My father is a curmudgeon. I've written this before, but in case you've forgotten, and lest you think I'm cruel, here are a couple of incidents that should serve to reinforce that statement.

When I went home for my class reunion, my mother - so frightened of my dad's rigid behavior and the impact it could have on not only us but herself - paid for us to stay in a hotel room in "downtown" Bloomington. Bloomington is population 702, down from 747 when I was a wee girl there. The "hotel room" has had several previous incarnations - once as a medical clinic (which perhaps explained the florescent lights that exposed our every enlarged pore) and more recently as an apartment. The accommodations were comfortable, and really, who needs TV or phone, or cell reception for that matter.

My sister, her two kids, me and Robby stayed there two nights, on Mom. There was no talking her out of it, or reimbursing her.

But my final night in Bloomington, my sister and her children having left for their home, Robby and I stayed with our folks.

I knew the routine. Lights out at 9:40. No talking beyond that point. No sitting in the glider, which is Dad's chair, right down to the stain from his greasy head. I knew what to do, and more importantly, what not to do.

I pissed him off anyway.

My first mistake was in putting a bag of cheese into the refrigerator. I'd picked up several to take home to Colorado. Rather thoughtlessly, I suppose, I found a spot for them on a middle shelf and tucked the bag behind the milk.

My dad called out from his glider seat around the corner. "Helene!" he shouted to my mom. "She didn't put that cheese on that middle shelf, did she?"

My mom grimaced. "No, Carl, I'm sure she didn't."

"She sure as hell better not have," he grumbled.

Asking Mom, apparently, was easier than addressing me directly.

"Mom," I whispered, "I did put it on the middle shelf."

Her grimace turned into a frown. I saw mild panic flit across her 81-year-old face. These were expressions of which she no doubt was unaware; she'd been making them for the entire 50 years of their marriage.

She opened the refrigerator door.

"I'll do it," I said, moving toward her.

"No," she said, waving me off. "Let me."

I watched as she shoved, stacked and otherwise renegotiated items within the refrigerator to make room for the large brown cheese-filled bag on a lower shelf.

As she completed her task, we heard the sound of Dad's boots hitting the kitchen's linoleum floor. These were the same style of boots he'd worn for years on the farm. Leather, above-the-calf lace-ups, far sturdier than needed for a man whose most difficult daily activity was walking loops round his basement - my dad's version of exercise.

He yanked open the refrigerator door to inspect it for himself. I heard him exhale through his nose, a sound of unwarranted disgust. "Sure as hell better not put that on that middle shelf. It can't take it."

With the commission of this grevious error, I became an object of suspicion.

Scarcely 10 minutes later, Dad was up again.

"Jane," he beckoned me with his index finger. "Come 'ere."

My dad has been bent with age for many years, yet his stride is nearly as long and purposeful as ever. Unfortunately, this lends him a comedic posture, particularly at a time like this - when he strode down the hallway, boots clomping, on a mission I was certain was bizarre by any one but my dad's standards.

I followed into the bedroom in which Robby and I would sleep that night. The small room held a double bed, matching dresser and a chair. There was room for no more. My suitcase yawned open on the bed.

He leaned over and pointed under the bed. "Look here," he said. "You see that?"

I followed his finger and saw the edge of a package of white toilet paper peeking out from underneath the bed.

"Now bend over further and look over here," he said, bending to point further under the bed.

I ducked lower and realized there were a multitude of packages underneath the bed. The local grocer must have had a sale. Dad had stockpiled at least 15 packages of toilet paper.

"Don't you god-damn throw anything heavy under there," he growled. "I don't want that toilet paper getting squished."

He was serious as a heart attack - as serious about his toilet paper's viriginal condition as he is about his bread - and I didn't even consider laughing.

"Sure, Dad," I said.

"Huh?"

"I said 'sure'."

Dad met my eyes briefly, no doubt to see if I understood the gravity of the situation.

Then he left me, and the 60-plus rolls of toilet paper, alone.

Could it possibly be true that we all become our parents someday?

I consider this as I change a roll of toilet paper. Do I feel any special affinity toward it, any motherly protectiveness? I have searched my soul and thankfully can say this is not so.

When I buy a loaf of bread, I am strangely happy if I forget that it's in the cart and accidentally squish it with a heavier item. Even if the clerk offers to replace it for a virgin loaf, I refuse. Instead, I eat misshapen sandwiches for a week.

I like it squished, daddy dearest. I like it squished just fine.

The only thing is - and it's a very small thing - I prefer it when it's squished on the right third of the slice - not the precise middle, definitely not the left. It makes for a more interesting-looking loaf of bread that way, and I know exactly how to curve the peanut butter so it precisely fills that little defect.

There's nothing wrong with that ... is there?

What do any of us seek from a class reunion? For some - perhaps most of us - it's simply the chance to reconnect with old friends. For others, the reassurance that you are not changing, maturing or, goddamnit let's just say it -- growing older -- alone, that even the most popular among our former classmates is losing hair, gaining weight, been buffeted by and weathered similar storms life. Others return because some part of them is still stuck in the past, mired by some teenaged trauma, and hoping for resolution that allows them, finally, to let go and be free of it.

Perhaps the latter is me, although I like to think I went back mostly for affirmation of what has come since, not before. Could be I'm just splitting hairs.

Yes, I was excited to see a few classmates with whom I stayed in intermittent touch, those once best friends whose ties have been frayed by distance, time and separate experiences. And yes, I was curious to see how my other classmates had fared with life in general and with time.

But mostly, I sought the acknowledgement that I was no longer the skinny, pale, uncoordinated, underconfident child I'd been. Back then, I had a bad perm, braces on my teeth and my back, glasses and a decided lack of style. One especially memorable day, a group of boys howled at me as I walked down the hall. These were among the least popular boys in the class above me. Their howls were not of admiration, but of the jeering, cruel variety that few but children and teenagers can project.

By senior year, I think I had outgrown much of this. But that's not how my memory has it.

Twenty-five years later, I wanted to be told I was different. Remarkably different. Overall better. Even perhaps beautiful.

I admit this with a sense of shame. My life, the mirror and my sense of self already affirms these things. We all know by now that it comes from within, or it does not come at all. Why did I still feel the need to find it elsewhere, and from such a long-ago source?

It was not that I resented anyone from the Class of '82. I resented my old, beaten image.

What I took away from the reunion was, like almost all in life, not quite what I expected.

Two or three people expressed exactly what I wanted to hear. Wonderful! Beautiful! I didn't recognize you!

But most said this: You look exactly the same!

What??!

I had good hair. Hell, I had red hair! I had a figure. Fashionable clothes, contacts, and decent posture. Damnit, I had a pierced belly button! I was no longer a virgin, or Catholic. I was not the same!

"Either I wasn't as bad as I thought I was then, or I don't look as good as I think I do now," I speculated later with my sister.

She did not directly respond. "All I know is, you're high maintenance," she said, annoyed with the length and attention to detail it had required for me to make my public appearance. She was right. I annoyed myself.

But the strange thing was, most of my classmates did look the same. The men had aged less gracefully than the women; several had gained weight and/or lost hair. A couple women also had gained a few pounds, but their faces were no more than slightly lined, their hairstyle generally identical, their personalities as they were with a mellower, kinder tint. Divorces, losses and victories had both scarred and formed us all.

The class beauty was still beautiful outside and had grown even more so inside.

The class ho was married, but still walked the walk, smoking incessantly, drinking heavily and cursing at a rate equal to both her habits. She looked the same, only harder, her lines more markedly and deeply drawn.

The cliques were gone, yet strangely, I found myself falling back into my old role of my friend Mary's sidekick, the two of us among the class funny girls. I rolled off jokes I didn't know were inside me, and a small circle soon formed around Mary and me. Our group laughter soon attracted more. No one could have warned me that within such a short time, I'd feel so at ease, so oddly removed and at home in one moment.

I liked these people, and most of them far more than when we had last met.

Perhaps this is what we all really seek in reunions: Not just reconnections but new discoveries of the people we thought we had labeled so neatly and precisely.

And just perhaps, no one had ever labeled me the way I'd once believed. Maybe, just maybe, I'd applied it all by myself.

This is the afternoon of the first full day in our new home.

The sulky one is my kid, annoyed with me for capturing the moment. Three of them are triplets, who live next door, another their little brother and the other two a couple of sisters from further down Peacock Drive.

