less than 24 hours spent with my great protagonist. One can do anything for a short time, or so they say. My understanding was wrong, she made alternate plans to those including Thanksgiving with her only child...the only child she includes in every complaint of marriage and money and hesitates not to burden with the guilt of debts and alliance. For Thanksgiving, she has "her plans" and for Christmas, a vacation to "alleviate the pressure of choice." How kind.

If I were brave enough to tell them how angry their whole approach at this lengthy end actually caused me to be, or how fearful I am that I will ruin my future with the example they have provided, it would probably be easy to cut away the fluff of compassion and cowardice. Maybe then I could be as brutally bitter as them, as raging and as hateful as their tactics. If I were to toughen up my soft spots, to poison my sweetness, to burn away the passion of my heart, maybe then I could say all the things that I stuff down inside of me and dismiss on account of unconditional something or other...

If one doesn't join them when it is realized that they cannot be beat, is it possible that she might come to embody all things on the other side of war? Might she become a pacifist instead of a warrior? Could it be that acting out the opposite is testament to the transparency of fear, and that fate might not have misery written in her stars? That failure could be an avoidable destiny?

I think I'd like to see Christmas in New York.

Sacred

My hands become possessed by the spirits of my mother's mother, her mother too, and the mothers that lived before those daughters. Haunted by their ancient ceremonies, I am compelled to perform them, drawing skill partially from heritage and partly from the guide of record. The formulas are immortal methods preserved in the black script of ritual books, and I summon them with the sole intent of paying homage to the traditions for which they were written. Their outlines are strict and require the vessel that I willingly provide. Alone, they are only a bleak memoriam of paper pages threatened by the tragedy of a dying art. To them, I offer holy reverence and all of what little I have.

And the door is only three paces away.

We spend so much time mapping journeys that never quite play out as planned. We fill our heads with dreams and whisper personally crafted endings into our own ears so many times that pre-construction based on fiction becomes inevitable. While the battle between expectations and actuality most often ends somewhere other than the scripted mark, life still finds a way to be incredibly beautiful. Even in tragedy, at the pinnacles of joy, in the gray ash of a season's defeat, and in the prospects of what mystery lies just beyond a door, it comes together in a collage of discovery. In it we are made human.

I can't make them love again, I can't even make them like one another. Likewise, I cannot stop or even pause the throes of wars being waged [or distant training that is required to combat them]. I may or may not be able to muster an ounce of interest in tomorrow's morning classes, or to rely on sunshine, acceptable cell service, a place to park my car. While these things are so, I am many of my parents' good parts. I am lucky for each moment in peace with and proximity to my soldier. I am grateful for close friends who willingly listen to garrulous chatter. Occasionally, I even feel cozy in the midst of a gray afternoon or the quiet of disconnect. It happens for a reason, to get us to the next place. Maybe if I shift my focus and stop trying to manage something so large that it cannot possibly be steered, I'll remember the gorgeous intricacies that make this mine [even when it's hard].

story time

He chuckles wildly from somewhere deep within himself. I pause my chatter to verify that I've heard this rare laughter, and I have.

"Man, I hated the military! In fact, I could have slugged the guy who called me into his office when my time was up...they call that...something other than re-enlisting, but that's what it was," he rants behind the belly rumble.

One of many really fantastic things about dating The Staff Sergeant is that it has awakened another grand avenue of my father's story telling.

He continues, "I had the meanest DI, man he was mean, but he could tell a great one liner. I think that if he had ever given up The Navy, he should have been a comedian...he had some great one liners..."

He's as bad as I am at staying on track.

"When you stand at attention, you can't laugh. You can't do anything, but you can't laugh, and that DI, some great jokes. So anyway, there was this one day that he dropped one into his talk [I can't remember what it was], and this 'ole boy couldn't help but laugh," he says with another diluted rumble, himself.

"'DO YOU THINK SOMETHING'S FUNNY?!' hollered the DI, 'I'LL SHOW YOU SOMETHING FUNNY! GET UP HERE AND LAUGH - FOR 20 MINUTES!' And that poor guy did. He stood in front of us and laughed for 20 whole minutes." my father finishes.

"They would do anything to embarrass you...I'll tell you what, I don't know if it made me a better man for being in the service, but I never once thought, 'I don't want to leave The Navy.'"

And that was just one of about 10 that found their way into last night's hour long "test of his new phone." My dad's a trip.

...I still miss my current man of the military.

The other stuff.

A lot of what I've written lately has revolved around matters of the heart. I'm sorry, it's distracting. You've all [hopefully] been there...[more than] smitten. The following is an update of life in addition to my amorous chronicles:

Mom has already spilled the beans regarding Christmas gifts. This year I'll be getting a queen size mattress that doesn't sag or fall through Dad's homemade platform bed frame, and my grandmother's 1920-something engagement setting adorned with an antique [conflict-free] diamond solitaire.

