i do my best but i'm made of mistakes

Today someone shared the posters for the new Alice in Wonderland in Google reader, and it reminded me (and I swear this is true) that when I was a child, before I started school, there was a recurring nightmare I only had when I had been read my Little Golden Book version of AiW. In the dream, I was always lost in Wonderland, unable to find my mother, and FREAKING THE FUCK OUT. I was a neurotic child. The only bad dreams I can still remember to this day from when I was 3-4 years old are the ones in which I was without my mother and struggling to do something alone. The other one that stands out in my memory is one in which I was, at 4 years old, driving my mother's burgundy Mercury down the winding country road leading to our house, crying hysterically while being chased by a tiger. The car looked something like this:

Please note that is not our house. I believe it may be a screencap from "Uncle Buck." (Do you remember those pancakes he makes for Macaulay Culkin's birthday? Talk about UNREALISTIC.)

Anyway.

I have avoided writing because I felt like such a Debbie Downer for six weeks or so. I have always been pretty much unable to write without automatically spilling into the kind of self-confession that will automatically inform any casual passerby about nearly every facet about my state of mind. (This made for some regrettable Myspace blogs before I came over here, trust me. Nothing more embarrassing than realizing you have shared anything of import on MYSPACE for God's sakes). So I stayed in a little hole for awhile, crying spontaneously in the car twice a week or so over the baby, the baby, the baby, but then the sun came out and I shook myself off and I'm back in the world of people who enjoy living. For now, anyway. My due date would have been right at Christmas and things will be up in the air until then, and that time will be shitty, I think, and then it will be over. Not really over, but at least the day will be done with, and I'll be very glad when it passes.

Let's talk about something else. I went to a lot of shows in November, and I've been left shaking my head and whimpering under my breath "Never again." Actually, all the shows were awesome in one way or the other, but Neko Case at Minglewood pushed me over the edge as far as general admission rock shows go. The problem is that people are Stupid Inconsiderate Asshole Fuckers. I'm not speaking of people who enjoy the act of anal sex, no no. I'm talking about Assholes who act like Fuckers at shows I paid $28 to attend. Yes ma'am.

I was so, so excited to see Ms. Case, right here in my hometown. So excited that I collaborated with Ashley la Rouge on a small art quilt that we gave to Neko at the end of the show. (More on that later). However, my parade was rained on slightly by the fact that although we had to share the premium space at the foot of the stage with Asshole Fuckers who seemed to be from some bumblefuck rural area outside of Memphis. I think they were rural dipshits due to bits and pieces of conversation I overheard in which the following terms were used: "Black people," "faggot," and "retard." I'm not suggesting that everyone who hails from the country uses such terminology, don't get me wrong. There are fine, fine people from the country who know how to act in a public setting. However, generally the Asshole Fuckers who don't know better are unenlightened about codes of conduct because they've spent the last 20 years of their life in a place where they're surrounded solely by people who share their ethnicity, religion, and prejudices. AND OH GOD IS THAT ANNOYING. Ok, there was a little Anthropology by Amanda (I know what I'm talking about. These are My People). There was one Rural Asshole Fucker (the one standing right by me, of course), who was particularly objectionable. He had long fingernails, which gave me bad flashbacks of the guys my ex hung out with in high school -- they were nice guys but those fingernails are disgusting. Truly. Right before Neko & the band came out, he shouted "Bring that bitch out!" and continued to yell dumbass things throughout the whole thing. And during the entirety of every song he knew the words to, he SANG VERY LOUDLY in an out-of-tune, drunken fashion. It was disgusting.

God, I'm sorry I'm such an old lady, but I just can't do it anymore! I can't! I can't share space with drunken 20 year olds who insist on ruining live music that I care about! Jeeeeeeeeeeeeez. Whew.

Here's the quilt:
(Also, here's a link to a bigger picture because that one is kind of small and shitty). I made the top right and bottom left-hand squares, and Ashley made the others. We were really pleased with it. I shook it at Neko and gave it to her at the end of the set. It was ridiculous because the first time I tried I didn't wave it excitedly enough and she didn't see it, and I got really nervous and my heart started pounding and I was practically shaking. I got that freaked out trying to hand a small piece of fabric to a singer that I like... can you imagine what it would be like if I ever had to go to war, or maybe even be in a car wreck? Jesus Christ.

tain't what you do (it's the way that you do it)

Now, have I been quiet because I haven't had anything to say? Or is it quite the opposite? Do I have TOO much to say? Or maybe it's that I have too much I can't say. That's probably it. Usually it. I find that I haven't written a blog of substance in so long that I have a hard time trusting my own sense of spelling.

