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If I had found this app on thursday I could have blogged from my table of coffee and smoking friends while I was at the river.

In years past I would pop awake early and drink a couple of tiny hotel-room pots of coffee and write, and last year was the birth of my blog so I would do that while the resort woke up. This year was different in so many ways...

First, it was freezing for most of the weekend. Usually it's a panic to see if anyone remembered the sun-screen. This yes I was sad that I brought ten tank tops and one long sleeved shirt that I never found in my suitcase till I was leaving.

As I remember last year and the year before there were 1500-2000 women there, I think we had 500-600 on site this year. People seemed very hesitant to spend money, I was definitely NOT off the hook tattooing.

Once Shayla and I decided to cheerfully write the event off as a business loss we stopped stressing about it. She had been sick a few days before and was happy to leave a day early without feeling like she was leaving me overwhelmed with business. Tiffany was the one of us who was extremely busy this year, she did a ton of piercing during the weekend.

I was getting phone reports from Michael that this week's shot was the worst ever and I felt guilty that I wasn't home to take care of him. Just to make things perfect, my headache is back with a vengeance. The miracle medication Michael found on the Mayo Clinic website to try ( which left me headache-free for months) has just stopped working. There have been moments in the last few days where I can't even see straight, and have trouble putting sentences together. Add all that together and the weekend wasn't as super-fantastic as it usually is.

Other elements of the weekend were beautiful and perfect, like reconnecting with many of the women I have come to know and love over these last three years. Or watching a certain friend of mine get to be more of who she really is than she ever could or would when we're back here in our stuffy little town. I watched her bloom, and it was magical.

I missed Molly, and so many other people who have come to love her did too. The combination of her growing up and having a life of her own that isn't just half of my life and the knowledge that her brother moves out a little more every day is making this empty-nest thing hard for me to deal with. I taped her picture to my glove box and pretended that she came with me anyway.

I also had an interesting time with my recovery this weekend. I am totally used to being around seas of alcohol with drunk people bobbing on the surface and even going under. My recovery is strong and I wouldn't trade my life today for a drink or any other drug. I walk fearlessly anywhere I want to, because I carry my new life within me and I know that to turn around and walk the other way would be to lose everything and eventually die.

Someone left a beer and a shot of Jaegermeister on my tattoo station when we went to dinner the first night, and it whispered to me throughout the meal. I don't even LIKE Jaeger, and yet I could hear it from the room the whole time. I told on myself and my girls made sure it was gone by the time I got back to the room. The final morning there was a fat-half of a very aromatic joint on the table in front of our room. I was very surprised at how elaborate my plans to take it, hide it, smoke it later and never tell developed so quickly. I was saved by a hero named Stacy who tried to give me the remains of a large bottle of vodka. I said "no thank you" and I told her she could save my life if she took it with her. She offered to "join me" with it, and I said " No, you should just take it and save my life. Being a hero would be so much more dramatic!" she had no idea what a service she did me.

On my drive home I listened to the iPod playlist I had made just for the weekend and meditated through my agonizing pain-helmet. I was exhausted from all the things I did NOT do rather than the things I did all weekend, and ended up sleeping for an entire day yesterday. Being home with Michael, who IS my home no matter where we are has done much to recharge me. His promotion has provided us with REAL medical insurance, but my first appointment with my very own physician doesn't happen until June 7. I'll get to start all over from where I was a year and a half ago in my quest for answers to the question "What's wrong with me?"

Now that I've cleared my clipboard of everything that lingered from that much-anticipated and anti-climactic weekend I'm sure I'll have something funny or thought-provoking for you soon. Sometimes this blog kicks ass, sometimes it's just a repository for all the squeaks my mental hamster wheel makes. Hey, you get what you get.

Writing on this iPad I don't get to do all the little editing and illustrating tricks I so enjoy, but I'm in love with the idea of not being tied to my glorious Super-Mac for the purposes of blogging.

Tonight is the final for my glorious art history class, and then I'll have to go without until the fall semester. Thank you " tired ole teacher lady" for the best set of Tuesdays in my life!

Ciao y'all!



Blogged from my giant phone that doesn't make calls...

Location:Terrace Dr,Napa,United States