This, 24 hours after we moved in, is the life I envisioned for my son.

Joining this neighborhood has so far been surreal. The neighbors are almost comically friendly, the dramas among them that I already am beginning to discover are textbook soap opera stuff.

"You'll love them," said Pam, the only other single woman on the street, who flagged down Robby and I this evening as we rode by - he on his electric scooter, me on my bike. "Then you'll get to know them too well, and you'll wish you could get away from them. Then, you'll feel blessed to have them. Then, ya know, over and over. Mostly, you'll feel blessed."

Robby and I never finished our planned race from one end of the street to the other. A trio of teenagers were playing softball in the middle section of it. Just beyond that, a woman whose name I did not remember called out, "Hi Jane!" On our way back, Pam stopped us again and when I told her I was searching for a washer and dryer, she led me across the street to Faith and Pat's house. There, inside the garage, waiting for a buyer, was a washer and dryer, a trundle bed perfect for the guest room for which I have no furniture, a badly needed dresser and Pat, who volunteered to bring it all down and set it up for me. For $275, I have added some of serious missing pieces to our home.

Surreal. Like I said.

It began Saturday, when we took a break from unpacking to introduce ourselves to the neighbors closest, the parents of the triplets. "Hey, a bunch of the neighbors are having a kick-off to summer picnic a few doors down. "Come on down and you'll meet half the street," said Suzanne.

Robby and I found the party with no trouble. In a driveway about eight houses down, a dozen people sat in lawn chairs, most with cans of beer in their hands, some focused on plates piled high with hot dogs, chicken, pasta salad and watermelon.
Suzanne immediately brought us into the fold. "These are the new neighbors," she said.

A dozen smiles turned toward us. Introductions flew fast and furious. "Mike is with Terri, Eileen and Todd go together," the names and connections blurred in my mind. "Oh, and this is Mike and Terri's dog Ladybug. And the blonde boy, he's June and Bob's; that's Mikey. The tall one, he's Kaleb." On and on it went.

Children ranging in size from knee high to six feet swarmed in and out of the driveway, adults and kids flowing from the front of the house, through the garage, into a mysteriously hidden back yard.

Robby and I found paper plates. Someone handed me a beer, and him a juice box. We sat in folding chairs, watching more than talking.

"Hey," a woman called out. "Sue's here!"

A middle aged woman in a battery-powered wheelchair rolled up the driveway. The entire crew erupted in cheers.

"Sue has MS," Suzanne explained. "She's been in the hospital for the last month."
Women rushed to hug and kiss Sue. "Sorry I didn't come by to see you in the hospital this morning," Diana said. "But now I don't have to. I can see you here!"

Another couple walked up the driveway, the woman carrying a pan of cream-cheese-stuffed green peppers. "Hi neighbor!" one of the men shouted in greeting. "Hey there, neighbor!" the other man volleyed back. Several other people joined in, laughing and tossing "hi neighbors" back and forth among them.

While they "hi-neighbored" themselves silly, I turned to Robby.

"Who wrote this script?" I asked. Robby laughed and nodded, and I grinned even wider at the realization that he understood exactly what I had meant.

Person after person approached us to say hello. Their words were almost identical.
"You couldn't have picked a better neighborhood," they said.

Eventually, we discovered who owned the house in whose driveway we sat.

"Welcome to the Peacock Bar and Grill!" said Todd, the tall, black-haired patriarch. "We're open for the season! See," he said, pointing around a bend in the sidewalk. "We've even got an 'open' sign." And there it was, just outside their front door.

Robby, who hung back with me for the first hour, soon vanished from my side with the boy who lives next door to us. Together, they ran back home to get their bikes. I saw Robby later, surrounded by a pack of neighborhood boys.

"That's the way it goes around here," Suzanne said.

I nodded and turned my head farther than necessary to look. I didn't want her to see the happy tears in my eyes.

Several times that evening, I turned my head in just that way. And several times again yesterday, when children ran our doorbell on a regular basis and flowed comfortably from room to room with Robby. They gathered around the table to play Life. Later, they lolled on the living room floor and took turns playing with Robby's Wii system.

By afternoon's end, I thought I would cry for another reason. Almost all our apple juice, orange juice, a bottle of Coke we'd received as part of a housewarming gift, four puddings and several pieces of cold chicken I'd planned on as dinner were gone. I was overwhelmed, completely unprepared for so many children. Robby and I both breathed a sigh of relief when our house finally became ours again.

Just why, I wondered, did we both feel so undone? Looking back, I realize that we have had six years of relative solitude, just he and I alone in homes too far removed from regular gangs of children. This will be a dramatic adjustment for us both. But it is one I am confident we will happily make.

Saturday night, we were the first to leave the party. We wandered back down our new street, Robby riding slowly next to me on his bike, the same bike that has sat unused for the last year in the closet of our third-story apartment.

"What do you think?" I asked him.

"I think this'll be good," he said, unable to suppress a grin.

"Sometimes," I said, "it takes a while to get where you belong, doesn't it?"

He nodded and at his next words, had it not been such a dark night, I would have turned my head again. "This," he said, "is where we belong."

My left hand is ready, as well trained as it will ever be for the endurance test that awaits it tomorrow. Tomorrow, we close on our new home. Tomorrow, I will sign, initial, sign, initial, initial and then again sign an awesome pile of documents, as well as hand over a very big cashier's check.

Commitmentphone that it appears I am, tomorrow, I will commit myself to a house for three decades. That's almost three times longer than the average American male-female relationship -- now 11 years. You'd think I'd be a nervous wreak.

But I sit here on my bed, one of the few still intact items in this apartment, heavy with contentment. Quietly happy with the knowledge that tomorrow, my son and I start another phase in our life, this one more sustained, more ripe with promise, than so many that have come before.

It's the comfortable hum of knowing something is right. Some piece of life's puzzle clicks softly into place. And with it, the others seem close enough to touch.

Life is boxes, tape, documents and an endless series of checks.

We are moving. During the past few weeks, I have signed countless papers, assembled W2s, IRA statements, released my credit history to faceless strangers and begged, borrowed and darn near stolen to qualify for a home while my Colorado Springs townhouse remains on the market. My checkbook looks thin, beaten. Checks in two-, three- and four-figure amounts have been ripped from its paper mouth.

But money is not bothering me. All this will work out.

For the last two days, I’ve been packing. Amazing how much hides in a two-bedroom apartment in which you have lived only 11 months.

Packing is tedious. I’d forgotten how much so. But packing is not bothering me.

My son told me about two weeks ago that he hates his stepmother. Since then, with gentle prodding from me, he has admitted to more and more unrest about the life he lives in what I have always known was her home – not Robby’s or his father’s. But hers.

His sadness - this is what is bothering me.

I’d always thought we were the exceptional split family, with the rare good stepmother/son relationship. In fact, I’d been a wee bit jealous of her. While I never liked the split in parenting time, or thought the judge had made the best decision for Robby, I figured it was OK. Robby was doing well. He liked both his homes. He was loved in both.

Often, I’d suspected his dad did not provide him with enough to do. That Robby was neglected in the bustle of caring for a hobby ranch teaming with animals. I’d believed since they’d married that my ex jumped for his wife, and tended to Robby’s needs second. That my ex’s fear of being left skewed the world for him, caused him to agree to things – such as the move to an 80-acre ranch truly in the middle of nowhere – because his terror of being left again was so overwhelming.

They’d hoped Robby would like ranch life. He does not. But instead of finding new things for him to do, instead of taking him to the small library there, or arranging time for him to see his school friends, finishing the long-promised tree house or buying the long-promised trampoline, he plays video games there. He does chores. He attends school, and does his homework.

My son is not given to drama, so I believe the things he is telling me. I believe he has wanted to tell me for some time, but because he doesn’t like to rock the boat, he’s kept it inside.

I question him one night as I am tucking him into bed.

“Do you feel loved at your dad’s house?” I ask him.

He looks away from me, up at the ceiling. He makes a clucking sound with his tongue. This is what he does when he’s trying not to cry.

“Just by my dad,” he says.

“Is Sherry mean to you?”

“Yes.”

His answer shocks me.

“How?” I ask. “Has she hit you?”

I wait for the answer, coiled tight like a snake ready to strike her in the jugular if he tells me she has.