October is drawing to a close. I am not scouring thrift stores for costume components; rather, I hate to tell you, I am a bit of a party pooper when it comes to dressing up. I like the idea of it, sure, but I always find myself limited by one thing or another. This year I am going to a show on Halloween night, and feel no pressure to dress up.

Although I've been such an underachiever in keeping up here, luckily I can peek up at the calendar above my computer and give you a pleasant run-down of my month, however.

Friday, October 2: "Brandon 29! GT!" My husband turned 29 (gasp. We are swiftly approaching 30 and, don't get me wrong, I don't think 30's old or anything, but you have to admit... it's sort of a milestone) and to reinforce our own mortality, we stood shoulder-to-shoulder with a crowd of people and saw Girl Talk at Minglewood Hall. Judging by the black "Xs" scrawled on their hands in sharpie, a LOT of the audience was under 21, rather than older. It was the perfect birthday present for B, however, who loves GT soooo much, and beat back flu-like symptoms enough to dance his ass off in the hot sweaty throng of children. He even saw a trio of nineteen-year-olds three-way-kissing, and what better gift can one receive? After shaking our asses as hard as we could, we came back home, where B watched LOST on Hulu and I read my newest cookbook. Postively riotous.

Friday, October 9: "Claire." My 12-year-old niece came and spent the weekend with us. My mom delivered her on Friday, and spent the night. We went to the Farmer's Market and Elmwood Cemetery before she left on Saturday, and after Claire & I went to Graceland and Muddy's to buy cupcakes. We made pizzas that night and her crust was perfect (unlike mine). She saw me drink a beer, and did not seem to be disturbed (no drinking in front of the kiddos at my mom's house, unless you sneak it). We had a really nice time, and after I delivered her back to her mom on Sunday, I went to the Whitton Farms Octoberfeast with Brandon and Liz & co. It was worth every penny, and I have to say that Jill & Keith Forrester should win some sort of "cute farmers" contest. I love them. Their farm was glorious, and the sun came out just long enough to make the day perfect-o.

October 16-18: "Chattanooga." We went to visit our brother & sister-in-law in Chattanooga. We ate too much (of course) and went to a bitching used book store where we spent too much money, and just had a nice chill hang-out weekend with them. Our sis is an artist, and we bought a gorgeous painting from her, which made me really excited. I always see art in other people's homes, and envy it, and since we have a little bit of money right now, we agreed that the only way to aquire art is to start buying it. This was our favorite of all the pieces that she had:

So now I'm kind of caught up, right?

Also... I have to admit that there is a lot that I just don't want to talk about here.

Too Good Not to Post

Ok, I was looking at Ye Olde Google Analytics today and had to share this new collection of search terms entered that brought people to this blog.

First we've got the classics:
animal dicks
animal love nsfw
animals pussy breast milk sex video
beastiality/breast feeding animals

Then it gets personal:
amanda fucking animal

Then there's your random WTF shit:
look hot for high school reunion
ole long dick
orphans at christmas early hallmark
sexylady in zoo
smokey mountian kin vol 3

Eventually we get into WTFF(fuckity fuck) territory:
i must pee when i fuck
is there dog pee in coors light

And sometimes it's even a little bit poetic:
travel because of heartache
utube. ladysex

give me that old fashioned morphine

It is raining in Memphis and it has been all week. We go through a monsoon at least once a season it seems, which is generally OK. I remember the draught that threatened to dry up my mom's spring in 2007, and as a daughter of the rural South, I know that rain is a good thing, but this dump of precipitation is threatening the Cooper Young festival tomorrow, so for now, I say "RAIN! Go! Away!" so that I can stroll around drinking beer out of a plastic cup and looking at arts & crafts which I probably won't buy. I am not completely broke as a joke, but seeing as how I just got a half check the last two pay periods, I will be coasting on fumes as the month runs out. Boy, I hate that. That is what leaving work for two weeks to see cool shit will do to you.

