You might be a parent if, when dripping with chunky vomit that is not your own, it isn’t even your primary concern.

Or, I suppose, you might just be really drunk.

Yep, we got a visit from the Vomit Fairy again. I really hate that guy. Rebekah’s been going all Linda Blair everywhere. I must say that I’m really impressed with the spread she manages to get out of what must logically—if not by appearance—be only a couple of ounces. Poor little thing just looks so stunned when it happens.

Cough. Urp. BLEAAARRRRRGGHHH!!!SplOOOOshh…

That’s been my last 24 hours or so. But it does remind me of a funny travel story. And by funny, I mean horrible and nerve-wracking, but, hey, it happened a couple months ago so I can laugh about it now.

Or at least ride it for a journal entry.

So, back in November, we’re headed to Virginia for a week. Getting the kids into the car takes longer than expected (doesn’t it always? See, we even EXPECT that and STILL it takes longer) and we leave the house at 4:08 instead of 4. Relax, my wife tells me. We could have left at 4:30 and still been on time. My wife, knowing me, has lovingly lied to me about what time we needed to leave. I might have to admit that it is effective, even if duplicitous. Anyway, we’re making our way to the airport as rush hour is getting underway. Rebekah, having just woken up from a nap and it being close to dinner AND having not eaten much for lunch, is hungry. I’d grabbed the bananas on the way out the door because, face it, those suckers weren’t going to last the week. So, she eats one happily in the car seat and Reed has one. A little later, Amy starts in on one and Rebekah starts raising cane from the backseat. She saw Mommy having something and—hey—she didn’t have one! So, presuming she’s still hungry, we give her another banana. And she downs it. Like, we had to make sure she didn’t eat the peel.

We’re on the interstate exchange about ten minutes from the airport when I realize: Oh Shit. Yeah. That’s right. I capitalized it. It was that kind of Shit. We’d forgotten the car seat for the airplane.

Now, for those of you uninitiated in child air travel, ‘car’ seats are actually designed for land yachts. SUVs, minivans and such. Frankly, they’re motherfuckin’ big-ass things. I had to search to find one that would fit behind the driver’s seat rear-facing in our car, a family-sized sedan. Needless to say, these things simply will not fit in an airline seat. So, we’ve got this spare travel seat that is really minimal and fits in the airplane seats. We’d done 30+ flights with this thing without a problem.

Only, now, our problem was that it was still at home.

Shit. (See, still capitalized.)

So, I take the interstate exchange in the other direction back to our house. I am hauling. We do some mental calculations and can just make it back in time to get checked-in at the airport. I take the back, curvy way to our house, skid into the driveway, snag the seat, repack the trunk (shoving a bag on my wife’s lap so everything would fit), hop back in and peel out for the airport.

We’re slinging through the turns (here, my wife refers to me as ‘Mario Andretti’) when a curious sound comes from the seat behind me. I glance up into the baby mirror to catch the first discharge of digesting bananas roll out of her mouth, down her front and into the seat cracks like so much fruit-n-bile lava. Seriously, she only ate two bananas, but it was more like ten that came out. In hindsight, that exchange rate is really good and I might consider feeding her hundred dollar bills next time.

At this point, I pined for the knowledge and skill to pull one of those high-speed, 180 degree turns. We went straight back to the house and dived out of the car. I handed Rebekah to Amy, who sprinted inside, stripped her, hosed her down and re-dressed her. Meanwhile, I began feebly trying to FIND the car seat under that mountain of puked produce while simultaneously trying not to vomit myself. I gave it up as a bad job, yanked the entire car seat out, set it in the garage ("That'll be nice after a week!" I thought aloud), fished out the travel car seat and snapped it in just as Amy was coming out with the clean-if-still-a-bit-damp daughter.

All the while, I’m pretty sure we’re boned regarding our flight. Which is, pretty much, the only flight that will get us to Virginia in time for my Dad’s wedding. Didn’t I mention that part? Yeah. He kind of postponed it from it’s original date especially so we could be there.

As I navigate the traffic, Amy prepares me that we, in fact, might not make our flight. Fortunately, I’m outdriving the feeling of screwed-ness for the moment at least. We, being the engineering types, strategize our attack for arriving at the airport. There’s no way we can all go to long term parking, get out shit on the bus, then get to the terminal, check our bags and make the flight. We decided to go directly to the terminal, drop off everything and I’ll take all the bags and the two kids in, drop off the bags and make my way to the gate/plane while Amy parks the car and hopefully gets to the gate in time, unencumbered by any bags at all and aided by all kinds of uber-traveler first class status.

Though, in retrospect I’m thinking she was secretly hoping to get to fly solo.