WAIT!

Before you jump to conclusions [and I know that if you know me, you are], it is not being passed on as an heirloom symbol of engagement. I already promised to exclude any reference to romance, so breathe and calm your racing pulses! It's just beautiful and it was given to me a few years ago by an aunt [sans rock]. It's very, very, [very] small...maybe 1/8th of a carat? But it's size is to be expected. It was purchased in an[other] era of war and somewhere around the beginning of depression...so it's sweet and sentimental and I'm really excited to finally have it once again intact.

Speaking of the infamous fam, Mom will be kindly serving my unknowing father with divorce papers next week. She just wanted me to have a "heads-up"...I was really more inclined to be heads down, over the toilet, sick with upset. No matter, it's coming [can you hear the rumble of impending discourse?]. If possible, I'll attempt to brace myself for the onslaught. Part of that plan includes sitting out on Thanksgiving. I'm staying planted for one of the two dreaded holidays. The [not so] Future Californian has expressed possible interest in spending it with me in rebellion, and The Staff Sergeant might possibly be game, and Mom claims that she might make the drive to Nashville, and maybe a cousin...I just want to lose myself in the preparation of a bird and cornbread dressing and cranberry sauce [even if I spend it alone].

In other news...I love the new[ish] job. Love, love love it! I love the people and the atmosphere, and today I fell in love with a china pattern, or rather, a mix of 3:

Richard Ginori, "Duchessa Gold"
Royal Crown Derby (accent plate only), "Indian Summer"
Haviland, "Laque de Chine Gold" (charger only), in "brick"

Again, WAIT! I haven't "picked out china"! Breathe, my friends. I will gladly accept these items in accordance with any/all upcoming occasions for gift-giving [Christmas, my birthday, just because you like me, etc.].

Now that you've gotten your BPM's down to a level of normalcy, I think Macbeth and I have kicked the flea infestation. I've become a domestic, baking machine [again] and I LOVE it [again]! I've also sworn off sweets, alcohol, and eating out while The Staff Sergeant is out of town in an effort to drop a few pounds [so my jeans fit]. I needed a project to focus on, and today marks the second of my 30-day gym commitment. No, the sudden cool-down is not a result of Hell freezing over, so don't ask or comment.

That's a fairly conclusive and loveless update on my life as I know it. I'm sure next week's earth-shaking debut of legal papers will prompt some interesting words. Until then, I may post again about missing my soldier.

A time and place for all things.

I wouldn't even know where to begin if I indeed had the time to spill forth all of the thoughts I'm warring with in my head and heart. I've stepped on some toes this week...some regretfully, others unknowingly. There are those things I wish that I was brave enough to exclaim loudly, awarding them the legacy of resounding echoes, and others I wish I had never uttered [or otherwise communicated]. at all. I've wanted to hang up in mid-sentence - Oh! the temptation of an effortless flip of wrist. I've wanted to [and may or may not have] shed tears of absolute frustration...or was it a mere imbalance of hormones? I've been tempted to shatter fragile things, and indulge in the gluttony of gentle affection, and not to honor obligations.

I'm not perfect and I hate that.

There's this passage in the opening paragraph of Hornby's, How to be Good that I've just recalled. It's both sobering and reflective of the human condition [and it's how I feel right this very second]. Sometimes terrible thoughts are thought and things are said or done, or not done or said, and you can't believe the moment has just transpired. Regardless of preference, it's done or lost, and you are the doer or the loser or the thinker or the "bad guy." Maybe it matters, maybe it doesn't, but it's You for better or worse:

"Even though I am, apparently, and to my surprise, the kind of person who tells her husband that she doesn't want to be married to him anymore, I really didn't think I was the kind of person to say so in a car park, on a mobile phone. That particular self-assessment will now have to be revised, clearly. I can describe myself as the kind of person who doesn't forget names, for example, because I have remembered names thousands of times and forgotten them only once or twice. But for the majority of people, marriage-ending conversations happen only once, if at all. If you choose to conduct yours on a mobile phone, in a Leeds car park, then you cannot really claim that it is unrepresentative, in the same way that Lee Harvey Oswald couldn't really claim that shooting presidents wasn't like him at all. Sometimes we have to be judged by our one-offs."

The grinding limbo of a 5 day interim...

Hello, Monday, my first day foe.

Left palm is tattooed with today's agenda:
1) email marketing group
2) check syllabus deadlines
3) set apt with [non-profit contact]
4) GET A JOB!

I did rise early today, in relation to usual and to bedtime, but early is all together relative, right? [I reference my morning's 8am debut.] I made it to Marketing on time, a commendable feat, and in my break between class and work, I stopped by an establishment I have been meaning to peruse for a job. They're hiring - interview Wednesday.

