theology&geometry

I had a bit of a meltdown yesterday right before Thanksgiving dinner. Everything had been going more or less okay; I got up and on the road to the parents’ as early as I could, since my mom had texted me the day before, telling me to hightail it early since I’d be trying to outrun bad weather. I was flying solo, as Ray had to work that afternoon. That sucked, but you gotta do what you gotta do. I couldn’t get my mom to answer the house phone or her cell, and she hadn’t answered my “need me to pick anything else up?” text early that morning. My brother was at his girlfriend’s house in Arlington and so couldn’t track mom down for me. Dad was at work so I didn’t even bother calling to bug him. Finally I got my sister on the phone and she told me that mom was having a bad day and still in bed, so she was getting the turkey ready for its broth bath. Her first time taking the reins on the turkey dinner. We assessed what else we’d still need after my grandmother’s and aunt’s contributions (dressing aka stuffing to all you yankees, yeast rolls, macaroni and cheese, green beans, banana pudding, butternut cake, etc.) and I stopped off at the Lakeland Schnucks and heaped a cheese plate, couple of sodas, salad fixins, and two pomegranates into my basket. I cranked up Girl Talk and car danced my way to the house.

Things were going fine. I was in a good mood. I knew mom felt bad but she was coming around and getting ready, and my sister had the kitchen under control. I made and stored the salad, peeled a pomegranate, and went outside to take pictures of the horses as a storm blew in and we waited on the family to assemble.

And assemble we did. It got hot in that house with all the people and heated surfaces working and the outside temperature not quite cool enough for an open door to make a difference. I went into the bathroom to put my hair up to get it out of my face, and came back down to survey the kitchen to see how else I could help. My dad looked at me with a squint in his eye and said, in front of everyone, “Lindsey, are you gaining weight again?”

And, obviously, the answer is yes, by every observable standard. Yes, world, I have gained weight. I lost a couple dozen pounds several years ago by drinking only water (okay, and a glass of wine a night), cutting out all fried foods, fast foods, and sweet foods, and consuming no more than 1,100 calories every day, while working out and burning at least 1,500 calories a week. It was a fairly fucking miserable diet but I got used to it and it felt great to watch the weight fall off. I had foot surgery and stopped working out for a while since it hurt to put any pressure on it, and got out of the habit. I started letting crap food back into my life the day of surgery, when I went and ate at Soul Fish and allowed myself some French fries. Etc. And in spectacularly human fashion, I have allowed those pounds to creep back onto my bones over the past four years.

So. Back to dinner. My eyes grew wide as saucers and I said something to the effect of, “Yes, I have! Just like everyone else in the world at some point!” Bitchin’ comeback. I’m known for my wit.

And you know that feeling you get in your gut, like it could almost be accompanied by falling string music and that camera trick where it seems like the background and the foreground move in opposite directions while you stand still in the middle? I had a smirk plastered on my face while my brain raced and raced to find somewhere safe to put what my dad had just said, because it was just a bullshit, one-off comment that probably meant nothing and so what if I had gained weight? Haitians were dying of cholera and starvation as we spoke and lava was swallowing up Indonesia. And yet my brain, my useless fucking brain, could not find a place for that comment, and in fact blew that comment up on the jumbotron inside me and all my senses’ attentions were directed to it. They stopped their happy little holiday bopping and looked up at it, and all I could feel was shame and failure. Shame and failure. Shame and failure. The muscles in my face seized up and I sat there until my aunt moved away from the oven so I could back up my chair and go somewhere, anywhere, where could I go? It was storming and cold outside by then so I just went out to the carport and wedged myself between my sister’s car and the garage door and had myself a moment. A long one, I guess, because my sister came looking for me later because it was time to eat.