“No. She just yells at me.”

“How much?”

“A lot,” he says, clucking, eyes rolled to the ceiling, tears gleaming anyway just inside the bottom lid.

“Why?”

“I don’t know. She just does.”

“Are you happy there?” I ask.

He shrugs. “I don’t know.”

“Do you like living there?”

No answer.

“Do you like school there?”

He nods.

Finally, after a series of questions – some answered, some not – I understand that he would like to live her fulltime, but still attend his little school in which he knows and loves everyone.

“Well,” I say, wrapping up the conversation as lightly as I can. “That would be a very long bus ride, wouldn’t it?”

I cuddle him close, tell him how much I love him, how special he is, say nothing about his father or Sherry. But inside, I feel no such calm.

I think about the judge who made a decision so biased it shocked the child court advocate, who had recommended my son spend his school days, and most of his time, with me. The judge – a former city dweller turned mountain goat - said Robby did not need all the extra curricular activities of a large school, when he had the mountains at his back door.

Shocked, emotionally and financially drained, I tried to accept the verdict. Eighteen months and $10,000 had passed; I could have appealed. I chose not to.

Now, I wonder if I made the right decision.

It is this I think about as I pack. The life that could have been, should have been, for my son.

On a shelf behind his bed, I find four soccer trophies, all of them a little dusty. I dust each one, wrapping them individually in sheets of newspaper. The trophies are from Dillon and Colorado Springs. The most recent, a bobble head we both found particularly cute.

This happy character, his right leg bent in a perpetual kick, saddens me. Here is the sport Robby never will be able to fully pursue because he cannot be on an organized team. In the tiny town in which he attends school, there are no team sports. No band. No choir. No nothing. His time here is too limited, his ability to make practices too impossible.

I open his closet door and see a skateboard and helmet. This, for about four months, was his passion. But he had no one with whom to practice, no one to egg him on to bigger stunts. No one skateboards in a ranching community. Roads are gravel. Homes are at least 80 acres apart. Kids don’t gather after school. No one “hangs out.” In this apartment complex, we see almost no children. I took him to skate parks, but without a partner, his confidence waned. The skateboard vanished behind a wall of hanging clothes.

All these tiny things make my heart ache. It bleeds, an ever so thin but constant trickle, for my son.

This move, I hope, will be about healing, offering him a new life and refuge from a house controlled by a woman whose maternal instincts never grew.

According to a nonverbal agreement between his father and I, Robby will attend high school where I am. I do not trust him. So instead of hoping he’ll simply do the right thing, I will entrench my son in his new neighborhood so firmly that there will be no question. That Robby’s voice, not the judge’s, or his father’s, will this time decide his future.

Robby and I found our new neighborhood by accident, searching for access to a beautiful park we spied from a busy cross street. We found the park, then walked the neighborhood. It felt, we agreed, like home.

The children on our new street are the ones with whom he will attend high school. Before I put an offer in on the house, I checked with the state to learn the quality of the high school – Excellent. I walked the street, talking to neighbors. One after another, they told me how much they love their neighborhood. The children ignore the nearby park to play in the street, they said. The adults gather in driveways to barbecue. Dogs roam free because everyone knows them.

I made an offer that day.

A couple of my friends think I should talk to my ex about what Robby has told me. But I see no way to win with this approach. My ex and his wife both likely will resent me for it. I have asked Robby if he will talk to his father. "No," he says. And when I push some more: "I never will."

So I'll take this silent approach. In addition to all the love and support I have, I will create for him the best home possible. A place that doesn't feel like something temporary, with neighbors who don't duck their heads as they walk without speaking from car to apartment door. A place without harsh words, warm with good food and good friends.

So that when the time comes, if his father balks, Robby can say -- perhaps even without words -- where he feels best. He can finally, fulltime, come home.

Sometimes, just when you need an ego boost most, there he is.

My dog and I took a leisurely walk on the bike path last night. Everything was spring-into-summer green, the temperature balmy, the breeze gentle.

We were farther from home than usual. I needed to make a return at Wal-Mart, just around the corner from a section of path we rarely traveled.

I parked the car in a lonely recycling center parking lot, just a few feet from the path and Ally and I walked down the hill. A man and a white Great Pyrenees were walking the opposite direction. The man was of average height, lean and prematurely gray. At a glance, I estimated him in his early 50s. Even though he was directly in our path, I couldn't have missed his seeing him. He wore a peachy-pink Breast Cancer 3K t-shirt over fashionably loose blue jeans.

We exchanged pleasantries, and commented on one another's dogs.

"You walk the bike path often?"

"Yes," I said.

"But not this section," he said. It was not a question, but a statement.

He was right, I told him. We typically walked a couple miles west, closer to our home.

He wished me a good night and we parted ways.

Ally and I proceeded on an unhurried walk, crossing a bridge, meandering into the forest and fighting off mosquitos. I watched her mine for rocks in the rushing stream. About an hour later, we returned to our starting point.

A sports car of some kind was parked next to my seen-better-days, badly-in-need-of-a-car-wash Saturn sedan. Not just a sports car, I could see now. A Jaguar. Our two vehicles were the only ones in the lot.

The door opened and an older man in a peachy-pink T-shirt stepped out. He perched on a boulder in front of his car and smiled at me as I approached.

"I wondered," he said, "if I could introduce myself to you."

Close up, I could see that he was an attractive man. Dimples, blue eyes, a quick smile and ... he was blushing.

"Chris Webb," he said, and shook my hand.

I gave him my first name, hesitated and then added my last.

How long, I wondered, had he been sitting there, waiting for me. And where was the dog? Had he walked her home, then driven back in the car?

I asked none of these things. But I stood a good six feet away from him, my big, black but completely fatigued and now useless protector between us.

"I wondered if I could take you to lunch or out for a drink sometime," he said.

I didn't want to hurt his feelings. In fact, I wanted to say 'yes' simply to reward him for his chutzpah. But the Jag, the dimples, the well-maintained body and blue eyes didn't touch me. Even the blush wasn't enough to tip me over into genuine interest. It wouldn't have mattered if this particular man had been in his early 30s, 40s, 50s or 60s, driving a jaguar or a dump truck. I simply wasn't interested in him.

"Well ... I ..."

"Here," he said, and pressed a business card into my hand. "I'll leave it up to you. You call me if you'd like to, and I'd be happy to take you."

"I'm very direct. But I'm not a stalker."

Immediately, I wondered: Could he be a stalker? Certainly, he'd sat in his car long enough to jot down my license plate number, even peer into the windows and see ... what? A copy of recorded books "Freakanomics," an Evercare brochure on the floor, an empty Nutrigrain wrapper in the console, my son's plastic green Martian figurine grinning at the car ceiling with its sightless plastic eyes? Nothing, really, that revealed anything about me.

I thanked him, told him I was flattered and that I admired his directness. He drove out of the parking lot, leaving me with a friendly smile and wave.

When I told two co-workers this story today, each had completely opposite reactions.

"My creep meter would have been burning red," said JoAnn, an almost 50 blonde Texan who had seen more than her share of male n'er-do-wells.

"I think it's awesome!" said my boss, Vickie, a down-to-earth, extroverted, also-near-50 brunette who had graduated from a homeless-by-choice 20-something into the top exec at our company. "A guy with a Jaguar waiting for you? How wonderful!"

JoAnn may be right. But if I believed her, the encounter left me feeling very nearly violated. Instead, I concur with Vickie. I had been paid a compliment by a nice, impressive gentleman.

Nevertheless, there are miles of bike path to explore. Most of them far from the Wal-Mart. Who knows? Maybe there's another of these guys - someone who piques my interest, touches my heart or does something so simple as make me laugh; really, that's all it takes for me - just around the next bend in life's unpredictable path.

Tonight, I chatted with a newly divorced single friend. She felt wonderful about her decision and, based on what she'd told me about the relationship, it was the only logical choice available to her. She'd been married and divorced three times she said, and was not prepared to do it again. "I'm done," she said, "done with marriage. Done with men."

She and her husband had been separated for many months, so, she said, the adjustment would be small.

"You get used to being lonely," she said, her expression implying this was a fact I - so long a single woman - already knew and would not argue.

I didn't say anything to her, but I disagree. You get used to being alone. You never get used to being lonely.

