i'm gonna find you, and take it slowly

The dungeon is being turned into a casino. I wish I were making that up.

I've tried posting about this many times in the two years since the news first broke, but I couldn't bring myself to write the words. Construction is now set to start early next year. Maybe that's why it finally feels like it might actually happen.

That place was the beginning of so much, and I had absolutely no idea. I was busy whining about problems with parking and missing my friends while trapped there until the wee hours, night after night. Meanwhile up in the stratosphere, the universe was conspiring with the Interwebs to bump me into H. Eighteen years later, I wouldn't trade the life we've built together for anything in the world.

So many things have changed since 2005. I've had a dozen jobs, two careers and four homes since I last sat in that windowless cinderblock room at a 1980s metal desk with a classic "icon" telephone as my only lifeline to the outside. I've created countless works of art in that time, too. It's no surprise that the trickiest, most laborious projects--obviously, the children--give me joy beyond measure and pride that will bring me to tears if I spend too much time thinking about how wondrous they are and what a miracle it is that they even came to be at all.

After them, however, the thing that I am most proud of is this blog. It is the one endeavor I did completely by myself, FOR myself, putting it out there just to see what would happen. I had all of this inside of me with nowhere else for it to go. And then slowly people started reading it (almost zero people I expected and a lot of people I grew to care about and still worry after--some whom I have never even met to this day, and one of whom I cannot imagine not getting to snuggle up to every night).

There are some really lame posts on here. The embarrassment practically vibrates from them. But I accept that it wouldn't be a chronicle that can settle bets about what really happened without also including busy, buzzing CRINGE. 

I've missed this blog like one of those friends who knew me during those terrible junior high years but loves me enough to lie "Oh Cadiz, you never had an awkward phase!" with a straight face. Every month that went by without a post here was like forgetting her birthday and then getting a cheesy card from the grocery store but continually forgetting to mail it. 

I'm here now. The card is crumpled and I had to add several more stamps to cover the increased price of postage. I don't know what this is going to be; maybe I'll circle back and update some stuff from before, maybe I'll tell you what I can piece together about the last three years, maybe it'll be a bunch of links back to the days when I was too stupid to realize that the clueless protagonist in the romantic comedy was actually ME. I've got that feeling again: There's too much in here that has nowhere to go. Here it comes.

#NaBloPoMo

"Ready or Not" The Fugees