Love

I have to do it. Again. Be sappy, that is; I'm afraid this blog is turning out to be mostly appreciation for the people around me, which is nice, I guess, but where's the spit? The fire? Oh, yeah, I expend my energy on the road and all I've got time for these days is frustration over other drivers.

Carrying on: one of my favorite blog-o-sphere writers recently wrote a blog about what she wanted out of life--namely, love. But it wasn't what she wrote that got to me so much as what one of her commenters said:

I’ve been with my husband for 17 years. We’ve had big ups and downs and many struggles. But he’s still the one I want holding my hand when something goes wrong and he’s still the one I want to hug and kiss me every night before I go to bed. I can’t imagine a life where I’d ever be able to “breathe” if he weren’t in it.

Whippoorwill says, come home, come home

There is one word echoing in my skull's empty caverns, and I'm certain beginning and ending, not to mention filling up, a blog with the word AWESOME doesn't cut it as far as content goes, but I'm really tempted to sum up my trip to Seattle thusly nonetheless regardless (<--that, if my favorite college roomie, henceforth known as Dr. Dre, was reading, would be ticklesome because her boyfriend's most oft-used words for most of our three years rooming together were: thusly, nonetheless and regardless). Southwest Airlines doesn't have pretty planes built after 1980, but they let me preboard so I didn't miss the announcement and I got to pick my own seat, so I forgave them the uncomfortable fake leather seats. Seattle's wretched coldness strengthened my resolve to enjoy the sun while I'm in California even if it gets over 100 for 3 months in a row, and mandated the purchase of a new North Face jacket prior to a baseball game between the two worst teams in some professional league or other on the national level (sports be not my realm of interest). My momma-in-law, the Baroness, provided a two-day getaway vacation to her new landholdings in Eastern Washington, which was in the throes of a beautiful early summer. The view from her expansive deck out over the Yakima river lends the viewer incredible peace--river, miles and miles of gentle hills, small mountains in the distance, stars at night...

Friends were seen, family loved on. My sushi appetite was sated, temporarily.

When I pulled my hot pink suitcase home, however, the most wonderful present awaited me: Sir, home, attached to a land-bound posting so he can be home every night, not on a ship sailing out to sea for two months. No amount of fun and revelry away from home can ever make up for the happiness of coming home to Sir.

The cappuchino swirl

Amongst my group of girlfriends, when one is panty-peeing excited, there's a word we yell [type] out: SQUEEEEEEE!!! In order for it to work properly and adequately convey the level of excitement, one adds/subtracts "E"s and exclamation points.

Thus:

Girlfriend: SQEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!
Me: You got engaged, right?

Girlfriend: SQUEE!
Me: You saw a beluga whale at SeaWorld?

There's also the drunken "squee" that occurs whilst typing online between ourselves, but that usually involves significant typing errors that can only be authentically reproduced by the imbibed-impaired themselves.

That said, there is some measure of "squee-ing" occurring in my life today. At somewhere around 1pm, a shuttle is picking me and my hot pink suitcase up from my home and depositing me at the San Diego Airport, where I'll purchase magazines and...fly home. To Washington, to Seattle, to things I know and people I love. Ordinarily the ensuing squee would look like this: SQUEEE!! but for one drawback, a not insignificant fact that casts a dark shadow on my excitement. Sir, courtesy of the Navy, will not be going with me, and this morning I kissed my last kiss until August.