Apologies for not updating for awhile, things, needless to say, have been in a state of flux, and have also been quite busy. Those condescending snobs at work have finally deigned to put me in charge of a project that I am not only expected to complete in a timely manner, but to their satisfaction. In short, no more Diaryland whilst at work.

The Girl and I are also working on a lot of shit right now. It ain't fun, but we're learning. We're also growing as individuals and, though it doth sucketh, it's been good for both of us.

We also just got back from a short trip home to pristine Podunk, Montana.

There is a reason that our rural home is sometimes referred to as "the Last, Best Place," as it is one of the most amazingly beautiful, stunningly peaceful places on the planet.

Our tiny hometown is nestled in a conjunction of two narrow, half-mile wide, valleys. There is only one main road into, and out of, town and, when it departs from the mainstream Interstate 90, it twists and winds its way 15 miles along one of the pine-covered sides of the valley until it crests a hill and gives a breathtaking view of the Beartooth Mountain Range, before dropping down into our humble town.

This shot is from the opposite side of the valley, just before entering town.

This highway, comprises the Main street in our town and is one of only three that run North/South, spanning about a mile and a half.

Our town, our home, is more than just the assorted buildings and businesses inside of those shrunken city limits, though.

It's a place where it's not uncommon for two pickup trucks, going opposite directions, to stop next to each other in the middle of the Main street, so that the driver's can chat. Almost every truck has at least one dog in the back, hasn't been washed in years, if ever, and has an array of tools, shreds of hay and manure, and assorted ranching equipment littering the floor and truckbed.

The blocking of the main road causes very few traffic problems though, because even if someone is needing to get by one of the pickups, that person almost certainly knows the other two drivers and will wait, and will most likely stop and chat with the other truck once the first has pulled away.

Our town is a place where a visit to someone else's home is usually accompanied by a gift, an offering, of some sort, be it beer, meat, baked goods, tools, or equipment of some kind. These visits always take longer than one would think, but the time elapsed is never noticed until you have already left, and are on your way to visit someone else, with the wax-wrapped packages of elk steaks on the seat beside you.

It's a place where you feel comfortable, almost serene. No one seems to be in much of a hurry to do anything, but anything that needs done always gets done. No task ever really feels insurmountable when you realize that you won't be doing it alone and, despite the miniscule population, you're almost never really alone.

You won't ever really need to ask, you'll just start patching the hole in the roof of your garage, and soon notice that your neighbor is climbing your ladder, wearing his stained, beaten, old coveralls, carrying a roll of tar-paper he had left-over from the summer before, when you helped him re-roof his garage.

You may be heartsick and worried about your 70-year old husband, lying in a hospital bed after his 3rd heart attack, not realizing that you hadn't eaten all day and it's nearly dinner time, when your doorbell will ring and you'll find the retired teacher from across town, wearing oven mitts, holding a steaming, fresh-baked casserole, who just heard through the grapevine that you were having a tough time and figured you shouldn't have to worry about making dinner.

It's a place where you can find yourself on any number of patios, porches, living rooms, or driveways and never worry about how long you've been there, bullshitting about nothing and everything, and never worry about what's for dinner or who's making it. Your biggest concern, at that point, is usually running out of beer. Even that turns into a visit though, as you can go to either of the two bars, the gas station, or the grocery store, from as early as 6 A.M. to as late as 2 A.M. and buy whatever you may need, and you'll almost always run into somebody who wants to visit and may even want to share a beer or seven.

It's a place where everyone knows almost everything about you and, while it can be maddening at times, it's comforting at other times, because there's just that much less explaining to do.

It's a place where the pristine, untouched, natural beauty of the mountains spills down over everything, and the fast-paced, high-tech world, that threatens to run us over sometimes, is forgotten almost entirely.

The world that I currently live in, the life that I'm currently living, is forgotten within moments of my arrival in that sleepy, little town, and I become comfortable... relaxed.

Having drink after drink handed to me on the sun-drenched beaches of tropical Mexico has never brought me to the level of relaxation I reach the instant that I am home.

This relaxation, of course, can never last, but it held on tightly to me last weekend, even when I attempted to bludgeon myself repeatedly into a more painful, stressful state.

I use, "bludgeon," as a metaphor, but it's true meaning will soon be clear.

Saturday, my "adopted" brother, his wife, and some of their friends came down from the city to go river-rafting (city, meaning the only town with over 100,000 people in the whole state).

One of the best things about the Girl's old house, her father, Caveman's house, is that it is situated almost perfectly on the banks of one of the most beautiful rivers in the state. Rafting said river only entails dragging the boat from the garage, across the lawn, through the weeds, over a couple rocks, and into the river.

Oh, and beer.

A fucking ton of beer.