I played like I had been on the phone out there in the cold and not sobbing like a fool, and I rejoined the family to a chorus of “where were you it’s time to eat what’s wrong are you sure you’re okay” and then my dad said grace. And my mom hugged me and asked me if I was okay, at which point I lost my shit and ran off to the bathroom like a drama queen. I had to get it out of me, let the heaving get done. I shooed both parents who tried to talk to me through that door and I was in there for an hour. On the floor. Unable to coax myself off it or out the door. How could I possibly go downstairs and put food in my mouth when everyone had just been made acutely aware of the fact that I am more of a fatass now than I was at the last Thanksgiving I got to attend a couple of years ago?

And I know it’s overly dramatic and completely irrational and I’m ashamed to even write about it. There is a horrible shame cycle to body-image bullshit and in general I try to not even indulge those neuroses. Publicly. But they are always with me. Always. I’ve clearly got a demon that needs exorcising. I don’t really know why what my dad said hit me as hard as it did, except that his statement comes bundled with a lot of baggage and I unpacked it there on the spot and it fucking leveled me.

It leveled me because I know how I look. I have to look at me every day, get this body into and out of clothes every day. I know how it has changed and I fucking hate it. I don’t think my dad has any idea how much I hate myself, how so many moments of every day are spent wrestling with very deeply rooted self-loathing, because I keep quiet about that stuff. I can’t imagine that he could have any idea about the kinds of things I say to the mirror when no one else is around, the way I will spit insults at every dimple in my flesh, every crease, every shadow. I know how narcissistic that sounds and is and I hate myself even more for getting tangled up in this ridiculous web that I KNOW is a farce. It’s my silent shame, and it is with me always. My dad saying what he said to me — after I had gone to the bathroom to put my hair up, which is something I do reluctantly these days because I always feel like, with my hair up, you can see too clearly all the extra flesh on my face — just gave a voice to all the toxic shit that swims in my head every minute of every day. It confirmed my fears about how I appear to other people and it labeled me a failure in front of my entire family. Because, you know, fat = failure. According to popular sentiment.

I know he didn’t mean to set off that insane chain of reaction in me, and I feel genuinely awful that he feels so awful about accidentally hurting me. I spent the entire night in seclusion. After my initial shame had subsided enough for me to want to leave the bathroom then bedroom, I was overcome with embarrassment and just wanted to disappear. And yet I couldn’t make my apparently too large body disappear. I could only hide.

I am fucked up about my body and always have been. I have struggled with my weight my entire life. I remember being in middle school and attempting to see how many days I could go without eating when a boy I had a crush on called me “lumberjack legs.” (For the record, two days.) I think most women will tell a similar tale. We all want to try and act like we have risen above it but body consciousness is a quicksand. Secretly we want to look great but as though we don’t spend any time worrying about how we look. That’s the ideal. I can be a bulldog of a feminist all day long but when I close my eyes at night, I don’t want to wake up ugly and unattractive. And I FUCKING HATE THAT ABOUT MYSELF. I have tried to squelch that part of me but it comes back bigger and stronger every time I try to put it down.

My dad has said something like his comment above to me before. I remember we were riding in the car together on the way to Jackson. We were talking about relationships. I don’t remember if Phil and I had broken up or what, but I remember my dad pretty much told me that I was lucky Phil had stayed with me as long as he had, considering I’d gained weight after high school. I remember the sting I felt when I heard that. I love my dad so much and I wouldn’t trade him for any other father on this or any other planet (that fact is well documented here on this blog), but he has never quite understood that there are some things that are better left unsaid.*

And so every time I prepare to make the trip home to see the family, I look at myself in the mirror and I get nervous about what they are going to think about how my looks have changed since the last time they saw me. I am getting older, my jowls more pronounced, my thickness everpresent. If I am not pretty enough, and just slim enough, I am not good enough. Of course they don’t think that way but this is what I have internalized, what I have made myself believe.

