So my spirits were in the dump yesterday afternoon. This isn't so very shocking considering everything that's churning in my once-picket fence life, not to mention the murky skies tend to suck the joy from someone with the horsepower of a Hoover. Grandma, Mom's mom, spent the last couple of nights here...she had her 60th high school reunion to attend, and was staying in the area to carpool with old friends.

I was apprehensive coming home from my last moments of work to a non-empty house...I wasn't in a small talk mood. I came through the door carrying the personal items I kept at my desk...the photographs of my loved ones, the cards I received thanks to the friendships I made there, my box of instant oatmeal, my toothbrush—you know, the necessities.

Everything strewn haphazardly upon my bed, I went upstairs to waist brain power on the Internet. I don't spend so much time here anymore. I'm sure that's difficult to believe for those who knew me once upon a time...but I've decided that I find reality much preferable to virtual reality. Grandma twittered around me, making pleasant inquiries...I kept my answers short, my body language translating my mood. Grandma, being of my mother's personality, and thus, of mine, understood quickly enough. Sometimes you just don't want to talk. Sometimes you just want to brood.

"I know you have a lot going on right now, it's ok. Very understandable. I'll be in the other room, just pretend I'm not here." I smiled sweetly then, grateful that I wouldn't be hurting her feelings. I volleyed several emails with Debbie and Brenda, I looked at my checking account balance. I lurked over at my fitness forums. I read the home page blurbs from Cnn.com. I looked at the weather radar. I got bored. How did I once waste so much time in Cyberspace!?

So I made it downstairs, determined to begin my overwhelming tasks of cleaning, sorting, and disposing. I stared at the frame Mom gave me shortly after Miles left.



It reads, "When you're with a friend, your heart has come home," a quote from Emily Farrar. I stared that the picture of my mother and myself, and I wanted so badly to hear her melodic voice and to feel her soft skin...I wanted so very badly to nuzzle my nose into her fragrant hair and feel the full belly laugh I've only ever experienced while joking with her. So I stood there, staring, crying, and feeling empty. Brenda text messaged me, "I hear your grandma's a good hugger..." Though, how Brenda, the anti-hugger (who would never think to deny me an embrace), would know is rather curious.

So I went upstairs, a dual purpose in mind...me to feel comforted, and grandma to feel needed. I think it was the first time I've let my grandmother see me cry...outside of the funeral, of course. Grandma squeezed me with rib-crushing force and rubbed my back brusquely...pretty shocking for an old lady, really...but I loved it. I loved the desperation behind the hug, the yearning to ring the pain from my body. She kissed my cheek, over and over again, and she thanked me for needing her.

As she was leaving soon for her reunion, I decided to head to the gym...exercise always makes me feel better. I also had a check for my car insurance to mail off. I grabbed it on my way out of the door, exited through the garage and entered the code on the keypad to secure it once more. We had much problems with that keypad after the exorcism. We all took a turn at reprogramming the doohickey...but nothing seemed to register. Imagine our celebration when we discovered that the fix was cheap!—the cost of batteries being quite negligible.

I walked down to the mailbox and was discouraged to see that mail had already been delivered. Feeling too lazy to walk the mail back to the house (this is the part that gives the entry title meaning...you honestly didn't expect me to get to the point any sort of quickly, did you?), reopening the garage door being way too arduous, I decided to mail my insurance check from another location. So yes, instead of walking a few yards back to the house, I elected instead to walk a mile and a half to the post office, and backtrack a half-mile back to my gym.

I reasoned the whole mess with my inner voice, the one who replies for my ears alone when I speak to myself, and eventually exclaimed above the whir of the treadmill, "WHERE'S THE SENSE IN THAT!?" And that sage inner voice smoothed my brow and murmured, "Time to touch up the highlights..."

(The beauty of having an inner voice is not having to start a new paragraph when it speaks...because it's really still you...and that enter button can be such a time-waster...my right pinky is poky.)