Because I did promise you, after all.

Ok - I'm a little short on obnoxious baby animal pictures to contradict my last post (soorrry), but could I interest you in a picture of me and *COBRA Commander holding our New Moon tickets?

For the past two seasons, we've taken a trip to Jackson, WY with the quilting platoon and various friends. We use up Kelly's timeshares and go to the annual FireBall (post later), and it always seems like some Twilight movie is getting released while we're there.

Jackson Hole, in the off-season, is a magical place, because the tourists go away and you can see who the locals are.

The interesting thing about their locals, is the lack of Twilight-obsessed women that live there. Their movie theater at 4:15 p.m. the opening day of New Moon, had no line. We bought ghetto red raffle tickets from a guy with a calculator, and walked right in. We laughed like last year, at the cheesy dialogue, but were duly humbled when that Lautner kid took his shirt off, and we were more respectful then.

So, instead of kitten pictures, here's one better:

COBRA Commander and her trusty sidekick Destro (should be my nightlife alterego). Notice the tickets were already ripped in half for us when we got them. I really think they were running low on tickets and ripped them in half, like those days you see the sacrament pieces in the size of peas. Usually when there are an extra hundred people at church for a baby blessing everyone forgot about.

By the time we got out of the theater, their teenage population had showed up. So there's us being trampled by people who were, unfortunately, not dressed up in the theme of casts and prom dresses.

So that's Heather, Liz, Kylie, Me, and The Commander in front. I never was "team" anything when it came to that Twilight crap...I figured I would be considered team Edward because my Twilighter friends called Rbf my Jedward because of our embarrassingly hot-n-heavy, zero-to-sixty relationship...that or because I used to wake up to Rbf gazing at me while I slept. Just kidding. Edward would get embarrassed and shifty and ran away. Rbf would just get excited that I was finally awake. So they're really not the same.

But after seeing that movie, I suppose I'd have to pick Team Jacob because of his pec muscles. That's all.

The real post about Jackson is still coming. Sorry to keep you waiting. I'm sure you're on pins and frickin needles. Love you guys.

*COBRA Commander is her nickname at work...and since I'm her COBRA sidekick, they call me Destro. I believe the creators of G.I. Joe were going for some form of the word "destroy" when they came up with the sidekick's name. I say it's fitting. At work, CC dominates the COBRA admin arena, and as I was brought in to manage some of the programming for her projects, I have destroyed many things for her. I've been of immense value to the team.

Paul, ID Cemetery

I went to visit my reboyfriend, his brother and their dad.

You could say it was bittersweet. My love for him made everything endearing to me. The little stamp in the grass (no headstones yet)...the square mat of sod that they draped back over the dirt...all of it is cute. Everything about him, I adore it. I pitched paper planes on pickets into the ground, with love notes written inside.

Rbf and his brother are side by side, at their dad's feet. His family's burial plots were in pairs - except for his. Rbf lies alone at the end of the line, with nobody beside him. I couldn't get that image from my mind as I drove home alone.

But I made it there.

And I was a little less pouty than the last time I was there.

Sorry, that's not really funny. It was just a funny face. I really didn't look like that the whole time. Really. Catatonic zombies don't pout.

As is my standard, I'll swing over to my next post on an extremist pendulum. Given the depressing-o-meter rating of this one, it looks like you're in for some kittens wearing tutus nestled in ice-cream scoops.

The one about the JFD

I remember a time, last year - a year ago to be exact...when I made history with this little charmer (http://bussio.blogspot.com/2009/01/best-of.html)

and told this little story (http://itotallyforgotyougohere.blogspot.com/2009/01/quote-board-me-unfortunately.html)

Buy yourself something pretty.

[So here's an old post I never posted; it's pretty much about being a failure and a loser, in which it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy because I was apparently too bored with myself and discouraged from everything, to actually publish the stupid post. It's about me on a Friday night all alone. This is gonna be so hot. Good thing you all got up and checked your RSS feeds for this baby.]

This was nothing special - just a regular autumny Friday night, where I had invitations from nice friends to go out and play in the SLC nightlife with them, like old times, you know, when I was Kirsten. The old Kirsten kicked so much ass but the new me? Only kicks minimal ass. If any ass at all.

Instead of being old me, I be Kirsten 2.0, where I obsessively look at my big long to-do list. You know, the spreadsheet that ruins the enjoyability of anything that is not on it? It is not unlike homework in college. It's not like you could ever be done with it, no matter how much you studied. That it the point - really, it's what you REALLY learn in college: that to-do lists are never complete. It prepares us for careers in project management, like mine. So your brain punishes itself for doing anything else. And my to-do list is how I ended up running errands tonight. But loser errands. Make no mistake about that part.

