What I don't really want, I just sorta want it today because I'm stressed.........

I look down at my check. This is a mistake, has to be. Way too much money. I mean, I often feel that way about how much I'm paid, but I know they intend to overpay me that much. This can't be what they intended to give me. This is....................

I uncross my legs and slide my feet into my shoes. I grab my cds, my hermit crab tank, my favorite coffee mug ("Joey") and my purse. I leave this blog post open on the screen and the front door open.

I pause in the doorway, blow a kiss, then get in my car and drive home.

I throw only my favorite clothes in a small bag, but all my warm socks and scarves. The fish get carefully scooped into a smaller travel tank, and I add the hermit crabs I have at home to the small plastic tank I took from work. "Fritz and Lily, meet Raymond and Bradley." I cover the bird cages and buckle them into the backseat of my car, wedging the small fish tank inbetween and the hemit crabs get placed sideways on the floor behind the passenger seat. My bag goes in the truck, and the cats find their traveling spots, Dulce under the seat, Maximus on the passenger seat, paws up on the window to look out. I make one last walkthrow of my apartment and take my coffee stirring spoon, Anabelle and a few framed photos. I lock the apartment tightly, reconsider for a sec, re-enter and find that can of spray paint left over from some project, write "The Ark" on the back bumper of my car, then re-lock down my apartment.

There's no way that pulling our of my parking lot, my street, my little town, couldn't hurt me a bit. It will hurt my little home a bit too, but it understands, because it loves me back.

I drive east for a bit. Nothing like the desert in the evening for thinking of everything and nothing. I stop for a bit and just kick the sand under my feet and gaze at the stars. The birds get used to the car, and sing happily. Maximus gets out and sniffs around, I sit down and cuddle Dulce into peace and contentment. She is calmer and happier for the rest of the trip. So am I.

We get going until about midnight, when I check into a roadside hotel, impersonal and simple. I arrive in Albuquerque and drive past my Gramie Dude's place. She's there, she and Patrick are telling each other stories while he continues the endless foot rub that is their marriage. I watch through the window for a few minutes, but I don't go in. I don't need to. I go light a candle in the Catholic church in the old part of town, the one that brought me a strange sense of comfort when I lived there, even though I'm not catholic. I sit in the confessional and tell the kind priest that I have already done all my confessing in the privacy of my own heart, and he gives me his blessing and leaves me alone in with my thoughts for an hour, where I have the most hopeful cry session I've ever had. I when I walk out of the church, I am so light I have to work to keep the skip out of my step.

My little "Ark" car and I wind north, into Santa Fe, where I buy a silver belt that makes me stand tall and throw my hips around, and feel strong from the very core of me.

I wander through little Rocky Mountain towns, and settle in the most obscure corner of Wyoming I can find, where I'm more likely to run into Harrison Ford than anyone I know.
I rent a small room in a hotel. Maybe I work at a small town diner, maybe I just hang out there all day. I get all the old people to tell me their life stories. The whole story, the long version. I cover the walls of my hotel room with postcards of the place I'm actually in. Total immersion. They grow to like me very much.

Then one day, I kiss them all and tell them a part of me will always live there with them, and they should keep my seat in the diner for me. I drive west to the coast and then let the ocean's edge steer me home, unhurridly.

When I arrive home, I dust off my old life, literally and metaphorically, if that can be done.