thinking about miniature horses, chicken and roof shingles

I don't know where to start...

I am upset and sad and selfish.

A very dear friend of mine has been in a very difficult predictament for quite a while and he finally made a decision to save himself the grief. He has decided to quit graduate school and move back to his family farm in Maine. Tonight we are all going out to celebrate his new freedom. But I don't feel like celebrating.

I feel like crying.

Cam made this decision suddenly and it came as a shock to us all. And I don't understand how I'm supposed to process it, be happy for him and wish him well inside of three days.

I just don't think it's fair to me. (And of course, this is so all about me...)

Cam has been a foundation for many of us and a source of inspiration to me.

The best trip I've ever gone on, I went with him. We were playing road games in the car, heading to Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. We weren't really paying attention. Obviously... We ended up in St. Louis. Five hours the wrong direction. The three of us who had made this error of a journey together finally arrived at Mammoth Cave at 3 am. It was a great weekend. We explored caves, we rock climbed, we dry-bobsledded down mountains, we had chicken fights (Cam and I won), we had campfires and hotdogs and corn and beer and laughter. On the ride home, we all agreed that the best part of the whole experience was the ride down. How do three people extend their car ride essentially by ten hours and still have a good time? Because we were together.

Beginning this post, I was upset. But after telling that story, I've come to realize that Maine isn't that far. And after all we've been through and all we've meant to each other, we always will find a way to be together.

It doesn't mean that I won't miss you every single day, Cam.

You are a great friend.

You always will be.

I still can't say "fireplace" without cracking up.

Happy Land

So while the rest of the world is all doom and gloom, and layoffs and firings, and banks going under, etc, I am in “Happy Land”.

I am in week two of my new badass position. I landed this badass position at exactly the right time. Last week my former employer laid off 1.2 million dollars worth of salaried employees in one day. I find that number staggering, scary and really, profoundly sad.

That being said, I now work in “HappyLand”. We have had an ABBA dance party, my new Dean is throwing me a “Welcome-to-your-new-badass-position-pizza-party”, we eat French toast and drink chocolate milk, we make embarrassing You-Tube videos of us playing rock band, and –get this- we have Gummi Flintstones vitamins for the office and they are delicious. My boss is adorable and my coworker is a rockstar. The only downside of this new, badass position is that my huuuuuge window is street-level, so I have to be very careful about when I pick my nose.

Waking up on the couch at 3 am in wearing Grandma’s pants

Waking up on the couch at 3 am wearing Grandma’s pants… you’d think that would be the start to a beautiful trip, no? Not exactly. Although it was totally a highlight.

New Year’s Eve, I wake at 3:30 in the morning (in Grandma’s pants) to load up the her car and her cats and drive 1250 miles to where she winters in Florida. It’s a two day trip and I hate cats, but I’ve done it for the last fourteen years anyway. Every winter I drive down to Tampa, where I pick Grandma up from the airport, hang out in the sun and have afternoon cocktails with Grandma and the neighbors for a few days, then I fly home. In the springtime, I do that same trip, but in reverse.

That’s 35,000 miles of road over the years.

Wow, really?

Yeah, really.

And while I don’t like the cats, I do like the drive. I like the loneliness of it. I like the road and the scenery and the really good music (Thanks, Sunny!). Truth is, I just like to drive and be by myself. And I’ve been doing it since I was sixteen, never had a problem. Not so much as a ticket or a flat tire.

Which is why I was really surprised that I landed in a ditch at 68 miles per hour. Yep. ~$3,000 worth of damage to Grandma’s car.

I was able to get out of the ditch after a few hours. I was the only one of the five cars that ended up in the ditch that wasn’t totaled. So there’s that. I hobbled down the road (another 900) miles to my warm and sunny destination, dragging the back bumper behind me. I have pictures. I’m just not ready to look at them, let alone share them with the world.

But anyways, I’m fine. The cats are fine. The car will be fine. Someday.

The moral of this story is never begin a trip wearing Grandma’s pants.

Beautiful, sunny Tampa Bay.

Of course it rained the whole time I was there...

been a while

It has been so long since the last post because I was in an alcohol induced coma from participating in the Twelve Bars of Christmas, one of my favorite annual drinking events in Chicago. We (me, Sunny, Vil, Matt & wife) headed out at about 9:30 in the morning. I lost Vil by 10 and was drunk by 10:30. I think I was home safely in bed by 7 pm. That may be a huuuuge exaggeration, because I actually have no clue.


The sticker on my card says I'm the Mistle Ho. I wore it with pride.

Drunk girl in a hat with a beer pyramid.

I *heart* beer. Obviously.

Also, the last picture was taken in the first bar at about 10:30 in the morning.