Sto-ormy weathe-er-er

I know dear friend, I know.
I know that you are lost, LOST without the Arizona sun.
Beside yourself in sorrow over the greeny-green-ness of Washington.
And all that beautiful (I mean...terrible, obviously) northern rain.

And so, just for you, here are a few pictures of the haboob as it rolled in. Of the sun, pink behind the storm clouds, and the bizarre tan lines on my chubby little feet. :)

Also, as promised, a picture of me, not in scrubs.
(Look ma! I got dressed all by myself!)

Sending tons of love your way.
Hoping each day is better than the last.

Song of the Day!

This is one of my favorite songs
Of all time.
It reminds me of summer days
When I was small
And my mother was away.
Just me and my dad
And our little songs.

Weather.

I love monsoon season in Arizona. I love the wacky way it manages to rain hard while the sun is still shining and it's still nearing a million degrees out. I love the way we are not prepared for rain. The way all the roads flood, the parking lots flood, the campus floods. The way everyone drives at 15 miles an hour just in case the sky actually falls. I love the massive, MASSIVE haboobs we've had this year. Really, I just love the word 'haboob' in general. What I don't like is the impact it's having on my adventuring.

This is the second weekend our plans have been hampered by monsoon weather. It's particularly irritating because it's sunny and boiling hot here, too hot to go outside, and storming everywhere else.

We had just great plans. Brilliant plans, even. Plans of hiking, swimming, fossiling. Plans of diving from cliffs into crystal clear pools. Plans of running like hell from javelinas. Dodging rattlesnakes. Possibly trying to evade bears. Plans of tea parties in the middle of nowhere. Plans of hot springs. Plans at Wet Beaver Creek...yes, you heard me. Wet. Beaver. Creek. The name alone would have made it worth the journey. Even in my little Honda Accord, which is not at all designed for any of the roads around any creeks, Wet Beaver, Fossil, or otherwise.

But no.

No.

Just before you left we went fossiling, out in the mountains, you know the place, staring down the black clouds of monsoon doom. What's a 60% chance of thunderstorms, we said. Nothing! We fear you not ominous clouds! Not even when standing atop a mountain, swinging a metal hammer about like a maniac! We will battle the clouds, the winds, the dust! We will emerge victorious!

What fools we were! The lightning started up just before we reached our spot. Misty rain. Booming thunder. But we were fearless. We scampered, high on adrenaline and the summer rain, hunting for ancient treasures. The lightning strikes came closer. Closer. And still we played.
Then.
All.
We.
Saw.
Was.
Red.
Have you ever had lightning strike so close to you that you didn't even see the flash? Just saw your vision go totally, completely, red...then black...then fade back? Me neither. And I hopefully never will again.

We scampered back down the mountain in the now pouring rain. Soaked to the bone. Backpacks filling up with water. Slip-sliding down the old waterfall to the car. Laughing. Always laughing.

The drive home took three times as long as usual. Several times the rain was so thick I couldn't see the road. Twice I drove into the wrong lane because I couldn't see anything. Luckily, when you're out in the middle of nowhere in a storm, no one else is stupid enough to be driving in it, and no harm came to us. Luckily we were driving with the storm instead of against it. Luckily the road never flooded out in front of us. Luckily we made it home.

Now, we are more cautious. Maybe not about that spot in particular, as the road is always paved, and the hike back to the car is only a few minutes. But these new spots, these blissful wilderness spots we so long to be crawling all over, these are not the places to be trapped in during a monsoon storm. These are at the end of miles and miles of sketchy dirt roads driven until the car can go no farther. Then hours of hiking, uphill this time, back to the car. They are areas prone to flash flooding, and I do not want to wait out a flood. In my car, on the ground, in a tree, whatever.

So instead, we're sitting in the house, staring at the sun. Burning down on us. Mocking our foiled plans. Ick.


I owe you pictures. Pictures of me looking like a big kid. Pictures of me not in scrubs, and I am frantically seeking the cord to my camera to give you just that. Pinky promise.

Please frolic in the woods for me. Scratch all your critters. Say hi to J. Tell him we miss you both. Terribly.

Much love.
Us.

Song of the Day!

Song of the Day.

i watch you braid your hair
you're from another time
when the earth wasn't so angry
and god was on our side.

searching west and east
all points in between...

The rise and fall of frumpzilla.

Ugh.
I work in a hospital.
I wear scrubs.
EVERY.
DAY.