But here’s the thing. I grew up in a family of thick people. We are all overweight or have been for most of our lives. I never really learned how to eat well; I maintained a general pickiness throughout my childhood that allowed me to eat crap food. I remember one time when I was really young that we had Brussels sprouts with dinner. I didn’t want mine because I was generally leery of green things, but my parents tried to make me eat them. I got a little bit down and then made myself sick. And I got in trouble. But I didn’t learn how to like things that are good for me. I didn’t learn how to use food as fuel. I like fatty things, sweet things, buttery things, cheesy things, breaded things. Carbs. Lord god, carbs. And of course, these things are fine in moderation. But when they are the only things you like, it is hard to moderate.**

My palate has gotten more sophisticated as I’ve gotten older, but I’m still not where I need to be and I know it. I think about it every effing day, every time I pass a reflective surface, or feel the folds of my skin touching, or hide my face from my boyfriend when I laugh because I’m afraid he’ll suddenly see all the imperfections I see and decide he doesn’t love me anymore. What sent me over the edge Thursday is when someone else copped to noticing.

I’ve got a lot of work to do. I probably need a head shrinker to help me comb through some of this, but I’ve been reluctant to pursue that route. Obviously I need to get back to exercising because it’s good for me, but frankly I am busy lately. Insanely busy with a weird, backwards-ass schedule. (“Make time!” sings a chorus of self-righteous demons cruising for a punch to the mouth.) I will make time. I’ve done it before. It was not easy. And it’s interesting because even though I have all these fucked-up body issues, I don’t have particularly bad self-esteem. I mean, I genuinely know that I deserve to be loved and appreciated, and I think I am worthy of love and appreciation. And I think I am more or less an attractive person, in spite of the extra trunk junk and the crazy in my brain.

But obviously even if I lose the weight again, I am still going to need to get that self-hatred poison out of my head. It doesn’t want to go away, no matter how many hours I spend on the elliptical.

* Dad, if you ever read this, or if someone ever reads this to you, know that I love you dearly and I know you didn’t mean anything by either of these things you said. I forgive you, and I’m sorry I made you feel horrible.

** I appreciate your kneejerk desire to comment or e-mail me diet or nutrition or exercise or whatever tips, but I don’t want them. This post is not a solicitation for advice or a chance for you to prove that you have slayed the weight-maintenance beast by imparting your wisdom. At the risk of coming off as a total asshole here, please keep your concern trolling to yourself, please and thanks.

Saturday afternoon my aunt Vicki and her crew — boyfriend Paul and friend Ralph — rolled into town for the UT-Memphis football game, an affair we had been planning for months. We had a few hours to kill and found ourselves at India Palace, heaping piles of deliciousness onto stark white buffet plates. Why is it that I can never remember to wait and get a big plate from the middle, and instead, always end up using the smallish dessert plates for my noms? Anyway. I cracked the “hey guys, watch how many refills we’ll get” joke a little too loudly, I think, because I ended up only getting two. TWO! At one point my water glass even reached nearly empty. Maybe they were short-staffed, I dunno. Also, the bf was unamused by my “punch the horse painting” joke, probably because I had no way of explaining exactly what the hell that even meant, even when sitting there, staring at said horse painting face to face, but how can someone not laugh at that phrase alone? Just say it and try not to laugh. Or think about masturbation. See? Funny shit.

We killed a couple of additional hours at my house, getting our pre-game on, and then it was a short walk to the Liberty Bowl (yay free parking!), where I was a tad dismayed to watch the stadium fill up with orange. Poor Tigers. Even when the Vols suck, their fans come to watch. The game was pretty brutal to behold. I tried to be an impartial observer; I sure am not going to root for UT and my loyalties don’t exactly lie with the Tigers either, but they are my hometown team and it hurt to see them get beat up the way they did in front of a teeming, taunting orange crowd. Alas. Sports, she is a cruel mistress.

