Brad, last night on the phone, leaving a voicemail for his stepmom: Blah blah blah Happy Mother’s Day, I’ll talk to you soon. Love you, Brad.

Like he was signing a card or something. At the time, it was so funny, we laughed till my back muscles hurt.

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The song Freebird has been haunting me lately. It’s been around since before I was born, and it’s such an iconic song, yet somehow I never paid much attention until recently. Now it finds me all the time when I’m scanning through radio stations in the car, and every single time I feel compelled to stop and listen. What does that mean? Am I supposed to be getting a message from the lyrics?

But, if I stayed here with you girl,
Things just couldn’t be the same.

Could that mean I need to end the lesbian relationship I’m having on the side?

But please don’t take it badly,
‘Cause Lord knows I’m to blame.

Meaning it’s my fault because I’m not even a lesbian anyway?

For I must be travelling on, now,
‘Cause there’s too many places I’ve got to see.

Actually I think that must be it. I need to get out of here, out of this place. It’s squashing me and there are things I want to do, places I want to see. I plan to take Brad with me, but I think I’ll have to leave my girlfriend behind.

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I visited my family this weekend and it was a lot of fun. My sister E is in town from Montana with her new puppy, so we had a sister night on Friday. On Saturday I went to my nephew’s tumbling class, then watched my dad run in his first 25K in years. Yeah he’s 49, only trained up to 12 miles, and he blew out his knee last week. Yet he still ran just over 10 minute miles. I ran next to him for about 100 yards trying to capture a picture, and when I stopped my legs were burning and I was nearly out of breath. I’m 26. He’s 49 with a blown out knee. What the hell.

Then Sunday morning my siblings and I took Mom out to breakfast. My mother is beautiful and amazing and strong and always has the best attitude, and I only wish I could learn to be more like her.

This is Mom with three of her five kids. Bet you can’t even tell which one is her because she still looks so young and beautiful. Happy Mother’s Day Mom.

The only downside to the weekend was my lack of sleep. It’s not because we were up till the wee hours chatting and drinking beer—we quit that at a decent time. No, it’s because all the dogs in the house would not shut the fuck up for crying out loud! And the people would not stop coming in late. And the alarms would not stop going off at ungodly hours. Saturday night I ended up crying to Brad on the phone at 2:30am because I hadn’t gotten any sleep all weekend. I’ve mentioned before how fragile my sleep is. Don’t mess with my sleep!

But I suppose that’s what happens when eight humans and five animals share a house. It was a fun weekend, but I practically made love to my bed when I got home.