You wish you were moi.

So if you know me in person, you may have seen me moping around or bursting into tears about my upcoming birthday. Oh, and when they say the holidays are sad for new widows (oh wait, we weren't married, it doesn't count), they don't really mean Halloween. Except Halloween was sad. Not spending my birthday (and Thanksgiving) with Rbf is taking this intense emotional toll on me. We already know I'll probably need to be institutionalized on Christmas. But you'd think these other holidays wouldn't render so much dread in me.

The worst part is, I can't decide whether I'm turning 28 or 58. On my way home today, I had to physically restrain myself from getting off the freeway to get myself another pound of See's candy, since I polished my last one off in about 2 days. I had the box of chocolates open on my desk at work the entire time. My coworkers watched in horror as the count of bon-bons diminished rapidly. If only my to-do list did the same thing.

I have been listening to nothing but Nat King Cole's Christmas album (aside from my usual dose of Swimmers) alone in the car, or when there are chewing noises in the office. It's a secret, because so many people become enraged at the early onset of Christmas joy. They don't know that it isn't so much joy, as it is comfort. There is comfort in this old guy's voice. Is there not?

I check my PO Box. There is quite a stack in there. Roughly 90% of it is from PETA and its sister organizations. When you receive mail from me, it will feature my new return address labels, complete with turtles and bunnies holding things in their mouths (photoshopped, of course, as They Are Not Ours To Gag). I am that lady that gets all her mail from something with a sad kitten on the front.

We did our Kris Kringle drawing for the office (our inter-departmental Secret Santa extravaganza). They give you a little slip of paper to fill out. I handed mine back in and requested that it not be posted publicly. The "no can do" response I got made me regret putting down interests like "Franklin Covey stuff, Scentsy stuff, Aviation themes, Architectural and Home magazines" and my "least favorites" listed as sports and romantic stuff like the Twilight series. Thank God I refrained from saying I'm not into iTunes. I'd come out to my tires slashed in the parking lot.

I am still thinking I made a mistake in not stopping at See's, because it would be so nice as I read my Tori Spelling book. There's nothing like curling up in some sweats with your nasal spray and celebrity tell-all after a long day in your cubicle.

Then today I got home and decided, for whatever reason, to download screensavers of different puppies because I don't want to get sick of the pictures on my hard drive.

PuPpIeS!!!!!

If it makes anyone pity me less, I did pass on the ones wearing sunglasses.

Bacon fest

And get your cop jokes out of the way now, because this is actually about bacon.

Bacon woven - as if from a loom - into a blanket of oozing pork, enveloping sausage and baked in loglike formations. Then sliced and eaten on flaky biscuits.

Oink.

In order to fully appreciate The Baconator, a close cousin to heavensent manna, you must go to a special place in West Yellowstone where bears and the Dumke family dominate the land. You must partake of this trunk-o-meat only in a cabin with close friends who get up at 5 to start the cooking.

Shit goes down in life and you find out who your real friends are. If they bring baconized sausage, you know.

Zeke and Anaga - aside from offering their jaw dropping guest suite as my unofficial home away from home - hauled my mopey ass up to one of their cabins on Hebgen Lake in West Yellowstone. It was pretty soon after the accident for me, so I'm surprised they took on the challenge. The drive is five-ish hours. Given the fact that, at that time, I have to bring my laptop to work everyday so I could play Friends dvds on my front seat while I drove, so I didn't have a loneliness breakdown...this drive was not about to happen solo. Sadly my first thought was "I can't do this drive. Maybe I'll get Jed to fly me up therrr.......aw dammit." STUpid MEMory LAPSES are such stupid hookers, I effing hate them. MEEEEAN.

So since my mind stuck its foot in its mouth AG-AINNN, God took hasty action to ease the awkward moment in my head, where my mental Department of Problem-Solving had an unfortunate slip in front of the Department of Healing.

My Brain's Department of Problem-Solving: Oh, geez. I'm sorry. I was just trying to help...

My Brain's Department of Healing: Don't worry about it. It happens all the time. With you.

DoPS: Seriously, I mean, is there any way you can take this issue and make something good out of it and utilize it for your healing, like remembering the good times in the plane and Reboyfriend's passion for it?

DoH: Don't sweat it. And no, there's not really a silver lining in that one.

My Brain's Department of Judging Everything: ProblemSolver, get a grip. Healing? Get over it.

God: Shhhh, little voices in Kir's's head. Calm thyselves. She doesn't have to drive alone. I'll just get Jacob to ride up with her.

Meet Jacob!

This is the guy whose office and apartment are both on Wall Street (the real Wall Street), sports $600 jeans and has like seven thousand law degrees from at least three different continents, but talks me into detouring our road trip to stop at Smith & Edwards. At this point I had known him for about an hour.

Never mind that I'm old enough to have babysat, at some point, this child who'd have said "no tomOTToes please" on a sandwich. Three, two, one, and I'm hooked on this kid. We browsed through Wranglers in the denim area, clutching Pez to our chests. Before we hit Idaho, we were planning my life as superwoman at all the grad schools around the globe he thought I'd like.

He was in town today for an elk hunt and we went to Rico's for lunch, when he reminded me that I had this whole post drafted and never uploaded. So here I am.

When I said God suggested I ride up with Jacob, I meant Anaga. She said "you'll love him." She also said I'd love the acai antioxidant at Jamba and their steel cut oats (now addicted, thanks Anaga) as well as Glee. She is constantly hucking delightful things at me left and right and each of them is successful in cheering me up. Her baby brother was no different. We discovered used rocket launcher things and garden gnomes during our detour to the country boy store. And when I thought, "I wonder if they have a big fiberglass case filled with little collecter pins in the image of vintage airplanes," well there they were. Sorted by year. I went to 1949, and looked for the Navion. It was there, and I got their only one for four dollars.

At the cabin, Anaga put me up in the front room looking right over the lake. Cuz she's like that. When I went in to set down my bags, I almost melted. She had turned the heater on to warm it up and it was like heaven. We all hung out on Friday, but almost all of Saturday I stayed in that room and journaled my heart out. And I cried. And I napped. And I woke up and looked out at the lake, and then took another nap. They only knocked on the door to bring me out for dinner. I hope they didn't think I was a douche. If they only knew how peaceful it was, how necessary it was.

It was only a few weeks after I lost Rbf, so it would be an understatement to say that I was raw and depressed. They were OK with that. They let me be sad, which I needed. They made me laugh anyway, which I also needed. They made smores out of Raspberry-filled Ghirardelli chocolate squares and real raspberries. Who DOESN'T need that? And who the hell finds these ideas? The same people who find the Baconator, that's who.

They're smartasses. I need that too. They're the classiest people you ever met, but you show up to their cabin and they're wearing Wolf Pack T-shirts and merrily unearthing old sex novels from the sixties that they found in the family cabin. Sex novels from the sixties are fantastically hilarious. Zeke's a pretty sophisticated guy, a lawyer and such. But at the circus a few weeks after our trip, he decided that we should start measuring the backs of fat ladies' arms in actual cup sizes. Then he pointed out a double-D. This is why I love this family.