Paychecks. With the same regularity of Memphis monsoons, I experience a crushing disappointment in myself quarterly with this fucking job I hate. I go to work and come home & go to work and come home & go to work and then come home unable to smile or laugh one day. Then I lament loudly, in a really boring fashion, about how much it SUCKS, how STUPID I am to have gotten myself into this position, WHAT ON EARTH will ever change, how I have NO SKILLS, etc. etc. etc. Usually by the next day it is gone, because, well, what's the point.

All of this is accompanied by Brandon's insistance that we don't have to keep doing any of this. We don't have to have an apartment, I don't have to have a 9-5 job; we don't have to live or stay anywhere for longer than we want to. We've seen enough of the world and people thriving in it leading unconventional lives to know that it works. We have this bundle of money in the bank that sits and waits for us to do something with it, and over the last six months we have made all sorts of different plans for it. I am terrified of doing anything; I am terrified of doing nothing.

A few months ago we were going to have a baby, and now we are not, and I can't say that I don't think about it every day. I think about it when I see a fat pregnant stomach; I think about it when I interview women who, in this city where the infant mortality rate is absolutely stunning, have managed to push out 2 or 4 or even 6 babies under a banner of poverty & stress. I wonder why & when & how, and then I just sit quietly with it all. I don't feel depressed by it, I don't get in a really sad mood about it, it's just always there, reminding me that I won't have something that I thought I would.

So I think about having a baby; I think about buying a house in this city that I do really love. I think about putting all our stuff in storage and cutting the strings for awhile. I think about moving to the field behind my mother's house and planting a really huge garden and living out of a camper. And I think and I think and I think...

And then I get up, walk the dog, take a shower & come to work again.

Trips & Travel, Quatro

The drive from the Grand Canyon to Zion was about 5 hours long, which is a breeze on a trip in which you drove as much as we did. The drive took us through the scrubbier beige parts of the desert into my favorite, the red parts (Do these descriptions sound Kindergarten-ish?). It also took us through the Indian reservations, which are just... Oh man. I am not kidding at all when I say that the White Guilt was heavy upon me when we drove through those reservations. There were roadside stands with handpainted signs to attract tourists, one of which said, "NICE INDIANS." This was single-handedly, one of the most depressing things I have ever seen in my life. When I think of what our nation has done to those people, it just makes me want to cry and cry and cry. Even though the nice thing to do would have been to stop and buy something from them, we just couldn't deal with it at all and drove past.

We ate lunch at a pizza buffet in Kanab, UT, that was staffed only with children. (I would prefer to keep this as much a mystery to you guys as it was to us, and offer no explanation. We did not get one.) We ate a lot of pizza, and the bloat and the heat made me sleepy and unenthusiastic. When we arrived at the park, however, the FAB (fuckin awesome beauty) woke my ass up. Behold! Pictures! (Finally, can you believe it? Although these are repeats to my FB friends and readers of GST. Sorry 'bout that.)

This is probably indicative of the first sights I saw when we entered the park. Like I said, I was all full of pizza and slightly grumpy and groggy from the "road soda" I had consumed on the way in, and the sky, the huge fucking boulders, they were pretty cool, but I wasn't threatening to piss & shit myself like I was when I started seeing things like this:

The Virgin River runs right through Zion, and has formed the canyon. Learning how it has done so, and how many years it has taken, makes geology seems really, really fascinating.

Cliffs like the one above were formed from sand dunes that existed where Zion is today thousands of years ago. The sand dunes in Utah were 3,000 feet deep! Or tall! However you want to look at it. One bus driver told us that, in comparison, the dunes in the Sahara are 250 feet high. Doesn't all of this knowledge make you feel just crazy?

Above is the formation known as "The Great White Throne." All of the rock towers had similarly weirdish and/or forbidding names. (Although in Googling for some other names of landmarks at Zion, I am reminded that they were biblical, so maybe my heathen bias is showing... but seriously, "The Altar of Sacrifice"?)

We had all afternoon and most of the next day to explore Zion before heading to Vegas, where we'd catch our flight home Saturday morning. We didn't do anything major the first day, just a couple of short hikes to check things out. On the second day Brandon woke me up not long after the sun rose and we took off to hike the Narrows.

Like I mentioned earlier, the canyon was formed by the Virgin River, which runs right through the park. When you first drive into the park, the canyon is quite wide, but as you drive further into it, the canyon narrows until, at the end of the Riverside trail, it is only passable by foot, through the river itself. Since the high temp that day was 105 degrees, it turned out to be the perfect day to go for a hike up the narrows.