Errand on Friday night that is to IKEA: -1 points
Errand on Friday night that is to Walmart for photo prints: -1 points
Having Walmart ninja status (i.e. knowing on my own what time the photo counter at Walmart closes so I can work my IKEA time around that): -3 points.

(And according to the intercom announcement, we all needed to make it snappy with our side-swiveling carts as IKEA was closing early for some stupid party. You read it right. Even IKEA had plans tonight.)

IKEA as if it were a person, actually being cooler than me: -4 points
Picture order supposed to take an hour, ME only needing 20 minutes to round up Grape Amp and Scentsy knockoffs, so I return 40 minutes early to annoyed photo counter man: -2 points (just from reading his facial expression)
Chinese food for dinner that I take back to the empty house: -1 points
It's not even real Chinese takeout, it's Panda Express: -2 points
Friends on DVD and stack of magazines: -1 points
Magazines are from 2008: -1 points
Magazines were retrieved from Meems' discard pile when I came to stay here: -3 points
Host family comes home with sleeping baby, and I smoothly attempt to use remote control to turn down volume while they put her in bed, and WAY fail at it: -1 points
Aforementioned fail involved spastic thumb hitting CHANNEL down, not VOLUME down, and therefore switched my Friends DVD to Dr. Phil (and why wouldn't it?), so it looked like THAT is what I was watching on Friday night with my face in lo mein: -17 points

Actually ate the Chinese food: +10 points. Probably would have been better if any of it included vegetables, but food intake is food intake. Judge rules? Positive point count.

Crossed off a couple things on that motherloving list: +100 points.

I am win. To-do lists can eat me! Tomorrow's to-do list at work? I'm looking at you. (Clients rejoice).

You wish you were moi.

So if you know me in person, you may have seen me moping around or bursting into tears about my upcoming birthday. Oh, and when they say the holidays are sad for new widows (oh wait, we weren't married, it doesn't count), they don't really mean Halloween. Except Halloween was sad. Not spending my birthday (and Thanksgiving) with Rbf is taking this intense emotional toll on me. We already know I'll probably need to be institutionalized on Christmas. But you'd think these other holidays wouldn't render so much dread in me.

The worst part is, I can't decide whether I'm turning 28 or 58. On my way home today, I had to physically restrain myself from getting off the freeway to get myself another pound of See's candy, since I polished my last one off in about 2 days. I had the box of chocolates open on my desk at work the entire time. My coworkers watched in horror as the count of bon-bons diminished rapidly. If only my to-do list did the same thing.

I have been listening to nothing but Nat King Cole's Christmas album (aside from my usual dose of Swimmers) alone in the car, or when there are chewing noises in the office. It's a secret, because so many people become enraged at the early onset of Christmas joy. They don't know that it isn't so much joy, as it is comfort. There is comfort in this old guy's voice. Is there not?

I check my PO Box. There is quite a stack in there. Roughly 90% of it is from PETA and its sister organizations. When you receive mail from me, it will feature my new return address labels, complete with turtles and bunnies holding things in their mouths (photoshopped, of course, as They Are Not Ours To Gag). I am that lady that gets all her mail from something with a sad kitten on the front.

We did our Kris Kringle drawing for the office (our inter-departmental Secret Santa extravaganza). They give you a little slip of paper to fill out. I handed mine back in and requested that it not be posted publicly. The "no can do" response I got made me regret putting down interests like "Franklin Covey stuff, Scentsy stuff, Aviation themes, Architectural and Home magazines" and my "least favorites" listed as sports and romantic stuff like the Twilight series. Thank God I refrained from saying I'm not into iTunes. I'd come out to my tires slashed in the parking lot.

I am still thinking I made a mistake in not stopping at See's, because it would be so nice as I read my Tori Spelling book. There's nothing like curling up in some sweats with your nasal spray and celebrity tell-all after a long day in your cubicle.

Then today I got home and decided, for whatever reason, to download screensavers of different puppies because I don't want to get sick of the pictures on my hard drive.

PuPpIeS!!!!!

If it makes anyone pity me less, I did pass on the ones wearing sunglasses.

Bacon fest

And get your cop jokes out of the way now, because this is actually about bacon.

Bacon woven - as if from a loom - into a blanket of oozing pork, enveloping sausage and baked in loglike formations. Then sliced and eaten on flaky biscuits.

Oink.

In order to fully appreciate The Baconator, a close cousin to heavensent manna, you must go to a special place in West Yellowstone where bears and the Dumke family dominate the land. You must partake of this trunk-o-meat only in a cabin with close friends who get up at 5 to start the cooking.

Shit goes down in life and you find out who your real friends are. If they bring baconized sausage, you know.