We always seem to go rafting in August, when the mountain's peaks have sweated off their snowy blankets, and the underground springs can barely keep the water flowing down their respective valleys and their rivers. This means that a trip that usually takes a little over 2 hours now takes anywhere from 4 to 6, as there are multiple points in the river that all the occupants of the boat will have to get out and pull the rubber raft over a stretch of rocks, where the water is only a few inches deep.

This also means that there is much, much more drinking, as said occupants of the raft also have less whitewater and paddling to worry about, and can turn their attention to drinking copious amounts of beer.

Last year, we ran out. Caveman will never let me forget that the only raft trip he's ever been on when he ran out of beer, was my fault. The fact that I packed my weight in alcohol, gave several away to other floaters, and opened the last one within 100 yards of our take-out point after 4 and a half hours on the river, apparently means nothing to him, it's the principle of the thing.

This year I was determined not to run out. I bought an 18-pack for each person in that raft, knowing full well that two of them probably weren't going to drink half that together. I filled the BIG cooler, as well as the Medium cooler and, combined with ice, the beer accounted for another whole entire person in that raft.

Because we had more people and the water was so low, me and my "adopted" brother, another big boy like myself, tied off two tractor-tire inner tubes to the raft and were content to trail along behind the boat. This worked out well as the beer-wenches in the boat caught our empties and threw us full ones when we wished, and we never had to stop, or even move really, to take a piss. Ahhh, good times.

Of course, even with the intermittent warmer water hitting them, your boys can only take so much soaking in cold water before your internal body temperature dips to uncomfortable levels, so, after a while, we got in the boat and made others ride "tug-style."

I was fine with this, paddling and sunning myself on the front of the boat, except for one thing. I was now way too close to all that beer. No longer needing anyone to get it for me, I found that it was taking me longer and longer to find a full one in the ever-increasing pile of empty cans inside the cooler. I was also getting quite drunk.

This would normally not be a problem on this relatively calm stretch of water, but we rounded a bend to find an ominous looking tree branch extending out from the shore, arcing head-level, directly over the point where the current was taking us.

As we neared it and realized that we weren't going to go around it, but under it, seemingly everyone in the boat used their individual common sense and ducked in expectation of the tree branch. I not only did not see this ducking, as I was in the front of the boat, but I did not duck, I stood strong and brave, and nobly attempted to push that tree branch up and out of harm's way, gallantly saving everyone in the boat.

I cried, "I've got it!" and placed both my hands on the underside of the 15-foot limb.

The surprising thing about tree branches, even dead ones, is not only their sheer tensile strength, but also their elasticity.

*Creeeaaaaaaak*

*WHAP*

I held the branch long enough for it to move about 6 feet, complain loudly, and then react with a vengeance, cutting a path back to its chosen spot on the bank directly through my head and the heads of Caveman and the Girl's mom, directly behind me.

Apparently they were the only ones to hear me say I had it and, very foolishly, believed me, so they raised their heads from their ducked positions just in time to have the branch hit them. The plus side is that it seems my head slowed the branch just enough to give the Girl's parents only a glancing blow each.

I'm told later that I was unconscious for that part and for the entire boat's "gratitude."

I distinctly remember being asked things like, "Are you alright?" and "can you hear me?" and I remember attempting to answer them. There was a slight inhibiting factor to my answering though, in that my mouth and my eyes didn't seem to want to work for me.

A few minutes of "quiet time" and having beer opened directly under my nose, I got up and back in the boat, gung-ho for another crack at that dangerous river.

I was also told later that while Caveman and I were nursing our wounds on the shore, all 4 of the females with us walked back up the bank and wrenched the deadly tree branch from the river and out of the way of other floater's.

Hey, we could've got it, I just didn't want to waste my time on chopping that fucking thing into firewood, with sharp river rocks, in a wasted effort at revenge.

My head still felt quite silly, though I couldn't be sure if it was the Barry-Bonds-like hit that it took, or the 15 beers that I had drank, when we pulled into a quiet spot along a 10-foot rock-wall, popular with floater's for it's cliff-jumping.

The adventurous members of the crew, myself and the Girl included, hopped out and began scaling the rocks towards the cliff. At this point, I still had enough of my wits about me to know that I was going to have to be extra, super-duper, careful going up a cliff, as I was still wonky-in-the head and quite inebriated.

This is when I spotted a trail-like path to the right of where everyone else was climbing. It had nice, evenly-spaced, ledges and clear hand and foot holds for climbing. I remembered thinking on the way up that it didn't look very well-used and wondering why that was. As I hoisted myself onto the top of the ledge, I found out, painfully, why.

Cactus.

Not the fun, Coyote and Roadrunner, huge 3-inch-easy-to-see needles either. Not the simply-need-pliers-and-whiskey-to-pull-out kind that the Mom had to deal with. Oh no, these suckers were barely bigger than the average hair on your head, and there were thousands of them covering the palm of my left hand.