I remember the first night at the cabin, being so exhausted by the end of that day. I ate a smore and dozed off to the sound of all their voices. It was the advent of It All Sinking In, the brutal and horrific stage I've been in. But it was a peaceful experience. I really needed it. Thanks, Wolf Pack.

In The Mid-Autumn Breeze

Quote board:

Me: Hi internet.
Internet: Sup, gangsta.
Me: So that goat blog, it was to soften you up.
Internet: Why. Did you move out of that house you shared with three hot truckers? Are you going to write about it or something and bum my ass out?
Me: Yeah.
Internet: Will you at least share your plane-widow-tic-tacs? Sorry, that's their street name. I meant xanax. Just kidding, I'm the internet. I can't pop pills. Did you know I feature a video on YouTube of this gross couple dry-humping on a really crowded beach? And it's like seven minutes long? I am the technology responsible for everyone having A.D.D. You should put my text in the color of poop.
Me: Anyway. Moving day was Saturday. Hardest thing I've ever done. It stabbed my soul. Internet, please do something about my sad, stabbed soul. I don't live at reboyfriend's anymore. It's not our home. I liked it being our house. And I like being grammatically incorrect when describing it. Like as in Kir, where is my rashguard? Oh, it's at me and Reboyfriend's. And There are five pounds of blueberries at me and Reboyfriend's. You know what, it's not grammatically incorrect because "Me And Reboyfriend" was its own entity. The rashguard was at [entity]'s. There was always a blueberry stash at [entity]'s.
Internet: You talk too much. I miss that goat story.
Me: I put the sheets in a special box.
Internet: Of course you did.
Me: And the bridal magazine.
Internet: I'm sorry, Kir. I will furnish about four hundred supportive, pithy, amazing comments from the people who read this blog.
Me: I know. That's why I'm here.

I remember a time Rbf was trying to get me to move in with him but I was dripping with too much awesomeness to do such a thing. I was skidding around life, with my music on shuffle. A Great Lake Swimmers song came up (I Will Never See The Sun). It was the first time I'd ever heard it. And this freak-of-nature daydream painted itself into my mind in about four seconds. It was like a daydream you spend five commutes designing, but I hadn't. It just injected itself into my mind in an instant.

It was me and him walking through this weird, freaky looking church I saw once in Jackson Hole. We had just said our vows and kissed, and then we flatly turned and walked out of the church without much fanfare. My dress was gauzy and frayed in some fantastically edgy, indie fashion. The church had these giant, obscene windows overlooking the Tetons. I can't imagine why that came into my head.

But it was the first time I realized I would probably marry this guy. Once you picture your Melissa Sweet "Fern" dress, and x guy by your side, it's over. Just forget it. The wedding would be in the Fall. Of course it would, because September 17th would be your wedding day, and the Tetons would be breathtaking.

Maybe my subconscious was doing it to me because he had just got my mind on it. I swear he did it on purpose. That nerd. He figured out how he wanted to proposed. He was so proud of the fact that he had a romantic idea that he told me exactly how he was going to do it. In his plane, with the words lit up on the ground in candles.

A friend of his, Ricky, called me a few weeks after the funeral, saying his girlfriend told him not to tell me this (no girl wants to hear those words). But he disagreed, and thought I should know. That the weekend before the crash when Rbf was visiting, they stayed up late planning a trip where Rbf and I would fly the Navion to Texas and meet Ricky and his girlfriend, before driving in to Mexico on a road trip. Ricky said he believed that's when Rbf was planning to pop the official question. It was going to be over Thanksgiving and my birthday. I told Ricky he absolutely did the right thing by telling me.

Because it was a lot more romantic than the preliminary proposal, which took place in the cluttered sleeper of a motocross semi.

Me: You know I am OK if we never get married, right?
Him: Shrug.
Me: Is it important to you to get married?
Him: [Long Pause]. Yeah.
Me: Because I mean, I'm putting you on the title of the house, and you said you're putting the plane in my name, and if we have that bastard child I keep talking about, I think I'm pretty much yours. I'm just saying, there's no m-word pressure, or anything. Just so you know. [I'm breezy!]
Him: I want to be married.
Me: .............OK.
Him: Will you marry me?
Me: haha.
Him: [Quietness and no smile, somber].

I realized then that he was tired of being timid with me about it, done trying to be cool, done hinting. No more jokes about Five Guy burgers being near his house, no more looking subdued when I'd tell him what a joke marriage is. The change I saw in him after his family reunion...the talk about him wanting me to be friends with his mom all of a sudden. Even the look on his face when he saw the ranch in Leavenworth my father said he was leaving me, the runways he was probably designing there, in his mind's eye. It all clicks now. And I remember this moment like it was this morning. He had his hands behind his head and he stared at the ceiling of that messy cab.

Me: [realizing he's not kidding]. Of course, Jed. Of course I'll marry you.

And there we had it, so I took his picture.

And then I kissed him and he fell asleep and snored.

And then three months later, I moved my things out of Me And Reboyfriend's, and it introduced me to a new brand of pain. It was a very pretty Fall day. I guess that's all I can really say about it.

I saved this goat.

Walked out to my car for a lunch break to find a coworker trying to reach animal control. Why? Oh, across the parking lot from the office building where we work, there is some field with random barnyard animals in it. For real.

And this goat was stuck in the fence.

Clearly, it was bored with the variety of foliage available in the field and saw a tree on our side of the fence. Below it were freshly fallen bright red and yellow leaves. He stuck his head through the fence (one of those cheap wire kind that have squares the size of a goat's head) to snag him a little leafy treat, and couldn't reach. And then couldn't get back out.

My coworker, B, said he'd been there since 6 this morning. I want to cry just thinking about it. B sat on hold with lame-o animal control while the goat looked patiently at us with this happy goat face, like "hey guys!" I picked up a leaf and held it in front of him. He happily munched it right up and then looked at me with these big, green goat eyes blinking gratefully. Seriously, still stuck in this fence.

Since he was dreaming big, the goat had stepped up onto the bottom rung of the fence to better reach his treat. That meant that when he couldn't pull his head back out, he had to keep standing on this wire rung. If he put his hooves back down on the ground, it would strangle him. So he stood contently on the wire looking around at the scenery. I petted him and rubbed behind his big goat ears kind of like Moses likes me to. The goat liked this. B and I finally decided Animal Control couldn't do anything we couldn't. So we manhandled this poor goat's head by the horns, and bent the metal as far as we could, and shoved the goat backward. Poor thing was so confused, but didn't whine or fight. When we got him free, he didn't walk off. He stood there and stared happily back at us. I think he was wondering if I was going to pet him some more.

It was the cutest goat.

And yes, I washed my hands.

Suppose I said you're my saving grace.

If there's anything I've learned (OMG this sounds like if narrative from Traveling Pants mated with narrative from Carrie Bradshaw) from all of this, it's that I know nothing, and that I believe very little.