I missed nearly the entire first quarter because I took it upon myself to go in search of beer for the group, since auntie had bought my first round and gotten me into the game. Lord god, the belly of the Liberty Bowl reminds me of both the New York City subway system and also some apocalyptic movie where everyone lives in underground tunnels and buys wares with cash — CASH!!! — from price-gouging kiosks. Oh, and there is only one working ATM in the entire world and it is located exactly halfway around the globe, so have fun getting there and back in a reasonable amount of time. Oh, and the beers are $7 and the Budweiser hawkers will only let you have two at a time, which puts a crimp in your plan to shove several in your purse and share with the group. Oh, and you can’t get a text out to inform your group that you are, in fact, not dead, just running behind on accounta the ATM situation and the bathroom situation (oh how I longed for a Stadium Pal) and the beer situation. IT’S MADNESS UNDER THAT STADIUM. Up top, however, it’s quite nice. I’d never been in there before and I must say I think the Liberty Bowl’s quite fetching, despite its age. Paul kept describing it as “undulating,” and I think that’s about right.

The score hit 50-7 and we decided that there was probably no big come-from-behind U of M win to keep us there past the third quarter, so we vamoosed. We heard the Tigers score a touchdown somewhere between the stadium and my house. My Vol-loving companions were unfazed.

It was great to see dear auntie; I think the last time we saw each other was Christmas of ’08, in the mountains at the Timeshare of Family Near-Breakdown (which she luckily missed by a day or so). That’s just too dang long between visits and I intend to remedy that in the coming year.

Photo up top is a composite made using AutoStitch Panorama for iPhone.

I have been laid low a few times in my life. Luckily (or perhaps sadly, depending on your perspective and how much you like to see me suffer), not too terribly many times. Nonetheless, this weekend I found myself on my floor in a heap, a demon of despair escaping from my lungs in great heaves. It was not pretty and it was not cathartic. It just felt like death. The death of all the good things inside me I had gotten cozy with over the past few months. It felt like getting kicked in the spiritual groin by a playground bully who stood over me and laughed at me for having the audacity to be happy. It felt like being spit on by someone you’d thought all along was your good friend. It just wouldn’t stop aching. It pulsed. I wanted to vomit up everything I had ever swallowed. Everything.

It didn’t go away for two days. I drove two hours to my parents’ house in a complete haze. I’d catch my vision blurring and my focus shifting from the road to the white line to the grooves on the side of the highway to the gravel to the grass to the what the fuck wake up you are running off the road. I should not have been driving. But I couldn’t stay in the house in my pajamas, either, loopy on sleeping pills. I had to get out. Get away. Get some space. Get some time. I thought so hard. I could have bored holes in concrete with those thoughts. They wouldn’t relent and when they did, I sobbed at the emptiness in my gut. I envisioned my drafty house, completely quiet, and I was angry. I cussed to the mirages on the road and the dead raccoons I swerved past. I got phone calls and text messages and @ replies and DMs and I could not respond. I did not have the energy or the words and I wanted to disappear.

I suppose I was (am) being a tad melodramatic but heartbreak — good ol’ out-of-left-field heartbreak — is never the time for emotional reservation, the way I’ve got it figured. You’ve got to go ahead and punch a hole and just let that abscess drain or you will be ripe with infection later. I feel a little silly for airing such intimately dirty laundry on the internet but I thought one good shaming deserved another, and whatever came of it, he would at least know that breaking my heart comes with a bit of a price. It’s not much in the grand scheme of things, but having my friends lob unflattering names at you has to hurt the ego at least a smidge, doesn’t it? And I am not above a strategic Googlebomb if push comes to shove.

When I pulled into my parents’ driveway, I saw my dad standing there, waiting for me. I couldn’t even make it all the way to him before the floodgates opened. He held me as I shuddered and sobbed. My brother put his hand on my shoulder for extra support and I cried in part out of gratitude for them. That evening I moped. Just thinking thinking thinking. What to do, what to do. I snuck out from time to time to be alone and that was, perhaps, not my best move, as sitting out under that inky country sky and those vast country stars has a way of making a person feel even more alone and insignificant than any sort of relationship breakdown. I saw a shooting star. I could not think of a thing to wish for.

