a blizzard and a panic attack

i love driving in the middle of nowhere for signs like this. diners with no other message but EAT. Classic. we didn't eat here. it was next to a gas station we gased up at out side of Amarillo TX, but i had to take a picture. if i ever own a restaurant, i want to have a sign that says EAT. what else do you really need to tell people.

okay, i really need to get back on the road here, but on with the title subject. so we had this picture perfect day, blah, blah, blah. tons of time to think and talk to johnhenry. i came to some realizations about myself in realtion to chris and our marriage and things i have been blaming him for instead of taking responsibility. more of that later. so, we get to Albuquerque, stop for dinner. Angie told me to stay there and get a room. i wanted to get a little further, say Gallup, then stop. They were having snow in Flagstaff and she was worried, so she checked the weather and thought we shoud be okay to Gallup NM. We get back on the road not 20 minutesand the wind picks up, semis start passing us and snow starts pounding us. we hit a surprise blizzard in the mountains. i about crapped my pants. after our beautiful day, how did this happen. snow wasn't even on my radar. now, i don't care about myself, but when i have my 2 baby boys in the car and it is pitch black and i have been driving all day and visibility is ZERO with snow coming down like a Little House on the Prairie very special episode and i think the next town is 100 miles away, in my very Brooke way i have a panic attack. scary dude. way scary.

angie gets on the horn and finds a little town clled Grants , only 40 miles away, still 40 miles, in a blizzard, in the mountains. we drove 35 miles in a 75 mile zone. i had trucks honking at me like you wouldn't believe. i don't care. i'll drive 5 miles an hour if i have to. so we arrived in Grants. found a room at a Super 8, put the boys in bed and i can't even take a sleeping pill because i have to be able to wake up if the boys need me, so i did take a xanax to calm the nerves.

no we are on the final stretch to phoenix. although last night has left me freaked out i must say. there is snow in Flagstaff, but at least it is day and i will be able to see. and i will drive 30 miles an hour again if i have to. i will say, if i can handle last night, i can handle anything. i can do this whole life thing. i can dammit!

I've Been to Paradise, But I've Never Been to Albuquerque

Well, yesterday was an amazing day in so many ways. The weather was something out of a Peter JAckson dream sequence. We had the biggest bluest sky from Oklahoma City all the way to Albuquerque. If you painted it, no one would have believed it was real. It was so amazing to look out the window and watch the landscape change from Oklahoma to Texas to New Mexico. I would remind the boys to look up from their portable dvd player and look at it. Johnhenry would humor me and say "cool, a mesa." It was all lost on Atticus. He is only 3. I realized i am not taking enough still pictures. i have the video camera with me and am taking tons of video, which isn't the safest since i am driving and johnhenry is supposed to be my DP and now refuses so i have been taping while driving. so today i will take more stills.

before i get too far off track, the Oklahoma City Memorial. We started our day there yesterday morning. i have to say, i am so glad i went and took my children to it, but i had such a conflicted, emotional reaction. we just went to the memorial outside. we did not venture inside the museum because of Atticus's behavior and time. you pull up on the street and park at a meter out side the plaza just like the building is still there. and then you walk around the side and you see the chain link fence filled with flowers and teddy bears and pictures and runner's bibs and notes etc...... and then the big iron gates with the message and the doorway and i have to say, i got all choked up. At the top of the post is a picture of the entrance. I find it interesting? ironic? that it says "May all who leave here know the impact of violence." don't get me wrong. i think it is a great thing to say and i do hope all who see it are affected and moved and see first what a useless, senseless, mess violence is. but was this monument put together by the federal government? the city of Oklahoma City? the families of those who were so needlessly killed? i don't know what i am exactly trying to say here. this is where i have so much going on in my head and i can't staighten it all out. all i know is, i was standing in front of this field of chairs, on a near perfect, blue sky day, wind blowing, with my 2 youngest sons, and johnhenry asks :what are the little chairs for?" and it tell him those represent the children who died and then i tell him what happened that day and i am genuinely moved and so is he because we are there. But then i start thinking about the bombs that have gone off in iraq and how many little chairs they would have to put up that country for people to stand in front of and remember and it all just didn't seem fair to me. does this make sense. why isn't someone submitting plans for a memorial to remember all the innocents killed in Bagdhad? And we want be to remember the horror of violence so we create this beautiful landmark to honor these innocents and then look we have done as a country since. i guess in short, i just had a problem rectifying the two and an even harder time explaining it to my son. We haven't started to discuss what happened to the ex-American soldier responsible for the bombing yet. i don't even know where to begin. that is part of my whole blame vs. responsibility and excuse vs. reasons thinking i am doing right now. i think America could do some of that. Don't we exist as a nation because we created extreme acts of violence to prove a point and stand for what we believed in? don't we train men and women to do very violent things in the name of freedom? sorry, i will step down now.