I know I've had more great love than most people could come close to even thinking up in their lifetimes. Stephenie Meyer and Jane Austen don't have a clue. I know life's not fair. And I know I'm so tired of feeling like this. If you haven't guessed, this is going to be one of those posts where I am serious and heavy and I write here instead of my journal, and break my promise to you that I was going to start keeping it light (and I am glad you protested, because I was going to explode). If you're looking for something funny, Maddox and Wonkette are linked in my sidebar. Knock yourself out.

I believe...so few things. And the things I believe are bizarre. I didn't believe them before August 10th, so I think I'm entitled (well, no, indebted) to believe them now. Because if I didn't, it would be ungrateful and blind. Not to sound like that Vanity Fair/Vogue/Whatever article where Jessica Simpson talked about spirituality through butterflies, or that unfortunate post-homo-Anne-Heche-speaking-in-tongues-to-aliens spectacle...but I really think dreams are this place you go when your body is at rest - and that you can run into each other there like you can at Smith's (I'm serious, Anne Heche did an interview where she made gibberish sounds on camera speaking in a magical language). I'm not a freak. And in dreams, sometimes we imagine people, and sometimes we run into the real them...and usually don't know the difference. And most often, I doubt we remember it happening once we wake up.

I also believe in sad, weird things I probably WISH were true without having any reason to think they are. Like how sometimes a song, or a conference talk, or a conversation someone else is having...will burst into your attention at the right time, and it feels so oddly and peculiarly like someone shoved it into your mind. I know this. I am certain that it has nothing to do with my ability or efforts to focus or pay attention. It happens on its own, and it's conducted by something external to me.

Here and there, I hear songs on the radio or things I just have to turn on because they're not associated with any memory of have of Rbf, and therefore do not leave me a raw, broken down mess with creaking head bones. I had to do this when I got divorced - and it left me with no good music, so I was reduced to a lot of Taylor Swift and Lady Gag, because everything respectable reminded me of my husband. Now, Taylor Swift reminds me of the days I was falling back in love with Rbf.

These new, comfortingly unfamiliar, random songs usually just create background noise, but once in awhile, lyrics will jump through the haze--the haze of me tolerating consciousness--and pierce my thoughts. Like, rudely interrupt them...and say something to me that, I swear on my blog, I believe is almost coming from Rbf. (And my soul mixes with butterflies and glitter and unicorns and shakra and mystical chi topped with rainbows and tasting like bonkers candy!) I know, I know, I am losing it.

It's not like I think Rbf takes time out of whatever his soul is doing, to go down to Clear Channel and mess with airwaves so that Jay Sean can tell me "there's no need to worry." It's not that. It's just the information that comes my way at the times my mind tunes into it.

I turned my Zune to a random song a while ago, probably thinking about real estate or how to fix the html on this damn blog...and the song suddenly made me grip my steering wheel and freeze.

Would you want me when I'm not myself? Wait it out while I am someone else? And I in time will come around. I always do, for you.

It was just mainstream old John Mayer (hey, HE didn't mind when Jessica Simpson talked about sparkles and God and flying leprechauns, probably because she has big jugs - which I don't, so maybe you have to expect more sophistication from me. If so, sorry Charlie). But I thought, if I died, I'd freak out worrying that my sweetheart wouldn't wait for me. Rbf and I have a history of waiting for one another, and returning for one another, and so on. I'd just worry that this time, he wouldn't wait.

It made me feel bad for him a little bit. I know that's not how it works. But in my sad, warped, A-bomb-leveled mind...it makes a little bit of sense. Does he worry I don't want him anymore because he's in a different form? Does he worry that I will stop loving him because he's not himself right now? He shouldn't. I love him the same, if not more, and I sure as hell trust him without question. You and I can agree, there are no drunk Monster Girls in heaven. (Book title?)

I have had a "didn't expect to run into you here" moment, in a few dreams in my lifetime. I LOVE when it happens. It tells me there's something more than this. And that almost makes up for the drained, horrified, breathless, trampled-heart, sunken-stomach, kicked-in-face feeling I get when I hear the Pride & Prejudice soundtrack, or smell our old backrub lotion (Love Spell...cheesy, I know), or see the preview for that new Amelia Earhart movie. (Seriously? Right now? Hey, show that part again where the plane crashes into the ground, the sight feels so good on my cried-out bloodshot eyeballs, you Hollywood dickwads). And the moment's over.

In my defense, he really was on his best behavior...and I really think I've always been his saving grace. There are so very few things that I believe...but that much I do.

Sorry for all the ellipses. And for the sap. Do we need a Moses story to lighten the mood?

My dog Moses chews and eats everything in sight. Everything. He ate SH's glasses and three seasons of Six Feet Under. If you put bitter polish (from the petstore) on things to deter him, it just makes him like it more. He's such a goat. That's all. Watch some 30 Rock, and thanks for reading my diary.

When Your Lifemapping GPS Tells You

...That It's Getting Worse.

(And other reasons to write a "Favorites" blog).

Not to sound like every college-ward testimony you and I ever bore, (That's a Mormon thing if you are reading this from outside the zion curtain)...but the last couple of weeks have been bad.

Call-my-mom-and-ask-her-to-call-me-in-the-morning-to-make-sure-I-wake-UP bad. You know, because that poor woman isn't already worried enough. Then I got sick, and laid awake all night long trying to barf and not being able to, which sucked because that is like the one talent I learned from getting divorced last year, and now I'm a big fail about it. People were like "is it upset stomach, or like, sore throat?" And I couldn't decide, because my throat really hurt. Turns out it was from my finger (see post from late 2008 where I thrash my throat with my fingernail and describe it to everyone). My stomach hurt. My head hurt. My throat hurt. My heart hurt.

Anyway, I guess it's time where I have to do that thing where I remind myself of my favorite things, because I get too sad when anything and everything I see reminds me of Rbf. Like I heard a Bush song, which always reminds me of the time Rbf and I "broke in" his new car once in college - note: Honda Accords not conducive to relaxing stretches of necking, so just stay home and cuddle on his smelly dudebro couch instead. It's not even like Bush was popular then either. He was like "this reminds me of my Senior year!" and I was like "Yeah! This reminds me of 8th grade! What a perv you'd be for liking me then!"

So my Top Four for this week's emotional breakdown are:

Google Chrome - my gmail is so fast and it also reminds me upon launching the browswer, of the embarrassment of sites I visit regularly. Thanks Chrome! (Bank, blog, gmail. LOSER). It also remembers passwords (careful boys) and then tells you what they are, so if your wife thinks you're sneaking around on her, she'll probably figure out your passwords to things log into. Don't be dumbasses. Cheat the old way, like on Mad Men. OR not at all, or whatever. Psycho-enabling aside, it's just slicker than Firefox or expl***r (my apologies to the Spaniard's sensibilities, but the comparison begged its mention).

