2003-09-30 - 8:04 p.m.

It Must Weigh 300 Pounds

Sometimes I get crazy urges to grab all my money and just run. Take off like a shot and keep on going til the money runs out.

Days like this do that to me; the clear, pretty ones with that hint of cool in them.

Most often, too, when I feel overwhelmed and really need to just lie down for about three days.

Recently I had the idea to go somewhere alone for a couple of days. I couldn't even break off that one thing without a heapin' helpin' of homespun guilt.

I haven't been on a vacation for over four years. Not so much as a hotel stay. All my "vacation days" were spent caring for my kids while my parents went on vacation. Any other day off was arranged so that I could attend some mandatory family event "because Aint Looby will just be flattened if you don't go. That's not a vacation, yo.

You know, I deserve to go anywhere I want to go, anytime I want to go, for any reason I want to go, for as long as I want to stay.

Especially now.

So it's a triple shame that I'm saddled and have been saddled all my life with an enormous sack of guilt that thwarts everything I want to do in life that is solely for me.

I would like to thank Mom for this, too, and I do in great part...but some of it, I manufacture myself. As guilt is spent, it regenerates itself. It's a huge, wobbling, heavy sack of guilt that juts from me at a grotesque angle, bending my back and slowing me down, swaying like those big, nasty tumors you see on those medical mysteries shows they broadcast once in a while. When I try to formulate a plan, when I form an idea that I'm going to do/buy/allow something for myself, the guilt tumor starts kicking, thumping, and jumping against me like a pig in a sack until I give up and slide back into my purgatory.

I've decided to cut that bitch off. Just hack it right the hell off like the hunk of fat you chop off a brisket.

I'll fix it myself with one powerful whack, one good enough to get through the gristle, and I'll twist and pull it till it comes loose and falls at my feet. Just like that lady in Alaska who removed her own breast cancer. She gritted her teeth, poised her knife, and cut that bitch right out. Then she recovered and went on.

Probably on a fine vacation, even.

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