I Went into the Wilderness and Survived.

Packing for a trip is always stressful for me. The promise just over the horizon of whatever relaxing destination awaits me is never enough to assuage the bile of tension that is rising like butterflies soaked in syrup and then put on a rickety conveyer belt that stretches from my pussy to my throat, the butterflies able to move in the confines of the syrup but only in tortured twitches and sticky thrusts.

Yep. It's that bad.

Regardless Jeremiah and I took Elijah on a weekend trip to the mountains. It was mainly uneventful, generally wonderful and very much needed. Jeremiah conquered his fear of horses (somewhat) and befriended a very old horse named Toro that wandered free around the vast acreage of our 140 year old farm house. We fished in a pond and didn't catch anything, had to drive for thirty minutes just to find a farmer's market, hiked through woods along a creek and marveled at the fact that people actually live an every day existence out there away from everything with horses and turtles and strangely the sound of non-stop gunfire all night long.

We cooked out on a bonfire and I was so proud and impressed by Jeremiah's fire building skills, we watched movies by the wood burning pot stove/fireplace thingy and I was again impressed by Jeremiah's fire building skills and we ate apple cider donuts and talked about how very dark it was outside.

At some point something magical happened in my stomach. Right after we put Elijah to bed, after I turned off most of the lights and after Jeremiah made room for me on the couch something went pop in my tummy and the grinding rickety conveyer belt with the sickly, sticky butterflies stopped. I felt Jeremiah's warmth behind me and we watched Pacific Heights on HBO and laughed at the silliness of it. We brushed our teeth together and went to bed together. We made love in the ancient bedroom of this ancient house where generations of love had been made, babies had been born, people had died.

Jeremiah went to sleep and despite the chill I went outside and sat in the pitch dark just to revel in the amazing life I have been granted and the gifts I have been given. Trials and tribulations have come my way but there is always good that comes out of the bad. I sat there contemplating these things until the gun shots resumed again in the distance and I high tailed it inside, locked all the doors and woke up Jeremiah just to be sure that he was aware of my frightening experience.