The response was unanimous.

So, while NovySan wrestled with JavaScript inside, I wrested with NaNoWriMo outside. When I couldn’t stand it anymore, I knitted. And when that got frustrating (one of these days, I swear, I will figure out how to pick up dropped stitches without leaving visible tracks on the fabric), I went back to writing. It took awhile, but I added several inches to Novy’s Doctor Who scarf (and fortunately for me, he doesn’t mind my mistakes – I keep telling him he’s always going to know which end of this scarf I started on, because I’m going to be a much better knitter by the time I’m done than I was when I began. Hell, I already am!), and more than 3,000 words to my NaNo project. Not bad for a lazy Saturday.

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“I wish people dressed like that when it isn’t Halloween,” I said.

Saturday, we met Slackmistress and Be the Boy for lunch at Baby Blues before Randi and Mike‘s pumpkin carving party. I spotted a couple in a Volkswagen van, with a surfboard and sun-creased faces. “That’s not a Halloween costume,” I said. NovySan agreed. “They may have bought that van new,” he said.

Today, I drove to Woodland Hills for something work related (and ate two cookies and an evil little chocolate brownie, dammit), and stopped by Joe’s on the way home for pizza and hummus and a few other things. On the sidewalk outside, I saw a tall, slender woman in her 70s, swathed chin-to-ankles in black velvet and topped off by a white beret (cashmere, at a guess, or angora maybe – her scowl suggested I’d do better not to ask). “What a fabulous costume!” I thought, and then I realized – it’s November 3. If she’s going to a Halloween party, she’s three days late.

Only one thing could possibly have made this encounter any better, and I found it inside. A plump, pretty girl in her early 20s, wearing hotpants and fishnets, with fuzzy white legwarmers to match the old lady’s beret and bits of neon fluff in her long, dark hair, buying liquor and cookies without a trace of self-consciousness.

I don’t think they were together. But, damn, I hope I’m wrong.

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It took me years to do it. Twice, I left and came back. Once, I planned to leave it for an even smaller town.

I was clearly insane.

When I moved to the Bay Area, though, I knew that I’d escaped. I’d visit, yes, but I’d never move back home.

Wyoming, as I’ve said more than once, is a lovely place to be from.

There are things that I miss, though. Lilacs. Oh, how I miss the lilacs in the Spring. (And never mind that Spring may not come until June – the lilacs are worth the wait.) The old brick buildings downtown. People who stop to help if your car breaks down. (Seriously – eight years of driving an old Bug in LA, and only a few times has anyone stopped. Once in Santa Monica, when I was trying to push my car up the California Incline; once just a few blocks from my house; and twice in Topanga. The time I ran out of gas on the 101? The Highway Patrolman who pushed my car into the breakdown lane didn’t even bother to ask if I had a cell phone before he disappeared.)

And when I’m stressed, I want to go home.

This morning, Sara, who camped across the street from us our first year at Burning Man, tweeted that she and Frinetik had “Just passed happy jack road and is stopping to look at the floating head of lincoln.”

“Hey,” I told her, “You just went through my hometown!”

And then I went to look at the Prexy’s Pasture webcam, on the University of Wyoming campus.

That statue in the middle is by the same sculptor who carved Lincoln's head.

And surprised myself by bursting into tears.

Today, I just want to go home.

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When I was 15, my mother sent me to a psychologist. She was a very direct, often abrasive German woman, with a thick accent and a collection of gorgeous suede skirts, and I hated her. At first. Eventually, though, I realized that making me angry was her way of getting inside my shell, and once she was in there, she did start helping me rearrange the furniture in ways that were, ultimately, beneficial. She ran me through a battery of tests, and at the end of it, she told me I was highly intelligent and clinically depressed. She didn’t want to put me on antidepressants, though – she didn’t like the side effects, and she thought exercise might do just as well. So, she told me to walk, half an hour every day, and she’d re-evaluate me in a few months.

She was right. The exercise helped. I haven’t always been good at remembering that, though, when I’ve started slipping back into the grey places – partly because it’s so difficult to know that you’re depressed. I’ve gotten better at it, though. I don’t want to live there again, and I certainly don’t want to take NovySan there with me. So whether or not I manage any other exercise, I’ve been walking, daily, and it helps.

The other thing it helps with is getting to really know this neighborhood I’ve lived in for seven years, but haven’t thoroughly explored. If you follow me on Flickr, or on Twitter, you may have noticed posts and pictures of things I see when I’m out and about.

Yesterday, it was this one:

I still don’t know for sure, but the Twitterverse has several theories:

The child was kidnapped:

The child escaped:

The child was ejected:

Or, the child was traded for a fifth of JD:

What do you think?

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It’s gonna be a great evening!

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