Everyday We're Shuffling

I only lost it once over the holidays so I consider it a win of a deployment season.

Staying with family feels like coming home. But you can't go home again, "they" say, and I think I see why. You've changed. They've changed. Everything else has changed. That's normal, and I seriously was reminded of that quote while watching The O.C. for the third time and it's funny because the dumbest character says it.

You grow up. That doesn't mean you handle everything with logic and grace. When I open the gates even a little, often the flood comes out.

I was telling Jules again the other day how it's OK to cry. She says, I know but I don't like to cry. Hm. Yeah. Good point. It does suck. I pretty much never feel better. Maybe mentally but not physically and that kind of ruins it.

I miss my co-parent the most. Because we can still talk, text or email, I get my best friend back now and then. But because he's not here to parent, I don't always get his dose of a second opinion when I need it. (Though I did make him put them to bed the other night, listening to his stern voice through the phone while I cleaned up.)

I was coaxing Cole out of my parents' house to go to my siblings' over Thanksgiving break, and it just built and built and I had told my parents to wait in the car, and Jules the peacemaker had stayed over with cousins, and he was fighting me so hard. I wanted him to see he was hurting me, making it hard. So I let myself tear up. His face softened but he didn't budge much. We sat staring at each other and breathing heavily. Me with tears streaming, wishing my husband and his dad was there with us right then and now instead of serving everyone else.

It seemed like everyone always loves hanging out with Jules but not Cole.

Cary would've said, it's just because he's only three. He's not old enough to do full-on sleepovers and be more manageable yet. Remember it's us against the world.

However I couldn't think of that in the moment, on my own.

I couldn't remember how much I love that sweet, wild child exactly as he is at every stage unconditionally always and forever. Couldn't vent. Couldn't download. Couldn't be embraced and supported the way only his father knows how to do best. Not perfect but best.

Yet I'm tired. So when we returned to sunny California from my homey northwest, my angel of a mom-in-law and Grammie-in-law watched the kids while I went to the spa, sitting in the foggy steam room till my eyes felt better finally and where I couldn't even see the sporadic other person in the tiled space.

Then I lay on a pool chair while reading as I watched people ice skating at The Del in bikinis.

Everything isn't so bad.

We all got back in our beloved routine filled with tiny San Diego excursions which breathe life into all of us. Things then continued to get jacked up by random COVID scares. Which always give my heart palpitations and stress despite my best efforts but also moments with my children I wouldn't have had otherwise – which I know one day I'll wish to live twice. I want off this ride but it's life so I guess I don't.

We saw family again another weekend in my husband's hometown. I ran into old college friends while wearing Grammie's coat since she was worried I wouldn't be warm enough at the park (she was right), which was adorable but probably not the coolest item.

Donkeys were everywhere from the Loma Linda hills so Grammie and I dodged their poop with the kids.

I drove out of the way with the kiddos to hit up and stock up at my fave Mexican spot in grad school and realized I feared for our lives. The kids had a blast though taking quarters from a determined homeless man to work the games and vending machines.

Cary's mom came down so I could go to my work holiday party for free but traffic was murder and I still had to leave early to get them from school and daycare. However for that one hour it was so nice to talk shop and not deployment or kids too much. Though when I did with Liz we commiserated over our tough boys, and my heart swelled and kept healing with mutual understanding.

We got matching really cute Christmas pajamas for once this year but mine looked funny on me, Jules' ended up being too tight she admitted though she powered through for 24 hours, and Cole's were adorable but he didn't have the patience for the buttons or the heat. We got some of my favorite, horrible pics though. #worthit

Then Jules got a light-bright type art thing for Christmas and it looks cool in the dark, so while I'm cooking Christmas morning breakfast she calls me and Cole in to check it out. It's dark and needs to be darker; Cole closes the door. We all admire the lit-up drawing. I turn around with spatula in hand to find the door locked from the outside. Shit. I panic for 15 seconds. Jules says it's OK, I can go out the (high, tiny) window. My friends are out of town. One neighbor I know too. I picture us all burning to death from our breakfast or at the very least the fire department showing up or CPS again. LUCKILY, I had my phone on me. So I called my other, closest neighbor (the couple who takes my barrels out and in every Wednesday and it breaks my heart with glee), and she follows my instructions to get in the still-locked-from-the-night house and save us all. Not even making me feel bad. Then brings over goodies they had gotten the kids and I.