Tadaki - My friend Kelly works/sews/gossips with me. She is the best of the best even on her own, but she got a CCI service dog this year named Tadaki. When he wears his vest, he is quiet and somber and holds his leash (or her file folders or anything he sees you drop) gently in his jaws. When that vest comes off, though, buckle up. One associate at work gets T all riled up, and races him down the carpeted aisle of our office and stops abruptly, sending the Tadakster skidding spastically through the office past the cubicles and copiers. It's more disruptive than the time they hired me. It is awesome. Even when I go to her house and it's "release" time (no vest), and he is therefore allowed to greet me like Kelly's Australian Shepherd, Deacon (meaning spazzout charge you, and manhandle you)...and you drop your coat/purse/sewing machine in all the excitement, and your phone goes flying across the room...Tadaki forgets he's not on duty and hurries to retrieve it for you. He returns it gently in his big strong dog-jaws without crushing or denting or scratching anything. GENIUS. He's the most chivalrous damn dog I've ever met. Kelly lets him stop at my desk on the way to hers, just for loves. They both can tell when I really need it. Kelly waited a long time for Tadaki. We could not be more honored to have him join our team at work and our circle of family at Kelly's.

Kingdom clothing - Rbf's favorite motocross team (Rockwell), who he got to go on the road with, has a line of clothing by the name of Kingdom. That meant lots of cool free things for somebody's regirlfriend! My Kindgom shirts fit long and snug and flatter me on my puffy days.

Beyond Glaze donuts - I can't imagine they're good for you in any way except for when your soul needs nurturing. But they are these beautiful works of art masquerading as donuts. They are so good, you can eat a half and not even crave more. Even though I eat a whole. The only store of theirs that I know of is in Draper, just off 123rd west of the freeway. My only disappointment is that they close at 6. I never get there in time on my way home from work. Damn traffic.

Jedidiah T-shirts - I once took Rbf into Buckle to show him their cute earth-and-orphan-loving line of T-shirts and he just thought it was damned-right fantastic. He thought it was cute that I ordered one for myself, right before he died. I found them on antiapparel.com...but when I never got my shirt (they accepted my payment), I was sad. The whole idea of it had gone from cute to special, and I didn't even have the shirt. I emailed them my story, and they rushed to send me whatever shirt I wanted, and also threw in the new one from their Hope project. I now have three Jedidiah shirts. They are the softest fabric and my favorite articles of clothing. Antiapparel was undergoing a management shift, which caused the complications with my order. When my shirts came, there was a little note inside from the guy who took my complaint, hoping it brought a little joy to my day. It did. I'll be buying more from them, too. Hope you join me.

Good night. Tomorrow is Monday. Pick a favorite thing and run with it, because Mondays can eat our poo. xo/km

Where in the world are you now...

I love Great Lake Swimmers. In medium-sized doses, of course, because after that you need to drink Seattle-in-January proportions of caffeine and pop a benzo of some variety just to keep yourself from having a day like I had on Monday.

I know I said no more blogging like I'm that girl that needs attention for her tragedy (bring on the comments, I know you know I'm not That Girl, but still...) but my timestamps are getting ripe, and I feel like maybe I've become a crapwad writer all of a sudden.

The Swimmers' song Where in the world are you? is in my head, because I'm writing the lyrics to it in my little book of letters I write to Rbf.

OK. Little book of letters, not so much. It is actually the journal I got him for Christmas. The gorgeous leatherbound, gold-edged, soft cover lined journal I picked out just for him, the front cover of which he inked with his name, number and address, and the date "January 1, 2009" in. And nothing else from that point on.

We had been talking and catching up just before the holiday, and we sat down to dinner a few days before Christmas to catch up. For the first time in three contact-free years. He had come directly from a downtown bookstore where he was buying journals as Christmas gifts for the little kids living in Grandpa Floyd's house on the farm. Their parents "rented" it from Rbf, and by "rented," I mean "occupied and trashed without paying for." They loved him (as we all do), and he decided they needed journals.

Of course he did. Why not bring a Brazilian orphan to the table that he picked up on one of his trips back there, and proceed to speak to her in Portugese in front of me while telling me Angelina Jolie doesn't know crap about orphans and asking me where I got my highlights done, before mentioning he thinks jacked-up trucks are an embarrassment to roughnecks everywhere. Hearing the journals-for-white-trash-kids story was like getting rufied. I'm lucky he didn't have impure intentions.

He filled six or seven journals in his lifetime. He loved to journal, and I laughed over our dinner as it all came back - what a huge part of his life journaling was, and how much it had made me love him back in the day. We used to sit and read to one another from our journals...and skip to the parts each of us wrote about the other. He said he hadn't been writing in his lately, that it had been a really long time. It's sad, because I would love to be able to read what was on his mind during the past several months. We still aren't sure if he had picked back up in his current unfinished journal, or where it is. It's possible the most recent one they have is his last.

I searched for the perfect one, found it, and gave it to him on Christmas Eve when we carpooled to the two towns in southern Idaho our parents lived. I don't know when he marked it January 1, but I wish he'd followed through. The blank pages of it bugged me. The journal reminded me of the rest of my life. Branded with him early on and then nothing more of him in the story, from that point forward. So I fill it up with writings of the one-sided relationship we now have. I write letters to him there. I include lyrics to the songs I hear him in and tell him about my day.

And this song always applied. When we dated the first time, and he was always traveling the world with his dudebros and leaving me behind. And when I was married, how I wondered once in awhile if I would ever run into him in a gas station or a mall what I would say, and where he was, and if he was happy, and if he knew how great my husband was, and what he would think if he could see the grownup, independent, employed, confident me that my husband helped coax out. I kept my thoughts loyal to my husband, but I wondered about Rbf. When we found each other again, and he was always on the road, I'd wonder what state he was in as I sat at my boring desk every day.

And now, all I ever do is wonder. I think I see him everywhere. My 40 minute commute every morning has more 18-wheelers than you'd believe. And motorcycles. And the sky is filled with planes...single engine ones that piss me right off. Why do those guys' wives and partners and girlfriends and roommates get to see them tonight? I see him in the traffic and I hear him in every song. It feels like I'm always looking for him somewhere. Rbf, where in the world are you?

I got a storage unit today. It was time. I haven't packed up my room at the boys' house yet. It's still right where I left it. Bed made, sheets unwashed, a bridal magazine dog-eared and sitting on my desk. Dust on my printer. Dust on my monitor. My garbage can unemptied. It is time, now, for that dreaded task that makes it really over.

When I filled out the application for the unit, I got to the line that said "emergency contact" and robotically put the pen down to write his name, and it hit me. Shit. Ow, that one hurt. OK that was the sad part, now here's the embarrassing part. I kind of looked up and stared ahead trying to think of who else I should put since he can't be my emergency contact anymore for stuff, and my mind went, "oh oh, I know, Reboyfriend!" DAMMIT. I'm such a moron. I had to have that kick to the face twice. I kept wanting to write his name anyway. I should have. What are the chances of an emergency with my storage unit? Duh.

The thought of just putting his name down anyway, just depressed me. It reminded me of this guy that bought a bunch of home-made soap from my sister Scoot in this one scent (she made them in all kinds of pretty smells). He said he wanted just that scent, because it was his wife's favorite. Scoot found out later that day that the guy's wife had died like two weeks earlier. Sometimes I still refer to Rbf in the present tense. I'm getting a new snowboard here soon, and I'm only looking at Forums, Rbf's longtime board of choice. I'm soap-wife guy.