Monday my parents took me to Shiloh so we could piddle and I could take pictures, if I wanted, because that’s something that usually cheers me up. We packed a picnic lunch and ate cold hot dogs in the car while we cruised past recently cleaned monuments and I listened as my dad told me the things he would do differently if he ran the park. We parked and walked down a wooded path and I sat in the grass and closed in with my lens on a buckeye moth. I listened to the wind in the trees in the same field where a line of thousands of Confederate troops had surprised Union scouts eons ago. My dad hung back in the distance, swapping stories with some folks from Eastern Kentucky and their big schnauzer, who growled at me upon my return, until I let him get a good long sniff of my hand.

My parents worried about me the whole way home, and did their best to keep conversation light. Except for when mom kept talking about all the things she and dad wanted to bequeath to us kids before they died. “I don’t want to talk about that now,” I said. “Yes, but we have to talk about those things,” she said. “I know, but not right now,” I pleaded. She got it. It was dark before I headed back to Memphis, anxious to get back to the house and the cats and get on with the business of getting on. I had half resolved to do this, this, and this … and yet.

I don’t know where this post is going.

All that thinking and all that anger have left me not quite ready to give up. I am learning some things about my capacity for forgiveness, for understanding, for love in unlikely and painful circumstances. I spent all weekend wallowing in my victimhood and felt no better for it. I realized at some point that I do not want to live as a Wronged Woman and that I have a say in this situation and its direction. I am beginning to understand that people do stupid, hurtful shit to the people they love for no reason, other than because they are fickle, imperfect humans and the human capacity for mistake-making is vastly greater than the human capacity to understand why those mistakes are made. I know some mistakes are worse than others. I am given to the belief that stupid mistakes can be a catalyst for positive things. That awful shit will crystallize what’s important in a life and, if worked on, can raise you up and spur you on.

These are not excuses or rationalizations for what was clearly fucked-up behavior. These are things I have been working to understand so that I can grow from this experience. I do not want to be a bitter person, as is my nature — both born and learned — and I do not want to be a heartbreak waiting to happen. I do not want pity. I do not wish to be complicit in destructive behavior by turning a blind eye to it, but I also refuse to allow this destructive behavior to happen just because of fear or emotional damage that I can’t get at. People do some stupid shit when they are scared. I know I can’t heal old wounds or change natures but I can love fully and clearly and deliberately, with everything I’ve got. If that ends up not being enough, then it will hurt again and it will hurt harder than before, but at least I will know that I did not act rashly or out of pain and spite, and that maybe whatever love I put out there in the world might come back to me in some way.

I don’t know where anything is going.

But for now I intend to see some things through.

The oldest nephew is a sophomore in high school (eeeep!) and is a band kid, just like his dear ol’ auntie. He plays the tenors, and gets to do the intro to the cool new cadence. I always wanted to play percussion but I lack the ability to wail on objects with any sense of rhythm. I find it deliciously bitchin’ that both my brother and my nephew have drum-related talent.

Friday night the fella and I hauled ass to Hardin County to catch a home football game so I could see Casey perform in the halftime show. The band’s show this year is Beatles themed, and while I am not the biggest Beatles fan who ever ironically traversed a crosswalk, I thought it was fun. (For the record, I tend to prefer highly funk-based field shows that involve lots of inappropriate dancing and maybe even some shouting.) The kids sounded great. The mellophones wailed like antelopes, just like old times. I wanted more oomph out of my beloved trombone section, naturally. There were at least a dozen of them; they should have melted my earwax with their sound. But then again, my band directors always had a hard time getting a big sound out of little ol’ modest me. Which kind of blows my mind now. If I played an instrument in 2010, you’d be hard pressed to ever get me to drop below forte. Truth.

I’m proud of Casey. My parents give him a hard time for sleeping late and being lazy and sort of flighty and teenagery, but when he’s in his element, he is on point. I hope he keeps it up. Fun sidenote: During the band’s third-quarter rest period, I spied him schmoozing with a cute girl named Paige. They were all laughing and joking and taking cell phone pictures of themselves together, and it was adorable. The youngest nephew made sure to stay around them and bug the everloving shit out of them (is it wrong to use the term “cockblock” when talking about your youngish nephews? yes, yes I think it is), so I got a good kick out of that. They are growing up too damned fast for my taste but it’s fun to watch it happen.