Anyhoo, even though it’s about 40 minutes before departure, I’m able to check my bags curbside, whisk the kids through security (and, seriously, my 18-month-old is not a terrorist; why must I take off her shoes? All the dangerous stuff is in the diaper, anyway.), meet Amy and make it to the gate just as they begin boarding.

Oh. And Reed? He slept through the entire ordeal.
 

I picked up the phone today and part of me got bent sideways inside. My loving Grandmother, telling me to turn on the TV. That's hardly ever a good sign, is it?

And there it was.

It's been nearly a decade since I graduated from Virginia Tech, but nearly every picture was of a place I'd been before, walked across dozens or hundreds of times. That shaky cell phone video that's everywhere? I know that place. The blood stain on the sidewalk? I ran past there to catch the bus at Burress. And having had several classes in Norris, I think that might have been the room I had Calculus in one semester. My wife used to live in Ambler Johnston.

Amy said she was fighting crying today, that in some way it felt eerily similar to that day in September five and a half years ago. And I agreed on both counts. We're midway between being college freshmen and sending a child off to be a college freshman, and it lends a weirdness I can't really grasp. Knowing that we'd always kind of daydreamed of our kids going there, of retiring and living near there, and knowing now that in many ways it is inexorably changed.

I waver between being sadly numb and being pissed at "The Media." Following this over the course of the day, it's disconcerting to see how the story bends to suit the angle of the hour. How very like a feeding frenzy a press conference becomes. Thinking everyone must have foresight as keen as their hindsight, journalists dog officials about why the campus was not locked down after the initial incident. One went so far as to note that, hey, high schools get locked down all the time. And I suppose if you went to a small, liberal arts college for your journalism degree, you might not realize that with 30,000+ people, hundreds of buildings and thousands of acres, locking down that campus is aking to shutting down a small city. Did it eventually get locked down? Yes, but only after the arrival of every nearby police force, the ATF and the FBI to assist. But while you get that kind of response for mass murder, I don't think Steger would have gotten it for the first two, do you?

Sadly, I think Steger, who has been a good president for Tech, will end up losing his job for not anticipating what no one could have conceived of prior to 10am today.

Amidst violent assertions of apocalypse and rapture, we have found love. We have found love under thunderous, rolling shouts, and we have found uncertainty in the interstices. We walk sweet and excuse ourselves twenty times too many when those tectonic plates shift, and the earth swallows us whole. But we are fine, because we are whole. We manage, because we are whole. We are true and warm and real and we are whole.

She says, "I don't often fear for my safety, but I did that night." Half of the room agrees with her. The other half, the we half, the us half, tell her it is an articulation of what is always present. What is always echoing. For centuries after a comet burns out, its light can be seen on earth. And our planet is riddled with craters, scars from the beatings it's gotten from being in the wrong place at the wrong time, looking the way it did. But it, like us, has managed. And though misshapen, it, like us, is still whole.

i've got three shifts left at my now-beloved, ragtag little bookstore, the first of which is presently taking place. it's about 90 outside and the shy is prematurely darkening with the threat of an evening summer shower. i've got a nice weird mix of johnny cash, madonna, and the beatles in the store stereo and i'm sighing a little.

i've been reluctant to start labelling my "lasts" in BK, but jane, my shrink therapist (in our, er, final session today) encouraged me to totally go with the one-lasts (italian ice, fresh juice at second helpings) and finals (stalk and walks past the williams/ledgers*) and going aways (dinners with friends). i think she thinks i'll bottle up my sadness at leaving new york and won't work through it if i don't pointedly acknowledge my imminent departure.

i pointed out that it seems a little silly to be all nutty with goodbyes when i will be back so soon - next week, in fact, just days after my official exodus, i will be back to take care of some paperwork for a grant i was found eligible for. and i'm going to take a bus up a little earlier so i can go to one last meeting of my gilda's club wednesday night group - the most regular and dependable part of my life over the past year. i wasn't quite ready for my last one of those last night.

overall, i think jane made some good points, but i just haven't really felt into the whole goodbye thing, other than about gilda's. i'm planning no going away party or last blowout before i leave the city. i have been talked a little into dinner with people tomorrow night at red bamboo, my favorite vegetarian place here, and that is really all i want. she pointed out that i'm not being a traitor to todd or my decision to move by being sad about leaving, which hit a nerve somewhere. i did warn him last weekend that should (ha) i get emotional in the next week during this transition, that it's not a reflection of him.

part of me is scared, too, of going into total meltdown mode as i did last year this time when i moved here. it was so scary and i felt so out of control; i can't help but think i would do most anything to not have that happen again. i figured everything would fall into glittery, sparkly place once i was finally in the place i had always wanted to be, physically. and i worry that try as i might to resist it, the persistently romantic side of me that tends to take over has the same pie-in-the-sky hopes for living with todd. i'm not trying to force pessimism on myself by any means, but rather trying to be realistic about my expectations of what will happen once i am where i have always wanted to be, relationship-wise.

raise your hand if you think i should just shut up and stop analyzing.

yeah, me too.

