As I drove back from Callaway Gardens Sunday afternoon, I found myself on the outskirts of Atlanta, beginning to merge into the predictable cluster-o-traffic bafoons…and sobbing.

The radio was tuned to the local NPR station where Valarie Jackson was interviewing Davy Isay, creator of the Story Corps Project about his new book “Listening Is an Act of Love”.

Several times I’ve been caught in my morning commute, affording me the stillness needed to enjoy a piece from this project. I always find my lids growing fat with tears. Now, I had a concentrated dose, with Isay’s personal accounts of the experiences he’s had and the people he’s encountered during the project.

One young man, he recounted, came to Story Corps to talk about his father. The young man was a steel worker who told with pride and enthusiasm of the first time his father brought him to the factory and how he eventually followed in his footsteps. He told of his fathers long life and the eventual heath changes that brought him to be in a hospital full time, unaware of his surroundings; his organs making their way along the slow, deliberate path to the end of life.

The nurses and doctors would study the old man, perplexed, while his father made unconscious movements with his hands until one day his son happened to come into the room as they were watching. Someone spoke to the son and said “we’ve been watching your father, and he’s been doing this thing with his hands…we can’t figure it out.”

The son said he knew as soon as he saw it - his father was making steel. He was making steel until the day he died.

My chin quivered and plump drops fell out of my head.

There was another story - read by the woman Chaplin who experienced it - about employees in the basement of a hospital that pack the equipment needed for surgeries. They’re in a gray, sterile room with no windows and day in and day out, they get a packing list. It has the name of the patient, the planned surgery, and the packing list of what’s needed for the operation. These people prayed. They prayed as they packed each and every set of instruments. One woman had been there for forty years…praying.

I bawled. I made the face I make when I don’t think I should be crying. I snapped a picture for my 365 that I’ll never upload. I cried more.

I’d spent the hours prior wandering about a tropical butterfly house, snapping pictures of colorful spastic insects, selfishly enjoying a few hundred acres of snow covered trees and grounds that were barely populated due to the inclement weather.

I had reveled in my solitude and given thanks for the quiet space. It was time I’d desperately needed for reflection, though now, I felt selfish about it.

I sniffled and wept a little more.

Before going home, I stopped in the place I used to take myself on self date night for my standard menu at my standard spot, belly up to the bar. I opened my book and sipped water to wash down the ideas being presented to me – the idea that you can do whatever you want to do, if you make up your mind to do it.

I started making excuses: Job. Debt. Not knowing where to begin.

I caught myself. Anyone and everyone can create change. My favorite poet came to mind and her words typed themselves across a screen in my mind – “It’s really that simple, but it’s never that easy. How can we understand change when our socks have always been in the same drawer?”

I need to think bigger. I need to do more. I need to find a way to make an impact.

I bawled inside and beat myself up a little.

I thought of the conversation Kelly and I had last week (or the week before?) about stepping forward and being cheerleaders for the people we love, for helping them identify their dreams and pushing them forward while they chase them into a headwind.

I don’t know what it means yet, this pile of thoughts and ideas. The passion to DO tangles me up.

When I finally arrived back at The Big House, The Mc was on the couch in the media room looking giddy as a kid with his Halloween bounty as he looked from the big screen and the pigskin to me with the plate of 5 layer dip I’d made, a pile of chips on his lap and a toothy grin.

Retiring to the bedroom I popped in one of the DVD’s that had arrived: Evening.

I bawled more. Not because the movie was two stars at best, but because I fear being on my deathbed with a pile of regrets climbing all over me like maggots, eating away whats left of my soul.

I crashed the one man football party and sobbed on the couch to The Mc, stammering something about dying without living, about missing my father, about hating breaking up with/loosing friends, about the simultaneous peace and frustration I have being a restless soul, and about the basic but key, driving changes in my world that I’m on the cusp of making.

He complimented me on my ability to make snot and told me my father would be proud after I’d made my way through a quarter of a roll of TP and created a small mountain of tissue and DNA on the floor.

Swirling around me there are lessons and signs and flashing neon arrows telling me the way I need to go and the things I need to be doing, but it seems like every time I take a step, the signs move.

I’m a little lost and a lot impatient, but I’m thankful for the messages, the signs, the love and the opportunity to receive them all.

I feel better for having cried, if for no other reason than because it means I’m alive…even if I still don’t know where to begin.

The only marginally impressive or redeeming quality John McCain has is that he served on the USS Enterprise and *that* makes me snicker.

I’m having one of my moments.

The kind where even my skin is suffocating me and I want to shake it loose and run away for the weekend/a month/a year/forever.

I want scenery and solitude and most of all I want it cheap. I want something new and I don’t want to have to talk to other humans or spend a lot of loot…just have pretty stuff to look at and pretty/interesting bits to look at while I wander.

It won’t happen this weekend because it’s too late. A bite sized escape will probably happen next weekend followed a month or two later by a bigger, better, badder escape.

For now, I need help with next weekend. Driving somewhere seems the logical choice (if you don’t look at gas prices) but frankly there just aren’t that many places to drive to from Atlanta for a 1/2 day trip that I a) haven’t already been or b) want to go to.

You may suggest somewhere I’ve already been or you may not, but I’d still like your thoughts. Just remember: bargain, pretty, interesting.

I know you’ve been wanting to tell me where to go for some time, now’s your chance.

During a long distance reality check from my older, wiser and much more daring seester last night we were discussing my being in a vulnerable place. “That’s not a good place for you” she says. I grunt a nearly inaudible “no” to affirm the statement. She goes on. “It’s not one of your favorites. I’d guess it’s not on your list of 100 places you want to go before you die.”

I love her perspective and I love her for making me laugh when I’m feeling poopy.

*****

This morning laying in bed, with The Mc standing over me telling me it’s time to get up and my coffee is waiting on the bathroom counter. My face is buried in a pillow and I grumble “cramps” following it up with an overly dramatic child like pouting fake whimper.

“Women really should get extra time off so they can stay home during the worst day of their cycle.”

He’s a logical, handsome, witty, charming little genius and I love him for sympathizing with me.

It’s SNOWING in Atlanta. Right. Now.

Ran into a couple issues trying to get todays post up, but no matter! I have a substitute: the blog comments following their explanation of a massive accounting error.

Enjoy, maybe I’ll be back tomorrow.