This is the one family heirloom that my sister and I might actually eventually fight over. We have always called it “the umbrella chair,” but I think it’s actually called a canopy chair. This chair always kept a prominent spot in my mother’s mother’s house (trailer) while I was growing up. Snagging a spot in this chair during family gatherings was always a tough job, as everyone always wanted to sit in it. Its red velour and tiny little brown thatched roof were like a big ol’ retro hug. I want that in my house some day, even though the upholstery needs a major overhaul. This thing has been sitting in my parents’ loft for years, sadly neglected.

Frown.

Also, if the title of this post puts a song in your head, then I hope that means you loved the show as much as I did when I was a kid.

I promise there will be less pee-related posts going forward.

I think.

1. Both take their coffee black with an ice cube.

2. She spent some time in Alamogordo, New Mexico, while my grandfather was stationed at Holloman back in the ’50s; he was born in Alamogordo back in the ’70s.

3. She scolds me if my hair gets in my eyes or if my sleeve hems cover my hands; he scolds me when I chew my cuticles.

Okay, so maybe it’s a stretch. But I’m noting it here for when I inevitably find out that we are all, in fact, part of one big family.

My dad is a snorer. A robust Olympian of a snorer. The kind of snorer who can shake walls and summon earthquakes with his tracheal vibrations. For years I suffered through family vacations spent sleeping in the same room as my parents. As soon as dad would nod off — which never took long, as damn near everyone in my family is more or less narcoleptic — I knew that was all the wrote, and at best I’d get a couple of broken hours of sleep that night. I buried my face in pillows and shoved earplugs into my head and pitched unholy but silent fits at the injustice. I just couldn’t understand why Dad couldn’t just not snore so I could sleep. It seemed so simple.

Aaaaand then I grew up and into a snorer too. I didn’t even know it had happened until I moved in with my boyfriend in college and he got the pleasure of discovering it and letting me in on the secret. Except, truthfully or not, he told me he thought it was cute. So I always just sort of imagined that I cooed adorably in my sleep a little every now and again, and that my breath smelled of roses and my drool turned into diamonds when it hit the pillow.

Since then I have had multiple people break the awful truth to me again and again: I am a snorer, and it’s not cute, and did I know I sometimes sound like I am going to die mid-slumber?

You win this round of Lesson Learnedness, Universe.

In the intervening years, Dad learned that he has sleep apnea, which is a cruel sleep disorder in which you are sleepy and tired all the time, but the time you spend sleeping is so choppy thanks to your inability to breathe properly that you don’t get any rest at all. Hence being tired all the time. He wakes up dozens of times an hour, every hour, to try to regain his breath. The doctors put him on a CPAP machine years ago, and it took him a long time to get used to it, but it seems to be helping a bit. Since then, mom’s gotten diagnosed with sleep apnea too. And Grandmaw. The snoring scourge has been somewhat tamed by large, expensive, unsexy apparatuses that are not unlike nighttime gas masks. My (very brief, very digital) research leads me to believe that sleep apnea/snoring is at least partly inherited, and exacerbated by things like being overweight and a fondness for cheese and booze. OH HOORAY.

Recently I have been feeling real sheepish about my snoring problem. See, there is this guy I’ve taken a real strong shine to who occasionally finds himself in my house overnight, and he very often has to get up early for work. My bedroom is quiet — perhaps too quiet — so any rattly peep I make is amplified, causing this guy to lose precious minutes of REM time. I have told him to just nudge me or move my head when I start snoring and I’ll stop. This is mostly true. But I can’t ask him to be the snore police all night. Which is why when I felt him nudge me in the wee hours of this morning, I just moseyed on out of the bedroom and took to the couch. It was a blow to my ego — I mean, I’m still trying to impress this guy, not make him lie awake, cursing my existence — but I’d much rather feel a little embarrassed than lie there and ruin his entire night and the entire next heavy-eyed day.