Alone is a condition. And often a desirable one. People with families, hectic jobs and frantic schedules long for alone time. It is a time for reflection and relaxation. Being alone often elicits a sense of freedom, the satisfaction of efficiency.

Lonely is an emotion. An ache that manifests itself as a pain inside your chest. You might become familiar with this feeling. But you do not get used to it. Lonely finds you in a crowd.

I am used to being alone. Self sufficient, independent, proud, so entrenched in my aloneness I'm not sure how successful I could be at opening my life to another.

Loneliness, however, demands that I try.

No one believes I am athletic.

I am banged up, with a seriously swollen digit, a kneecap that after four weeks is still annoyed with me for allowing a foot to kiss it and there is an upside-down, wheel-less bicycle in my living room.

Yet still, people snicker at my claims of athleticism.

The truth is, while I am fit, I am not currently what anyone would consider athletic. All my life, I have had an aversion (read: bottomless insecurity) to team sports. In high school, I was tall, painfully thin and awkward. I was, literally, the last one picked. And then I stood from the ball as possible. My attempts were feeble, and ducking my best move.

The fact that I am now involved in a weekly child/parent kickball game is a feat that few can truly understand.

The fact that I have actually caught the ball, scoring an automatic out, is a mini miracle. But my high school self apparently wants me back in line, and off the field. She was the one who caught the ball more than two weeks ago, moving her finger precisely so that the ball jammed it.

It was my pinkie.

It hurt. And I whined and showed it to a fellow player. At that point, it looked minor. The next day, half my hand was swollen and colorful with purple and blue bruises.

When I still couldn't bend my pinkie two weeks later, I became alarmed. And secretly, thrilled. Never in my life have I suffered a broken bone. At 42, playing my first team sport, it was time. Such an injury would make me an athlete, a member of the sacred club for which I have never passed muster.

The X-ray showed no fractures. I was keenly disappointed.

But the doctor acknowledged it would not heal without some special attention. Nothing so glorious as a cast, or even an anti-inflammatory. Medication, while not as good as a break, would underline the seriousness of the whole affair. Instead, she advised me to stop by Walgreen's and pick up a finger splint.

The splint is a large, vertical piece of shiny, silver metal with a split at the bottom. Cushioned by a thick pad of spongy material, the finger slides neatly inside the splint. The instructions - all of two sentences - suggested taping it for added security. Untaped, it comes off with a pull. That seemed far too simple for my sports injury. Tape. Definitely tape.

I tried Scotch. Then I decided that looked worse than nothing, and pried it off.

Tape or no tape, the splint did the trick. Finally, people noticed. People wanted to talk to me about my finger. I was elated - until I saw their reactions.

The clerk at Wal-Mart brightened when she saw the splint. Here was a conversation piece! A breath of fresh air from the constant weather patter!

"What happened?" she asked, furrowing her brow with concern.

"Oh," I said, my tone carefully nonchalant. "I jammed it."

"How?" Now she sounded alarmed.

"Kickball," I said.

"Oh." Her tone was suddenly flat, the sweet note of sympathy now absent.

I tried to redeem myself.

"It happened two weeks ago, and still wasn't healing right," I said.

She was silent.

"That's a long time," I added.

Now she looked annoyed, anxious to be ride of me.

"Yeah," she said, handing me the receipt, her eyes and dull now as they'd been before she'd spied my splint. "Well, take care."

And so it went. At the gas station. The grocery store. An outing downtown with friends.

Raised brows followed by rolled eyes.

I tried to spice the story up with a little humor. "No one told me you were supposed to use your feet in kickball," I'd throw in brightly. The smiles that elicited were merely polite.

Why, I wondered, was a fracture worth so much more emotion than a sprain? I felt like Rodney Dangerfield.

Saturday, I apparently made one last, subconscious attempt to stake a claim on athleticism. I fell off my bike.

It was a gorgeous day and I'd set out from home with the intent to ride for about an hour. Ten minutes into the ride, a strong wind came up, blowing sand into my eyes and making it generally tough to ride. This was not part of my planned interlude. I turned around. On the way back, I cut through the parking lot of an empty office building. It was beautifully constructed, with multi-colored tiles leading the way to the entrance. I rode around the front, admiring it, and looked up too late to see that the tiles were not all on one level.

My feet were securely fastened into my clipless pedals. (Clipless pedals -- now clearly that's an indication of an athlete, right?!) I didn't even try to escape them. Instead, I watched myself fall. Down, sideways and off. My thigh broke part of my fall, my splint the rest. I reached out for the sidewalk, and the splint absorbed some of the shock that would otherwise surely have ripped up my arm!

I dusted myself off and looked at my hand. The shiny silver splint now bore a series of scratches.

At that day's holiday picnic, I displayed the splint to the first person who asked. "What did you do?"

I spoke without thinking. "I jammed it playing kickball and then I dinged up the splint when I fell of my bike this morning. Amazing, huh?"

He looked at me with poorly disguised pity with an aftertaste of disgust. Too late, I realized how incredibly clumsy the whole thing made me sound.

"Yeah," he said, trying to hide an eye roll as he turned away. "That would be the word."

This is another story from the past, but unlike the last entry, this one has never been committed to paper - or cyberspace. But I thought of it the other day and realized it would be a crime not to share it.

I call this The Mystery of the Thong.

It was May, 2003. The day I was sealing the door on the packed U-Haul and, after 13 years in the High Country, moving to Colorado Springs.

All that remained to be done was to pick up a check from my last pet-sitting client. During 10 of those 13 years in Summit County, I operated a pet-sitting business. One that thrived so well I sometimes brought home more cash per month from it than I grossed from my full-time career reporting job.

It was the first time I had pet sat for this couple, an early 50-something pair who took off for a week someplace tropical. It wasn't the first time I did laundry at a client's house.

I spent my last 18 months of mountain residency in a drafty cabin with no washer and dryer - a truly evil little house but we shall save that story for another time. I saw no sense in dragging my dirty laundry to a laundromat, or to friends' homes, when all my pet-sitting customers had perfectly good washers and dryers. I suppose it would have been easier, and more honest, to simply ask their permission. But it seemed an offbeat request, so instead, I went ahead and did it, always checking every nook and cranny of both machines to ensure nothing was left behind. No one ever asked any questions or seemingly suspected a thing.

That final morning, I drove to the couple's home to pick up the check.

The man, a lean, gray-haired, sophisticated-seeming fellow, greeted me at the door. He smiled, an expression I assumed was genuine. In retrospect, I suspect it was rather a thin stretch of the lips. But I had no reason to suspect anything was amiss.

"Let's go downstairs," he said. "We have something for you."

He said "we" but his wife was not home.

I smiled again, a bit of an 'aw shucks' sort of thing. It was not uncommon for people to bring back a small, typically cheesy, gift from their exotic vacation spot for their petsitter. I hoped it was a coffee mug, or a useful object along those lines, not a miniature depiction of a leaping dolphin or some other dust magnet.

The man, whom we'll call Dick for simplicity's sake, motioned for me to sit down at a round wooden table in their remodeled basement. A small brown bag, its top curled downward into a little fist, sat innocently on the table. A tiny alert went off in my brain. Odd packaging, I thought, for a gift.

"Go ahead," Dick said. "Open it." His tone was somber, setting off another small alarm. But I paid it no mind; I was too anxious to see what treasure they had bought for me.

I uncurled the top and reached in, surprised when my hand closed around a wispy piece of cotton. I pulled it out into full display. It was a thong. A extremely tiny thong. With a pair of big, red lips on the only piece of fabric large enough to accommodate them. It was my thong.

"We found this on the floor in the hallway," he said.

I looked up. His eyes were dark and hard. I felt my face reddening, felt the first wave of humiliation crashing into my brain.

"It's dirty," he added.

I looked at him, my mouth gaping. I had not looked inside it. But clearly, he had.

Disbelief joined embarrassment. And then, anger made its appearance.

This man had set me up for this moment. Even worse, he had looked at my underwear. Suddenly, his crime seemed far worse to me than my own.

"How did it get here?" he asked.

Still more embarrassed than anything, I stumbled.
"I don't know," I said.

"Did you do laundry here?" the dick, I mean Dick, asked.

It would have been easiest to have confessed the simple truth. But he had me against a wall, and I panicked.

