The real question is: what the hell do they feed their yellow jackets on the West Coast? I wanna know. 48 hours later, and I still feel like someone jabbed a hot needle through my knuckle. A knitting needle, if I'm not mistaken. What's up with that?

Well, I meant to audioblog while I was gone, but mostly I couldn't be bothered. Too much stuff going on, too little time. Waaay too little time.

I can barely remember the flight out, it seems like it was five years ago. Oh, wait. Air sickness, that's right. I wish I had known that was going to be the leitmotif of the weekend's symphony..."Here's Susan feeling sick on the plane, here's Susan feeling sick on the train...in the car...on the plane again...at dinner...in bed...at the park...at the wedding..." What a fucking waste of energy, an endless fugue of illness and pain.

Anyway, despite that, it was an easy trip to Portland, and an easy trip to Sacramento and then Chico from there.

I think Friday went okay. Well, right--I think my heart stopped when Catherine announced Susana's arrival, but CPR wasn't actually required, so that's okay. It ended up being a pretty nice, low-key evening of shopping and dinner and chatting. I managed to spill coffee on myself (twice by Monday, in fact), but I mostly just thought it was funny.

But, yeah, I wish I could have most of Saturday back to do over. There were really good parts of it, like walking in Bidwell Park, but by the time the wedding rolled around, I was so sick all I wanted to do was curl up in a ball and cry. It should be easy to spot me in the wedding photos--I'm the one who looks like she's about to pitch forward and crack her head open on the concrete. It's really too bad, the wedding was at the most beautiful spot up on the Skyway, but I honestly think Susana enjoyed herself more than I did, and they weren't even her relatives. Well, I've hidden away a few moments from the day to take out later and enjoy them, and hopefully the rest of it will just fade from memory after a bit.

I am so fucking un-butch, I almost asked Susana to drive us home from the wedding. But I probably would have burst into tears, and that would have been absolutely humiliating. It's kind of funny now, I had this raging dialogue with myself the entire way down the canyon, telling myself "You cannot wreck the car. You cannot. You have your wife, your mother-in-law, and your greatest friend in here, and you will hold it together and get them home. You CAN.NOT.WRECK.THE.CAR." And I didn't. Didn't hit that 'possum, either, so it all worked out okay in the end.

And when we got home, we watched Roger and Me and quite frankly, once you've contemplated life in Flint, Michigan, it doesn't matter how crappy you feel--your life can only look perfect in comparison.

Oh. Someone should have reminded me of that on Sunday when I was bitching at Catherine. I could have used it. I know everyone else was still in wedding mode, but I had my eye on my watch the entire time, watching the rest of my weekend tick away. Watching, and getting more and more annoyed because I wanted to be out of Chico, on my way south, a lot earlier than we were. I am so high-strung, I don't know how Catherine stands it. I didn't even begin to relax until we hit Sacramento.

I'm not sure when I totally relaxed. Definitely by Monday morning. When the alarm went off, I had the passing thought that I should get out of bed and take a shower before anyone saw my hair, but that was pretty quickly replaced with an "Ah, screw it, I'm too tired." And ten minutes later, S. did me the favor of pointing out that it was indeed sticking up all over--a true friend :)

The interesting thing about the internet that I'd never really thought about before--it masks motion. E-mail is static, web pages are mostly static, and you just don't get the sense that someone is actually moving around behind those words. Sitting and typing, more likely. Well, I discovered that Susana is a perpetual motion machine. I saw a bit of it on Friday and Saturday, but wow, once she hit her own front door, it was amazing, especially since I was still in "don't make me move" mode. It is absolutely fantastic to watch someone inhabit their own space, it really is (even if it was a bit dizzying to watch her toast a bagel). But what *really* got me was that her rapidity was punctuated by these moments of absolute stillness when she was thinking. I would ask a question, and everything would just freeze for a few seconds. The first couple times it happened, I thought it was just that she hadn't heard me or something, then I realized, Oh my god, she's actually trying to give me a well-thought out answer. How cool is that? Cool, and for some reason endearing. I don't know, I can't explain it. Just a completely opaque and silent moment when I have no idea if she's going to say yes, no, or fuck off, like she's drawn into herself examining the possibilities. I don't know, just very, very cool.

Needless to say, Monday was my favorite day of the whole trip. At one point, I was trailing after her (if I am ever cast in a Hollywood film, it will be as the sidekick, eternally drifting along behind the protagonist), heading toward her pickup, and I suddenly channeled myself at 10, 11, 12, when I used to follow my cousin, Sheryl, around in this hero-worship sort of manner, all excited because she was going to take me along where ever she was going, and maybe if I was good and quiet and didn't sing off key, she would let me stay on. All that was missing this weekend was the 8-track player in the truck. Otherwise, I was totally there for a few seconds.

I just needed more time. Time to not be sick, time to get rid of my family obligations, time to just *be*. Hopefully some day. I don't know, as I was standing in Liz's yard, trying not to look like an idiot because everyone was staring at me, I felt just like an angry three year old, robbed of my favorite toy (C: Why are you crying? S: I don't want her to go! Make her come back!).

Yeah. Anyway. I'm trying to console myself with the fact that I should get a lot of mileage out of the broken toilet handle over the next couple of years.

It is SO COLD in Indiana. Completely cruel to give me sunny, warm California for a few days, then plunge me into freezing temperatures. The flight from St. Louis, which was delayed *forever* came sans heater. We did manage to get home five and a half hours before I had to be at work, and now that I'm home from there, I'm getting in some quality time with the cats. Life ain't all bad.