The car wreck.

You ever have one of those days that starts off so normal but ends so far from normal that you wonder if perhaps more than one day passed in the process? You wonder how you got from point A to point B? Today was one of those days.

I'll start at the end and work forward to the beginning.

I ended the day riding back in a car under chilly Winter sky with two friends. One who came through for me in my panic and now drove the car while I sat in the back seat holding a T-shirt decorated with wide-eyed Panda bear and Chinese restaurant name. One who just escaped death by probably what amounts to mere inches. Before that, I sat in Wang's Chinese restaurant eating nearly-semi-edible buffet food surrounded by curiously Hispanic-speaking waiters, a stiff and aching, dazed friend and a huge tank containing only one fish. Before that, in a hospital room staring non-blinking under bright florescent lights at a friend who was thankfully alive to stare non-blinking back at me. Before that, Chance and I were barreling down the interstate to a small town after being called and told that Jerry had just been taken to the hospital after a car wreck. Before that, I sat in a Burger King drive-thru trying to decide between fries or onion rings. Before that, the night seemed mundane.

It's under there

Tonight, as the final phase of my relocation, I sold my stove. I wondered what would be under it when it was moved. The usual suspects - Dust bunnies and rogue french fries? Bread ties and wounded catnip mice?

Instead it was words. There was a sheet of tablet paper stuck to the floor. I flipped it over, blew off the dust and recognized it. It was a quote that I'd put up on the refrigerator almost a year ago. It was from Gilda Radner who died of ovarian cancer at the young age of 43, in the prime of her life.



" I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned the hard way that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle and end. Life is about not knowing, taking the moment and making the most of it, without knowing what's going to happen next..."



I'm glad that I have the kind of luck that leaves sobering words beneath major appliances right when I need to be reminded what a gift any kind of tomorrow is.

The move: Gypsies-R-Us

The move: Gypsies-R-Us

Surrounded by cardboard and storage bins. Walls bare as bone. Family and friends states away stress for me about things that I am donating in my minimalist inclination towards freedom. It seems that this gives them something to worry about besides me - and I guess that is good.

I am so tired that my eyes barely peek from their sockets. Under my arm - always that damned yellow legal pad headed with "Things to do". Eating so much junk food that I am on either a constant up or a constant down. Closets empty. Every single thing I own has been looked at with a scrutinizing eye and separated into a "want" or a "need". I'd like to have some sort of ritualistic burning but I can barely find the time. And to be honest, I can't remember where I put the matches. Wearing wrinkled clothes to work and sometimes sheet marks still on the side of my face. Things will be better in the new place - that is what I tell myself. They'd have to be because things around here are about as cheerful as a train derailment. We're all ready to get on with it - thankfully, no time to be sad yet. Too busy looking for the always missing packing tape and sharpie markers.

I danced with abandon in the empty living room of the new house to the Shack Shakers version of "Hip Shake" just to break it in. I sang Etta James while I cleansed the tub of the previous owners. I threw out their ice trays and dried up Glade plug-in air fresheners. I've struggled for two days to convince BellSouth that my address actually exists. Sometimes, I find it funny. Sometimes, I want to climb into my car and drive to a Motel 6, hand the desk clerk a wad of hundreds and say, "Don't you dare disturb me until I owe you cash."

I put my big funky, plaid suitcase into the donation pile but retrieved it with visions of me finally taking that road trip to places that would just have to include that suitcase at the foot of the bed. I have a stack of new things to read and CD's to listen to at my new house - I tell myself that there I will have time to enjoy them - really take them in. They sit on my bamboo dresser. I walk past them several times a day and say, "Soon....soon...."

There is a little Southern Methodist Revival church next door to me at the new house. I want to lie in my bed on Sunday mornings after actually sleeping late for the first time in years, read the paper and listen to the members sing hymns. Then I want to peek at them from behind my blinds, go into the kitchen and make myself pancakes and bacon, rub my feet together and watch Mr. Smith Goes to Washington for the eight hundredth time. Cats will lie content in newly arranged sunbeams. I will know that there is no grass to cut. No leaves to rake. Nothing can leak, break or explode that I will be responsible for. I want to memorize the NPR show schedules and walk to the movies down tree-lined streets.

Going to hang Chinese paper lanterns in my foyer turned office. Going to sing Red Sovine songs bathed in muted paper glow while I surf on Ebay. Going to put more nail holes in my walls than my land lady would care to know about. Got a new shower curtain and I am excited by it's plastic swimming pool liner smell. Soon the stress here will be gone.......the Sideways House will be under new and sketchy management in a poetic irony that only the oldest and wisest Gods could have created.

Okay. On with the show.