"No," I said."All I can think is that it must have gotten stuck inside my jeans last time I did laundry, and it fell out while I was walking in your house."

A clever answer, I thought, although it still did not address the little detail about the thong's dirty state.

He waited for more, but I had nothing else to say. Looking back, I should have said something cutting that would have turned the tables and made him see how utterly ridiculous a game he was playing. But I was stunned and my mind was set on only one thing: Escape.

Dick handed me a check. I took it, tossed the thong back into its brown bag, stood and exited the garden level door. I suppose I said thanks, since that would be my typical response to receiving a check, but I hope not.

I was only a block away when I began to laugh. First at myself, and then at Dick.

I realized I had left him with only one conclusion: I had had sex in his house. Somewhere. Perhaps on the washing machine. Maybe on the floor. Or could it have been ... in the master bed? I suddenly envisioned Dick stripping the bed, perhaps not only that bed but not knowing where the deed had occurred, every one in the house,

The truth was so pedestrian. The vision I had left him with so perverse. Precisely what he deserved.

I drove from there to a local diner where I met a few friends for a farewell brunch. We laughed about it until we cried. I did not show them the thong.

I expected to leave Summit County with relief. I had overstayed my time there by several years, and was chomping at the bit to start the next chapter in my life. Instead, I left with a delirious grin on my face, and a dirty thong by my side.

In a May 3 Denver Post editorial, columnist Pius Kamau manages to do exactly what he claims to abhor.

Kamau's editorial, "Dealing with mental illness," does nothing to enlighten the public about such disorders. Instead, it instills further fear among those ignorant of the subject and enhances a stale but still wildly raging stereotype.

"By not supporting vigorous research into mental illness, we perpetuate our ignorance and demonize the mentally ill," he writes.

Sounds good, right? But before and after that sentence, Kamau does an astonishingly job of just that: perpetuating and demonizing. He refers to Virginia Tech shooter Cho, along with Columbine's Harris and Klebold as examples of the mentally ill. "Before the next Columbine or Virginia Tech," America needs to step up to the plate and "intelligently evaluate and treat tomorrow's mass murderers" to "abort future killing rampages."

Thanks, Kamau. Because clearly, Cho, Harris and Klebold are accurate representations of the mentally ill, aren't they?

Did they slip through the cracks? Yes. Are these horrible events lessons for the future? Will they help society give others the help they need before headlines are made? Yes.

But Kamau's depiction paints all the mentally ill with the same broad and dangerous brush.

It is in the people he features. It is in the phrases and words he chooses. "We have been poor caretakers of the weak and vulnerable among us." Ironic, since some of the strongest people I know battle emotional disorders. Kamau points out that mental illness is of "epidemic proportions." The word "epidemic" does not induce compassion in the average reader; instead, it summons up images of a contagious disease, something we should fear and from which we should run.

He notes that 10 to 15 percent of prisoners suffer from "severe mental illness". A valid point but again, one that hardly softens the heart or reduces needless fear.

Kamau fails to mention the vast majority of mentally ill Americans. Those who work, play, raise children, maintain successful marriages and whose disorder passes unnoticed by all but their most beloved confidantes. These are the silent millions who deal with their mental illness with medication, therapy, exercise, support groups, supplements and in other ways. These people are more keenly tuned to their emotions than most, alert for any change that seems threatens their carefully wrought balance, ready to correct it before it impacts their lives and the lives of those around them.

They are not besieged by violent thoughts. By and large, they are in fact the most compassionate and empathetic among us. They've visited the darkest corners of the human mind and emerged scarred but typically the better for it.

When the demons visit them, they deal with them behind closed doors, not in public demonstrations of rage.

For those who are undiagnosed, the battle rages internally, not on the front page. If they think of hurting anyone, it is themselves. Life has become too painful. They feel keenly their difference from others, but fear the knowledge of what that may be. No one, they believe, can understand or help them.

I agree with Kamau that diseases like cancer and heart disease draw more attention and funding. The suffering and death that these diseases cause is all too visible. The suffering of those with mental illness passes unnoticed, and the disorders do not kill. The dying is internal. And so, mental illness goes underfunded and largely ignored.

Kamau makes a pitch for research that will reveal the chemical markers of these disorders. A side benefit of this kind of understanding, he writes, "will be to destigmatize mental illness."

But with writers like Kamau wielding the power of the editorial pen, the stigma grows only stronger.

Lying in bed this first of summery Monday mornings, I realized that I miss writing.

I miss making it my job. I miss getting paid for doing what I love.

The sun had not yet risen, but the slice of sky I could see through the slats of my blinds was a bright gray. Birds were singing. An engine came to life in the parking lot below.

It was 5:45.

I hadn't awakened, much less gotten up, at this hour in a very long time. What had prompted my feet to hit the floor then was excitement, a love of the coming day, the idea of getting into the office early, well before anyone else. That gave me two hours to write, completely alone. Usually a column, but sometimes an article.

The first one in after me was always Brad. "Hey, Janie," he'd say cheerfully as he headed toward his dark room.

Brad was quiet and not disruptive. We shared the early morning hours in peaceful, respective silence.

I loved those hours when my head was clear, uncluttered by the details and noise of the coming day. When the writing flowed easily, and the words passed from brain to keyboard with little thought, so natural was the process.

Today was the first time in years I have thought of writing this way again. Today is the first time I've missed it. It feels like re-introducing myself to an old friend.

I think of how I very nearly cringe when people ask me what I do for a living, Reluctantly, I say, "I sell insurance." There is not any pride in this statement and the person who is inquiring always picks up on it, and looks, as I think they should, vaguely disappointed in the answer.

This job was my soft place to land, my desperately needed parachute from the smoking airplane that was the Gazette.

Selling insurance has been a needed break. But it has not been following my bliss.

What will I do about this revelation? Nothing. For now. It could be something as simple as taking this blog to the next level. Who knows.

We are all beyond the age where we can leave a job just because we realize it's a poor fit.

But almost every grand change in life starts with a seed of recognition such as this one. For now, that's enough.

"You never have the energy to do anything," my son said scornfully Friday night.

We were at a playground, an unplanned stop on our way home from the grocery store. I was hungry, and frustrated from another fruitless day of attempted sales. I reacted with unnecessary anger.

"You wait until you're my age!" I said, then, realizing how ancient I sounded, I backpedaled. "Or even ... 30!

"Playgrounds won't be so interesting to you then. That's why they're designed for kids."

Sometimes, I enjoyed the playground. Who doesn't love an occasional swing? A trip or two down the slide? Sure. And the monkey bars? A test of my upper body strength. Occasionally, we'd play a game of tag, charging up and down ladders and slides, scaring the other parents who gaped up at us from their benches below, and exciting the other children. My time limit for these activities was always limited. Robby was inevitably not ready to stop. But never had he expressed it this way.

I was pretty sure I was more active than most parents. Lately, however, life in general had made me feel old. And so, his comment stung. But my response made me feel ancient, as though my best days were behind me.

Saturday, we returned to the same park for what will be a weekly kickball game for single parents and their kids. The 11 of us divided into teams and played an amusing game of kickball. Amusing because all of us adults attempted and utterly failed to catch perfect pop kicks. Amusing because some the kids seemed particularly disappointed in us, even embarrassed, for this. Amusing because even though Dave kicked missiles, he was nearly hyperventilating with exhaustion. And Dennis didn't run for the ball; he jogged lightly, his feet barely leaving the ground, sweat beading his forehead.

I no longer felt alone. In fact, I felt fantastic. Because clearly, of the five of us, I was the most energetic. I was a little ashamed of myself, glorying in the good health I was lucky to have. Yet, remembering my son's disappoint expression of the night before, I felt a small sense of redemption.

After the game, we drove to a barbecue hosted by a member of the same group. The kids fanned out into a common area in the middle of the townhouses there. Out came soccer balls, croquet balls, Superballs and footballs. My son was in kid heaven.

Me, I hung with the adults, sitting on the grass, conversing about things like how fast our kids were growing, what they would and would not eat, how tough it was to be a single parent, how much we all looked forward to getting out with other adults. Eventually, I grew weary of the conversation and found my son. We batted the soccer ball around for nearly half an hour until someone shouted, "Let's play a game!"

It was normally at this point that I would disappaer into the house, or find a comfy lawn chair from which to safely watch. Uncoordinated as a child, the last one picked for almost every grade school game, I am not about team sports.

