One of my favorite entries on this site is the 2001 entry, Southern political girl.  It has remained one of my favorite tidbits I've ever posted on my site, and every election cycle brings it back to memory.  I have always liked it for its remembrance of the collision of national politics with everyday life; how I saw that particular election from a viewpoint that was different from most of my fellow citizens.

I just had a discussion with my fellow IT workers, and I just dropped a southernism they don't recognize. I stopped to think about it for a second or two, and realized that I don't know the 'real' name for what I'm describing.

Growing up in Arkansas, we were careful about where in the yard we went barefoot, because there was a certain type of grass we called 'stickers.' It was grass, but it has small but definite thornlike parts, and they stuck in your skin (thus the name) and made it very uncomfortable to walk barefoot on grass.

Anyone know the real name of what I'm describing?

At lunchtime, the raindrops were starting to find each other and think about congregating on windshields, and I thought about Chris, out west, half a world and a blizzard away.

Children spend years of their lives wondering, planning, dreaming of this moment. Adults ask the question before children are barely out of diapers: So, sonny, what do you want to be when you grow up? The adults find the answers cute, charming, and endlessly entertaining.My classmates and I were asked this question, once; our answers are printed in a sixth-grade yearbook that NONE OF YOU WILL EVER SEE.

I don't have a pretty run-in for you here, or a way to lace together these words in a way that has meaning or resonance. In the end, they're just words, the words of someone who is up at one in the morning and who is thinking through keystrokes instead of being asleep, like she should be.

Father's Day.

"Well, I think about friends in the back of my mind
Are they still just kids frozen in time
The mirror won't lie as the days fly by
Are they all no better off than I?"

I think it unlikely that I will post a public chronicle of my days spent in Arkansas, for reasons that are abundantly clear in the private entry posted directly before this one, but there is one story that I wanted to tell. It was not for what I did, but for what I chose not to do.The dead cross daily with the living in Tull; it is a place in which your memories and your past confront you even during the smallest of errands.

There aren't many ways to get there from here. It's easy to underestimate the power of the Mississippi River until you realize that there are only four roads that cross Arkansas' eastern border. That's correct: four, for the entire state. Memphis holds two; the northern I-40 bridge and the southern I-55 bridge. Your next chance is a good bit farther south, in Helena, and your final opportunity lies at the southeastern corner of the state near Lake Chicot.

(We won't count the railroad-only bridge in Memphis, which technically makes five.)

Truth is, I haven't let myself think about it much. Three hundred and eighty-five miles is nothing when compared to the scale of a planet, but it's a planet when compared to the scale of a life. While putting together my breakfast this morning I asked myself what the hell, exactly, I thought I was doing, planning on returning to the town of my birth. What do I hope to see? What do I hope to accomplish?

I'm not sure.

If I can cough, I can breathe, and if I can breathe, I'm still here. 'Here' is a relative term, though, and one whose definition will change a few times in the coming weeks. More so than I'd planned even a month ago, and more so than I've said publicly.I have a plane ticket with my name on it, a ticket that will send me away for a week for a trip that's been delayed since October for various reasons. Instead of an exciting, action-packed Vacation!™ I think I will be … escaping. Resting. I will be gone for a week, and I have zero plans for that week.