July 14, 2009

I think I may title my blog posts by date, and then subtitle them by content if I feel like it. After all, this is a diary; I didn't mean for that merely to be the title of my blog. In my old diaries, ones that I would scribble in with pencil or those cheap blue bic pens, I would simply put the day and then start out writing.

I wanted to simply do some straight out writing, so what follows isn't in any order. I did separate it out into paragraphs, but mostly it's just steam of consciousness from today, nothing terribly important; it rambles on and then it ends abruptly, simply because I was done writing. There are many run on sentences.

I might keep on doing this for a while.

Keith was telling me last night that he wants to drive hazmat trucks when he retires from the Army and we could go together, travel all around the country together and I thought that was a good idea actually, except for the extremely hazardous material that would be like three feet away from us at all times.

But I actually put myself to sleep thinking of trucking down the highway with Keith beside me, an older Keith with less hair and most of it grey and his body heavy and solid and changing the gears and the whine of it and the racket of the engine and the road passing by under the tires and how I could stretch out on the seat and put my head on his hard thigh and sleep and watch his hands on the gear shaft and the wheel when I opened my eyes and the heat of the sun and the shadows moving constantly and the gleam of light off the windshield.

And then stopping somewhere for dinner and crawling out all stiff and the air cool and leafy green and smelling truck fumes and gasoline and fried foods and stretching while the engine makes those ticking sounds. And feeling so safe, even in that dark, heated tangle of huge, sixteen wheeler trucks, because Keith is there and I'm always safe wherever he is and happy to be there, in fact, because it throws into relief exactly how safe he can make me, the pleasure of walking through the dark like that.

We'll go to the place to eat and sit down on the grubby vinyl seats and order coffee and a BLT sandwich or an omelet or a cheeseburger with fries. Only I probably won't, because it'll be hard to keep my shape with all the sitting and I'll want to, I'll know. I'll only be in my middle to late forties. I'll still be a hot mamma.

Speaking of mama, where will our kids be? Old enough to be on their own? With grandma and grandpa, playing in the lake and coming home to hang the damp towels off the line? The mica in the sand still clinging to their skin, glistening in the sun. But the oldest will only be about fifteen, the youngest about eight.

How could we leave them all summer long? We couldn't possibly bring them with us, not all of them. I'll call them and hear their voices all excited over the phone, talking about something they found, or a trip to the dump with grampa or planting something in the garden.

And I'll miss them.


But that's just one dream, who knows what life will look like by the time we get there. I got back from the vet, Lynn behaved beautifully, she is such a clever, willing little girl. She is as slippery as a little eel and clever and fierce and prone to sudden bouts of anxiety that cause her to shiver all over.

I'm starving, I scarfed down an entire sandwich of honey ham, Swiss cheese, baby spinach leaves, onion and tomato. It was delicious and I'm ravenous all over again. I want a cheeseburger.

Thinking of driving reminds me of coming back from Indianapolis that late afternoon, driving straight into the sun and the glare, for hours and my headache throbbing, the pain having expanded beyond my skull, hazy all over my head and making the edges go soft and squinting and listening to the non stop country music, the same one or two CDs that we had listened to the entire trip.

It was making me sick to my stomach to hear the same songs over and over again and I had to put on something different or else I couldn't breathe. He found the other CD at last and it was some kind of pop rock and immediately the haze lifted, broke away and I could breathe and the road dipped down into a cool lake of shadow, thick, trimmed green on either side. How tidy the houses were in Indiana, beautifully kept lawns, little brick ranches with trimmed hedges and garden gnomes and flower boxes.

We went off the main road in search of dinner and the GPS system took us way the hell out into the flat country on this back road into a dying town. We went up and down the tiny, backwater main street, half the shops closed, dingy looking, clearly in the heart of farm country, reminiscent to both of us of our childhoods but sad because of that.

We couldn't find the restaurant. We found an Amish one down the road, with a large, empty parking lot and a low roof, a rooster glinting in the sunlight high up there and inside it was quiet and large and mostly empty, the little tables covered with vinyl table clothes, the kind with the fuzzy back, looking as though it has been varnished on top.

We sat down in the dim light with relief. Keith was there, opposite me at the table, bulky and exhausted, his shoulders slumped forward, his cap shading his eyes. His hands were curled loosely, one laid out on the table. All the muscle in his arms were at rest but looking lethal even at rest, as though the energy in them was just waiting to uncoil.

It was a buffet and we got up and took greasy pieces of home fried chicken, thigh and breast and baked beans and coleslaw and corn. They had red and green jello squares and tapioca pudding, which I love. We had big, sweating glasses of iced tea. Or I had. Keith must have had, because I don't think they served beer. Maybe he got a diet Pepsi. That seems right, I can see the dark against the ice and the bubbles rising up around them, against the glass.

When we went back out we were ready for the rest of the trip, I settled into the seat familiarly, wiggling back into the leather, stretching my legs for the pedals, making sure I could reach them easily. The truck responded to the lightest touch.

It climbed hills effortlessly. It was the most amazing thing. For mile after mile I would watch for the hills just to feel the truck eat them, run straight up them without taking a breath. It was huge and high and turned easily but needed space for wide turns because of the length and I had to calculate the turning radius, swing it wide.

Where did we sleep that night? I don't remember. I don't remember getting where we were heading. But probably Bubba's.