Trips & travels, Vol. 1

I have been a really terrible blogger lately, just as I was an underachieving diarist in elementary school and awful journal-er in high school (somehow I think those are and should be considered different). However, the good news is that upon my return to this lovely page I have done a lot and have much to report.

So, around 2.5 weeks ago, I straightened up my depressing cubicle, leaving things that people might need in neat, organized piles, and then I drove away from work cackling, since I was to be not only off work but also out of town for the next 15 days. Yes! I hope you know how much I love this feeling. Although airplanes themselves are uncomfortable, making Brandon's leg twitch involuntarily and my hair and face feel greasy, I cannot help but be exhilarated when I am dropped off at the airport. My favorite part is when you ditch your checked luggage and get to wander around buying coffee drinks and/or reading magazines (FOR FREE AND WHAT ARE THEY GOING TO DO ABOUT IT) in the numerous Hudson News stands that dot each and every airport I have visited in the past two weeks, which have been quite a few, actually. I smell a monopoly.

I had been on an airplane not very many times when I met Brandon, but in the past 3 years that we have been together, we have flown this way and that, across oceans and up and down the eastern seaboard several times. I really like it, and when I am in a new place with him, I cannot help but quietly think "Thanks, babe."

Anyway. Let's at least DELAY the corny cheesiness, I may not be able to eradicate it entirely.

So we zipped up to New York for a friend's wedding. The state, not the city, mind you. It was a fast in & out kind of a trip, but invaluable for the simple lesson learned by yours truly: Do Not Get Wasted In A Hot Tub. There are all sort of scientific reasons, as it turns out, but for some reason, although I'm approaching 30 years of life, I had never been informed of the situation. When I woke up on Saturday, I had the worse hangover of the past 2 years at the very least, and although I was greeted when I was finally able to awaken at 1:00 p.m. by ibprofen, biscuits & gravy, and a tall boy Mountain Dew, I felt like hell for the rest of the day. I hate drinking. I love drinking. I hate it. I love it.

Anyway, the wedding was gorgeous, went off without a hitch, and since I was still suffering too much to indulge in the top shelf open bar, I was sober enough to drive everyone back to the other side of the lake in the bride's father's SUV. He is a judge, and I had never driven a judge's car before. It was... uncomfortable.

So we had one full day back in Memphis before we were to leave on our big trip, 11 days out West. B's brother was getting married in Orange County, CA, and we decided to take full advantage of our flight out there, and spend extra time seeing some sights. The last time I had been out to that part of the country, I was too young and trifling to appreciate any of it, and B has been wanting me to go out there with him for forever, so now was the time. We flew into Vegas, spent the night at our new sis-in-law's parents' house, and woke up really early the next morning and drove north to Monterey. Our plan was to drive south on the Pacific Coast Highway back down to the LA area, and we had 2.5 days to do it. Before we left, I had been checking things out, looking at the map, and one day I did a Google Image search for "Big Sur," (because I remembered the Kerouac book) and I came up with this:

So needless to say that I was RFE (really fucking excited). We spent part of the day walking around Monterey, where the water was full of a ton of jellyfish, great big blobby brains with streamers of tentacles hanging off on all sides, eating clam chowder, spying otters, briefly napping on the beach, and discovering the incredible cheapness of wine in California. Then we started our drive down CA 1. We wound out of Monterey, through Carmel, and then the trees cleared, we looked down, and there was the ocean.
And it was really & truly, the most stunning thing I have ever seen.

Seeing that stretch of coast makes me wish I was a much better writer. If I could express myself in a more beautiful way, maybe I could convey to anyone who would read this how much the crashing waves, the craggy cliffs, the blue water, the golden light made me feel. How much it made me feel. Brandon and I drove and stopped and drove and stopped, climbed on the rocks and took pictures, talking about the sealife, the plants, the waves, the tide, and how we felt unable to express the flood of emotions that we were both experiencing. We drove until it got dark, then turned around to find the cheapest motel we could, and then in the morning we did it again, travelling south to the parks around Big Sur, which are nestled in Redwood forests. That's right, you see all that incredible coastal beauty, then drive about 15 minutes to find yourself in Redwood forests. I couldn't believe it. I told B the whole thing made me want to laugh, cry, and piss my pants, all at the same time (sounds a little bit like a mushroom trip).

Unfortunately I have to go back to work now, but I am determined to blog about every part of this before I forget it all. So, installment #2, and hopefully pics to come. You can see B's first gallery of images here -- they're not pretty pictures as much as they are the things he really enjoys shooting.

