I’m at work. There is no work to be done. I am not working. Everyone in the Las Vegas area is sufficiently relaxed, out of pain, and not in need of therapeutic bodywork.

I have set up my laptop, taken the annoying Enigma CD that the owner plays over and over….and over out of the CD player, and put in my own, trancey, techno thing that I bought in China. Yes China, you heard me, I’m cool. I’ve been to China. I have a cup of brown rice / green tea next to my left hand and and a glowing red optic mouse at my right. I could, and probably will, stay like this until nine o’clock tonight.

I know you can’t see me right now, but if you could have, you would have seen me staring blankly past the plastic, dusty fake ferns, out the front window through the newly painted white and purple window sign, through the parking lot of cars and some raggedy looking palm trees, into nothing. I think it might be the ambient trance music. That, or, I have been stung by a scorpion and am slowly becoming paralyzed by venom and have only a few more short minutes of life.

Maria, the other therapist here today is on the phone to her alcoholic husband/soon to be ex husband, yelling at the top of her lungs.

I don’t really want to be here right now.

X and I went back to Mt. Charleston yesterday with Murphy the dog. We walked a shorter distance, on a different, softer trail with more resting. This time, we did not break the dog. All four paws, and two hip joints are intact.

At this very moment Mr. X is getting an 9′ x 8′ storage unit. Last night I rearranged some of the boxes that I never really unpacked from Detroit in preparation to be stored in said storage facility. Our lease for the sea foam green carpeted, crying baby, yelling Indian neighbor apartment is up at the end of October. Our new house will not be finished being built until December at the earliest. When I asked the mortgage guy if the dates that the building company gave us for completion were realistic, he rolled his eyes. But he did say, that they would give us at least a five day notice before closing. The mortgage guy thought that was rude of them. X and I thought that five days was a perfect amount of notification. We could be in Alaska and still make it back in time.

Near the end of October we will drive to Denver, where Mr. X lived before he agreed to take on the position of personal supervisor to me. This will be the start of our mini “driving around the western part of the country” experiment. It’s an experiment because, if it works out, we might add the rest of the country and drive around for six months next year when baseball season is over.

*to my Detroit peeps: I am flying from Denver to Chicago to take a class and visit the rents. My mom is letting me use her car to drive to Detroit, probably Nov. 1st-3rd or 4th. Get those couches ready my peeps.*

If anyone within the sound of my voice that lives in the western half of the country wants to be visited by me, Mr. X, Murphy the dog and maybe Toonces the cat for a few days….just let me know and we will put a black magic marker dot on the atlas for you.

I just don’t feel like writing.

Murphy the dog has socks on her paws. She has these cut off human socks filled with Neosporin, put on her little dog feet and taped above and below her dog knee. She has them on because we are bad people. We took an eight year old dog with arthritis for a four hour hike over sharp stones and large boulders.

I hear Mr. X’s voice in my ear telling me that I have a tendency to exaggerate, “filled with Neosporin…..Cindigo”.

Yes I say….filled.

We just got through the at home medical procedure that involved X cutting flaps of skin off of Murphy the dog’s poor feet while I made sure she didn’t flail around. She’ll be okay. There was no blood. Despite the high kicking and shaking of the stocking feet, she seems to be in good spirits.

But oh the guilt, the guilt.

peeps.

I have a new phone number.

If you are a creepy stalker, please do not use this.

702-204-9722