Not fun colorful, funky, me-esque scrubs, but plain old blue, hospital issued OR scrubs. They are baggy. Big baggy, unisex, drawstring waist, hospital logo stamped scrubs.

I brought this on myself. Five years ago, when I was sitting in the small board room being interviewed I asked, with a little too much excitement in my voice, if I could wear scrubs. Not just any scrubs, but these abysmal, soul crushing hospital scrubs.

I had to change into them anyway, I rationalized, as I would be spending time in the OR. I might as well just keep them on.

Part of the problem was that I spent my early education in Catholic School. In my formative years I was never held responsible for dressing myself in something presentable. Every day was the same. Same plaid jumper, same white blouse, same navy shoes. Every day. For years.

And
I
Loved
It

I looked exactly the same every day. I looked exactly like everyone else. Uniforms were school issued, right down to our scrunchies and our shoes. There was no leeway. No scrambling around the mall to find something cute in navy. Nuh-uh. Everyone wore exactly the same thing, by exactly the same company, in exactly the same way. Every day.

This was great for me. It meant I could sleep in later. It meant I never had to think about what I was going to wear. It meant, no matter how bad my morning was, I was going to show up to school looking exactly like everyone else. Marvelous.

Well after my mom lost her mind and the school finally kicked us out, I headed off to public school. ... . and I never really did learn how to dress myself.

You remember right? Junior high? The perpetual disaster that was my taste in...everything? I know, I know, we were all odd kids, and we all had odd taste when it came to dressing ourselves, but I wasn't working on that awkward, angsty, weirdo look. It just came naturally.

Do you remember my lime green jeans? I had a matching lime green shirt that I often wore with them. Oblivious to the fact that I looked like Kermit the Frog after exposure to nuclear waste. In my mind I looked perfectly presentable. Someone said something to me on the bus about it one day on my way home, I don't remember what he said, but I do remember trying to figure out what on earth there was to criticize about my outfit. They're just clothes, right? What does it matter what I look like?

That was the year, somewhere around the end of seventh grade, that I finally learned that I did in fact, need to brush my hair in the morning. Yeah. I was totally that kid. (I'll scan my yearbook picture for you when I get home, I promise.)

Decorum was always wasted on me. I had things to do! Books to read, trees to climb, stamps to collect...who cares what I look like while I'm doing it? The answer apparently is everyone. *laughs* Oh well.

Makeup is much the same. My sister started collecting it somewhere in elementary school. I was in high school before I ever even tried to wear it, and in my early twenties before I started wearing it even semi-regularly. And even then, it was mostly to impress girls or because my roommates were doing it.

I did however, learn to dress myself...for the most part...if I had to. If we were going out somewhere where pictures were going to be taken of me, or where I would run into one of my ex's, or better yet, one of my ex friends or roommates. I did a reasonably good job at building up my wardrobe. I learned to walk in heels. I cut my hair so that shaggy and sticky-upy was what I was going for rather than what I ended up with, and then, then I started working here.

There's something comforting about scrubs. And I think it goes back to grade school, and knowing, really knowing that no matter how bad I looked, I was going to look just like everyone else. That it would never ever matter. And it doesn't.

I LIVE in scrubs. I mean it. I don't even wear anything else anymore. I go home, strip off my scrubs and lie around in my unds. The prospect of picking out an outfit, dressing myself, doing my hair, it's all just too much effort.

No thank you.

As I have become more and more comfortable in my scrubs and with my scrub life, other aspects of my decorum have fallen to the wayside.

I never, ever do my hair. I wear a bandana every day. My dad calls them head rags. I look cute in them, in an earthy, lazy-mazy kind of way, but that's not why I wear them. Really really, I'm just too lazy to do my hair. Too lazy to comb it out when it's wet. Too lazy to blow it dry. Too lazy to straighten it. Too lazy to even just defriz it. Nope. Why waste the energy when I can just slap a bandana on my head and call it a day?

You may be asking yourself then, why on earth do I pay so much money to have my hair cut if I refuse to do it? Why waste the $100 every couple of months for something I don't appreciate. Why not just pay $12 at great clips for a pixie cut and call it a day?

The answer is that I like the OPTION of being able to do something with my hair. I may never actually do it, but I like to know that should the mood strike me I could. And it would look damn good. Better than your hair. Better than everyone's hair. Because I'm awesome.