But I was already standing in the common area, among the dozen kids and three other adults who were gathering to play. I glanced longingly at the cluster of adults on the deck. They chatted and laughed, and watched curiously as we formed teams. There lay my comfort zone. But no matter what I did at this point, I would obviously be slinking away.

My son was already setting up the goals. I knew he wanted me to play. I could not disappoint him or myself.

We divided up into teams: Six small children, three teenagers and only four adults.

The game began.

I flinched the first time the ball descended upon me from above, and from there on, my teammates knew to take over from me in those situations. But otherwise, I needed no help at all. Caught quickly up in the competition, I found myself in the middle of the fray, kicking without hesitation at the ball, prizing it away from the well-practiced, teenaged members of the opposing team, steering it clear of my son, the opponents' goalie.

It was not a gentle game. Two children were knocked out in a row, one when the soccer ball hit in square in the gut and stole his breath, another when the ball slapped him in the face.

The teenagers were not going easy on any of us. I took kicks to the shins, a soccer ball cheek smash as well as a ball to the crotch.

I was far from good, obviously unskilled in the game. But I was also far from the sidelines. Breathing hard along with not only the other adults, but the younger players as well. The sun had gone down. The night was chilly. My shirt was soaked with sweat.

"You've gotten so aggressive in the last half hour," one of my teammates said during a break in the game. "I love it!"

I scarcely acknowledged him. The ball was back in play. Robby's team won by one point. Both teams came together in the end for a group High 5, something I had never before done.

My limbs began to complain about it all shortly after we got home. I popped two ibuprofen pills, then fell into bed.

I dreamt that my legs had ceased to work and throbbed with pain. I was attempting to cross a city street, but instead of walking, I was dragging myself with my hands, my damaged legs trailing behind me. It was the dark of night. Light, cold rain fell. I looked up, and saw headlights closing in on me.

I woke up. My legs were functional but oh, how they throbbed.

Robby followed me into consciousness an hour later. His blond hair was, as always at this time of day, completely askew. He smiling sleepily. It was at this hour that I found him his most adorable.

He nestled into the couch and I sat down beside him.

"Yesterday was fun, huh?" I said.

He nodded, giving me another grin.

"You sore from any of that?" I asked.

He touched his leg and frowned. "Yeah," he said, then punched the remove to bring up Cartoon Network.

I thought of saying, "Did you see me tearing it up out there?" or, "Still think your mom has no energy?" But that would be all for me, some little dig designed to get even. And that has nothing to do with being a good mother.

In the end, I said nothing. We sat there, engaged in our morning cuddle, until the aches became a single hum of contentment.

It doesn't happen very often, but once in a while, I fall in love. It happened gradually over the last month, and last night, I realized I was head over heels.

I haven't been blogging often because I haven't been feeling mentally on top. In fact, I've been feeling like shit. None too inspired to write, none too eager to broadcast the return of nasty feelings.

In a search for remedies, I abandoned my newly acquired paperback about a 38-year-old woman who retreats to find the meaning in her life, to understand why she has always seen her value in other people's eyes, why she clings to people she loves - even though they do not love her in the same way - and to society's rituals and expectations. In short, I kept thinking as I read, why she is so beautifully human.

I realized the book was making me sad, so similar were her comments to my thoughts. Seeing them in print made me feel common. And we all want to feel special, even in our misery. So I exchanged it for the newest novel from Alice Hoffman. Her books are typically about the magic of the human experience, sprinkled with elements both sadness and surprises. Magical, as I said. The thing we all seek and are all so amazed to sometimes find. The thing that happens, I am convinced, if we only believe that it will.

I surfed the TV for something light, too, and landed last night on Comedy Central.

And there he was. My new love. Jon Stewart, host of the Daily Show.

Jon Stewart has, I guess, been around for years. You may laugh to know that while I may have heard his name, I never knew who he was, or really why he was famous. About a month ago, I caught him in an interview with the host of some random talk show. He was like all of the men I've fallen for lately: Whip smart and intelligent with deadly wit and good looks.

I watched the interview until the end and realized I was disappointed when the credits rolled. But that, I told myself, was that. I wasn't interested enough to find out when the Daily Show aired. TV is not my bag, you see. It's the computer that holds me hostage.

Then, last night, he blasted into my living room. Host of his own show. A pitifully short half hour wrap-up of the day's news, relayed Saturday Night Live style (which I vaguely recall is where he began).

Jon Stewart delivers it with effortless comedic mastery. It is a hurricane of humor wrapped around kernels of fact, awash in conservative smashing and Bush bashing - things which bring me joy in even my darkest hours - with a few jabs directed toward extreme liberalism.

The humor thawed a little misery. But it wasn't just that. Jon Stewart's face - like Jerry Seinfeld's - made me feel good. Something Leno manages irregularly and Letterman manages not at all. I admired the ways he delivered comedy - with frequent flashes of his dimples, a dance of the eyes, the arch or drop of an eyebrow, a dead stare. More said without words than with them. I liked that he looked to be my age, just slightly jowly and graying at the temples. I was entranced by his interview with John Kerry, and the way he laced serious, pointed questions in among the humor. It was, in short, a delicious experience.

Jon was back in my apartment tonight. I was finishing laundry at the time, which meant leaving the building to unload the dryer at the laundry facility down the sidewalk. Idiot, I thought. From now on, I would time these mundane events for non-Daily Show time. I waited for a commercial break, ran to the laundry building, stuffed clothes into bags and ran back in record time. Jon smiled at me. The clothes and sheets wrinkled as I dropped them on the floor and sat on the couch to watch.

Unlike most men who've crossed my path, Jon is reliable. He'll be there for me, every night at 9 p.m., warming my heart and lightening my mood. And while he's not as dashing, there's another man waiting in the wings for me when Jon leaves for the night: Stephen Colbert.

Watch and see. But don't be seduced by him. Remember, he's my man.

Richard and Adamarie married 35 years ago. He is 80, tall and handsome with wavy white hair and a deep but gentle voice. She is 70, with only a smattering of gray in her dark brown hair and an expression that I believe never strays far from sweet.

Adamarie is suffering from memory loss. Richard won't allow the label Alzheimer's, or even dementia. Apparently, the couple's doctor has not yet uttered those words either, but it lurks among the three of them, eager to make an entrance. Richard is barring the door.

I enrolled both of them in our Medicare program Friday. They live in a small apartment in a low-income housing complex. I expected something neat but shabby, but instead, I was welcomed into a home overflowing with antiques, decorated with Victorian flair. It also overflowed with love, and I felt its embrace before I found a seat on the couch.

We talked very little of business. Instead, with a little encouragement from me, they talked of their lives together, how lucky they had been to find one another, how wonderful those 35 years.

"She's my reason for living," he said. "God knew was he was doing when he sent her to me.

Richard had been deathly ill a year before. "When I was in the hospital, I hallucinated that she had died."

His eyes filled with tears. "It haunts me to this day."

Now, Adamarie was ill. He would do everything humanly possible, he said, to keep her healthy.

She smiled, shook her head and turned to me. "I'm blessed. I am blessed with this man."

Not being particularly religious, I normally found frequent references to "blessings" and divine intervention a bit trite and annoying. But not from this couple. This was part of their story, part of who they were. From them, it sounded perfectly natural. It lent the story of their live the mystical shine it merited.

Richard told me about the vitamin supplements they were taking to help combat her memory loss. They had purchased an inversion table, and twice a day, Adamarie hung upside down from it with the aim of keeping the blood circulating in her brain. He massaged her twice daily, he said, again with the same purpose.

Their doctor, he said, had asked permission to share their story at an Alzheimer's convention he was leading. At first, Richard had hesitated. It was, after all, a convention about the word they did not use. But the doctor reassured him theirs was a story of inspiration. They had managed to not only stop Adamarie's memory loss, but slowly, to reverse it, and that, he said, made it a story worth sharing.

"I want to tell them that there is one reason for her success," the doctor said. "And that is unconditional love."

"I thought that was quite a compliment," said Richard, smiling at Adamarie, who sat next to me on the couch.

She turned toward me, and patted my knee. "Blessed, I tell you."

I stayed with them for almost two hours. Richard, a former professional singer, played a tape of one of his performances. They showed me family photographs, offered me tea and asked me about my own family. They told me to stop by some time at the end of a hard day and they would give me "something stronger than tea." Come for dinner, they urged me. Come anytime.

