leaving on a jet plane

In twenty-four hours I'll likely be somewhere over Canada or the North Atlantic en route to the Amalfi Coast and a glorious week with Katie. We have had many adventures together and we are accustomed to lazing by bodies of water, although I'm guessing that Positano and Capri may be slightly more luxurious than floating in a rowboat at the lake at Bob White. And, since we are not underage and also have better jobs than we had in high school, the drinks will probably involve real wine instead of wine coolers. But beyond that, I expect it to be pretty much exactly the same as our usual summer shenanigans.

I spent today mostly prepping for the trip, although I did get up early and grab some coffee and write for forty-five minutes or so. Eventually, I went to the mall to return some things and buy some other things, and I was pretty much the only person wearing a mask because I don't want to get covid right before my trip. I also ran a few other errands, and then I stopped by Katie's to scan her vaccine card for check-in and we ended up talking for an hour and a half. Tomorrow's seatmate should be glad that we got some initial conversation out of the way, although we have barely seen each other in the last few months and so have many and varied possible topics to cover this week.

Then I came home, ate leftover takeout, and did a bunch of organizing / packing. I haven't actually packed, but I got out the clothes I plan to take, and I organized / winnowed my cosmetics and first aid stuff and all the other things that I vaguely remember taking with me on international trips. I'm so out of practice that I'm concerned I'm going to screw up crucial things - but I found my travel adapters, and I found melatonin and earplugs and an eye mask, and as long as I have my contacts / glasses / passport / credit card, I guess everything else can be solved on arrival.

And now, I really need some sleep so that I can make the last push tomorrow before we head to the airport - goodnight!

i gotta stay high all the time to forget i'm missing you

Allow me to start by saying that Katie is the oldest of best friends and the best of old friends, and that I shall love her until the bitter end. She is also a wonderful person with a hugely generous heart, and I enjoy watching how she is passing that on to her daughters. No matter how many miles separate us, I look forward to many future visits, and I hope that we grow to a fabulous old age together -- one in which we can still compare fashion notes, ogle firefighters, and reminisce about how awful junior high was, preferably while drinking delightful cocktails and wearing dark glasses and telling kids to get off our lawn. I've loved spending time with her this weekend, and I can't wait to come back.

That said, toddlers are fucking monsters sometimes.

I woke up at five a.m. to shower so that I could assist in the get-out-the-door process (where my assistance was mostly limited to eating the scrambled eggs that James made, and making myself some iced coffee to survive the trip). We were headed to Pikes Peak and had tickets for the 8am train to the top, and we couldn't be late. The drive down was almost lovely - the sun was coming up, and there was no traffic, and there was the possibility of a great day ahead.

But then Julia threw up approximately ten minutes before we reached our destination (car sickness is no fun, as I know), which set things off on a swift decline. We made it onto the train (after some cleaning occurred), but I'm sure Julia wasn't feeling all that chipper, which was a bummer. The train ride up was really pretty - the scenery is gorgeous, with lots of waterfalls and rock formations and aspen, etc.

Pikes Peak itself, though, was a frozen hellscape. They had closed the highway up because of wind, if that's any indication...apparently the winds were gusting to fifty miles per hour (I believe it), and the windchill factor was 17 degrees. This was way too fucking cold. Also, at 12,000 feet, altitude issues kick in pretty fast, and I was feeling somewhat woozy and lightheaded by the end of our forty minutes at the top. The girls didn't wander outside at all, and we mostly spent the time huddled in the snackbar at the top, where James bought $11 lollipops out of pure desperation, and the temperature of my ovaries quickly dropped to match the temperature outside.

So then we took the train down, which was still lovely, and it was gorgeous in Manitou Springs by the time the train pulled into the depot. I was still feeling pretty delighted at this point, and we went to a brewery in town for lunch - the food itself was average, but I had a glass of wine and we sat on the patio and enjoyed the sun/shade, and that was all great...

...until we got back in the car and it was going to take almost twice as long to get home as it took to get there, and Julia threw up approximately ten minutes into the drive, and we all began to melt down. I shall draw a veil over the rest of it, because it's a memory best left behind, but suffice it to say that we got back to Katie and James's a little before four and promptly fell apart (and by that I mean the adults were all wandering around like soulless zombies and the children were refusing to acknowledge that they were tired).