The river only got a little deep in a couple of places, and you can see how deep it got by the watermarks on our shorts. Those are my camp counselor shorts, by the way.

We didn't intend to spend as many hours as we did in the Narrows, but it was so, so gorgeous that we couldn't stop ourselves from going further and further. We hiked in 3 miles, which meant we hiked out 3 miles, and didn't leave the park until late afternoon.

And now for the conclusion of my travelogue.

Las Vegas, NV.

People love Las Vegas, it seems. Flights to the city are cheap, which indicates to me that it's a popular destination. There's a shit-ton of hotels, and gambling, and titties. When we arrived at our hotel, the Sahara (the cheapest on the strip that didn't seem really really manky), I hadn't bathed in 3 days or so, and had spent the same amount of time immersed in the natural grandeur of the American West. I got out of the car while Brandon navigated the valet parking abortion (even though it was free, we parked ourselves. I can walk, you know). It was hot as fuck in Vegas, all that concrete and defeat had sucked any kind of coolness out of the city. I went in the hotel, through the casino, and was greeted by this bizarre assortment of overly groomed girls in short summer dresses, grandmas on oxygen, skeezy dudes of all ages, and, oddly enough, a seemingly high concentration of disabled people. Every kind of disabled you can imagine, they were spending their SSI checks at the Sahara on August 21, 2009. It was so, so weird & depressing, and I started to feel like Hunter S. Thompson in the Fear & Loathing movie when everyone looked like weird dinosaur lizard people. So, after I had eaten my tuna melt in the 24 hour cafe at the Sahara, I said, "Thanks but no thanks, Las Vegas," and went to sleep. Vegas is not my kind of city. I can't understand how it's fun to go on a vacation where the purpose of the whole thing is to lose a bunch of money! I mean, you spend enough money travelling already!

So, all in all, it may have been one of the best trips we have ever taken together. I am not kidding when I say that we didn't have one fight the whole trip. Sure, we got annoyed with each other a few times, but there was never one of those shitty fights that can erupt when you're in a car together for so many hours. We logged more than 2500 miles in 11 days, drank approximately 6 bottles of $2 chuck, ate 6+ fish tacos, and married off our dear brother & got a sister. You can see a shit-ton of pictures on FB, if you're interested.

Personally, I'm just glad I can go back to blogging about real life again.

Trips & Travels, Vol 3

Damn, I didn't mean to have a gap this big in between trip reports, but believe it or not I have been BUSY at work. However, I am determined to get this done, so here we go again.

All right. Last you heard, we were in California witnessing the loving union of our dear brother & sister-in-law. Then we went to sleep, woke up, packed, and once again hit the road. We were heading the Arizona & the Grand Canyon, but first I wanted to go to the Mission at San Juan Capistrano. It is where the swallows return to roost every year, and supposedly "the jewel of the California missions." It was indeed beautiful, and we did what tourists do at such destinations, walked around, gawked, pretended to read the captions at a variety of historical markers, etc. After wards we ate some RFA (really fucking awesome) Mexican food near the mission. The town was very charming and so was the saucy pork I ate with corn tortillas. We swung by Trader Joe's to buy some car-food (I can't even talk about TJ's. I realize that I am 5 years behind on this, but good Lord! I couldn't even believe HOW CHEAP everything was. Food that would be considered swank and therefore expensive in Memphis, TN was amazingly thrifty. Not to mention our dear, dear friend Charles Shaw), then set off into the desert.

The desert was hot and dry. I know I'm blowing your mind here. I am not much of a desert person; some people love it, but there were really only parts of it I found appealing. It seems like every 70 miles or so you pop into a "town" that has a gas station and maybe a few small buildings, and you think "What in the fuck are these people doing out here?" and all of a sudden, even though I haven't even seen it, everything became very The Hills Have Eyes-ish, and I couldn't help but imagine the inhabitants of these outposts, their leathery skin, their desire for rape and flesh-eating. That's very unfair, I realize, and I hope some desert-dweller doesn't happen upon this blog. Sorry guys.