Can't Title Now, Must Pee

I was just listening to a particular Gillian Welch song, "Wrecking Ball," to be exact, that reminds me of the sore, sensitive end of a relationship that I shall not speak of in any detail. Even though I was the one who weaseled my way out of it, when I hear this song, I always think of a day when I was driving to work (down the highway from Murfreesboro to Smyrna, to be exact), and I heard it and my face crumpled up and approximately 3 hot wet tears escaped down my cheeks. That was pretty much all I could muster; I'm not trying to be cold, but lots of times if I am blue about something, I will have these bouts of near-crying, usually while driving my car. It's just enough crying to make you look ugly, not near enough to make you experience any sort of relief. I can no longer seperate the idea of what I look like when the cry is breaking from this:


Claire Danes, you are an ugly crier.

And this lady has noticed, too.

I have been having some pretty decent times lately. This little lady scampered into my life:

She is pretty damned awesome, and growing like a weed. Her name is Lucy, and I am sorry if we are Facebook friends and you are having to see these for the tenth time. I am slacking on my new puppy photography. Everybody is in love with her except for the cats, and they hate my stinkin' guts for bringing her into the house.

I had a lovely weekend with some really good old friends. We drank champagne and talked shit and went swimming, a little bit. The weather has been the most fantastically gorgeous thing that you could ever experience in Memphis, TN in July. I GOT COLD LAST NIGHT. YES, COLD. Keep in mind that we don't have any AC in our bedroom, only a fan. I was very happy that Mr. Dill was back from his bachelor mountain adventure.

Bachelor Mountain Adventure... if this was a reality show, what would the plot be? I imagine a diverse group of bachelors, from overly-groomed & coiffed slicksters with waxed eyebrows (oh God, I cannot handle that shit), to the kind of guys who you bought pot from in college, who only wear band t-shirts and live in houses in which the toilet hadn't been cleaned in 3 years. They're all doing challenges and co-habitating, and then they punch each other.

Excuse me, now I have to go buy tofu for dinner. B is detoxing from Bachelor Mountain Adventure. Apparently, they had beer and red meat for every meal.

I'm happy just because I found out I am really no one

Do you guys know this Bright Eyes song? It's a real winner.



Last year B discovered this song on a mix CD that wasn't his. It was his brother's and had fallen into his possession somehow. He loved the song and then I heard it and I loved it too. He drove me back and forth across the Mississippi river on the I40 bridge and played it for me. It was like were were teenagers for the 10 or so minutes that it took for us to play it 3x in a row.

P.S. I will give you a kiss on the face if you can tell me who is singing in the background.

The other day I saw a man who I don't see very often, and I was in a weird awkward mood, and when he came to greet me, I thought that he might be going to give me a kiss on the cheek. It seemed very natural, and like that was exactly what he was going to do. But he was not, so then I said, "I thought you were going to give me a kiss on the cheek. Why don't you do that?" and he did. It wasn't very awkward. Maybe I will start the summer of greeting people with a kiss. Maybe we'll all get mono and lose 15 lbs. One can hope.

Check check checking in...

I only have a minute. I am terrifyingly behind at work and trying to get everything approved before next Wednesday. I wanted to say that everyone at my house is feeling better; well, not the cat. He is still hot, fat, and tired. Brandon and I are feeling better in the head and heart, if I may dare speak for him. It was a dark week or so; I laid out of work playing the Sims, watching Intervention, and drinking rum. Oh yes, and feeling very sorry for myself.

However, the clouds are lifting because life has to go on, no matter what. You have to be somewhat philosophical about these things, and tell yourself that although you were happy and excited, it wasn't the right time. And the right time will come, right? As the Avett Brothers said, "To this awful news, try not to hold on / The day will come, the sun will rise, and we'll be fine."



Anyway, I also wanted to try and express to everyone some kind of thanks and gratitude for the overwhelming outpouring of love and affection we received from everybody. It's the terrible times that make you realize what a community is, how much care and concern means, and how important it is to be loved. People brought us booze and pie and hugs and showed us how sad they were for us in so many different ways. Thanks to all of y'all. You have no idea how much it meant, really & truly, all of the messages and comments and everything else.

however...

Inevitably there will be points in which humor arises from sadness. It was 95 degrees outside, and both my husband and I have been too stubborn up to this point to have retrieved the window unit AC from the basement. The cats lie around the house, desperate and dramatic.

One might say, "Spread out like dinner on the grounds."