God bless them.

I fix the doorknob, figuring out how to turn the knob around the right way with a Phillips and some jimmying. *pat on back*

I fall into bed every night.

Though I hate going to sleep because when I wake up, Cary won't be awake till later afternoon. It's sad and lonely when the person who cares most about us isn’t conscious enough to care.

And what is it about being a parent maybe that makes me cry in every damn movie?

Cary must miss the kids so much.

And we keep losing people in real life. Which breaks my heart for everyone involved.

My heart feels like it can't take much more. Then it can. Like the Grinch's.

I can't go home because I'm this different person who cries in movies and has heart palpitations and stress without being an essential worker or working on Wall Street, but also shuffles through the day rock star style. I think of my Grams sometimes, who would come help these days if we could live and feel good forever, and if anything she would tell me she's proud of my own bravery.

Even though bravery can be selfish, giving can be self-serving, and serving can be a sacrifice that's too much, I still think, Fly Navy. We're almost home.

In Omnia Paratus: Not So Much

Cary screenshotted us from Okinawa.

A newsletter I get through work has great quotes. They usually make me laugh, or feel happy or encouraged. But this one edition brought up a Latin quote from Gilmore Girls – "in omnia paratus." Or "ready for all things" essentially. I liked it. And then I didn't.

We felt ready for deployment. We were. Prepped to the point of creating ease and paving the way for help and peace of mind. You can't be ready for all things. No one is always coming. Yet we're putting pavement beneath and behind us every moment.

The snails there are huge.

I watched a movie about bears with the kids, and aside from the amazing things mama bears do – like mamas in real life – I mainly resonated with their hibernation, which works for a lot of necessary recharging especially at the beginning of deployment. Then there are the days I commit to two birthday parties for different reasons and stumble into bed feeling tired in my bone marrow.

Jules: Are you gonna be back for my birthday?

Cary: No I'll miss your birthday. And Cole's birthday... And mama's birthday. But I'll be back for mine.

Jules laughs.

For the first few weeks when I'd hear the neighbor's gate or ours when something's delivered, I couldn't help but jump inside thinking it was him.

Cole got potty-trained in the nick of time. Not before pooping at the same friend's house a second time and wondering if pink eye was coming for us this time.

I also don't love when we get home and they didn't eat enough hosted dinner, so now I have to give them second dinner before bed. I don't do it the next time.

With this friend – who dealt with the threat of poop again and kids complaining the sausage is too spicy while falling out of their chairs and screaming – I discuss signing up for things. Swim this time since she's been jumping through hoops like I had several months before. Why is signing kids up for stuff so complicated sometimes? We ponder.

I now drive a minivan. It's my favorite minivan and green and ours with an affordable Nevada plate and doors we don't have to interact with nor seats we have to squish into with guests, but it still killed a little of my soul and chipped away a little of my identity. I wanted to rage against the minivan. But it's a vehicle. And I'm practical. So it's me and can handle the mountains we visit. I buy knock-off expensive sneakers six months later and feel a little bit better too.

We're in the van, just Jules and I heading from after-school care to get Cole from daycare.

Jules: I'm so glad I was born.

The best weekends with this sassy angel and my sour patch kid are spent on the couch with two breakfasts in a row plus an outing where we breathe life into the truck that sits lonely all week. In the evenings or in bed I decompress, sitting in the quiet for a moment and listening to my breath or heart that I think beats too fast these days, feeling solely responsible for them and feeling every pulled muscle from the day. Exhausted but wanting to look at pictures and videos of them on my phone like most parents. Needing alone time but feeling lonely.

Sometimes when I share a schedule idea with the kids... "How about we eat and get ready then go to the library then the park."

Cole says: I like your plan, Mom!

I learn only military spouses understand.

At work the single parents and parents and married couples and former service members or spouses relate. At work, without operating on anyone or operating an aircraft, it's a break and a lovely workout for my brain. It's something that's mine alone, that I can care about with both a selfish and selfless, passionate level of service and skill.

At opposite points in the day, besides the weekend vegetation or sense of adventure, the kids are there and then not there. I can't soak up every detail enough during the day. I want to drink them up and feel them inside me again, keep them safe. However I don't want to be wiggled and kicked against or jumped on, spilled on, sneezed on.

The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don’t know. Albert Einstein.

We all miss Butters.

I want to prove them right. That we can do it.