I'm at the two month stage - Rbf's sister told me that she took a little grieving seminar thing, where she learned that you are in shock for the first two months. You are blogging and laughing at work and bragging about the two times you did your hair since the funeral and everyone is going "hm, well she's taking this well." Nope. Wrong-o. Suddenly, out of the blue, you REALLY realize he is not coming back.

I have dreams where I forget he is gone, but I'm acutely aware that I haven't talked to him FOREVER, and it really has been awhile since he called, so maybe I should just call HIM. I wake up to do it, too. And I then have that DAMMIT moment.

I have severe sinus issues. I'm due for my third operation on them. Basically they all grow in and close off my nasal passages, and I have to get them roto-rooted every six years and it's like $16,000 and you have black eyes for weeks and it hurts like a bitch. You might understand why I'm putting it off.

When I cry extremely hard, and all the tissues in my sinus cavities swell, there is literally no room for them to expand. My head hurts like it's been hit with a hammer, and I can hear the little bones above my palate and septum and in between all the sinuses, creaking like an old ship under the pressure against them. It's super gross and creepy.

My hair comes out in handfuls when I brush it. I have zits growing on top of other zits, scattered over giant wrinkles. I have zits in my wrinkles you guys. W!T!F! I weighed myself today and I'm about a damp kleenex away from two-digit territory. (Sounds extreme, but keep in mind I don't even clear 5'3"). When you drop a bunch of weight and your skin is still a blanket of cellulite, it's not called weight loss...it's called dehydration. Gross. (I'm not single, but I'm not getting married anymore, so it's a weird mid-air/matrix/relationship limbo that equates to not having to shave and still being in love. Awesome). Sorry, I just had to get up from my laptop to go pick my face since I haven't been able to stop thinking about it since I just wrote that. It wasn't helpful. Nothing got smaller and now I look like I have shingles.

I haven't blogged because I have nothing to say but sad things about my fat dimples and hair loss. The cupcakes and flowers I buy myself are still nice, and they still make a difference, but the past two weeks have been heinous. It has hit me. It is real.

And I don't have much else to say.

"I've been looking in churches and looking in bars

Thought that I saw you in the oncoming cars

It was your reflection cast off by the light

And into the sky of this dark city night

I looked for you up in the tallest of trees

Swayed back and forth in the mid-autumn breeze

When the leaves reddened and left too

I knew then that it wasn't you

Where in the world are you now?

Where in the world are you now?

Oh where in the world are you?

Oh where in the world are you?

Where in the world are you now?

And I looked for you then in music and song

'Cause I thought I could find you there

They were only notes pulled from the air

Not the kind I could read or breathe if I dare

Where in the world are you now?

Where in the world are you now?

Oh where in the world are you?

Oh where in the world are you?

Where in the world are you now?"

Back at ya...

So, I in the process of adding all people who've commented, to my RSS feed. That way I can read up on you and get to know you. I adore anyone that would read my blog, stranger or not.

I also want to respond to everyone. Instead of writing back in your comments section, though, I am just leaving one comment with a response to everyone, in my comment section. I love your comments and always want to respond. So check the box that lets it email you when there's a follow up, so you get my response.

That wasn't an interesting post, whatsoever. Sorry.

I wish I had some joke about a little kid swearing or something. But I got nothin'.

So picture a little kid swearing. xo/km

Who are these sick people? They are awesome!

From my new favorite site, http://www.dontevenreply.com/index.php

This guy responds to real people's craiglist ads to see how long they take him seriously. I couldn't pick a favorite, but I probably behaved the least professionally at work when reading this one.

My starter husband posted this on his blog and ruined my life by making me not want to work, and making me happy and probably soon fired. Enjoy. Oh, and it is not G-rated. Remember how much I love words? I don't discriminate when they're 4-letter ones. Just a heads up, because my bishop's wife reads this. Hi Karen! Karen is pretty!

Deer Hunter

Posted at: 2009-09-08 09:05:23
Original ad

Looking for permission to deer hunt (bow, shotgun) on a property in Bucks County. I am a very responsible hunter. Willing to compensate you for your permission.

From Me to ************@**********.org

Hi there!

I will let you hunt in my backyard. I live in an area that is infested with deer. You are more than welcome to kill as many of those white-tailed bastards from hell as you want.

I only have one small favor to ask - let me know if you are interested.

Mike

From Dennis ********* to Me:

Mike,

Thank you. I only plan on bagging one or two deer. Is your property available this weekend? What is your favor?

Dennis

From Me to Dennis *********:

Dennis,

If you are concerned about not having enough room in your truck to bring the deer back, don't worry about it. You can just leave the pile of carcases in my backyard and I'll take care of them. I'll probably just drop them down my neighbor's well, or put them in my wood burner. Burning dead deer makes my house smell nice.

The one favor I am asking of you shouldn't be that much of a problem. My neighbor has this goddamn cat that always wanders into my yard at night and meows. It wakes me up and I am unable to fall back asleep. Also, I can't tell you how many times I have stepped in cat shit on my patio.

All I ask of you is that if you see my neighbor's cat wander into my yard, please blow that son-of-a-bitch straight to hell. Shotgun or crossbow, I don't care how you do it. Try to make it look like an accident though if my neighbor sees it happen.

This weekend is fine for me.

Mike

From Dennis ********* to Me:

How close is your neighbor's house? I was under the impression that you had a large plot of land.

I feel uncomfortable with the idea of killing your neighbor's cat. Sorry.

From Me to Dennis *********:

My neighbor's house is about 50 yards from my house.

Why won't you kill the cat? Just pretend it is a deer.

From Dennis ********* to Me:

The cat is someone's pet that they love. I won't kill it. I am willing to compensate you some other way.

Have you had a talk with your neighbor about your problems with their cat?

From Me to Dennis *********:

I don't believe this. A hunter that loves animals. Now I've seen everything. I can't talk to my neighbor - she has a restraining order on me from when I went over there and punted her cat like a football. Seriously, if you kill the cat, my neighbor will have no idea.

I was thinking - you said you had a bow and arrow, right? Would you be able to get those arrows with the explosive tip, like the ones Rambo uses? That would surely blow the cat into unrecognizable pieces and my neighbor would never even be able to find it.

From Dennis ********* to Me:

I'm fairly certain that those arrows are fictional. That is beyond the point because I am not shooting a cat. End of discussion.

From Me to Dennis *********:

Is this some kind of a joke? Are you from PETA? Just kill the goddamn cat and you can shoot all of the deer that you want. I'll even have the grill fired up so we can enjoy some freshly-killed venison.

Also, even if those arrows aren't real, they don't seem that hard to make. What about that thing that Arnold used in Predator? Didn't he just take grenade launcher rounds and tie them to an arrow? Try that. Do you have an M203? That would work even better.

From Dennis ********* to Me:

I'll find somewhere else to hunt, thanks.