The next day we were visiting the Grand Canyon so we drove through the night until we were in the national forest about 30 minutes outside the GC. We had been schooled by G that camping in national forests is a free-for-all, and we were so tired and chilly that we just slept in the car. My mind raced for about five minutes with thoughts of bloodthirsty hillbillies before I dropped off into an uncomfortable night's sleep. I woke up off and on all night with a kind of anxious tightness in my chest, which I couldn't figure out since I wasn't THAT worried about being hacked to death in my sleep. The next day I figured out that the altitude was to blame, when walking 30 feet had me panting slightly.

OK, so the Grand Canyon. The first sight that greeted me was not the massive, stunning canyon itself, but actually a Japanese man pursuing a squirrel with a potato chip, making kissy noises. Despite the fact that there were only, oh, I don't know, 30 signs in the immediate vicinity asking that no one feed any animals. Past Mr. Japanese Potato Chip Man laid the Grand Canyon... Wow. "Wow" with a period behind it kind of summed up my feelings about it. Yes, it is huge and it's crazy how huge it is, and the colors of the cliffs are really gorgeous, but I wasn't as bowled over as I thought I would be. Maybe it was the haze that hung in the air that prevented us from getting a crisp view, maybe it's the fact that we are inundated with images of the GC all of our lives, but I guess I felt kind of underwhelmed? I know the preceding sentences make me sound like a spoiled bored baby, but don't get me wrong; I'm not trying to take a shit on our beautiful national jewel. For me, I just didn't feel overwhelmed, which is how I expected to feel. Brandon thought that perhaps my feelings would be different if we had the time and stamina to go down to the bottom of the canyon, and I can imagine how that would be so, so different and just BIGGER. We chose a trail to hike, the Bright Angel trail, which only went 1.5 miles down into the canyon. I say only, but when you're coming up that 1.5 miles and you're as physically inept as me, that 1.5 miles is humiliating as fuck. Especially when there are a lot of skinny French people everywhere. I'm not obese, but good Lord, I'm not French either. The most insulting part of the whole thing is that I'm pretty sure they were drinking cream instead of water to stay hydrated, and still they're just so lithe and JUDGEMENTAL.

You don't think I'm being paranoid about the French, do you?

I picked up a fantastic new bathroom book in the gift shop, Over The Edge: Death in the Grand Canyon. If you click that little link, you will see the really fantastic cover, which features both a rainbow AND a skeleton. This book answers the question "How many people have fallen off this shit?" and many, many more. Personally, I think the creepiest stories are ones of people dying from exposure, going off into the canyon terribly unprepared for the heat & dehydration. Although some of the stories of people falling off the rim made me pretty creeped out as well, given Brandon's propensity to leap around on rocks that are high in the air all in the name of photography. As his domestic partner, I certainly don't want to "break" him of anything, but man, oh man, sometimes these vacations that involve high altitudes make me wish I had some of his sperm frozen.

We said goodbye to the Grand Canyon on Thursday morning and headed north to our final destination: Zion National Park. B had gotten his info from his brother, who lived out west for a good while and went to a good number of parks out there; G & almost everyone we talked to agreed that Zion was The Place To Go... and they were totally right.

Ok, I am going to wrap it up in the next entry. Then I will be done talking about our vacation, and I'm sure everyone who did not go on a vacation this summer will be very pleased.

Trips & Travels, Vol II

Ok, I said I'd be back and here I am. Back. As anyone who follows me on Twitter knows, I have been feasting on tomatoes from my mom's garden, cottage cheese, tuna & crackers for lunch today, and all the rest of this week as well. It is the Patsy-Lunch-Special; my mother ate this lunch many, many days of her own boring office job. It's pretty tasty. Also sounds like diet food from the 70s.

I mentioned in the last post that we stayed in a cheap motel on the first night of our PCH adventure; this was not our intention, mind you. Brandon and I are Cheap Ass Travelers; we will only accept The Worst & Thriftiest in terms of lodgings, and we had (sort of) planned to camp out on these first two nights on the road. I had, in fact, reserved campsites at our two post-wedding destinations, but since Brandon seemed to be non-committal in the way of making definite plans, I decided to hold off on reserving anything for our two nights in the Big Sur area. I said to myself "Be cool. Adapt your husband's lassiez-faire attitude! Take that stick out of your ass and GO WITH THE FLOW." Well, what you don't find out when you don't plan is that both the private and public campsites in areas as spiritually rich as the one we were in? Those campsites fill up 6 months in advance. So instead of pitching a tent, we drove inland until we found a little independent crappy (but not scary) motel room. We took possession of a room with two Queen beds with the understanding that we could only use one bed and receive a reduced rate; however, B was so tired that when he got in bed with a dinky plastic cup of Shiraz, he promptly fell asleep, leaving an enormous crimson stain on the blanket and sheets. (Please comment with joke about broken hymen. I am too boring to think of one right now).