What's the point of all this you say? Well the point is it's got to stop. I'm damn near 27 and at some point decorum is going to matter. I can't possibly get away with this for much longer, and leaving this particular path of least resistance is going to be hard. Really hard. Possibly epic.

And
I
Don't
Want
To
Do
It

Growing up sucks. In case you missed that. Okay, maybe not, but parts of it are definitely not as awesome as expected. Like this...and bills. Not a big fan of those either.

Moral of the story- I WILL post a picture of me. EVERY DAY. Wearing something that is not scrubs. I can't promise that it will look good, but we've all got to start somewhere. At least this way you can laugh along with me, and hold me to my promise to grow up at least a little bit. To brush my hair, to pick out my own clothes, to wear eyeliner when appropriate. All that stuff I've been so diligent about avoiding.

I'll update this with pictures when I get home.

I hope you're lungs aren't struggling to handle all that fresh air up there, and that the scenery isn't smashing your soul. :p Call when you can. Lots of love to both of you from both of us.

Song of the Day!

I'm lost. . . and the shadows keep on changing. . . . .



:)

Song of the Day.

And you can hear, you can hear the first beat to the flat-line.
Keepin' up, keepin' up with the time lapse lifeline.

So far away...

...doesn't anybody stay in one place anymore?
It would be so fine to see your face at my door.
Doesn't help to know, you're just time away.

Remember when we were kids? When you showed up outside my window in the middle of a cold and rainy October night with that kid (that for the record, I had never met) with the one arm? Remember how my dad almost shot you? How you scrambled over the wall? Think we'll ever have adventures like that again?

It seems like sneaking out in the middle of the night, to walk down the center of the road, dressed without giving consideration to the weather...seems like those days are so far away.

I know that we're (at least slightly) less crazy, and less like teenagers and more like big kids. With all our big kid responsibilities. Bills... Marriages... But sometimes I just want the option to stomp down the street, bare footed, tears streaming down my face at 2am to demand you wake up and pay attention to me. I may never do it, but I like being able to roll the thought of it around my mouth.

I dislike the constant whittling down of options.

You know, I damn near peed myself when I woke up to see two people standing outside my window in the middle of that storm. I stuck my head under the blanket and everything. Trying to breathe. Convinced you were just a side effect of the crazy. But you weren't.

I think that story encapsulates just about everything I love about you.

One more song about moving along the highway
Can't say much of anything that's new
If I could only work this life out my way
I'd rather spend it being close to you

It's funny to me, that I feel a stronger sense of mourning over you moving, than I felt during any of my actual break ups. There aren't a lot of people, there aren't really any people (Goose excluded, obviously) that really truly get my shade of crazy. Lots of people were there with us when we were losing it for the first time, but no one really got it. I don't know if that's some sort of separation of angst vs crazy or what, but somehow they watched the play and missed the message.

I made something for you last night, while I was failing at sleeping. I don't know that you'll like it, but then again, I don't really care. :P When you get a minute send me your address.

I hope all that green up there isn't driving you crazy. I hope that things settle down as you settle in. I hope (against all hope) that you'll call me one day to help get you back home, though even I would understand if you chose to start over somewhere else.

Maybe, one of these days, I'll show up outside your window in the middle of the night...just make sure no one shoots me. :)

Take care dear friend. Let me know if you need anything.

Funerals and phone calls.

The following is Russel Brand's tribute to Amy Winehouse, in its entirety. I'm posting it, not because I find Amy Winehouse's death to be of particular importance, particularly not in the wake of the disaster in Norway, among other things, but because I thought it was particularly eloquent both in it's treatment of Amy's death, as well as the bigger issue of addiction.

I'll talk some more after the quote...

"When you love someone who suffers from the disease of addiction you await the phone call. There will be a phone call. The sincere hope is that the call will be from the addict themselves, telling you they’ve had enough, that they’re ready to stop, ready to try something new. Of course though, you fear the other call, the sad nocturnal chime from a friend or relative telling you it’s too late, she’s gone.

Frustratingly it’s not a call you can ever make it must be received. It is impossible to intervene.

I’ve known Amy Winehouse for years. When I first met her around Camden she was just some twit in a pink satin jacket shuffling round bars with mutual friends, most of whom were in cool Indie bands or peripheral Camden figures Withnail-ing their way through life on impotent charisma. Carl Barrat told me that “Winehouse” (which I usually called her and got a kick out of cos it’s kind of funny to call a girl by her surname) was a jazz singer, which struck me as a bizarrely anomalous in that crowd. To me with my limited musical knowledge this information placed Amy beyond an invisible boundary of relevance; “Jazz singer? She must be some kind of eccentric” I thought. I chatted to her anyway though, she was after all, a girl, and she was sweet and peculiar but most of all vulnerable.