We're running out of gas and I'm getting used to the van fuel gauge. It's dangerously low suddenly on my way home from work, and I'm not sure exactly how many miles to the base gas station though it's near. After grabbing Jules and then pulling away from Cole's daycare I say I hope we make it.

Cole: "I believe in you, Mom!

Me too.

Old Town has been the best excursion yet.

Your Name Here.

Jules writes her name with a big, solid period at the end. So sure of herself it seems. I've noticed other kids do this sometimes as they learn to write and learn punctuation. I like the idea of thinking of ourselves with a firm, confident period at the end of who we are.

Potty training a boy, at least my boy, makes me doubt putting a period at the end of my name.

Anyone else experience that rush of adrenaline, ripping your kid out of a swing or off the couch, or out of the bath, at the hint they're pooping while attempting to potty-train? Then trip getting to the portable potty you brought to the park? Then find you're too late and now that you've pulled their pants down, it's worse than you ever imagined?

You really learn what good friends are when your kid poops their pants at your friends' house and you came unprepared.

Cole taught us over the last year he cannot be trusted to stop having fun to hit the bathroom.

We taught Jules about crying wolf. Spoiler alert: A wolf will petrify any kid into avoiding that. We may have forgotten briefly it eats the sheep and had it eat the boy, our voices slowing down to a quiet trail as we realized what we were doing, her eyes wide in the dark before bedtime, us curled around her on top of the covers. Oops.

There are many immature ways I still feel young but I'm nonetheless getting older (and wiser at an eighth of the rate). Old move: I got a pap smear for my birthday last fall. Immature move: I think I might start doing that yearly because I got a few extra "happy birthday's," giving my birth date to check in and so on.

Let's see, I watched Enola and The Queen's Gambit and fell in love with women all over again.

Oh – I got a new, full-time job! It's been great. Rewarding. Uses my skillset. Makes me feel like a grown-up. It also takes about 30 minutes to explain so I'll spare you.

In other literal news, I got the cover of Crown City Magazine again. In honesty, the key is the photo someone more professional took. Also got a Coronavirus at Christmastime feature for the Coronado Times. You can read more about my island Times life here if you're really, really bored – so these are basically some of my favorite people ever and I wish we could have writer get-togethers which they did before COVID and I arrived.

The writing and income life is good for once. If only I could make time to finish that pesky 30-something coming-of-age novel instead of blogging therapeutically.

I still like how I saw this on Twitter and thought, yep.

Anyone else have an Apple Watch and not know what to do with it? If you have one and do know what to do with it, please tell me. I'm tempted to donate it to someone who needs it. I still love you for getting it for my birthday, Cary, don't get me wrong.

Yet it feels like the giant blue pleather planner I bought when I was 12 and pretty much just enjoyed rewriting my homework assignments in my best (still really bad) handwriting and seeing a five dollar bill in the clear plastic pouch inside.

I proceeded to leave it in every store – racing back in a panic – when I put it down to check out an item.

Cary was gone for some training for a couple weeks recently. The C.B. Strike series on HBO MAX and frozen burritos got me though. Also my amazing mom-in-law. Grandparents may not replace your spouse. They may spoil your kids or not know where everything goes, or not know how to communicate every drop-off, pick-up and chore or errand like your more intuitive spouse after nearly 15 years of marriage. But they sure damn do make it easier when you have to change one less diaper, discipline one less time, deal with one less load of dishes or laundry, make one less even simple meal; and they provide that much more love.

Plus I didn't have to clean the microwave that was laughing at and taunting me. I wanted to shed a tear.

Because when your kids are getting in their car seats, talking incessantly or fighting, and you close the car door on their high, penetrating voices. And you pause. Walk as slowly as possible around to your own car door. It's one break. Adding a grandparent is a whole other one.

Then we drive home, Jules asking me about our our poor dead dog, girls marrying girls, me dying, God, heaven, giving birth (seriously all one in day)... And I’m like, I want them to ask and learn and find their way but also I’m just so tired and can’t even explain these things when tip-top. I mess up these conversations so much. Like I don’t have the answers, kid. Just be a nice person. But like tough when you have to be. Ugghh, good luck.

