Warning:  This post contains multiple, egregious run-on sentences and stylized abuse of conjunctions.

Ugh.  So it’s been almost a week since I’ve updated, and I’m like “oh I have something to write about!” and then I’m like “oh shit I’ve got loads to write about” immediately followed by “I have no desire to do this thing”.

Ugh.

I went with a friend to Gatlinburg, TN over the weekend.  We left Saturday early afternoon and returned today (Monday) mid-afternoon.  Less than 48 hours.  She went because her daughter had a dance competition there and I went because she wanted some adult companionship and I enjoy her company.  We did a similar thing last year, just in Myrtle Beach and for a longer stretch of time.

It was my first time in the Smokies other than driving through.

Fucking gorgeous.

Stuart and I lived near mountains when we were residents of Seattle a million years ago and we ventured occasionally into the Cascades and we could see the Olympics fairly often.  I had forgotten how primal mountain ranges are…how they overwhelm when you are in the middle of them.  When you live in a city and your house is like around 100-120 years old and that’s pretty old for most of the stuff around because everything else is a road that was repaved two years ago (already is buckled and cracked) and a shiny sign (replaced to look more trendy) and freshly planted sod and then you drive through a mountain range and your ears are poppin’ and you look around and everything is ancient, more old than you can really wrap your head around, your life is put into a humbling kind of perspective.

I’ve already lived through the head scratching, chin stroking “life is everything/life is nothing” thought experiment/existential despair that happens when one eats acid or survives an accident/illness or gives birth etc.  Most of us who lived past 30 have gone through some version.  Being in the mountains though is stop-you-in-your-tracks level of “you, in all your amazing human potential, are but a dot compared to what these hills have lived through”.

Could be on account of growing up in Wisconsin.  The Dairy State has some excellent rock formations because of the Ice Age (not the movie) dumping a bunch of terminal moraines all over the state, but for the most part it’s kinda flat.*  Whatever the reason, mountains impress me, and the Smokies are amazing.

*not like Illinois flat

Gatlinburg is the Tennessee version of Wisconsin Dells.  If you don’t know what that means, educate yourself (*ahem* count yourself lucky).  It is a mix of kitsch and cheese (figurative for Gatlinburg, literal for the Dells) and trash and fun and the best of the local surroundings.  It is a tourist trap surrounded by cloud-shrouded hills and towering trees and breath-stealing beauty.  It’s America, all its contradictions and weirdness and loveliness.

So I’m home from Gatlinburg and unpacked and back into the heat and humidity (hottest heat index in the entire country!).  Reunited with the dogs and Spouse and Spawn.  And realizing that I should have started this two hours ago.  Posts about cancer** and books*** will have to wait.

**started tamoxifen today

***facebook book meme

I wish writing were easier than just not fucking writing.  Not fucking writing is so easy.  Not fucking writing is my default.

I need to change that.  Hopefully that will happen because I have been doing so much interesting relevant stuff and not because I’m dying of T side effects.

I am, forever, a work in progress.