which will be kicked off, in weird ceremony, by the two of us driving halfway across the country. hauling the stored wreckage of her botched engagement two thousand miles to the east.

and if she has her insistent way, we will drive from oakland to stillwater practically in one go.

she thinks she's an expert at this: the straight-through, tag-team, thirty-six-hour road fury. she thinks it the wise, efficient plan to road trips. but I have seen where her driving ideas get us. I was there waking up in the passenger seat, just barely at the shoulder of a nebraska freeway with a semi rumbling past to shake the little car hard enough to wake me from a four a.m. doze. she was there asleep in the driver's seat, unable to make the last mile to a rest stop.

and then two weeks ago I put it aside and said yes, I'd be happy to make the drive back with you.

ohmanohmanohman.

I want the next 12 days to just go quickly. and be over with licketysplit.

I love them all, each far-flung one, and not to seem heartless, but it is all so fricking much. not just the drive across country but the parsing out of every moment there, the impossible distance between, the hours spent on icy road.

the two days with dad, who'll be ill-tempered and say how many many times how long it's been since I called. and a day my gramma m who I think is feeling better and the hour visit my gramma k who I feel guilty that I never see. and never enough time with mom & pappy rog & the baby-babies, who will maybe remember me from september and maybe say my name. and I'll wish that I could stay longer and/or get the hell out fast so I don't have to keep feeling bad I don't see them all more than I do.

yes: it's a lot of mess in me. but geography doesn't help either. and fissures between people who don't say a word to each other after twenty-two years, those don't make anything either. when I'm trying sort of hard but very blindly just to do what I can to do right.