For some wins – what I live for – we watched Earwig and the Witch (also on HBO), the whole weird thing in peace, both kids rapt, me with coffee I made it all the way through without heating up. And we watched Frozen 2 for the millionth time (still so good) one night while they licked clean bowls of popcorn, also peaceful and laughing together in the near darkness because Jules makes it that way for a "special night" and we were close to her birthday – and I realized how much Cole is absorbing these days, talking about the "ice boat" and the "dark sea." And it's all worth it all over again and again.

Us toward the beginning of the pandemic,
getting ice cream and eating it in the traffic median. 😳

These Days Have Teeth

Cole escaped the gate outside our front door. I forgot to latch it in some hubbub, swore he was in our fenced yard, could hear him babbling and banging around. Nope. He had gone 200 feet to the nearest street corner, obsessed with all things vehicular. Oh my good Lord. My heart took the elevator shaft down when I couldn't find him. Springing down the sidewalk, Jules at my heels.

Strangers saved us yet again – but me feeling their hearts and minds, through their eyes, chewing on my soul with sharp, judgmental canines. I thanked profusely, dodged quickly, tried to show I cared the most and shuffled the kids back to the house – embarrassed – wracking my head for the error. Jules? Nope. Me.

The police stopped by (how long had Cole been chilling with these passersby?!). The officers kindly tried to make me feel a little better.

Why did I avoid apologizing to anyone?, I wondered later. Because it's my kid and I'm a good mom? Because I was stretched thin for the longest I've ever been? Because I felt enraged for all the wrongly judged parents, especially moms (let's be honest), especially military spouses or the like, especially these days?

Child Protective Services showed up a few days later, announcing themselves in startling clarity right when I had almost recovered from the lost child incident. My spirit plummeted all over again. My confidence was sapped all over again, trying to find it was probably like getting juice from a prune.

Work hit a distracted standstill, my appetite filled with nerves. Time was lost and a bunch of ache gained. I felt alone alone and like a failure in the HGTV Disneyland that was supposed to be my new home, the village that would help me with my kids and life when Cary isn't able to because he's out helping or preparing to help others.

I felt like the worst parent ever. When I know I'm not. It's a weird dichotomy. These days.

While I waited for a letter that would say the claim was unfounded, I went back near the corner to exchange numbers with a neighbor just in case it helped me feel better, the kids in tow. Jules was eating an apple she wanted to bring and Cole was wearing a fitting Mr. Mischief T-shirt. Make it better for yourself, I thought. And can and did. Notwithstanding a racing heart and worry about cowering to conflict.

In Fallon Jules didn't come inside right away when Cary got home from work one evening. People driving by called the police since apparently the light-glowing house with the front door half open wasn't a clue.

Wulp, I thought that Friday CPS announced themselves at our gate that boasted added security, we officially belong in a garbage can.

Hope no parents have an untidy house, drink alcohol, spank or have junk food around. Because you will feel less than enough even if none of that exists. And your kid will be woken from their nap. And your other kid will all of a sudden clam up. And you better pray it makes for a good wedding toast one day if your rascal survives that long.

I should've taken it more in stride. I should've shook it off sooner. 

Jules actually ran away from us in a Target once, thinking it would be a game while I had visions of someone snatching that tiny little person with the fuzzy hair and running out the front door.

Cole walked straight into the San Diego Bay the other day without his mini lifejacket on, thinking it would be a game too.

I treasure my kids. I'm also surviving them. That's OK.

Loved ones ease my mind. My friends accept me even when I text in weird teen shorthand. Like literally only five years ago my entire message trails were 14-year-old code since I apparently didn't have enough time to write out a complete word (shuttering I think, as a writer). So of course they understand a CPS visit.

One friend listened to me ball into the phone like we were kids again, as the straw had stacked up on top of me. Another said dads get a free pass on mistakes, moms get the authorities. One suggested this will totally be part of a speech at Carroll the Fifth's wedding. This childhood tribe is legit.

Though my buddies are all very different, they seem like they know exactly when to check in on me and how. My military squad can do that too, friends I'm lucky enough to live by again or new ones nearby who don't skip a beat. My heart rippled like a balloon starting to reinflate, slowly healing from all the teeth marks this year is leaving on my soul, many marks much shallower than other people's.

Sometimes I worry I'll have a heart attack or stroke while alone with the kids and they'll find me and panic and not know what to do. Or Cary will be gone and hopefully Jules will know what to do. A heart attack isn't out of realm as the last meal I ordered from Uber Eats left an oiled wood grease stain on a side table (and a chunk out of my wallet).

