Cornucopia of swears.

My mind is with Loco. I just finished penning her something that will hardly hold a candle to what she has been sending my direction lately. Canada Post must flip lids when they see our packages fly through the air. Dear Beth, expect something in four business days, uh huh. The girl working the counter at the post office was so perplexed by the line drawings going on on the front of your package, she almost smashed her nose upon bending at the waist for further inspection. I always like it when the post people offer to snip the obscene business day stamps down to size in order to accommodate my equally obscene packages. Thanks, Canada Post people that was nice.

No tears today. I made mashed potatoes with dill and butter and cream because I felt like it. I ate them in the kitchen too, just to spite my latest frenemy. They were delicious. As I was elbow deep inside a burning hot turkey, ripping it's heart out and then the ribcage (my favorite part), Rags came out of NOWHERE rocking Marc Jacobs and swingy hair and a bouquet of orchids wrapped in brown paper (also my favorite: orchids and anything wrapped in brown paper). If she would have waltzed in and presented me with a block of cheese or five pounds of corned beef wrapped in brown paper, I would have been equally as ecstatic. This little lady, this woman who has blazed into my life bearing so much more than expensive gifted flowers, has taught me a lot about living. About being a friend. About grief. About prioritizing and organizing. About employment and unemployment. About being a wife. About being cool. About humor. About making life-giving food.

She has taught me a cornucopia of skillz.

Yah, a Z. I went there, Rags. Thank you for the flowers you blessed woman. You have know idea how much seeing your face while we skipped out on the burning hot turkeys and sat on the warm wood fence welcoming all the Vitamin D we could behind the bakery, buoyed my spirits. You know how when you were a kid and you pushed a ball under water as far as you could in some Auntie's swimming pool? And then do you remember how it felt to see that thing build under pressure and then fly up through your tiny frame and light up the sky and block out the sun, if only for a moment? That is how I felt when I saw you walk in to my kitchen.

I have said it before, and I will say it again: Thank you is not enough. Do you remember the first time I wrote that to you? I do, like it was yesterday. It was last summer, after a shit show of an art show. I biked home that night, drunk off of the spell of your first lesson in living. May we always feel that fucking awesome when we walk into the kitchen's of our future selves. (Grandma, sorry for the usage of "fucking"). I love you Anne M. Orchids and you in one day? Goodness abounds.

Moving on. Speaking of Grandmothers, hello Helen! Are you out there? Are you still with us? Has your lover/other driven you to drink? I hope not. Hi Grandma, this is a public letter, something I consider FAR better than an email. We will see each other on Friday and whisper scandals back and forth while one of us holds the fastest baby in the world (Maiya Papaya, holler) and the other stuffs Auntie Marj's INSANE paska down the hatch. That lady knows how to bake the bread of the Body. I tell you! Sadly, I am becoming skin and bones as the days near closer and closer to my departure. I am starting to look like Granny Annie Kroeker. Now would be the PERFECT time to get our tattoos, while my bones show thanks to Cal's innate Kroeker metabolism that sky rockets when anxiety strikes:

mine on my ribs,

Helen
Helen
Helen

and yours on your heart,

Megsie
Megsie
Megsie


but sadly, I spent my last American twenty dollar bill on some new headphones so our Grandmother/granddaughter tattoos will have to be put on a two month hiatus until I get back from the trees, RICH. (Who needs Mister-Grade-one-to-Grade-nine-just-because-he-was-rich boyfriend when I can simply go tree planting? Besides, he broke up with me on a sheet of loose leaf. Asshole). Thank you for slipping that dollar dollar scrill into my mother's secret compartment of her wallet with the intention of passing it on to me. You are good. You are goodness. I love you, Grandma. See you on Good Friday, did you give up reading this post for lent or what? No comments in a hundred years. Come ON!

Yesterday was shitty, today lovely. I am still thinking of Loco, wishing she and JJ were here for a midnight ride, or some other kind of midnight delight on a Broadway rooftop. Lo standing up on her bicycle for countless blocks and JJ and I taking up the rear nice and slow with McDonald's in hand. Soon, soon, swoon.

Rags, do me.