Where I've Been (Only Slightly Related to Where I'm Going)

Now I get it, that whole denial stage of the grieving process. 'Cause I'm here, right here barefoot in my kitchen in denial and good lord do I like it. So much more comfy than anger, this denial. For one thing, I can eat. Leftover Halloween candy, chocolate covered pretzels, gingerbread, eggnog, tra la la! Bring in the bon bons! The only pit in my stomach is caused by gorging on sugar, but my body has had 36 years to get used to that particular brand of masochism so yes, let me eat cake. Nom nom. Is nom nom overused? I think so, yes, nom nom is so over, like I just threw up in my mouth a little and garden gnomes sending postcards of their world travels. O-to-the-"ohnoshedi'int"-VER.

Except my own little gnome took her first plane ride this past weekend. Here's a postcard of sorts of Zoey flying the friendly skies:

Nom nom, right? So delicious you could eat her up? So cute you just threw up in your mouth a little? Oh, yes I did. Please forgive me the hackneyed 2008 and beyond-isms, but honestly. She laughed during take-off, during the beverage service, at her tray table and the air sick bag. She laughed at the lady in the lime green jacket who gave her a dirty look for singing Bah Bah Black Sheep just a might bit louder than socially acceptable, she laughed at her small package of dry roasted peanuts and she laughed when we landed. And when she laughs? I laugh. O-to-the-VER, because she kills me, that girl, she kills me just by being so alive.

All laughing aside, I know what you're thinking: Just who do you think you are, you dirt poor well-educated upper middle class unemployed people who still suscribe to expanded cable? Who do you think you are jetting off to somewhere that looks awfully craggy and warm? Well here's the thing: remember when I first got laid off and Bryan's grandmother passed away? And how we went to the funeral and came back and looked for jobs but there were none and so we had mac and cheese for dinner even if it was the organic kind with the pouch of creamy white cheddar and not the cheap kind made from a packet of fluorescent orange powder? Well we're still eating mac and cheese and there are still no jobs only now it's Bryan's grandfather who is sick, very sick, so off we went to Arizona to visit him with the family and who knew that de Nile flowed through the rough-hewn canyons of the Arizona desert just so?

But it does and I am flowing with it, a prickly pear cactus following a petunia faced girl as she grows in the direction of the sun. Stress? What stress? Today I am donning my boots with the fuzzy pink dingleberries and just riding it out. Today.