A bright spot in these months was a job offer. But I turned it down. In our situation, I don't think you could pay me enough these days to do technical writing with still little take-home after the needed nanny or tutor. The second income childcare wash is real precarious these days.

Another bright note: I ordered some scrunchies (so comfy) and a NYC T-shirt (gotta at least wear the dream) to save on shipping when I got sparklers for Jules – after I learned too late Cali doesn't sell fireworks. Thirty dollars later I had saved $10 in shipping. My mind is starting to go.

Cole also burnt his little hand on a sparkler even after a long lecture and with careful eyes. Not careful enough, the voices say. F^@$ off!

Digging through my drawers for other comfortable things to wear every day, I discovered I have several sets of basically yoga pants. Some with pockets! Cell phone-specific pockets! These pants have definitely proven themselves to me and I regret every bad thing I ever thought about them and hope they didn't hear.

I also started the curly girl method toward the beginning of the pandemic. Have you heard of this? Whenever I get low on something in the bathroom or closet, I resort to Instagram to see what items I've saved and might want to try – that aren't one million dollars. Through this I found there's a thing to treat your hair naturally and let its natural wave shine. It's nice but I'm never sure if I should leave the house looking like that.

Good thing because I was all ready to start remote kindergarten, mainly to write about it. Then some go-getter families I'll forever be in debt to started a pod and needed a fifth kid via Facebook. Yet prior to the pod life raft, Jules and I (and Cole) attended a school district parent night via Zoom.

Jules' little head popped over the kitchen bar with me, to meet the amazing teacher and other families whose thought bubbles I would've paid to see. It was so heartfelt but so hilarious. Jules waved, talked, realized no one was responding. She grabbed a toy to show, a banana to eat. Still got bored. Cole pulled me away. Jules and I came back to the screen. We discussed this crazy thing called a mouse.

Their computer experience is going to be so much different than mine was. As well as their nature one.

At the Point Loma Tide Pools Cole said, "Look, Mom!" He had stacked a rectangular rock on top of a larger rectangular rock. "Ah cool!" A few minutes later... "And who's your mother?" Oh crap. A nice older woman (alongside her older man counterpart), who are likely state park volunteers, said they can't have unnatural formations in the park.

"See those rock towers over there?" she said, pointing to the two carefully balanced, small towers of stones perched in holes of the beach cliff wall. "People build them out in nature but they're not natural." She then bent over with her walking stick sprawled to the side and used a hand to awkwardly knock over Cole's very flat tower.

My friend and I proceeded to weirdly tell our adventurous kiddos not to stack rocks.

You never forgive yourself for the real mistakes you make with your kids. But you can move on.

(Plus I love telling that rock story.)

Now I'm going to post this to social media and hopefully make someone else's teeth marks a little less deep.

Watching All The Way Down

Cary actually noticed its greatness first.

See it all from their perspective.
They were there every hilarious step of the way.

The Lion King 1 1/2 is actually really clever. Disney sequels aren't usually up to adult snuff. Jules and I (and Cole) watch endless movies and shows together (including all four of The Descendants*, which I can barely keep up with since I have to jump up constantly apparently for juice, milk, crackers, diaper changes, assistance fluffing pillows, you know).

And I keep observing of some productions: Wow, that was really creative. Now Jules has started saying that too.

"I just want to watch *insert something*. It's really creative. We can cuddle (liltingly)."

She knows me too well now.

I've entered an alternate reality that's beyond binge-watching. We're binge-living.

I love belting out 'Into the Unknown' from Frozen 2. Both my kids hate it when I do it. Which makes me love it more. You know when Tom Hanks shouts "I have made fire!" in Castaway? Well that's how I feel. "I am a parent!"

These are my weeks, probably like other people's weeks:

This is hard.

This is easy.

This is hard.

This is easy.

A year ago I was weighing how we could afford a co-op** in Brooklyn if we went to NYC next – if I somehow got a job there and Cary started flying commercially. Last time I almost sunk into my idea of the East Coast publishing high life, 9/11 hit right after my summer in D.C. I never know whether to feel lucky I missed catastrophe or whether I missed out on some life-altering experience for the better.

One day New York City or Paris or Seattle will get me, starring in my own romcom minus the rom and plus some years to my appearance. For now I'm content (cough cough) and trying to be tough living the comedy of errors that is Jules and Cole.