* i must note this report of my obsession's move out of brooklyn, also. i swear coincidence!

a post is long overdue. i've travelled a decent distance from my sad haze of the week, and it's important for me to put that out there. i don't want to present an entirely skewed vision of me or my life by posting primarily when things are not going peachy-keen.

i'm in VA for yet another weekend, ostensibly for justin and dre's wedding but also, of course, to see todd. i am constantly obsessing over this relationship and realizing how hard it is for me to simply just go with it. he makes me feel so secure and happy and i have more fun with him than anyone else, so i know it's not completely illogical that i want to spend as much time with him as i can, but i am constantly scared at the same time to allowing myself to get comfortable, lest it all just disappear. it's a shitty mindframe to have and i want so badly to work on it. sometimes emotionally i really feel like complete damaged goods.

the wedding was really quite lovely and of course worth none of my pre-event fretting. the weird high school reunion anxiety disappeared after a couple of the best mojitos i have ever tasted, and it was a really nice time. with time though and a few more mojitos, being surrounded by all this coupleStuff i got moony and eventually found myself in mingo flying back down I-95 to richmond to spend another night with todd. completely not my plan, completely not necessary as i had just spent 16 hours with him that day and the night before, but completely something i could not not do once i got the idea in my head.

are relationships always so scary, or is this just me and my post-losing-mom issues?

i don't want to only post about my relationship stuff, either. i know i do too much of that and i fear i'm just not as interesting to read as i once was. tripp recently said i am more boring now tht i don't talk about hooking up and sex and whatnot any longer, but i am certainly not going to post about that with todd (other than to say i am very satisfied and it is quite lovely). i guess i could write more about physical things when they didn't … matter. or when they weren't part of something important. does that make sense?

in theory, my self-aborption should decrease proportionally to the number of hours i will be at work now that i have accepted a job part-time at the independent bookstore in my neighborhood. also thinking number of interesting stories should conversely rise proportionately. but of course, math is not really my thing, is it?

gone through two flipouts today and it's only 5.30pm. one was financial - finding out my tax returns were not right and finding out the $951 rebate i was anticipating will probably not come to fruition. let's just say that my financial situation for the next few weeks has me in a raman-noodle-ville. you'd think at 28 i could get my shit together when it comes to money. but no. i spend frivolously, buy too much of everything, and lend when i feel its worth it.

the second freakout was yet another todd-related worry session where for approximately the hundredth time i wondered wtf i am doing planning on another year in new york when he is in virginia.

i hate that i am such an emotional responder. that the tears fall and the blood pressure rises and my stomach starts twisting and turning but it's always something just going on in my head. how i wish to be calm and level-headed, able to leap problems and difficult situations with a single bound, sans tears and hysteria. i react to things i am thinking about as if they are actual physical threats to my current well-being. once outside the original panic, i can see how ridiculous this is.

occasionally, though, these flipouts result in some insights. or maybe it's just talking to someone (who actually makes sense) during them. and here is my ephiphany. for so long i made decisions based on my mother's illness. where to go to school, where to live, basically what to do with my life. i don't regret these decisions. but after she died i didn't have that focus anymore, and it was something i kind of relied upon as a guide upon which choices were made.

weirdly, i think i yearn for that now. for some direction. someone or something to base my decisions on. i think i look at todd and his son and i subconsciously see the stability i want for myself. it's a ready-made family unit, to boot - something i obviously feel like i've been lacking without my mom.

and all this fights with my logical side that admits that it's far too soon to made any big decisions like moving based on a relationship that is, in its present entity, only a few months old. if a friend told me they were considering relocating to live with a new boyfriend who lived a few states away, i wouldn't think it was a good idea. but when it comes to me, i feel like this must be so different than that. but that's a trap i think everyone falls for - thinking their own situations and feelings are completely unique. it makes it less special to be the same as who other people have gone through.

what makes gives me right to assume that what i feel has to be bigger, better, stronger, more everything than something that happened to you?

this afternoon i heard my father cry for i think the third time ever. i called to check in and he told me that a family friend who was battling cancer passed away today. it was so strange to hear his voice break, and to know how unemotional he usually is. it was as though we had switched roles. i was calm and level. i don't know if that comes from not being as close to tom as my father was, or feeling as though i should to be the strong one when my dad needed the support. i'm not to used to being the tearless one, but i hope i was good to my father and gave him whatever he needed from me.