A Fitting Send-Off

I'll post a photo tomorrow, but I have to share the details of my last few moments in DC with you now.

Can you guess how it went?

Well, as if God himself were telling me that moving on is a good thing, some crackhead (no doubt) smashed my car window and stole my suitcase. I went to bed at midnight, and by 6am when we were leaving the house, someone had done a Smash and Grab on my car.

The f&*%ers got all of my underwear save the pair on my butt, all of my favorite T-shirts (Scottish Mafia: Frugal But Deadly, Needs More Coffee, Nerds Are Cute, etc), all of Bambina's first aid supplies, all of my jammies, and a damn good pair of shoes I was so looking forward to wearing. I'm sure some other things were in there too but I can't recall them all at the moment.

So here I sit, ordering underwear online, hoping I can get away with one pair for two days (don't tell my mother...), wearing a random shirt, an outdoor fleece and some surgeon pants instead of jammies, and alternating between furor at the total violation of not only having someone take something that is yours, and annoyance, wondering where my underwear is and who is touching it. Like, are they going to sell my purple thong for...pardon the pun...crack money? Who is buying used underwear and some Old Navy pajamas? Who ARE these people?! Why not just bring it back when you realize there is nothing but drawers in the suitcase? Not, I suppose, that I'd be wearing any of them again anyway now that Drunk High Dude has handled them...

But anyway. My point: sometimes a place or an experience leaves you with the lingering joy of good memories, warm feelings, and a soul-deep ache in the moment of departure. Other places kick you in the (naked) ass and send you on your way in a cacophony of shattered glass and the flapflapflap of taped-up plastic blowing in the wind.