From Me to Dennis *********:

I hope that while you are hunting, you miss your shot and accidentally kill a cat anyway, you pussy.

You

Did you guys know that your comments are the advice column I live by?

Too bad I'm not kidding even a little bit. I bet you think I'm being cute or finding cheeky ways to show my gratitude for your support.

In conversations I have to stop myself from saying "I know, Lovestrong tells me I ...." or "Katie" or "Nicole" or the other fifteen of you personal (and quite skilled) personal therapists that come here to take me in and then leave their unique signatures of grace at the bottom. Your words are the pulse of my sanity.

Your comments - all of them - I need to respond. Not out of obligation or etiquette, but out of this overwhelming sense of closeness I have gotten with you. I freaking LOVE you guys and all the things you write on here.

As for my in-person friends: Your emails. Your calls. I have three or four of you that I need to call (those of you who live out of town) and two or three that I need to go to lunch with. BAD. You know who you are. You have left me a voicemail or a text or an email and I have not gotten back to you, to help myself to your love that is there for the taking. Probably some of my best friends on earth, I have a voicemail from mentally dog-eared to call back. It's the people I want to talk to the most.

My handful of closest girlfriends are the ones I have seen the least of (or not at all) since the accident that changed my life, world, and blog.

But I don't do it. Once I make the phone call or have that lunch - or come see you - that visit isn't out there waiting to happen anymore. As if I'm afraid you won't have phones after I call you. Or you won't have houses for me to visit after I drop by. Or Greek Souvlaki and every other eatery on the Wasatch Front will go out of business and we won't have food to bond over. It's a psych 1010 conundrum. Don't enjoy anything too much, don't seize anything worth seizing because when you do, it goes away forever.

For the hundredth time, this whole thing has made me so extremely psychotic, it's not even close to funny.

Well, maybe a little close.

But I am a little messed up. I write psycho PSYCHO emails to total strangers that might have known ReBF. I will not even hint about the disturbing things I've saved of his. I've always been weird and I have not hidden that from you here or in my previous life's blog.

That's really all. Oh PS this stream of consciousness has been tied together by nothing but text and punctuation. Sorry.

Kristina The Cyber Prom Queen once told me she can't really read superlong posts. We were at a blogger in-face meetup where our online clique physically went to Olive Garden. The look on my face made her quickly remind me that it's not MY blog she was talking about, but those big, verbose no-hard-return blocks of text she can't handle. OTHER people's long blogs. Phew! Even if she was just backpedaling, it still worked. I felt better. She said my "new paragraph" approach to various trains of thought makes mine the exception.

So,

That's what's with all the hard returns.

And stuff.

Why is this the biggest A.D.D. post ever? What was I even talking about before?

Oh yeah, that's right. The part about I love you guys.

That stupid-ass number 7

...stared at me from my calendar all day long. Don't know why a 2 month mark matters.

I am just so tired.

Glee

First off, it's just a great word. You can't sound younger than 55, or masculine in any way, when saying it. So when you are telling everyone about the show called Glee, you have to sound like a dork and also put some effort into explaining yourself because it's kindof a musical. People who didn't grow up on musicals don't tend to like musicals. Glee might be the gateway drug, since all the people in it are hot and the music is all urban. Showtune versions of it all, but still. It sneaks its musicalness in the backdoor and before you know it, you are slackjawed staring at your laptop screen, bawling and stating YEAH, all obnoxious and resolute, with your mouth full of food and tears streaming down your face...because Rachel sings "On My Own." Who doesn't cry at that? Especially when they're me? I downloaded the soundtrack on Zune and I guess it's not really the same without being able to stare at the most adorable teen actors in teen acting history while they sing it. But in my head, I picture them, and their darling wardrobes. (I love him, but when the night is over...He is gone. The river's just a river. I know, sweetie. Sing it, girl).

Anaga got me hooked on it the other night...and I've been a slave to Hulu ever since. I sit at my computer and laugh and cry and shove my face full of Smart Cookies. Which, by the way, I was so food-horny for today that I almost ditched my cart in the middle of the Target line to go buy (yeah, note to AF Target: every other Target in America has like 15 lanes available. You are the birth defect of all Target stores everywhere. You owe me 20 minutes of my life back).

Don't worry, I didn't. I made my purchase at Target and THEN went to Smart Cookie. Four flower cookies, two almond and two lemon. Holy shit, half of one will keep you feeling all gross and unnervingly "full" for seven meals. That's what is so Smart about them. You can have one on Tuesday, fast for three days and then when you finally feel like you can eat again, you are two pant sizes down, byotches.

Smart Cookie and Glee don't really pertain to one another. Except that they should usually be indulged in simultaneously, and can be the dirty thoughts you think about when you find yourself one man short of an actual love life. Sad. (Editor's note: wait! That's all true except for the part where neither compares to you, Reboyfriend! Don't be mad, you hunk of Jedster McStudlytown, come on). The memory of him is my constant companion now, but sometimes the memory of him gets jealous. (If you just met Smart Cookie and Glee, baby, you would feel so much better. You'd be friends!). Ok I'm done, it's not funny anymore.

If you don't believe me, just Hulu the first episode. Adorable young earnest teacher, dripping with earnestness, sees hope in "geeks" at a satirically cliched high school. (Seriously, the cheerleaders are always wearing their cheer uniforms). These "geeks" (can't stop using quotes, you'll understand why) have She's All That syndrome. Where the girl is supposed to be ugly, but isn't, but you as the viewer go along with it because eventually she'll take her hair out of the pony, and take her glasses off, and music will play and we can all officially agree that she's good looking. THAT kind of geek. I was a geek. I wish that's what I was like in high school. Anyway, this teacher organizes this little group and they cover Don't Stop Believin' at the end. It is in the top ten cutest things I ever did see.

Also, I'm pretty sure Reboyfriend spoke to me through a rap song this week. So, both my hair AND my blog now look like they belong to Wanda Barzee. But with more A.D.D.

And now, your moment of Zen:

"And when I lose my way, I close my eyes and he has found me."

On words

My favorite thing in this world is words.

They are power. You know how we all love power.

They protect you from being misunderstood. They relieve you from exploding. If you are equipped with them to enough of a degree, your pain has an exit, and you make the most of it.

Words are the most powerful thing in this world. They have the power to engage a world war, they have the power to end one. They have the power to deliver love. They have the power to heal others. They have the power to hurt them.

I love them all. Big ones, small ones, swear ones, French ones, ancient ones, misused ones. (I acknowledge that "ones" is improper use of words, but it's an impropriety I love). When you are bickering, you can win much easier when you know more big ones. Ask Reboyfriend. Once, in a disagreement, he pouted, "Your vocabulary is bigger, so you're going to win." (This was about two weeks before he asked for The Big Book Of Words Reboyfriend Should Know). To be fair, I was right and he was wrong, but if it were the other way around, I could have danced my way around it a little more craftily. And one time when I got mad at him, I could ripped his throat out with my words. I didn't use the bazooka ones, but I whipped out a few to show him my arsenal. He learned: Don't. Do. That. Again. (He didn't Do That Again, to be sure).