Rarely do I stay so long at one call, but the truth was, I was basking in the happy atmosphere of this home, witnessing the apparent miracle of the kind of unconditional love that rarely shows its face to the world.

At the end, our conversation turned at last to the reason for my visit. We filled out the application. I asked Adamarie for her birthday. "May 25 -" she stopped. The sweet expression fell away for a moment, replaced by confusion. "1927?" she faltered.

Her eyes sought, and found, her husband's. He fixed her with a steady, reassuring gaze.

"No, no, my dear," he said. "1937."

Her furrowed brow relaxed. Her smile, and peaceful expression, returned.

"Yes, of course," she said, looking back to me. "1937."

She looked at him and whispered a single word; one I was not meant to hear. "Blessed."

Now that I have written of my concern for my friend J, and relief at her response, here's a 10-day-old photo of me that may well make you wonder about my own consumption.

Unfortunately, I can reassure you that what followed later on this night was not particularly raucous or madcap (two words I have been dying to use for some time now). It was, in fact, a sobering night with a disquieting ending. But tonight, we shall not go there. One because it's no fun to write about and two, because it's really not my story to tell.

Instead, I thought airing this in blogland this might make someone out there smile. Plus, I've just now figured out how to publish photos. Like a kid with a new toy -- or a frustrated former writer who no longer gets enough chances to use words like "raucous" or "madcap" -- I'm anxious to show off my new skill.

The flask is a story all its own. It was a Christmas gift that emitted dangerous vibes from the moment the wrapping paper fell away to reveal its smooth silver surface. It came with its own tiny funnel and was perfectly designed to slip into a purse. It winked up at me, begging to be used, whispering, "I'm your new friend! Take me everywhere!" I tucked it at the far corner of a high cupboard, completely out of my sight.

But not out of mind. From behind closed doors, it called to me. "I'm a gift! Don't insult your friend. Use me!"

I brought my silver buddy down one day to accompany my son and I on a springtime walk. He stared at me as I attempted to pour boxed white wine into its small mouth; I had completely forgotten about the funnel. I looked at him again and realized he was not staring after all. He was glaring.

Shamed, I put the partially-filled flask in the refrigerator and closed the door on it.

Robby never said a word. Neither did I. But the flask objected mightily. Or so I imagined.

Two Saturday nights ago, it finally made its official debut. Like any star attraction, it was photographed. Pictured with a beautiful woman. No wait, pictured with a woman. No, that's not right either. Pictured with a pop-eyed, fanatical appearing creature of some sort. The flask, and its brother owned by a visiting friend from a southern city, got its night on the town. It rode the light rail, visited a couple of downtown establishments and peeked out of my pocket as we strolled took LoDo and the Sixteenth Street Mall. Thoroughly depleted, it rode the train back home. Both flasks were along, too, for the disquieting ending of which I spoke earlier.

I suspect the evening would have ended the same if the flasks have both stayed home. But it's a convenient item to blame. Until I can come to terms with its role in our evening, it's been relegated back to its former home. High and away. Out of sight. Its seductive voice momentarily has been silenced.

Yet I have to admit: The thing is pretty darn photogenic. Even its ambivalent owner can see it has flash, a certain sense of presence. Reluctantly, I'm giving the flask its moment in the sun here on the blog. Admire it well. Although it thinks it's flying with me to Tucson next month, this photo may be its last public outing.

And consider this picture a warning: Things on my newly illustrated blog could get really ugly from here on out. Even uglier, and more bizarre, than this picture. Someday, it might just be you who gets the spotlight. Say 'Cheese.'

Last night, I sat here on my bed, laptop on lap, as usual. Thinking, not typing. Thinking that I surely had lost J in the letter I'd sent. I was content with what I had written and that I had sent it. Nevertheless, I felt sad about the loss of another friendship. For reasons as varied as Crayola colors, many have fallen away these last few years. If my expression followed my thoughts, I probably was frowning.

The phone rang. It was her.

She apologized for not calling sooner, thanked me for the letter, said she'd realized herself shortly before she received it that it was time for a change. We chatted for about an hour, a conversation sprinkled liberally with laughter and talk of getting together soon.

I believe what she says, probably because I believe in her. I hope her faith in herself is just as strong.

I hung up and glanced in the mirror. My expression had indeed followed my thoughts this time. I was smiling.

Sometimes, I have trouble making decisions.

Take last night, for instance. Ally and I were walking under a full moon. The air was still, absent the mighty winds that have plagued us all winter. Although we were walking on a sidewalk within our large apartment complex, not another soul was in sight. As I stopped to admire the night sky, a shooting star whizzed by, gold lines of remarkably sharp definition streaking along behind it.

It passed right over my head. Never had I seen one so close or so stunningly beautiful.

Surely, it was meant for me.

Quick! A wish! I thought.

I wished immediately for love with someone specific. And then took it back, thinking, That's a be-careful-what-you-wish-for-variety wish. Don't be stupid.

OK then, just love. With someone. Soon.

Now that, I thought, is selfish and immature. Insipid even.

I should wish something for my son. I'm a mother after all. Yes, that's it. I'll wish a great love for my son.

No, no, wrong again. This was not an altruistic moment. The wish should be all about moi!

But by that time, the star was long gone. And I felt mildly stressed from trying to come up with the perfect wish so spur of the moment. Besides which, don't most people just know their heart's desire? Is this something you should even have to think about?

In the end, I settled with wishing I'd see more such brilliant sights.

My friends often describe me as decisive, a risk-taker, a person of action and quick, dramatic change.

And maybe on the big-ticket items that's true. Surely, the most memorable things I've done have been somewhat spontaneous. The African. Bungee jumping. Belly button piercing. These make for good conversation pieces.

Clearly, when I listen to other people's stories, I see that I make major changes sooner than most. It's not as though I don't think about it. The solutions just come to me more quickly, I guess, and then I can see no reason to procrastinate.

When it dawned on me my marriage was over, I left. Like that. Never looking back, and with no regret. If I stayed, I knew another child would likely enter the picture (witness the multiple PWP children. See where all this indecisiveness gets you?). It was crystal clear in my brain that the time to go had come.

When I left the Gazette, I knew the day as it dawned. I knew, facing short-term self employment, it was a bit irrational. But was rock sure everything would turn out OK.

But when we get down to the nitty-gritty of life, the everyday stuff of it, I fumble.

Which route should I take to work? The interstate or the side streets? Which will bring me more pleasure? Should I run an errand to the store tonight, or take the dog for a long walk? Which one is calling to me more? And just this eve: Which gas station should I stop at? The one that's easier to get in and out of, or the one that's less busy, that feels more pleasant. ("Pleasant" won out on this one).

As you may now begin to understand, getting dressed in the morning often becomes a major trial. I'm tired before I leave my home.

All too often, it is not about what's practical. It is about what my heart seems to be telling me.

I know what you're thinking: This woman doesn't have enough to think about. As well as, Look at the train wreck that is her life! What's it gonna take for her to figure out the instinct/heart crap is NOT working?

It's not that I don't realize this. It's just that I can't come up with the correct solution - i.e. decision - to it.

In an effort to cut free of this somewhat circular thinking, I decided last Friday not to agonize any more about my shopping purchases at Kohl's. I'll just buy them all, I decided, and return what I don't want.

I bought 11 items. I returned 8. Sheepishly. "But the items I kept I really, really love!" I told the clerk, not wanting her to think I was a neurotic impulse shopper. Even though I was. Even though her polite smile said she already had me figured out.

Come to think of it, my friends also say I live life more by emotion than most of them do.

What it comes down to is I need to make many, many more small spontaneous and big, life-changing decisions.

I'll get started on that tomorrow. Tomorrow is going to be momentous, the start of something big!

What on earth am I going to wear?

Minutes ago, I mailed a letter to a friend. It was a letter I'd put off writing for weeks, since I'd seen her at Christmas.

J is an alcoholic. This I have known for years, from long periods of sobriety and these more recent ones of heavy drinking. But at Christmas, it seemed to me she had turned a corner. Her humor - usually so smart and unconventional that it often made me snort with laughter - was this time far over the top and crude. It was no longer original or funny. Several times, I was embarrassed by her words. Most alarming, she repeated stories - several times in the same day, sometimes in the same hour.