Zeke and Anaga - aside from offering their jaw dropping guest suite as my unofficial home away from home - hauled my mopey ass up to one of their cabins on Hebgen Lake in West Yellowstone. It was pretty soon after the accident for me, so I'm surprised they took on the challenge. The drive is five-ish hours. Given the fact that, at that time, I have to bring my laptop to work everyday so I could play Friends dvds on my front seat while I drove, so I didn't have a loneliness breakdown...this drive was not about to happen solo. Sadly my first thought was "I can't do this drive. Maybe I'll get Jed to fly me up therrr.......aw dammit." STUpid MEMory LAPSES are such stupid hookers, I effing hate them. MEEEEAN.

So since my mind stuck its foot in its mouth AG-AINNN, God took hasty action to ease the awkward moment in my head, where my mental Department of Problem-Solving had an unfortunate slip in front of the Department of Healing.

My Brain's Department of Problem-Solving: Oh, geez. I'm sorry. I was just trying to help...

My Brain's Department of Healing: Don't worry about it. It happens all the time. With you.

DoPS: Seriously, I mean, is there any way you can take this issue and make something good out of it and utilize it for your healing, like remembering the good times in the plane and Reboyfriend's passion for it?

DoH: Don't sweat it. And no, there's not really a silver lining in that one.

My Brain's Department of Judging Everything: ProblemSolver, get a grip. Healing? Get over it.

God: Shhhh, little voices in Kir's's head. Calm thyselves. She doesn't have to drive alone. I'll just get Jacob to ride up with her.

Meet Jacob!

This is the guy whose office and apartment are both on Wall Street (the real Wall Street), sports $600 jeans and has like seven thousand law degrees from at least three different continents, but talks me into detouring our road trip to stop at Smith & Edwards. At this point I had known him for about an hour.

Never mind that I'm old enough to have babysat, at some point, this child who'd have said "no tomOTToes please" on a sandwich. Three, two, one, and I'm hooked on this kid. We browsed through Wranglers in the denim area, clutching Pez to our chests. Before we hit Idaho, we were planning my life as superwoman at all the grad schools around the globe he thought I'd like.

He was in town today for an elk hunt and we went to Rico's for lunch, when he reminded me that I had this whole post drafted and never uploaded. So here I am.

When I said God suggested I ride up with Jacob, I meant Anaga. She said "you'll love him." She also said I'd love the acai antioxidant at Jamba and their steel cut oats (now addicted, thanks Anaga) as well as Glee. She is constantly hucking delightful things at me left and right and each of them is successful in cheering me up. Her baby brother was no different. We discovered used rocket launcher things and garden gnomes during our detour to the country boy store. And when I thought, "I wonder if they have a big fiberglass case filled with little collecter pins in the image of vintage airplanes," well there they were. Sorted by year. I went to 1949, and looked for the Navion. It was there, and I got their only one for four dollars.

At the cabin, Anaga put me up in the front room looking right over the lake. Cuz she's like that. When I went in to set down my bags, I almost melted. She had turned the heater on to warm it up and it was like heaven. We all hung out on Friday, but almost all of Saturday I stayed in that room and journaled my heart out. And I cried. And I napped. And I woke up and looked out at the lake, and then took another nap. They only knocked on the door to bring me out for dinner. I hope they didn't think I was a douche. If they only knew how peaceful it was, how necessary it was.

It was only a few weeks after I lost Rbf, so it would be an understatement to say that I was raw and depressed. They were OK with that. They let me be sad, which I needed. They made me laugh anyway, which I also needed. They made smores out of Raspberry-filled Ghirardelli chocolate squares and real raspberries. Who DOESN'T need that? And who the hell finds these ideas? The same people who find the Baconator, that's who.

They're smartasses. I need that too. They're the classiest people you ever met, but you show up to their cabin and they're wearing Wolf Pack T-shirts and merrily unearthing old sex novels from the sixties that they found in the family cabin. Sex novels from the sixties are fantastically hilarious. Zeke's a pretty sophisticated guy, a lawyer and such. But at the circus a few weeks after our trip, he decided that we should start measuring the backs of fat ladies' arms in actual cup sizes. Then he pointed out a double-D. This is why I love this family.

I remember the first night at the cabin, being so exhausted by the end of that day. I ate a smore and dozed off to the sound of all their voices. It was the advent of It All Sinking In, the brutal and horrific stage I've been in. But it was a peaceful experience. I really needed it. Thanks, Wolf Pack.