Please do not call the ASPCA. I know that he is fat. I do not fill his bowl to the brim every day, we dole out carefully measured scoops. He just refuses to run and play, no matter the temperature.

Addendum: Air conditioner was set up, screwed in, plugged up today. Not the most efficient machine in the world, but I feel a little bit less like I'm going to die now. Cat continues to languish in drama.

sadness so great it has created stanzas (apparently)

disclaimer for disclaimer's sake... I was more than halfway drunk when I wrote this thursday night. I was all the way there, although I considerately washed my broken-out face and brushed my teeth before I went to bed. also, I never ever EVER write poetry. I don't even like poetry very much. I like about 2 poems a year, and I usually hear them on the Writer's Almanac.

in other words... you don't have to read this. It might be embarrassing. BUT I reckon it's authentic so I'm keeping it, goddammit.

halfway drunken thoughts composed at 9:38 pm when the husband's taken to bed (who's to blame him) and you're upset about something that seems to have no end...

shut the fuck up, bloggers
shut up about your ranch
shut up about your fresh fruit granita
and homesewn camisole panty duo
shut up about your trip to london... it's so unauthentic. why don't you go somewhere REAL, like India or Thailand or motherfucking Turkey, even?
shut the fuck up.

shut up about your baby
he's very cute i'm sure
but not everybody wants to hear about it right now
in a house
where it's hot
and the cats are all there is, anymore,
and they're itching and miserable from the greasy flea medicine they've been dosed with
that you've begged them not to lick off each other

why does sadness wake you up
shake you sober
make you get drunk
and then realize that you'll soon be back asleep
with everything still bullshit

shut up about healthcare
and guns
and thugs
and everything you have pretentious ideas about,
in memphis, tn, in your office, at 3 in the afternoon,
but can't actually fathom

i don't want to see the pictures of your trip to
arizona
the skate park
texarkana
gulf shores even (although I laugh about it, and avoid it myself)

this bleeping digital vessel is nothing
but somehow all i have
at 9:43
when i already finished my book today
and nothing waits but sleep and then
wakefulness
too early
too hot
too restless
too everything

You have to make decisions when you have a blog. You have to decide how much of yourself you want to expose, and how much you want to keep quiet and hidden. How personal you want things to get. Generally, "in real life," I am someone who is pretty frank with most personal things. But in the blogosphere, it can be different. If my husband and I are fighting, I don't post about that, probably mostly because I am kind of gross and crazy, and I want people to think our relationship is nearly perfect. If I am a little depressed, I don't really post, because have you ever read blogs by people who are depressed a lot, or only write when they are down? It's really boring. And a downer.

Inevitably, however, there come the things that you don't know how to say, but feel like you must anyway. Things like this: We went to the midwife on Tuesday, 6/16. The midwife couldn't find the heartbeat of the baby with the doppler. We decided to go to the ultrasound clinic. At the ultrasound clinic we found out that although I was 12 weeks pregnant, the baby had stopped growing at 8 weeks. We aren't pregnant anymore. We are just waiting for the inevitable to happen. The inevitable being the actual physical miscarriage.

This happens a lot, but, you know, it doesn't get talked about very much, unless you are involved in certain internet communities in which women congregate to spill their guts about their experiences with miscarriage, for the sake of catharsis, and sharing, and building a network of women who know exactly what it feels like and find commisseration helpful.

Does this seem very unemotional? I feel odd. We have both gone back and forth between feeling a lot and being very numb. It is hard to lose something you hardly had to begin with; it's easy to keep making yourself remember what you're not going to be experiencing. (This time around, anyway). In grief, I find that sometimes I seem to tend towards... emotionally torturing myself, a bit. Maybe that is an extreme characterization. After my father died, I kept reminding myself of all the weekends I had spent away from home, away from his sickness, getting drunk with my friends, wasting time satisfying myself, trying to have a good time while he was sick and suffering. The same thing happened Tuesday, back at the house that the midwives are using as their office; when we returned, there was a pregnant woman there with her five children, one of which was a baby girl who was maybe a year old. I kept looking at her little arms and hands, and reminding myself that it will be a long time before I have a baby to call me mama, and reach for me, and all that. It's pretty fucked, I guess. It is like sprinkling salt into a wound; when I'm upset I feel like I should make myself feel really really upset, or I'm not having an "authentic experience." Then when it starts it's gets out of control until I'm nearly sick with it.

So that's what happened to me on Tuesday. And I'm not pregnant anymore. And it feels pretty shitty.