On Traveling Alone

God, that's some sexy food.
Cafe du Monde, I love you

As I've just gotten back from a wonderful trip to St. Paul to visit Dog-Ma and the wee pups (one is the size of small horse), I've been thinking a lot about traveling.  I've just ended a tumultuous and at times tortuous relationship with He Who Will Not Be Named and realized that my time spent with Him drastically limited my traveling, as well as my sense of self.  Sure, we went on little trips to CA, but we never went abroad or even across the country, something I did regularly before I became enmeshed in his life.  Last year at this time I got fed up with the constant on/off relationship roller coaster and booked a trip to New Orleans to volunteer for a rebuilding group.  Although the trip was emotionally weighted and rather solemn, I look back with fondness at the first steps of reforming my independent identity.

Traveling alone can be lonely.  Incredibly so.

New Orleans at dusk

I have distinct memories of wandering around Amsterdam for the first time, desperately in love with the city, alternately in awe of the culture and wiping away stray tears because I had no one to share the experience with.  New Orleans, however, was the breath of humid, dank air that I needed to think, to remember who I used to be.  I wandered with no destination, something my chronic workaholism and role as quasi-step mom role prohibited me from doing at home.  I ate beignets* until I was sick.  Then I ate some more.  I slept, and I drank Hurricanes, and wandered the French Market feeling alone and unsettled and so gloriously me.

Traveling alone reminds you that you are alone in this expansive, wonderful, complicated world.  It is up to you to build the relationships and love of friends and family.  We are all alone, but we can be alone together.

*If you are going to New Orleans proper, bring your sunscreen, your bug spray, and your appetite.  A must is Cafe du Monde.  Cliche and touristy, yes.  But holy shit you must eat a beignet. Everything else in the city can wait until you've had one or three. 

A Slow Day at Work aka The Post Vacation Blues

Damn I wish that I were eating some pudding.  I just pounded a box of Saltines like it was the last box in a Costco full of of pregnant women. Bland and salty...yum.

Things here at work are too slow.  As in, too much time to think, too much time to search Oprah.com for irrelevant articles on relationships and spirituality and starting your own farm (really Oprah?  I'm not Martha fucking Stewart here?!). So, to stave off boredom I made the slow crawl through The Bloggess recommended blogs, then farther still into blogs recommended by her blogger friends, and so on, in an unending sea of Internet intimacy.  Things I have learned so far include:

The Duck Pond at St. Kate's, looking all majestic and peaceful.
Let me tell you, those Geese are less than majestic.

1. Things that are funny can also make me cry.
2. I miss being in grad school.  I mean, the grad school experience for me was never so glossy and life-affirming because I was always exhausted from my full-time job(s), but I miss the potential of grad school.
3. Shit I want some cake.
4. Seriously, I would give up Saltines for cake.
5. Lemon lavender cake from Cafe Latte in St. Paul.  I deeply regret that I did not take a picture of it, bite by bite, until it was gone. 

Tonight I have dragged the boys out of seclusion to watch The Blackhawks vs Red Wings and pretend that talking to two men is an adequate substitute for girl time.  The boys are great but men seem to lack the Girl Code for "I need to dissect every moment of my breakup and past relationships to find the moment it went terribly, terribly wrong." 

Still Playoff Beards are happening and that is sexy times for Lucy. I'm looking at you, Henrik Zetterberg.

I'm going to eat your pudding

I've had a bowl of chicken salsa chili (not as good as the original), a bunch of cherries, and some guacamole. Now I'm going to eat one of the pudding cups you left here because I can. Also because there is just a tiny bit of room in my tummy and pudding would fit. So there.