At some point I realized I really needed to get out of the house or I was going to go mad (I'm not used to not walking, and also I had recklessly eaten a Kind bar and had part of a Sprite and ordered corn tortilla tacos for lunch, so I think my body was flipping out over corn/sugar). I thought about seeking out a wine store so I could take the edge off (recommended dose: two bottles), but thought better of it and went to Black Eye, where I restored my equilibrium with a dose of hipster life by sipping a cold brew iced coffee in an uncomfortable rocking chair (mission accomplished). James and the girls went on a walk and joined me for a bit, and then they left, and eventually I returned to the house and the remainder of my visit.

Katie was going to cook dinner, but I convinced her to order takeout instead, which I think was the right call. The girls stayed up relatively late since they weren't tired after the naps they took this afternoon, but eventually they went to bed and order was restored. Katie and I then retreated to the basement, where we watched the first half of the remake of 'The Man from U.N.C.L.E." However, we couldn't finish it since we're beyond tired, so I'll have to watch the rest of it myself.

And so ends my visit - it really was lovely, and I had a delightful time. Tomorrow it's back to the grind - and while my life hasn't seemed like a grind the last couple of months, summer is over and playtime is over, too.  San Francisco and a lot of writing await - goodnight!

everything that kills me makes me feel alive

I'm in Denver, enjoying the hospitality of Katie's guest room (which apparently comes with a free wakeup call tomorrow, since Anne, her four-year-old, has already proclaimed that she wants to be the one to wake Aunt Sara up in the morning). My trip was mostly smooth, albeit more eventful than I had hoped - I got to the airport early to have breakfast and get some leisurely coffee, which turned into very leisurely coffee when I found out that my flight was delayed by two hours. After talking to the gate agent, who told me that she had no idea that the flight was even delayed, and then suddenly said "I"m late!" and literally ran away from the gate like she was the fucking White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland, I was not feeling very good about my chances of getting out of SF today.

So, like a good road warrior, I used my phone app to secure a seat on a different flight before most people on my flight even knew it had been delayed. The new flight ended up leaving almost an hour before my old flight ended up taking off (the two hour delay stretched out another thirty minutes beyond that), so I felt pretty smug. I pampered that smugness by having a glass of sparkling rosé (I think I may be able to have rosé again - I was off it for awhile after having half of five bottles during my epic rosé bender on a memorable day in July), and then I got on the plane, where I slept for the first half and spent the second half hate-listening to the conversation next to me while working on formatting stuff for some book work I need to get done.

When I got to Denver, I took the new train from the airport to Union Station, and it was super convenient - and Union Station is really cute. Then I took a ten-minute Lyft from the train station to Katie's house - so the $9 train ticket + the $7 lyft ride for a total of an hour in transit (37mins train + 5mins waiting for lyft + 10min lyft ride) was way way way better than spending $50+ (or, if it's a blizzard, $300+) to sit in traffic for 45mins.

Katie was getting ready to go to a party when I got here - her nanny is getting married tomorrow, and they were going to go to the rehearsal dinner party tonight. I ended up crashing it with them, which I think was okay (I've met the nanny, whose name is also Katie, and she's the most adorably wonderful woman) - and if it wasn't okay, I still ate a million bacon-wrapped dates like it was my job to do so. The girls were of course super excited to see their nanny all dressed up and ready to get married, and it was really lovely to spend an evening in a backyard that isn't decimated by the cold, unforgiving ravages of #karlthefog. I've almost forgotten what it feels like to wear a sundress during the day that can transition to evening without the addition of tights/boots/cardigan/down jacket....

We stayed just long enough for them to cut some cake (which the grandma had baked last minute yesterday because she has some cake toppers that were used on her own parents' cake way back in the day and have been used in every other family wedding since, and she insisted on baking a cake for them - the cake was apparently fucking delicious, according to Katie and James), and then we came home and they put the girls to bed. Then Katie and I sat up and drank a bottle of wine and started our inevitable highly-detailed gossip about our birth county, which I'm sure James really appreciates (he mostly ignored us, with good reason).

But now I really need to sleep if I'm going to survive the sounds of reveille as played by the shrieking voices of Anne and Julia -- goodnight!