I was myself at that time barely out of rehab and was thirstily seeking less complicated women so I barely reflected on the now glaringly obvious fact that Winehouse and I shared an affliction, the disease of addiction. All addicts, regardless of the substance or their social status share a consistent and obvious symptom; they’re not quite present when you talk to them. They communicate to you through a barely discernible but un-ignorable veil. Whether a homeless smack head troubling you for 50p for a cup of tea or a coked-up, pinstriped exec foaming off about his “speedboat” there is a toxic aura that prevents connection. They have about them the air of elsewhere, that they’re looking through you to somewhere else they’d rather be. And of course they are. The priority of any addict is to anaesthetise the pain of living to ease the passage of the day with some purchased relief.

From time to time I’d bump into Amy she had good banter so we could chat a bit and have a laugh, she was “a character” but that world was riddled with half cut, doped up chancers, I was one of them, even in early recovery I was kept afloat only by clinging to the bodies of strangers so Winehouse, but for her gentle quirks didn’t especially register.

Then she became massively famous and I was pleased to see her acknowledged but mostly baffled because I’d not experienced her work and this not being the 1950’s I wondered how a “jazz singer” had achieved such cultural prominence. I wasn’t curious enough to do anything so extreme as listen to her music or go to one of her gigs, I was becoming famous myself at the time and that was an all consuming experience. It was only by chance that I attended a Paul Weller gig at the Roundhouse that I ever saw her live.

I arrived late and as I made my way to the audience through the plastic smiles and plastic cups I heard the rolling, wondrous resonance of a female vocal. Entering the space I saw Amy on stage with Weller and his band; and then the awe. The awe that envelops when witnessing a genius. From her oddly dainty presence that voice, a voice that seemed not to come from her but from somewhere beyond even Billie and Ella, from the font of all greatness. A voice that was filled with such power and pain that it was at once entirely human yet laced with the divine. My ears, my mouth, my heart and mind all instantly opened. Winehouse. Winehouse? Winehouse! That twerp, all eyeliner and lager dithering up Chalk Farm Road under a back-combed barnet, the lips that I’d only seen clenching a fishwife fag and dribbling curses now a portal for this holy sound. So now I knew. She wasn’t just some hapless wannabe, yet another pissed up nit who was never gonna make it, nor was she even a ten-a-penny-chanteuse enjoying her fifteen minutes. She was a fucking genius.

Shallow fool that I am I now regarded her in a different light, the light that blazed down from heaven when she sang. That lit her up now and a new phase in our friendship began. She came on a few of my TV and radio shows, I still saw her about but now attended to her with a little more interest. Publicly though, Amy increasingly became defined by her addiction. Our media though is more interested in tragedy than talent, so the ink began to defect from praising her gift to chronicling her downfall. The destructive personal relationships, the blood soaked ballet slippers, the aborted shows, that youtube madness with the baby mice. In the public perception this ephemeral tittle-tattle replaced her timeless talent. This and her manner in our occasional meetings brought home to me the severity of her condition. Addiction is a serious disease; it will end with jail, mental institutions or death. I was 27 years old when through the friendship and help of Chip Somers of the treatment centre, Focus12 I found recovery, through Focus I was introduced to support fellowships for alcoholics and drug addicts which are very easy to find and open to anybody with a desire to stop drinking and without which I would not be alive.

Now Amy Winehouse is dead, like many others whose unnecessary deaths have been retrospectively romanticised, at 27 years old. Whether this tragedy was preventable or not is now irrelevant. It is not preventable today. We have lost a beautiful and talented woman to this disease. Not all addicts have Amy’s incredible talent. Or Kurt’s or Jimi’s or Janis’s, some people just get the affliction. All we can do is adapt the way we view this condition, not as a crime or a romantic affectation but as a disease that will kill. We need to review the way society treats addicts, not as criminals but as sick people in need of care. We need to look at the way our government funds rehabilitation. It is cheaper to rehabilitate an addict than to send them to prison, so criminalisation doesn’t even make economic sense. Not all of us know someone with the incredible talent that Amy had but we all know drunks and junkies and they all need help and the help is out there. All they have to do is pick up the phone and make the call. Or not. Either way, there will be a phone call."