So obviously I need some kind of soothing, noisemaking something-or-other in the bedroom that will help offset the noise I make. (Frankly, I miss my old apartment’s rumbly loud window AC unit, which did double duty as a cat-mewling masker.) But then what? Lose weight? Liposuction my neck fat? Tracheotomy (Nick’s suggestion)? Give in and go to a sleep clinic and see just how bad my problem is? Ugh. I really don’t even want to know how bad it is, and I’m too stubborn to give in to the CPAP right now, despite how it will probably fix all my problems and cure futurecancer too.

But I really don’t want to run that very sweet man out of my bed either.

For once I actually had July 4 off work. That only happens every few years, so I decided to make the most of it and head to Saltillo to take part in the annual grilled-meat-and-pyrotechnics-a-thon. A fun twist this year is that I somehow convinced the manfriend that he should get in on that shit and come with me. So we took off as early as we could coax ourselves to Sunday (think 2 p.m.), armed with a bag of margarita fixins and a big bowl of chicken salad I had made.

I haven’t taken a boy home to meet the family in … a long time. So naturally everyone acted like the zoo was getting a new animal and everyone wanted a chance to come gawk at it. Within seconds of arriving, we had a margarita in our hands and moonshine had been shoved in our faces. My dad had teased me mercilessly leading up to Sunday, seeing as the manfriend is from Jersey and has been dubbed a full-on Yankee. But everyone was on their best behavior (read: they were goofy as ever) and I was so unbelievably relieved and happy to just sort of watch as everyone got along really well. Even — especially! — through gun show-and-tell time!

Maybe I also felt a little happy because as soon as we got to the house, I started pawing through the medicine cabinet for some Tylenol to knock out my lingering headache (**coughhangovercough**), and since it was kind of hectic and everyone was talking at and around me and I was checking back to make sure the manfriend wasn’t being ambushed and it was just chaos, I accidentally popped THREE TYLENOL PMS instead of actual regular don’t-fall-asleep-instantly Tylenol. My nervous brain did not even register why the pills I was putting into my mouth were blue. As soon as I realized my mistake — made on an empty stomach, no less — I began thinking I should make myself puke, but my sister seemed to think I’d probably already absorbed the medicine. And she was right. Shit got real trippy then, and I set about occupying myself the rest of the evening so that I wouldn’t fall asleep. This involved a LOT of coffee and M&Ms. And a lot of sympathetic looks from the manfriend, who was probably worried that I would fall asleep and leave him to the wolves. It was not unlike being in a Nightmare on Elm Street movie. Whatever you do, do not close your eyes.

But I mostly kept it together. Well, I stayed awake. I was pretty unable to comprehend complex sentences (people would talk to me and it just seemed soooo faaast) but my emotions felt super squishy and nice. The fireworks were pretty awesome, especially this one set called Chicken on a Chain. Yes, I don’t know what the hell that means and even when I was on sleepy drugs, it didn’t make any damn sense. But they sure were pretty.

Monday I got up early thanks to phone calls from the manfriend, who was stationed downstairs to sleep while I was upstairs (my parents are at least consistent in their old fashionedness). He wanted a tour of Saltillo, which I gave him in all of ten minutes. Then we headed out to Savannah to go to Walmart. I told him all the ridiculous hometown stories I could muster. Yes, including the one about the local decapitation lore. I am a fucking charmer. We ate delicious and greasy ground beef-based meals at the Worley Bird Café (named for Savannah’s current most famous export) and came back to Saltillo for more time with the family. The manfriend is such an unbelievably good sport, even when he was informed that because I have referred to him as “manfriend,” everyone else has started calling him “Manfred.”

He’s a catch, I tell you.

Zinnia grown from a bag of second- and third-generation seeds my mom kept from her own garden.