For Adam

Z and I just enjoyed this a couple of times and then walked around the house singing our hearts out. And because Adam can't see it otherwise right now, here it is for you.

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Sent Out

I ended a full day by driving home at two in the morning, windows down so I could enjoy the bit of winter the Valley allows. Sixty-five degree wind never felt better and just as I got on the highway Love and Memories came on the radio and for a few minutes I felt a little amazing, never mind my hair flying in seventy mile an hour directions or the short distance home.

A day like this, for all its simplicity, doesn't normally have this kind of ending. I visited my father and his wife, played with my nephew Rocco - he who enjoys chewing on fistfuls of hair if it's not stinging to the touch - ate Chinese for dinner and babysat for two nieces, Amanda who cannot experience life without high pitched wails of discontent and Emily, who at only two months doesn't know the difference anyway.

I should have come home and found comfort in bed, fallen deeply asleep instantly once my head hit the pillow. My drive home didn't allow it. I came in suddenly ravished, I laughed at the delicious morbidity of finding a carton of eggs on top of a box of cold fried chicken in the fridge and then helped myself to a snack. Then I came here to let you know of such an extraordinary end to such an ordinary day.

If I ever figure out what this was all about, I'll let you know.

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Fawkes

Seeing as this is the first post in my new home on the web, I imagine it should be pretty long and drawn out, carefully describing my new home life and such and such, whatever. It's late, I'm not up to it and if I don't open this blog now, it probably won't happen for a while.

So this is what I'll tell you: a week back in the Valley and I've babysat three times for my older brother, once for my younger brother and gone to sit with my grandmother in the hospital twice (she had knee surgery and is doing well, thanks for asking). Surely, that nursing degree was a wise move.

I miss the 'ville and my car broke down two hours from arriving home. It then required two separate visits to the mechanic, further increasing the debt in which I lie toward my mother's bank account. It sucks and it's making me cranky. Sorry.

I have found hilarity in my niece, Zara, however. Only 21 months and she's quite the hellion. In fact, she took a dislike to me after a several month absence, though she liked Eileen very much upon first sight. Zara displayed her feelings by continually saying "NO!", wagging her finger at me and, on occasion, smacking me with tiny palms. For the first several days, she refused me hugs, kisses and, yes, even Cheetos. Life is cruel. Though, she has made a habit of being contrary her entire life when it comes to me: she chose to be born the day after I left from a week long visit and then decided to do the same thing when it came to her first independent steps. Refusing to sit next to me on the couch? Same difference. But I'm wearing her down, slowly but surely. It required me to share an orange, but the sacrifice was quite worth it.

It makes me think about when I was driving home, pre-breakdown, and I thought that when it comes down to it, I moved back to the Valley to love my family. And then my car imploded, my brother drove two hours in the middle of the night, tethered my little Kia to the back of his truck in freezing drizzle and dragged us home in increasingly worsening weather at four in the morning (my battery dying and panic rising along the way) when he had to be at work at eight and it finally got through that I moved back to the Valley so they could love me, too.

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