My phone call came one hot summer night, from an Aunt, asking me to check on my little sister. My only sibling. Her ex-boyfriend, father to my nephew had died. His death was not an overdose, but part of the fall out of attempting to crawl out of the cycle of addiction with the intertwined emotional, economic, and legal complications that accompany it.

I have no right to write in detail about any of this. It wasn't my life. But I hope that should my sister read this she understands what I'm trying to say.

His death has had added ramifications, personal ones for my sister and her family, his family, my family, and their friends. There are obvious sorrows associated with the loss of a parent, a partner, a family member, but of all the things I expected, I did not expect the hole it left in my dad's heart.

My dad, traditionally, has had a strong moral compass. There was black, and there was white. There was right, and there was wrong. Period. However, after my nephew was born my dad spent more and more time discovering the grey area between ideal lives, and real ones. In the years between my nephews birth and the death of C I watched my dad become a better person. I watched him learn that things were not as cut and dry as he would like them to be.

What came out of that for me, was a better relationship with my dad. After years and YEARS of butting heads over the tiniest of things he began really trying to see things through my eyes. As he struggled to understand C's suffering, the complexity of his situation, and the ways he reacted to it, he also spent more time trying to understand my own struggle with mental illness and how it has shaped my interactions with him and the world at large. He also grew a better understanding of the amount it work it takes some of us to keep things in perspective and under control.

After C died, my dad, big and strong as he is, really really broke. He is, still, after all this time, fragile. Particularly when the world catches him off guard with some small insignificance that reminds him of his last meeting with C.

After the last time he saw him, dad bought C new tires for his bicycle. He never got to give them to him. They sat in a corner of the garage for a long time. Dad was unable to do anything with them, crushed by the weight of the world, and the fear that he never 'did enough'. There is a haunted look in his eyes and a cracked, far off quality to his voice when simple things like this cross his mind.

It breaks my heart.

There are other addicts in our lives, friends we've watched crumble, some of them we've watched die, family members we keep praying will get better and move on, and that aching feeling of betrayal I see in Goose every time her dad slips out of her life again and back into the arms of whatever vice he's courting.

Russel Brand, I think captured, very articulately, the sense of loss that comes with a 'preventable' death, with the complexity of addiction, and with the sense of grief all the survivors are left with. To him I say, well done, sir.

Song of the Day.

Ah, if only I had an outfit so sweet. And a soundtrack to my mischief as haunting as this.

Wild Child.

My Dad is So Cool.

For the record, I've been trying to drag my parents out fossil hunting all summer, however, for a variety of reasons this has never panned out. I do bring all my cool finds over to their house to explain/show off.

This weekend they went up to the rim to star gaze. I gave them some directions to a good, low energy paleo site, but they turned me down because Dad said he doesn't know what he's looking for. LIES! Lies I tell you!

Fast forward to today when he calls to chat, just like he does every day, and he starts going off about this outcrop he found and how he has some 'rocks' I need to come look at because he's sure he found some fossils. Well, sure enough he did! And I could NOT be any prouder. My dear, sweet father found fossils all on his own. Without a map to a paleo site, without any guidance from me, and he called to share it. SO COOL.

He also did say I was right (I love hearing that!) and that they were everywhere, they were really easy to find, and that I taught him well. <3 Anyway, here are some pictures from my dad's impromptu fossil hunting trip. These are just the pics of the fossils he couldn't bring home because of the size of the matrix. He also found an assortment of brachiopods and corals that I have yet to check out. Enjoy.

Song of the Day.

Can I just say, I love Cat Power? Okay, glad we got that out of the way. :)

"Knitting!" or "Oh how I've missed you, dear friend."

Yes, I've rediscovered my needles since the little fore into the hall closet, and now I can't stop. I forgot how much knitting settles my mind.

I keep rationalizing the fact that I've let my reading fall to the wayside (over the past week) by telling myself that all this knitting serves a purpose. Mainly, that it's reducing the insane yarn stash in the hall closet thus making the house cleaner. That however fails to take into account that while the yarn stash is dwindling the scarf/hat/mitten stash is growing. I would say, but I'm OBVIOUSLY going to wear all of this stuff/too many knitted goods is better than too many useless yarn balls, but I do live in the desert where the winter is terminally short, so maybe that's not the best argument.

