Aspen Trip For My Departed Aunt Linda

 Day one of the trip with my mom and my sister to clean and sort through my Aunt Linda’s belongings is done. But I’m up at 4AM, which is due to equal parts too much coffee, too much emotion, and just being used to waking up every night from my kids even when I’m not with them  I did a 3AM workout in the hotel fitness center and even that didn’t knock me out. So I figured I would be productive and post a blog on the phone  

The day before I left I told my son, Erik, I was a little sad to go on the trip it will be not fun and because I will miss my family and he says “Yeah but when you don’t want to go somewhere and you have to go, you just have to go.” This kid just turned 4 last month, by the way. 

The airplane was the smallest one I’ve ever been on. I hit my head on the roof of the airplane because I kept forgetting how low the ceiling was. Then I’m reading the Bill Wymann biography on my Kindle and just after Brian Jones died the book abruptly ended. What?! He still played and toured off of some of the greatest albums ever through out the entire 1970’s but none of that he wanted to cover? I was only like 20 minutes into the flight and now had nothing to read because you can’t download new books without WiFi. Thanks a lot, Bill. Now I’m reading a cooking magazine, and I hate cooking. My sisters was the across the aisle, tapped me on the shoulder, and while silently laughing impersonated my angry flipping through the pages of complex recipes with a million recipes and procedures that I would never dream of attempting. 

My mom’s birthday is tomorrow so will do a nice dinner out. But yeah, we will be sorting through her good friend’s junk during the day on her birthday. Don’t die if you’re reading this. And getting old, losing your loved ones, it’s all hard, but when no one is around to keep you in check, don’t randomly turn to alcohol in you 70’s when you were never a drinker. It’s just been emotionally draining sorting through all this stuff, seeing the places on the floor where she fell and laid there for long stretch of time before getting help, and then the other spot where she had the fall that took her for her final hospital stay. 

I saw a box labeled “camping” and I could tell she knew what she was doing because I camp a little. I never knew she camped. So I took a little knife that goes in a sheath that I can put in my camping tub to take with me, and I can think fondly of Linda when I unsheathe it. 

Hey this is random, but I heard “Valarie” by Jerry Garcia, and I caught one of those types of lyrics that I love, the ones that are so simple yet so incredibly impactful. “Valarie, what’s your complaint? I try to be everything I ain’t.” I think we all try to do that sometimes. Me, I try to cook. And I hate it. But I try. 

Good night, blog friends. I think I can finally get some rest. The workout, burping the worm, the shower - none of that worked. This worked. Thanks.