I yelped, I jumped, I danced around the cliff edge, cursing, as I tried to wipe those little suckers off, finding out that this was only embedding them deeper into my flesh. I couldn't even get my fingers in close enough to pluck some of them out as that only meant pushing the surrounding needles in deeper, as they were so tightly packed.

But, being drunk and having sustained a severe blow to the head, I got over it relatively quickly. I even succumbed to the peer-pressure and taunting of those in the boat, and attempting a front-flip off the cliff. Not having done this in a number of years, I quickly found out that, if you have around 10 feet to fall, you don't have to flip very forcefully to send your body into more than one rotation. I managed what Olympic divers would refer to as a "one-and-a-half-FACEPLANT."

This managed to make my head feel only slightly worse, and my hand feel a touch better, so I kept drinking.

6 and a half hours after putting in, we carried the boat out, loaded it onto Caveman's flatbed pickup, climbed into the raft and went home.

And we had beer left over.

---

The next day we were milling around the Girl's parents house when Caveman asked me if I'd help him haul one of his riding mower's into town to his mother's house. Knowing that the Girl and her Mom would like some time alone together, I readily obliged, and heartily agreed that we should haul some garbage out to the dump as well.

Loading the mower was interesting as Caveman had a system for getting the mower onto the truck involving two 6 x 10 planks and a lot of grunting. We managed fitfully, but I didn't trust my shock-addled brain enough to question any of his maneuverings.

We drove into, and around, town, visiting like old friends (which we've never been even remotely close to), and it was very cool.

Until we got to his mom's house.

I was trying to be as helpful as I could about how to unload the mower without questioning Caveman's planning integrity, but I realized that I probably should have the exact instant that the mower started slipping off of the planks.

See, Caveman was standing behind me, holding both planks on either side of me, level with the back of the truck, so that I could pull the mower onto them, thus clearing the truck bed, and then I could hold the mower while he lowered the planks to the ground, when we would both back it gently down.

The problem with this was, the mower is really fucking heavy and, when I had it out onto both planks and Caveman started lowering them, I slipped a little. There was no real problem with this as I was planted firmly, but, this time, Caveman ignored my cry of, "I've got it!" and tried to come to my aid. Unfortunately, he didn't realize that the best thing he could have done for me would have been to simply lift the planks back up.

Oh no, he was going to help me catch that mower, so he moved towards me, still holding the ends of the planks. Simple geometry tells us that if he's got a plank in each arm, and is moving forward as his arms spread further from his body, the planks are going to separate as well.

This meant that the mower's back wheels, which were at first precariously perched on the planks, were now completely off the planks and the full force of the mower came barreling directly off the truck and the planks.

And into my head.

Exactly where the branch o' death caught me.

My head and my shoulder, to be fair, as I caught that fucker and only dropped it when Caveman tried to grab it too and simply yelled, "don't worry about the fuckin' mower, just get out of the way!"

His saintly old mother came wandering down the walkway, staring at the cloud of dust and the two cursing idiots, muttering that she should have waited in the house for another minute as she came out just in time to see us put ourselves in bodily peril in her driveway.

She then turned a ghastly white as she saw that the right side of my forehead was bleeding... AGAIN.

As determined as I was to not relent in my quest for fun and relaxation on this trip, I was quickly figuring out that maybe the relaxation part was what I should focus on, so we headed home and I made my way onto the back patio to visit with the Girl and her Mom. I had the new Harry Potter book with me, but also my pliers and tweezers, in order to have another go at the palm of my left hand, still peppered with microscopic cactus needles. I also had a beer to aid in this task as well.

Their back patio is quite picturesque, with it's view of the river, the mountains, and it's newly installed, electronically extendable awning.

I was quite impressed with the job Caveman did installing the awning but, at this point, I should have at least taken note that the fact that no one that visits that house is over 5'8" and I am almost 6'3".

I didn't, and when I sauntered outside to see the women-folk, I walked around the low edge of the awning to give the Girl a smooch.

*WHACK*

For the 3rd time in 18 hours, the entire right-front part of my head caved in, focusing in a 5 square-inch-area, and my brains smashed against the inside of my skull.

I managed to say that I was fine this time, even though my right eyelid shut halfway and stayed there, unblinking, for a minute or two and the bleeding had started yet again.

After I settled the women back down, I walked out into the middle of the backyard, carrying my HP book and beer, and relented to what Montana was not-so-subtly trying to tell me...

Relax.

And don't move for a while.

I didn't, and it was wonderful.

---

I'm now saddled with the prospect that my yearning for the peacefulness and tranquility of my rural mountain home, as compared to my whirlwind of a life here in Denver, is either a sign that I need to return for good someday in the not-so-distant future�

...or the fact that I've got severe brain damage and shouldn't even be operating this keyboard.

Tough call.

I sure miss my home, though, so I'm inclined to believe the first one and not the idea that I'm permanently mentally disabled.

Even if I did forget my own phone number yesterday.

And my underwear.

Actually that last one's not so bad as I didn't have the kilt on.