Words, and their glory! When you run out of them, there are like 200 other languages full of their own, and you can start new.

They compel action. They are the thing that happens right before any action is taken. That's why I told Reboyfriend I would never date him if he used the N word. It's not harmless. It holds the power to set more wickedness into motion than most natural catastrophes can. That goes for all other racial words. Make no mistake, words created from hatred and used in the past to establish and fabricate conflict: Dealbreaker city.

Kids are naughty and throw huge fits, I honestly believe, because they don't know enough words to express themselves. Moms say "use your words" when their kids are acting out. Well, most kids don't know powerful enough words to usher their anger out calmly. When you are not armed with their power, you have to scream and kick and break things. That is the emotion and power they harness.

Once, in a powerful and special dream experience, I received communication that was delivered through speaking, but when I woke up to write it down, I couldn't find the word in my mental word rolodex. It wasn't a word. It was spoken from someone's mouth, but I couldn't register the word when I woke up. I knew the word when it was spoken to me in my dream, but there wasn't a waking counterpart. It was the weirdest thing. I SOOO needed a word for it. It was a verb. Crazy.

My starter husband and I sometimes text awesome words to each other. We had a list of grossest/most awesome (synonymous) words. (Like, ointment and discharge and loafer and horseplay). Words are fun.

/geekout completed./

Just issuing a public statement...

...to set the record straight: I'm not OK.

I swear some people think I am somewhat close to it, and it freaks me out. I want to ask "where the hell in this process do you think I AM?" People are asking about my next relationship, and I still think to reach for my phone to text ReBF when I see some show or event I want to attend. I still tell people I have a boyfriend.

One of my biggest fears in life is being misunderstood. It's why I love words so much.

But you've read enough 5,000 word posts about it that I kind of think you've proved yourself as a friend by now. Thank you, and I love you. I know you've been waiting for this post a good long time.

I have sought the validation that my grieving process was robbed of because we hadn't gotten married. And I have received it. My pain is legitimate even if the legality of our relationship was just shy of that legitimacy. After talking to a close friend about The Blog, I really think I gotta take it down a notch with the dramatic flowery boo-hooing and the like.

So, to set the record straight, all I want to do is curl up in a ball with the four articles of his dirty laundry left in the laundry basket when he died (three of them are underwear, ew, and how sad am I). OK, no lying: that is what I do. You are correct in your being grossed out. I'm not offended by it. Of course, I'm not grossed out by his dirty underwear either. I remember once walking into the bathroom because I had to leave for work, to say bye. He was sitting on the toilet. Without batting an eye, I came through the door, leaned down and kissed his forehead with a hair-tousle and said "I'll call you. Let's do something tonight. I love you." He looked pretty taken aback. Nothing about him grossed me out. Anyway, his unwashed undies don't have the same effect on me as they would on you. But it is a pretty good measure of how desperate and lonely I am for him. If you didn't believe I've died inside just a little, maybe that helps you understand.

And if anything I write on this blog from here on out makes it seem like I am doing anywhere near OK: I am misleading you, and I am sorry.

But it's time to talk about other things, and keep the sadness in my journal. You've paid your dues, and it's time to talk about the funny things I notice in the day, and not the sadness I breathe every minute of the day.

Thanks for being there through this.

To send off this little era, here he is in a pointless, disappointing cameraphone moment that meant nothing then (and everything now). He had the tendency to be a little oblivious, especially when it looked to him like I was just texting. I kept wishing he'd look over and instantly do something inappropriate. Nope. Clueless and candid. Warning: nothing, I repeat nothing, happens in this video. But when I found it deep in the hard drive of my phone thinking I'd accidentally deleted it, I was pretty happy. You can watch it if you are super bored.

*OK, here's some background to the video and I put it in my comments but I think I will just put it in the body of the post as it's kind of cute. About 2 minutes after this moment, he looked back to see one of the axles smoking from the pup trailer. He was so mellow as he pulled over to check it out and put a quick fix on it to hold him over until he could get it in the shop. The repairs probably came to more than they even made on the load. He just shrugged it off. (It was such a fun day, he let me in the little shack where they start the pump and let me push all the buttons.) After he got back in the drivers seat, he had me come sit behind him in it, and rub his shoulders. He was so excited, thinking his life was so perfect. He just lost his whole profit and had to work all night, but he was in hog heaven anyway. Such a sweet memory.

I had remembered taking this little clip about a month ago and scoured my phone and computer for it. I looked through all the hidden folders on all my SD cards that could have been in my phone when I snapped this. For weeks I had thought I'd lost it. I stumbled across it when looking in another folder. It had been accidentally moved to some folder with clips of Lolo at the arts festival, of all things.

The day I found this was the day I found out they had the Red Book. It was the cherry on top. It's funny what silly things will mean something to you later.

Man, I love him.

And then she was all like…

I am not going to blog-lie. I have never felt this horrible in my life. I cry all the time. I agonize about forgotten conversations I couldn’t write down before forgetting them. I lay in bed awake for a half hour before I can even bring myself to move. Every morning, I break the news to myself that, omygosh, I can’t believe this is my life. And that it always will be. How the hell am I supposed to know I’m going to just, like, LIVE through this? Can’t I die yet? Every night, I go to bed congratulating myself that I’m one day closer to it. My little spirit is so tired, and it just wants to go home. I’m sorry. I told you I wasn’t going to lie. Don’t get all up in my comments, and tell me to get help. I’m not going to off myself. I am just content with what I’ve done, and it wouldn't be such a shame if I got to duck out while my boobs were still semi perky. People tell me I seem like I’m doing better. Are you effing KIDDING ME? This is a month and a half after the worst day of my life. NOW is when it is SINKING IN.

I talk to reboyfriend out loud every night around this time. Up until the last night we spent together, we had a little two-part ritual any time we conked out. Now, I do my half of it alone in my bed every night. My imaginary friend, Jed, does his part back in my sad little pretend mental world. **WhoaWhoaWhoa WHOA...I just re-read this today...and realize it sounds totally dirty. Holy embarrassing. OK. What I meant was, every night we had a little back and forth VOCAL ritual, where he would sigh really big and let out this vulnerable, needy little hum, and wait quietly with his eyes closed, for me to copy him. If I didn't, he would do it again until I caught on. And when I did, he took it through about three more rounds. Duh, that's really all. But it was cute. He used to do it when we dated in college, and I had forgotten about it until one night this past spring he did it again out of the blue. It was our tradition of affirmation and endearment. Wow. Anyway...** I wonder if he ever sees me pick my nose, and I need to remind him that it was just an itch, not “picking.” I tell him about my day – my minor successes and the times he would be proud. I ask him if he misses me. I cry, because I don’t think he does, and then I get nervous about crying because I have this paranoid belief that he won’t come near me if I’m ever upset.

I can remember a time, four summers before this last one, when I was going through THE shittiest time. I lost 15 pounds, gave up on God, and I might have even developed a twitch. It was one of those things I Got Myself Into, so I made a point of learning like hell from it. I moved home from SLC, to live with my mom and four little sisters in Highland for the summer. All of them were going through their own loads of total crap. It was a crazy summer. Not the kind of “crazy” that involves jEePiN’ and lots of cuh-ray-zay nights out. I mean crazy as in mentally ill. Or pretty close to it.