So we drove back down the coast the next morning, everything was as beautiful as the day before, plus there was a gathering of folks with classic cars that were driving down CA 1 in spurts that day. I am talking 1930s' Rolls Royces, not 1960s' Mustangs. I kept having the spooky feeling I had somehow been transported into The Great Gatsby, and kept checking the highway for the corpse of Myrtle. All along the cliffs there were gorgeous homes and the mere sight of them made me want to vomit with jealousy. (For some reason, on this trip, beauty kept inspiring me to vomit/piss/shit myself, which B found odd. After reading a Pablo Neruda poem to him in the car, I said "GOD, this just makes me want to murder someone!" which he found equally strange).

We stopped in the woods and sat on lovely, large Adirondack chairs that were in the middle of the Big Sur River, drinking coffee and taking pictures. We hiked on a couple of trails, and on our way down South stopped at the Julia Pfeiffer Burns state park, where there is a waterfall that pours into the ocean. Let me stop right now and reiterate: there is a motherfucking waterfall pouring into the motherfucking ocean. Once again, I fought off the urge to crap myself and soldiered on. We spent that night inside another cheap motel (I believe it was the Holland Inn in Morrow Bay, CA); I remember that this one had a really skanky throw pillow on the bed, and a dramatic picture of a single red rose on the wall, the kind of print that you can win at the fair if you're lucky.

We trucked ourselves back down to Orange County for the beginning of the pre-wedding festivities without incident, having some particularly tasty fish tacos in Santa Barbara on the way down. (Fish tacos may be the culinary highlight of the trip. I love you, fish tacos! You never do me wrong like warm rum in a hot tub!) Somehow, despite the snail-like pace of traffic in Los Angeles, we arrived back at our lovely sis-in-law's family's home right on time. Her family was just as wonderful, hospitable & sweet as our sis-in-law, E, is. They made us feel so welcome and just like we were part of their family, and it made the whole weekend so nice & easy.

Let me pause my already long as hell trip story to explain a little bit about my brother & sister-in-law, G&E. They are just a little bit younger than us, and we all get along really well. They are also big Avett fans so we usually try to go to shows together if it's geographically convenient, and in the past couple of years Brandon has grown really close to his brother, so we try to get together as often as possible. They are both smart, funny, and cute; they're like Brandon and I... only better. By better, I mean that E never says the C word like I do, and G doesn't harshly confront people about politics. Also, they eat less and exercise more than us. However, they love & accept us anyway, and through them I am experiencing the kind of sibling relationships I never even realized I longed for; we are family and we are friends, it's great.

We camped out in a dry creekbed the Friday night before the wedding (which was Monday afternoon) with a big group of G&E's friends, which included a large contingency from Bowling Green, KY, where they both went to college. We drank and ate cookies and saw a tarantula and I introduced the ladies to the amazing P-Style. Thanks to it, I indeed peed in style during all camping excursions. We spent the weekend hanging out with all kinds of friends and family, drinking at night with B's cousins that I was too much of a Frantic Southern Bride to hang out with during out wedding. They are all as cool and weird as I would expect anyone who shares the Dill bloodlines to be.

Monday morning we woke up and B dropped me off at the wedding site, where I helped E's mom & family do wedding prep. I was really happy to do this, because I feel like I have wedding karmic debt to pay off from all the fine ladies that helped my mom and I when we got married. They got married in a park overlooking the ocean; it was a really relaxed & sweet site. E's mom is the workingest work machine that I have ever met and was literally decorating and preparing 35 minutes before the wedding. She had to be shooed down to the hotel, where I watched her fix her hair, get dressed, and sew a panel on her dress in like 20 min. It was awesome.

So then they got married and everyone cried and I was so, so proud of them. I don't know why that's how I felt, I guess it's just so nice to see two people who you know are making the right decision. It's not like that at every wedding you go to, you know? And, as B said in his wedding toast, I think that we're just so excited that they're together and we get to share our lives with them, and someday our kids will grow up together. (I'd like to request a simultaneous awwww right now).

Still to come: canyons, panting, wading, (actual) camping, driving, driving driving!