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.