Some of our favorite memories as sisters and daughters come from that time. We didn’t have a whole lot to be excited about in life. At all. We were all broke or knocked up or in rehab or getting restraining orders against people something equally rad. It wasn’t like we had a cruise coming up, or a wedding that we knew of, or some form of graduation from something. One sister had some childbirth penciled in, but she had to come home empty-handed from that one (and to this day, she is still my hero for choosing the harder route then for the better life now). Life just didn’t have a whole lot of sparkle on the horizon for us. So we made stuff up. There is just a human need, in some people, to have something, anything, to be excited about. And you need it even more when your heart is in a million little pieces.

We sprawled around on the floor of the living room and talked about this amazing song we heard performed on Leno, or the lame people in the online dating scene, or made fun of the girl that stole a boy from my sister because she drove a car called a “Lazer” that looked like a really old Eclipse, and we enjoyed repeating the word Lazerrrrrr as obnoxiously as possible. I looked forward to coming home from work and watching Mean Girls two times in a row, back to back. Or Little Women.

So, we’d burn that cool new song on to a CD and get in my car and open the sunroof all the way, even though the AC was running. We took late night drives down to Walmart or Del Taco, or the gas station for a fountain Pepsi we didn’t need. We drove down this really long “lane” (what a great word) that connects Highland to Lehi. It feels like a secret, because it’s really quiet and narrow and shady, and it doesn’t have lines painted on it, and hardly ever any other cars. The “lane” also meanders past some water reservoir/watershed thing, but they had to be all pretentious about the zoning, so it is surrounded by granite boulders and wrought iron fences, with pebbles spilling around the base of it as if to create the feeling of a quaint little pond. (Yeah, a pond that is a perfect rectangle and has this ugly metal power shed thing in the corner). We promptly mocked this, asking each other how in love with yourself you would have to be to take your neighborhood ditch and try to make it all classy. We named the road “classy ditch road.”

But it’s a beautiful drive. It cuts through field after field, before ending at the mouth of the world’s biggest jackpot of chain atrocities known to man. I love this, all of this. One minute, you’re in a scene from a Hallmark movie and next thing you know, BAM, you’re in The Meadows, the united states of generica, the glory hole of all strip malls, which has taken over Lehi, Utah. Anybody want Sonic? Somehow, that little road stayed surprisingly quiet and serene. I think legislature and resident CC&R vitriol may have had a hand in it. But also, you know, the fate that makes everything revolve around ME right now.

I take this peaceful, scenic little nature drive most mornings on my way to Starbucks or Walgreens.

Because here I am living in Highland again, once more to heal from something traumatic, this time something I didn’t get myself into, a life I never chose.

Tonight, I took the “lane” all the way back up into Highland with my Walmart and Panda Express bags tumbling around in the backseat. I opened my sunroof all the way, blasted my music and thought about the weird ways we stuck together and kept each other laughing that summer. It’s September 29^th. It’s still really Summer. And in Summer, you should always have your sunroof open when you drive at night, and your music should always be loud. I wondered, secretly at first, if maybe some of the sweetest things in life are things we look back and remember sprouting from the bitterest times. I honestly think some of the sweetest times in my life were those empty-hearted, broke-down moments next to Coot and mom that summer. I cut the stems off the Walmart roses I got for the counter today, eating my crap Chinese food, and wondering about that.

I know it probably weirded you out to read my first part of this entry. Where I talk about being one day closer to death (that always depresses people. Hell, it used to depress me). But don’t start thinking I’m some goth emo pu**y who just wants to lay around and listen to Radiohead and Tori Amos until people get sick of me. I put on a game face every damn day. I congratulate myself for things besides being a day nearer to God. I congratulate myself on crossing off 50% of my to-do list today at work. I congratulate myself for taking a shower AND using face wash in the process. I reward myself for going to work, almost once every single day. And here are some of the ways.

- Go to Smart Cookie. Buy a cream-cheese-frosted sugar cookie in every color. Bring home to host family.

- Stop at Cheesecake Factory on the way home from work. Pick up Wild Blueberry White Chocolate Truffle cheesecake. Bring home to host family.

- Buy myself a celebrity smut magazine (the first I’ve read in about a year, excluding hair salon days). Then eat cheesecake while reading about how Scroungelina is jealous of Brad’s relationship with The Walking Perfection That Is Rachel McAdams. I got to the blueberry graham cracker crust right about the part where it talked about Angie making Brad UNINVITE Rachel and her husband to the Jolie-Pitt Chateau. Tacktastic, Angie!

- Get a carwash. The best one they offer, with RainX and rainbow soap and free vacuums at the end.

- Stop at Starbucks and buy myself one of their really pretty mugs with my pumpkin latte. When they start to wrap it up in tissue paper and a gift box, stand there and don't stop them. Because it’s a present. To myself. Open it once I get to my desk at work.

- Get a cute pair of socks at Target when I really went there for contact solution.

- Get a cute notebook to scribble in and carry in my purse.

- Draw a bitchin bath, as cliché as I can – meaning candles and bubbles and Enya. Soak in my cliché. Bask in the triteness. It’s overdone for a very good reason. Shave! Past the knees even!

- Get Ghirardelli raspberry squares for smores that you will make in the chimnea on the back deck with the host family. (I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since the cabin trip with Zeke and Anaga…a blog you will read soon).

I do something like this for myself, every day. All this while, I am feeling incredibly sorry for myself, which is also healing. It makes you feel so deserving of the treat, and also makes you feel so loyal to yourself, and so in control of your healing. I get so tired of saying "what is taking so long" and not even know whose mercy I'm at.

Last weekend when I was out hunt for some gifts, I bought one for myself. I was at my favorite store of all time (Tabula Rasa), browsing all the cool books they have on display. One stood out at me – it is a little post-card sized hardcover called Take Time. It is full of inspirational quotes about how to LOVE all the time you have, how to make the most of it. Relish in the potential contained in the seemingly ENDLESS SPRAWL of your untouched future. It was on a day that I was feeling particularly overwhelmed by the amount of life I have left to live without the Jedster. And this made a celebration of that, focusing on how much of this life is terrifically just mine, for now. And that I’d better soak it up before I’m dead and back with him, so I can appreciate doing our nightly rituals and teasing each other about voting wrong.

Reboyfriend always made me make my bed – or made it for me, every morning. I NEVER made my bed in the morning before that. Now, I make a thing of it. And I put my dumb little Take Time book on the edge of it like a present, and it greets me when I get home from a long day at work.

I urge you to get something for yourself next time you buy something for someone else. I think you should congratulate yourself for something every day.

Oh, and there was no real point to this post. Hence the title. Sorry if you were waiting for it to make any sense, ever.

Whatever. Here's that book.

And, you know, that other book.

And Reboyfriend's copious notes taken while reading this blog, still stuck inside the pages of the book.

We love books.