The other major problem with the knitting addiction is that I have NO attention span. While I can sit and knit for hours, I can't sit and knit the SAME THING for hours. I'm an instant gratification kind of girl.

It goes something like this:
I start knitting something lacy and pretty with a fingering yarn and teeny tiny needles. I get about 50 lines out of the way and get antsy that I'm not getting it done fast enough. So I'll pick up a slightly thicker yarn/slightly bigger needles and start again with a different pattern. This will keep my attention for about the same 50 lines, then once again I'll move on to bigger yarn and bigger needles. This cycle continues to repeat itself until I end up using the super big 50g needles and can whip something out in about 5 minutes. At the end of the day I have one finished project and 3 to 6 others in various stages of completion.

Mind you, this is what I've taken up doing while Goose is at work. When she leaves the house is spotless. She returns home a few short hours later to find the entire living room strewn with my various knitting accoutrements, half finished projects I've since lost interest in, and a giant mess of yarn. The yarn mess however, is not entirely my fault as my dear sweet, sweet cats tend to help with that aspect of this whole mess. The result is a nonplussed Goose, standing in the doorway staring at the disaster area I've managed to create, wondering where on earth her nice clean home has gone.

I'm a bad wife.
I know this.
But in my defense, she knew I was a woman of intense and fleeting interests when she met me, so this shouldn't be entirely out of the realm of the imaginable for her.

I DO miss my reading though. Audiobooks just aren't the same.

Pictures soon dear friend. If you want something made, now is the time to let me know!

Song of the Day.

School Days.

I finally got all my school stuff sorted out for this semester. (Took me long enough, eh?) I've abandoned my molecular biology degree, which is heartbreaking at best, but the truth of the matter is that completing it with my work schedule as it is will take me another 5 years and I don't have the time or money to do that. Changing jobs is also out of the question, since I won't find a job with similar pay scale, so close to school, that lets me come and go as I please for classes. *sigh* So for now at least, I'll have to be happy with my BS in physical anthro. I have 6 classes left, so it's time to start gearing up for the GRE and applying for my doctorate.

Figuring out where to go from here is difficult, as this isn't how I really envisioned my life playing out. I'm not really sure what I'm going to do with a doctorate in anthropology, but I'm sure I can combine that and my background in art/art history/molecular bio into something interesting.

In addition to that, tuition went up $1300 this semester, and I'm not really sure how I'm going to pay for any of it right now. I know, I know, I could always take out a loan, but I've made it this far without any so it seems foolish to give in now, especially since there's a light at the end of the tunnel.

I wish you were here to go to grad school with me, especially since you had been planning classes this semester, but I'll settle for you attending school there and comparing notes via the telephone.

Also, small dog has settled into her new home. I think she misses all her animal buddies, but her and Teddy seem to be getting along just fine. Thanks for taking such good care of her.I really really appreciate it.

Hope you're enjoying the change in scenery. Miss you tons.

Song of the Day.

Song of the day is Amy Winehouse. Mostly because she died today, and because you were the one who introduced me to her. Thanks for that, by the way, and I hope you'll continue to add breadth to my already eclectic musical taste. <3

Oh the Last Dog Days of Summer.

It was hot today. Hotter than the gates of hell hot. But still not as hot as it could have been, so I suppose I should be grateful.

We intended to head up to slide rock or fossil springs today, but the heat sapped us and we oped for a shorter drive. So we drove out to to the Verde River and clambered down to where the water hits the rocks. I'd call it the shore, but there's not really one aside from a small patch of really sticky slimy mud we found, but didn't feel like braving. The water was murky so we decided not to swim, (which would have forced us into that mud patch anyway) and oped to climb about the boulders sticking out of the water. It was nice. Really nice. And quiet. I mean silent. Just us and the water.

We spent the day sitting around, laughing, talking about life, and skipping stones. I mostly sank stones, for the record. When we got bored we did our best to climb back up the steep steep slopes to where we parked the car. Mostly we did more sliding backward than climbing upward, but it was super funny, and we survived. I found one fossil on the way up. WIN! It's a brachiopod, Camposita, I believe, but it's covered in some fossilized red sponges and is going to need some cleaning up before I can give you a better ID. *laughs*

We drove around, down through Winkelman, Hayden, and Kerney, and I got so distracted thinking about you when we were driving under your railway bridge (you know the one) that I almost rear-ended someone. Goose almost died. I almost peed myself. But in the end we were fine.