In The Mid-Autumn Breeze

Quote board:

Me: Hi internet.
Internet: Sup, gangsta.
Me: So that goat blog, it was to soften you up.
Internet: Why. Did you move out of that house you shared with three hot truckers? Are you going to write about it or something and bum my ass out?
Me: Yeah.
Internet: Will you at least share your plane-widow-tic-tacs? Sorry, that's their street name. I meant xanax. Just kidding, I'm the internet. I can't pop pills. Did you know I feature a video on YouTube of this gross couple dry-humping on a really crowded beach? And it's like seven minutes long? I am the technology responsible for everyone having A.D.D. You should put my text in the color of poop.
Me: Anyway. Moving day was Saturday. Hardest thing I've ever done. It stabbed my soul. Internet, please do something about my sad, stabbed soul. I don't live at reboyfriend's anymore. It's not our home. I liked it being our house. And I like being grammatically incorrect when describing it. Like as in Kir, where is my rashguard? Oh, it's at me and Reboyfriend's. And There are five pounds of blueberries at me and Reboyfriend's. You know what, it's not grammatically incorrect because "Me And Reboyfriend" was its own entity. The rashguard was at [entity]'s. There was always a blueberry stash at [entity]'s.
Internet: You talk too much. I miss that goat story.
Me: I put the sheets in a special box.
Internet: Of course you did.
Me: And the bridal magazine.
Internet: I'm sorry, Kir. I will furnish about four hundred supportive, pithy, amazing comments from the people who read this blog.
Me: I know. That's why I'm here.

I remember a time Rbf was trying to get me to move in with him but I was dripping with too much awesomeness to do such a thing. I was skidding around life, with my music on shuffle. A Great Lake Swimmers song came up (I Will Never See The Sun). It was the first time I'd ever heard it. And this freak-of-nature daydream painted itself into my mind in about four seconds. It was like a daydream you spend five commutes designing, but I hadn't. It just injected itself into my mind in an instant.

It was me and him walking through this weird, freaky looking church I saw once in Jackson Hole. We had just said our vows and kissed, and then we flatly turned and walked out of the church without much fanfare. My dress was gauzy and frayed in some fantastically edgy, indie fashion. The church had these giant, obscene windows overlooking the Tetons. I can't imagine why that came into my head.

But it was the first time I realized I would probably marry this guy. Once you picture your Melissa Sweet "Fern" dress, and x guy by your side, it's over. Just forget it. The wedding would be in the Fall. Of course it would, because September 17th would be your wedding day, and the Tetons would be breathtaking.

Maybe my subconscious was doing it to me because he had just got my mind on it. I swear he did it on purpose. That nerd. He figured out how he wanted to proposed. He was so proud of the fact that he had a romantic idea that he told me exactly how he was going to do it. In his plane, with the words lit up on the ground in candles.

A friend of his, Ricky, called me a few weeks after the funeral, saying his girlfriend told him not to tell me this (no girl wants to hear those words). But he disagreed, and thought I should know. That the weekend before the crash when Rbf was visiting, they stayed up late planning a trip where Rbf and I would fly the Navion to Texas and meet Ricky and his girlfriend, before driving in to Mexico on a road trip. Ricky said he believed that's when Rbf was planning to pop the official question. It was going to be over Thanksgiving and my birthday. I told Ricky he absolutely did the right thing by telling me.

Because it was a lot more romantic than the preliminary proposal, which took place in the cluttered sleeper of a motocross semi.

Me: You know I am OK if we never get married, right?
Him: Shrug.
Me: Is it important to you to get married?
Him: [Long Pause]. Yeah.
Me: Because I mean, I'm putting you on the title of the house, and you said you're putting the plane in my name, and if we have that bastard child I keep talking about, I think I'm pretty much yours. I'm just saying, there's no m-word pressure, or anything. Just so you know. [I'm breezy!]
Him: I want to be married.
Me: .............OK.
Him: Will you marry me?
Me: haha.
Him: [Quietness and no smile, somber].

I realized then that he was tired of being timid with me about it, done trying to be cool, done hinting. No more jokes about Five Guy burgers being near his house, no more looking subdued when I'd tell him what a joke marriage is. The change I saw in him after his family reunion...the talk about him wanting me to be friends with his mom all of a sudden. Even the look on his face when he saw the ranch in Leavenworth my father said he was leaving me, the runways he was probably designing there, in his mind's eye. It all clicks now. And I remember this moment like it was this morning. He had his hands behind his head and he stared at the ceiling of that messy cab.

Me: [realizing he's not kidding]. Of course, Jed. Of course I'll marry you.

And there we had it, so I took his picture.

And then I kissed him and he fell asleep and snored.

And then three months later, I moved my things out of Me And Reboyfriend's, and it introduced me to a new brand of pain. It was a very pretty Fall day. I guess that's all I can really say about it.