Between a promising job opportunity and the planned banishment of in-house internet, the belated conversation with Mom should be more smoothly received. I promised to call following my afternoon spent in the cooler, er, the office...the office that will hopefully no longer rob me of body heat after Wednesday. No one can live on 9 hours a week and the immanent threat of frost bite.

After a good 5 days of willful silence, and ignored phone calls/emails, I feel that I am rested enough in the motherly situation to again speak cordially. She isn't guilty of heinous atrocities, but now and again the mounting anxiety of her role in my life peaks and I have to stop for a sanity break. So I've been breathing, and thinking, and I've made a few changes that she'll smile upon, and I've reckoned [momentarily] with the live-in-boat-man with which she has taken up companionship [although without formal introductions as such, or mention of the fact], and her friendly relations with fermented grapes [somewhat].

A low, throaty growl threatens audibility, but instead I chew anxiously on an inner wall of mouth...

Paper Wings

I sometimes feel very 2 dimensional. flat. plain. average. I dream of a life so large that it exceeds every possible perimeter that the world can throw around me and said explosive existence. Sometimes in the midst of that dream I realize that I am in fact more stuck than expansive energy and my heart sinks...until my romantic mind begins whirring again with those too-big thoughts. I've adopted that phrase, by the way, from Kerouac (read him).

So here I am - feeling stuck. Feeling small and flat and wanting. Wanting to move and shake and save the world and save myself...from whatever it is that makes me feel pinned. Today, perhaps it is my mother and that latest bought of guiltful puppeteering of purse strings and toxic parenting. Perhaps it's that I let her. Perhaps it's the apathy that still taints my ambition to do (anything). Maybe it's the monotony of life, and I'm tired. I'd like to leave for a bit...for a bit...I'd like to get in my car and drive to Anywhere But Here.

Welcome to Anywhere But Here! the sign would read.

I saw a film and that made me want to move, to sell it all, everything, and live on simplicity and good deeds. I'd like to save the world. I read a book, some blogs, I've listened to the moving plans, for downsizing the stuff. The stuff is so weighty, isn't it? And the grass is always greener. I lay beneath the stars as they fell across the midnight plane. I made a wish, but I can't repeat it. I heard a song and wanted to love like that again. It made me feel inspired to give my heart away...to someone true and good who also loves without regard. I want to love and be loved in capacities larger than reason would rightfully allow, and never ever hurt (again). And I'm homesick, for something I've never seen. I'm so sick for home...rotten sick for a state of being that I've known only in daydreams.

So here I am - feeling stuck. Feeling 2D and paper thin. Feeling weighed down with the crap of life and tethered to dead weight. But it isn't all so desperate. No, there's plenty of potential, don't get me wrong. There's plenty that I'm thankful for and makes me smile. It's just...it's just that I'm restless, and plagued a little by the burn of wanderlust. And the search for Home is a little more than I can mentally entertain right now. And I want to not be scared of love, or moved to silence maternal phone calls.

Long Weekend

Off to the lake with Mom and The Future Californian...

...be back Monday (if I survive).

This week's top 5 reasons I might toss my cookies (and it's only Monday):

1. Whatever the eff-ing hell this travesty calls itself...

2. That CNN story about Seniors and oral sex that aired between unnerving footage of soldiers in Iraq...

3. (said unnerving footage courtesy of CNN, and the theoretical heart palpitations I credit to the intensity of their musical score)

4. My masochistic tendencies and the search capabilities of YouTube and Google: [base location], [military branch], [specific category] = the virtual deflowering of my mind and eyes

5. The prospect of another long weekend spent with one of the parental forces of evil...a predicted 3 days of psychological warfare hidden behind the smoke and mirrors of, "I know that you asked not to be put in the middle of this, but there's something you should know..."

A breach of maternal boundaries...and date no. 3

I call Mom back this afternoon once I notice that I've missed her call - I know she's curious about the third date. She picks up, we relay the expected rhetoric - the "how are you's?" Immediately following, first thing, giddy like gabby girlfriends, she asks, "So, have you seen his body yet?"

Um. What?!

I'm still a bit taken aback from such an inquisition from my mother.

Despite the display of family dysfunction, the date was indeed fabulous. The menu consisting of caesar salad, homemade baguettes, homemade spinach ravioli with tomato sauce, white wine, and balsamic peaches with vanilla gelato (again, homemade) was well received. Afterward, our trek up Love Circle was also a hit. The weather was pleasantly unseasonal for the norms we've been experiencing. The daylight heat had subsided some and a breeze was an added bonus. Heat lightning flickered above the cityscape - a low glow in the dark clouds. It was perfect, and then when it seemed as though the night had peaked, an unexpected firework show erupted in the sky.