So, last night, well really shortly after we got home from "doctor torture" I realized I was really depressed, like really depressed . . . (like cry over cereal commercials depressed) I had no reason to be - I have good friends, wonderful children . . . I had no clue what was wrong with me. I couldn't sleep, so in the interest of making my brain stop thinking so much and relax my body, I turned to the bottle of Cuervo in the fridge (which is pretty out of character for me as most of you know) - I didn't overdo it as much as I originally thought I did last night, but I was pretty out of it. I still didn't really sleep though. Sometime in the middle of the night I realized I was running on adrenaline for the last three weeks. I've had work in crisis, 3 friends in crisis, family bs and Hailey's "stuff" and all of the sudden it was all over. Friends all better, family stuff over, Hailey's stuff over and work coming to an end, with only three shifts left at that store and those shifts being fairly stress-free, everything I'd been dealing with for the last three weeks over. I crashed - literally, emotional rollercoaster, crashed . . . my two friends that I always turn to for late night conversations are both out of the state right now . . . so with noone to talk to, I just laid there trying to sleep, without much luck.
This morning I got up with the kiddos and we had to mail something. We left the house at 8:30 with them literally still in what they slept in and me not much better, 250 miles and 7 hours later we were home (I know very un-green of me). When we mailed the bill (which was going to Boulder), Alyssa started asking a gazillion questions about where things were, so yet again, for another geography lesson, what the hell, let's drive up Lookout Mountain . . . . so we're up there and I'm pointing out various places to her and then she and Hailey wanted to know where I lived when I was a kid . . . so, yeah, next thing we're filling up the gas tank and heading up I-70. As we were driving I found myself teaching my children about things like mining, waterfalls and even the continental divide, they were amazed at going through tunnels, it's not that we'd never been up there before, but we usually took the passes, because we would go in the fall to look at the leaves or something. Hailey was really interested in the whole continental divide thing too . . . . she's the "logical" one. We stopped to eat lunch (in the car, given our appearance) in Silverthorne, then headed to Frisco where they got to see good old Summit Middle School, on to Breckenridge, where, yes Alyssa was so excited to learn that I actually went to Kindergarten at some point in my life, then by the house I grew up in down the road in Blue River. What's crazy is I have taken them up there before, but never with that purpose, I've never driven them by the places where I actually spent my time . . .
As we started to head over Hoosier pass to Fairplay, I realized that I was starting to feel better, a lot better, and I started to realize that I had been taking my stresses out on other people, not so much in the obvious ways, in the not so obvious ones though, I've been kinda clingy and annoying to a lot of my friends over the last three weeks which is out of character . . . I kinda knew that all along, but somehow that crisp mountain air brought it to the forefront of my mind. So, to those of you that I did that to, I'm sorry.
We headed down into Alma, and I showed them the house I lived in there, then into Fairplay. I didn't take them by the other three places I lived out there, I would have had to drive halfway to Buena Vista to get to one, and the other two were about four miles each out of the way as well, but they did get to see good old South Park High.
Sometime after we went up and over the top of Kenosha pass and were coming down into Grant, all three of them fell asleep, I felt even better. That was what I needed, just me, my music and my car (although a minivan is not nearly as fun to drive on those roads as my old Jetta or my mom's Eclipse). No cell service, obviously no computer and all three kids dead to the world, so they were quiet too! I had a moment of reflection as I came around the corner and saw Platte Canyon High School for the first time since those horrific events there, I had so many friends that walked the halls of that school, heck, some of you walked the halls of that school. As I kept driving, through Bailey and starting up Crow Hill, Nickelback's "Photograph" came on the trusty iPod in an ironic and symbolic way as I was at the tail end of this journey heading away from my past and back toward the civilization of the Denver Metro area and my present and future then up and over the hill as Nickelback faded and Blink 182's "Dammit" came on the phone started beeping from the missed calls and voicemails I had. So I took a breath, checked my voicemail and then checked my e-mail (yes, from my cell phone) . . . and life goes on, rejuvenated and refreshed, and I'm not even sure why. Maybe it's because I haven't done anything that spontaneous in like a decade, maybe it's because I was sharing with and teaching my children, maybe it's just because I had time to think, I don't know, but I feel better.
As we started to head over Hoosier pass to Fairplay, I realized that I was starting to feel better, a lot better, and I started to realize that I had been taking my stresses out on other people, not so much in the obvious ways, in the not so obvious ones though, I've been kinda clingy and annoying to a lot of my friends over the last three weeks which is out of character . . . I kinda knew that all along, but somehow that crisp mountain air brought it to the forefront of my mind. So, to those of you that I did that to, I'm sorry.
We headed down into Alma, and I showed them the house I lived in there, then into Fairplay. I didn't take them by the other three places I lived out there, I would have had to drive halfway to Buena Vista to get to one, and the other two were about four miles each out of the way as well, but they did get to see good old South Park High.
Sometime after we went up and over the top of Kenosha pass and were coming down into Grant, all three of them fell asleep, I felt even better. That was what I needed, just me, my music and my car (although a minivan is not nearly as fun to drive on those roads as my old Jetta or my mom's Eclipse). No cell service, obviously no computer and all three kids dead to the world, so they were quiet too! I had a moment of reflection as I came around the corner and saw Platte Canyon High School for the first time since those horrific events there, I had so many friends that walked the halls of that school, heck, some of you walked the halls of that school. As I kept driving, through Bailey and starting up Crow Hill, Nickelback's "Photograph" came on the trusty iPod in an ironic and symbolic way as I was at the tail end of this journey heading away from my past and back toward the civilization of the Denver Metro area and my present and future then up and over the hill as Nickelback faded and Blink 182's "Dammit" came on the phone started beeping from the missed calls and voicemails I had. So I took a breath, checked my voicemail and then checked my e-mail (yes, from my cell phone) . . . and life goes on, rejuvenated and refreshed, and I'm not even sure why. Maybe it's because I haven't done anything that spontaneous in like a decade, maybe it's because I was sharing with and teaching my children, maybe it's just because I had time to think, I don't know, but I feel better.