I spent two nights with her and, to my shame, lied the third night and told her I was going home early. In fact, the friends in whose cabin I was staying and I had agreed we did not want to see her again.

It was Christmas Eve. I knew she was alone that night, her ex-husband out of town with her only daughter. My heart broke for her. Yet I understood my friends' viewpoint and frankly, I felt the same.

I have pulled away from her in the past, for the very same reason. When we met, she was sober. She stayed that way for years. Then, while on an island vacation several years ago, she had one drink. It felt good, she said, so much so that she wanted to drink more. But she swore she could control it.

The day before Christmas, she drank three microbrews before lunch, swallowed a major painkiller and emptied most of a bottle of wine during the afternoon.

There are friends who share deep thoughts with you, friends who inspire, who offer advice, who listen to your troubles and share theirs with you, those who feel as comfortable as home and as light as air. Laughter plays a part in them all.

But then there are those who consistently make you laugh 'til you pee your pants, snort or clap your hands in delight.

There are only a handful of people in everyone's life like that, whose humor strikes a chord so perfectly you laugh long past the point at which others stop. It's the kind of laughter that is common in childhood, but rare among us adults. According to statistics, kids laugh more than 300 times a day. Adults? Less than 15.

So finding someone who elicits that kind of unbridled delight is like opening a gift. One you want to keep forever.

J was one of those gifts. We made one another laugh with ridiculous frequency for most of my 13 years in the mountains. We began to drift when she resumed drinking.

I didn't realize how precious she and those amazing other people were until now, when many of my friends have moved or drifted away, when I'm living in a new city and working to make new friends.

I realized this evening, as I wrote to her, that I haven't laughed that way since she'd visited here last fall. She was drinking then, but my son was here and it didn't swing out of control during those 16 or so hours. Robby still talks about that visit, the funny things she said and did.

You can't walk away from a gift as wonderful as that. And to turn your back on them when the laughter stops, when their presence no longer delights but embarrasses, when they begin the slow process of self-destruction, seems to break the unspoken contract that is a friendship. While it's not a marriage, friendships carry some of the same level of commitment. In sickness and in health. These words keep running through my mind.

So I sat down this evening and wrote that letter. I slipped into it gradually, telling her of my concern, which sprang from how much she meant to me. I told her my letter was written for selfish reasons - that she makes me laugh like few ever have, that I need her to keep me laughing, that she has to stay healthy for me, damnit. I told her many things, at first, because I knew writing them was the right thing to do, the right words to put on the page. But as I wrote, I realized how very true it was, how much she means to me, how much I have missed her and how much grayer my life would be without her. How much it saddens me to see her hurting, numbing age-old wounds with alcohol.

Could be that she won't write back, or call. Ever again. Could be this letter has cost me the friendship. Could be she sniffed out my lie at Christmas and wrote me off with the new year. I hope not, but even if she rejects the friendship, maybe she'll consider the words. That alone will make this letter worth writing.

I have somewhere this goofy picture of the two of us taken probably a decade ago. We are taking a break from a photography session in the mountains. The newspaper staff members were modeling that fall's new ski fashions. Robby was there, just 2 years old, decked out in a $250 snowsuit; that photo made the newspaper, as did a couple of me, and at least one of J.

In this particular picture (a candid not even remotely considered for publication), J and I are both grinning like hyenas. My mouth is stretched wide, exposing teeth and gums and my head tilted up, such that you can see up my nostrils (thankfully, clean). J's mouth is caught in an "oh!" Her hand is raised up and twisted around above both our heads; what she is doing I have no idea. Aesthetically, it is not our finest moment. But we are head to head, happy as hell.

Who took the photographs? Brad, of course.

How time has changed the course of these three lives.

I took that picture down from the wall of my Colorado Springs townhouse more than three years ago, when I had an experience with J similar to this Christmas. I pulled away then, turned my back, hoped it - or she - would just go away. Now I see how wrong that was, how delicate and precious friendships are, how reverently we should treat those characters who catapult unexpectedly into our lives and pepper them with life.

When I unpack those pictures from storage this summer, when hopefully we'll move into our new home, that dusty photo's coming out of hiding. Whether or not J reconnects with me, I'll find a patch of wall for it, a little place of honor for her and for our friendship.

"Be kinder than necessary, for everyone you meet is fighting some kind of battle."

I try to make this quotation my mantra. When someone cuts me off in traffic, I think, "Sucks to be you," or "Who pissed in his Post Toasties?", or something equally compassionate. It's a less poetic version of the above, I like to think. While I'm not exactly feeling sorry for the guy (because it's always a guy who cuts you off in traffic), I realize it's not my fault, that something far removed from me or my driving is making the driver act like an ass. I mean, injured soul.

OK, so maybe it's nothing like the above. And for damn sure I don't always adhere to this ideal, near saintly way of life. I confess, I have flipped people off.

The other day, a man behind me honked when I didn't move forward on the green light quickly enough. Probably, I should have ignored him. Instead, I waved merrily to him in my rear-view mirror. And when he came up beside me in the double through lanes at the next light, I turned sideways, waved just as wildly and grinned from ear to ear. Spittle was hitting the inside of his front passenger window as he let loose a string of what were most likely NC-17-variety words. His face was crimson with anger.

Was I being kind? Did I help to defuse the situation? No. This man was furious, for reasons I do not know, except that I was only his fleeting target, not the reason. Anger, I believe, is nothing more than hurt magnified. Something was eating him up inside. I should have ignored his horn honk and moved on instead of aggravating him further.

But wouldn't that be easier to do if we knew the pain each of us carries? How much kinder would we be if, instead of wondering why a co-worker lashes out at us with no apparent provocation, the reason was obvious. Written on him for everyone but them to see. "Verbally abused by father, uncertain he can ever measure up."

Mine, for instance, would say "Bipolar," "Single mom," "History of heartbreak (arguably self inflicted), distrust of men beyond friendship." And on some days, only: "PMSing."

My older sister's might read: "Epileptic," "Never married, no kids, has endured long periods of intense loneliness," "Aching for a reason to get up in the morning."

My sister's countenance is often blank and hard to read. At first glance, she may appear bored with you, dis-interested and daydreaming. But how much differently would you treat her if you only knew? How much differently would even I treat her if these labels flashed in my mind every time I spoke to her? For my sister and I have little in common and struggle for conversation, such that I would often rather avoid interaction. How can you abandon someone when their pain is always before you?

Think of all we would suddenly see.

The clerk snaps at you when you attempt to return an item at Target. "What's wrong with this?," she demands. You know a reason isn't required, only a receipt. You may realize she's likely exerting her frustrations on a stranger. Even so, you're tempted to snap back.

Until you see the words floating in front of her: "Lost 7-year-old daughter six years ago today to cancer."

Or, on a bright, sunny, spring day, when you are feeling on top of the world, you see an older man walking toward you on a city sidewalk. He looks at you. You smile. "Hello! Beautiful day, isn't it?" He frowns and walks on without replying and you feel a flash of annoyance. How could anyone be so rude on such a great day?

You turn to glare at his retreating back and there, in black and white letters, is the reason. "Agoraphobic." "Poverty stricken." "Abandoned by family." "Fears he will end life alone."

Even the seemingly happy ones would have stories. The handsome, smiling man who holds the door for you appears to never had had a care in the world, but there it is written: "Cancer survivor. In remission."

The couple holding hands make your heart ache because you have no one. His reads: "Twice divorced. Trying to love again but fears loss/failure."

We'd see things like these:

Pending divorce.

Fresh heartbreak.

Ongoing domestic violence.

No male role model in childhood.

Witnessed father's suicide as teen

Fired earlier today.

Undiagnosed anxiety disorder.

Long-term childhood sexual abuse.

All these things, if we but knew, could excuse so much and inspire us to send a smile to a sad-eyed stranger, ignore a hostile word.

But we can't know why. We can only imagine.

So when the driver tries to merge into your lane at the very last second -- miles after everyone else already has -- realize that he may not be just a jerk who fails to consider others' time. He may be an overworked, divorced dad trying desperately to make his son's final soccer game. And perhaps, instead of ignoring him or shooting him a glare in exchange for letting him in, you'll make the trip a bit brighter for you both. Perhaps you'll simply drop back, signal him in and smile.