'Cause no matter how far away you roam

I'll be thinking of them...

So, the battery story ended like this: It wasn’t the battery that was the problem.

I didn’t get out to get a new one so Dan brought one home. It’s a good thing because imagine my frustration had I made a mission of it and then realized it wasn’t the battery at all. Goddamn Motherfucking Frustrated, that’s what I would’ve been. GMFed.

Turns out there is something wrong with the opener’s receiver or something...I don’t know, I lost interest. Dan called our landlord and the situation is pending. (I will miss the magic of the landlord bat phone should ever we buy a house). When I first started writing the Goddamn Motherfucking Battery entry it was titled, “The Psychology of a Monday Morning” because there was more to it than my simply verbally swatting at Dan for being a Goddamned Motherfucking Mosquito buzzing in my ear with his barrage of questions. (Words must be chosen carefully when spoken before I’ve had my coffee. This was in our vows.) Mostly it was the stuff of two people who could’ve used one more day in the weekend. (It was also a little bit the stuff of, Are we still having this conversation? Just write it the fuck down. And also the stuff of, Didn’t I say months ago that we really ought to figure out how to work the code in case we lose the opener? And, if I’m being fair to Dan, it was also the stuff of, My Darling Lola, it must be hard being so right all the time.)

Bottom line is we’ve been able to get into the garage because my brain somehow retained the four-digit code the woman who had the garage before us assigned it (It is hard, my oft-wrong Danny) and for some reason it's working now. I don’t know why I’m even still talking about the goddamn motherfucking garage opener. Maybe so you’ll finally rest easy tonight knowing that Dan and I are no longer separated from our crap.

And we're getting our extra day this weekend.

Remember this little trip from last year ?

Well, Dan really liked the whole Christmas card/shopping getaway so this time we’re heading up to North Conway which is just about two hours north of where we live. My family rented a place up there every February vacation when I was a kid and those trips were a lot of what got me to pick New Hampshire when I decided to move from RI all those years ago. It’s funny though---I went there every year as a kid but have maybe been there three times in the last twelve years of living here. Not sure why. I’m looking forward to the getaway, though I know there will be some sad turns down Memory Lane.

It’s just how it goes. The first Christmas without both my parents on the planet. The shock surrounding my dad's death is fading, leaving only the throb of loss. I miss my mom every single day, that never fades. It's even more pronounced during this season. I was so the kid who packed all my dirty laundry into the car and blasted “Home for the Holidays” as I set out for my parents’ house every December. Home for the Holidays was my mom. It was her huge greeting---”My Laura is home!”---from the table when I walked into her kitchen. It was my Dad coming in because he heard my mom’s excitement and asking if I wanted him to put on a fire. Home for the Holidays is the saddest thought to me now because there is no such thing anymore. I was lucky to have had it, I know. And I am lucky for Dan, my home now, but Home for the Holidays is another loss in all of this. So I can’t pretend this season doesn’t have a sadness to it now for me. It’s a constant chest ache even during moments of joy.

So, I know there will be some of that this weekend especially as I see the old spots where my family went cross-country skiing or where I can remember my dad breaking out the video camera and my mom doing head counts of all us kids and our friends. And Dan knows that---I think he wants it for me even. He’s the one who booked the place and then got on me to make an appointment for a massage while we are there. He just gets it---all seven hundred emotions I feel at once. How the good days are ones where I cry because it means there’s release and a break from fighting all of it back.

He’s my Home For The Holidays now. No Goddamn Motherfucking pressure, Boo.

(Pretty snow pictures to come if there is pretty snow up there! If not, pictures of dirty side-of-the-road snow to come!)