We drove up through Superior to the first outcrop west of the city intending to do some fossiling. We drove over this big bridge, and I wanted a picture of it to show you, so we hiked down to the old road (who knew there were so many crumbling old highways around here?) so that I could get a better shot. By the time that was done, we were beat. Damn you hot sun. Damn you desert summer. We did stop and half heartedly search through some mudstone outcrops we saw and found a couple beautiful little brachiopods, Orthidae, I believe, but nothing particularly striking.

We tried to climb back to the car, but it was really more of a crawl. I don't know why we headed out in the midday heat, it was about 4 at this time, and WAY too hot to be crawling around in the summer sun. Somewhere around here we noticed the TRAIL, *facepalm* which made the trek back up much less taxing. 

Here are some pictures (hopefully, if I can figure out how to post pictures to this thing) that we took for you. Wish you could have been there, but we know, we know, life doesn't always work out like that.

On that note, it seems I'm having a much harder time with this than I had thought. I'm terminally distracted, exhausted, sad.  Not sobbing on the floor sad, but the quietly reflecting kind of sad, which seems, to me at least, to be harder to shake.

Hopefully by now you've made it to your new home, or are nearing there at least, and settling in. I hope you took a picture of Bebop during the drive for me, and that the drive was as uneventful as possible. Take care dear friend. We miss you tons. 

Ποταμοῖς τοῖς αὐτοῖς ἐμβαίνομέν τε καὶ οὐκ ἐμβαίνομεν, εἶμέν τε καὶ οὐκ εἶμεν

"We both step and do not step in the same rivers. We are and are not."

Goose began her new job yesterday, but I fell asleep shortly after she left for work...can you tell this week's been wearing on me? Ha! So today is my first real evening alone in many years and I'm not really sure what to do with myself.

After she left I sunk into some sort of retched state of melancholia which I can't seem to shake. I'm weepy. Generally weepy. Not particularly sad. Not beyond myself in sorrow. But weepy nonetheless.

Bones made me teary. My music made me teary. The message boards I frequent made me teary. All this lead me to the conclusion that it's possible I'm a bit overstimulated (and may have a touch of PMS) while still trying to mourn the loss of the two of you, as well as two other dear friends who coincidentally left on the same day.

So I got up, fully intending to clean out that closet in the hall, you know the one. The one that's packed more than waist high with everything I have ever picked up in a hurry and then frantically looked around for a place to stuff it, when the heavens opened, light descending, sparkling and brilliant upon the hall closet door? Yep, that's the one.

Well anyway, I opened the door fully mind set on cleaning, but got distracted by my knitting needles and ended up on the couch knitting (with white. white! oppressive WHITE!!! yarn) and listening to Nietzsche on audiobook. (Twilight of the Idols, in case you're wondering). This in turn lead me to googling Heraclitus, hoping to find a painting of him done by a particular artist whose name I cannot remember (It was Hendrick ter Brugghen). Which I then found, along with the quote in the title that is wrongly attributed to him, which in turn made me wish you were around to discuss literature with, which morphed into me writing you this rather dull account of my day.

Goose wonders how the Pig is, and how everyone is fairing on the drive. I wonder mostly, where you are now and if you miss the desert yet.

Also, I'm more determined than ever to beat you in our book race, even though you won't be around to chatter away with about all of these fancy pants books we're reading. Also, please know that since I knowingly packed my copy of Desolation Angels in with your stuff, you are in fact, required to read it all the way through. In turn I will read the horrible Vonnegut book of yours that I still have. Fair is fair.

I will also watch Harold and Maude on Monday. You may quiz me on my knowledge of the subtleties of it as early as Tuesday.

Also, if you ever want it back, or want any crazily hand scrawled, anxty, lyric drenched letters from me, written like the obsessive fourteen year old we all know I am inside, you're going to have to send me your address.  As a bonus, I will most likely send you other trinkets as well, but only if you let me know where you are.

That's all I've got. Hope you're safe.

Song of the Day.

Dear You

This is for you.
For all the things we'll miss doing with you.
For all the things you'll be glad you missed.
For updates on summer weather.
Crazy adventures.
And silly nonsense.

This is for you to be able to laugh at my lack of blogging skills.
My poor grammar.
And my love of sentence fragments.
To listen to sad sad songs and happy little tunes with me.
And to keep you updated on all the books I'm reading on my own now.

Have fun in the land of trees and fog.
Miss us sometimes.
But not every moment.
And find a fossil or two for me.

Lots of love.
Me.