Turtles All the Way Down art print by Dianne Gage

Jules has taken to snails. Hunting them down and holding them captive, er, taking them as pets. Cole found one that had escaped – much to Jules' glee – then 20 minutes later he accidentally stepped on it and cracked its shell – much to her despair. She found an empty snail shell in our yard (read: a long-dead snail's shell) and somehow got the new, yet traumatized, snail inside it. Needless to say it didn't make it.

Jules often says when she grows up she wants to live in Fallon, Banana (she means Nevada). It has proven more successful than Coronado to her. Touché. She doesn't fully understand yet the beaches and endless sidewalks, as well as only remembers the going-places, the reservoir and pre-school friends and teachers. We used to go to this great Reno zoo and this supposedly breathtaking San Diego zoo has proven a letdown. Jules' first world problems are real AF.

When I get tired of watching with them, I've taken to reading alongside them – immersive mysteries and YA novels and a negotiating book or any other books my dad sends me.

I take endless pictures of the kids when we're not endlessly watching, which makes me look like a better mom than I am.

I have more time to blog now.

Work hours are dwindling as I was between jobs yet again since I decided to take a news desk job on the brink of a pandemic. I also bought a home in 2006. I make such good choices sometimes.

But slowing down to almost a standstill – when not getting up and down off the friggin' couch or scrambling to write a press release during naptime or movietime – hasn't been all bad.

"At some point in life the world's beauty becomes enough. You don't need to photograph, paint or even remember it. It is enough. No record of it needs to be kept and you don't need someone to share it with or tell it to. When that happens – that letting go – you let go because you can."

—Toni Morrison, Tar Baby, 1981 (or since I'm bearing all, I really read this in John Green's Turtles All the Way Down – recommended)

*On Netflix and 'Under the Sea' is a Descendants short story. Woot woot.
**The HOA will getcha.

The Bath That Made Us All Dirtier

A lot has changed since I had two kids we somehow named after minerals but spelled differently.

As Jules would say adoringly, in that "tiny town" I had many jobs – more jobs than usual for a military spouse.

I was a reporter before leaving that beloved paper (which taught me a lot) to take advantage of paid maternity leave and a marketing environment. I was laid off because that's how start-ups can go at first. So then I got a new gig out of Carson City that allowed me to work remotely mostly – and kindly continued to do so when our family was being stationed indefinitely in San Diego.

It's nice when the 9-5 is a grind – or when a kid gets sick or Cary has to go be a hero.

Yet then I see people in the flesh, and I throw myself into a rabid conversation of relatable laughing points and stories, AP style discussions or plans for lunch. I also start rambling about all the shows and movies I've watched or stuff read when work is slow or Cary is gone. Sometimes I feel bad for the listener.

I'm sad to change hometowns again. Wherever you learn a lot it feels like home.

I learned I'm bad at being a ballet mom. I would show up in not enough time to get her hair up tight, sweating and having forgotten again to glue her decorative laces so they wouldn't come undone three times during class. She would get kicked out anyway for doing things like playing with the giant stuffed animals they were supposed to be leaping over gracefully.

I learned, in living color, your second child is different from the first. Cole falls asleep on the ground, demands to be read to, leaps off stairs and furniture with his sister, became surprisingly coordinated at a riding scooter early on – and he will sit in Jules' battery-powered truck inside the closed garage, long after the battery dies. He'll study wheels for minutes on end.

I learned I'm still struggling with writing for enjoyment versus writing for pay, or working with a family to take care of when the other caregiver can't be there. More money for my family or that rewarding feeling that oftentimes comes without much compensation or with more snuggles, laughs and memories. Sometimes you do get a bit of everything. But not all at once usually. It may be a never-ending tightrope walk, carefully weighing the stage of life and adjusting your quality of life.

I learned home is where my family is. This one I chose, the one I share a roof with – whether a hotel room, a camper or a home we rent, own or live in on a military base.

I learned when one kid poops in the bath and you have another, both get a lot dirtier. We all do.

I learned being happy is to be grateful. And that I have no good reason not to be.* (Thank you, Downton Abbey.) I've also learned that me letting Cary accept his new position makes me essentially the biggest badass I know. Or the biggest dumbass.

And San Diego? It's like the book Hatchet, only instead of returning to grocery stores I'm faced with an abundance of Targets, ramen shops and dry bars.

*Most of the time.