License to post

i was just reading my post i wrote last night after a long day of driving in the rain and 2 Xanax. It is all over the place. i meant evey word of it. i am just not very sure how clearly it was delivered. this blogging is all very new to me. how do you edit your thoughts? streamline what you want to say? i have so much going on in my head. plus i have spent some time this morning looking at other blogs and they are all so fancy. mine is not. i need to work on this.

the boys and i are off to get our free "hot" breakfast and then to the Oklahoma City Memorial and then on the road again toward Phoenix.

i am thinking a bit this morning about the differnence between excuse vs. reason and blame vs. responsibility. in everything, marriage, friendships, career and life in general, i think it has been very easy blame some other people for why i am unhappy and blanket a bunch of excuses with reasons why things aren't happening. i have a lot of driving to do today. think i will think on it.

Day One

Where do i begin? I guess at the beginning, as with most things. Of course we didn't get started on time. We didn't leave the house until almost 9:30. I wanted to be on the road at 7. But i wanted to get a run in and i let the boys sleep in. Plus Chris, my soon to be second ex-husband, was running around, busying himself and holding me up by "helping" me get ready. Chris's idea of helping is to sit for 2 hours and label all the power cords to the various electronic devices I may or may not want to bring with me on my trip. Or printing a bunch of maps i didn't ask for and then complain to me that he is late for a meeting because he was helping me get ready. One of the many reasons my second marriage is failing and why i had to get away from my house and chris and just be with my boys somewhere else. Shall i post a pic as we are about to depart?

This is Johnhenry, me, holding what is left of my dog Steve in a box and Atticus, on my front porch this morning. The sleds and shovels are still out from the winter. The plexi-glass images of Janet Reno and Harriet Tubman that were part of my theatre company's set for An American Daughter are still sitting to the right of Johnhenry. A little background. After 5 very successful years as an SPT, the company i co-founded and co-artistic directed went on indefinite hiatus due to the economic state of the world of professional not-for-profit arts in this country. That happened in October. The same month i lost my beloved dog and my purse was stolen while i was swimming laps at the Y. i felt like a fucking country music song. Anyway, we have been slowly liquidating the company and the i just don't know what to do with the plexi-glass Janet Reno. Do you throw it away? See, i am all over the place. This is why i needed a rip to clear my head. So when i finally was able to get Chris to quit forcing his way of life and travel and ways of the world on me, we left for our adventure. And it was beautiful. Fully armed with a cooler of goodies and a video camera, we took off. i am documenting the entire trip on video as well. The sun was shining. It was warm. A great day for hitting the road. And it is amazing you know. As soon as i am away from Chris, my 3 year old Atticus, who can be a handful, becomes so calm. kids are so intuitive. they can feel all that negative energy. and the minute it is gone, wow, the difference is amazing. We drove through MO without a hitch and then hit OK. And then it rained really, really hard. We had seen several signs for museums for things like Jesse James and the history of Vaccums and such and we decided to pass. But the rain and the fact that i have testosterone filled boys lead us to the world famous JM Davis Arms Museum. Basically a really big warehouse with every weapon ever maufactured, ever. It was here i had my first major discovery of trip. I am a terrible mother. I don't know my children. i have let my all my own shit get in the way being their mom. all the time i have spent nursing my wounds from my own shitty childhood and chasing these crazy aspirations of stardom and artisitic fulfillment, i have missed out. did i learn nothing from missing out on Dane, my oldest son's early years? We are standing in this fucking gun museum and we get to the section with more modern weapons and johnhenry starts rattling off all this information about all these things and what they do and what they are used for and what they are called etc.... and i am like "How do you know all this?" and he says"Call of Duty on XBox and my dad." I had no idea. So now we are sitting in a hotel in Oklahoma City. i am so tired. Atticus didn't even nap. i am going to take my boys to ok city bombing memorial tomorrow morning. i have never scene. i want to share that with them. i want to unglorify a bit for johnhenry what violence and weapons are. and i want us all to learn a little bit more about each other. good night.

oh, and my typing AWFUL. no consistency in punctuation or spelling or grammar or anything. maybe someday, i will have an editor. until then...sorry.

So we begin

My name is Brooke Edwards. I am heading to Phoenix to visit my best friend Angie. My 10 year old son Johnhenry and my 3 year old son Atticus will be coming along for the ride. So will the cremains of our beloved dog Steve. She was 11 when she went to the great dog park in the sky in October and I haven't been the same since. A lot happened in October that has had me not quite feeling myself since and I am going on a journey to get over myself, come to terms with what is, see one of my bestest friends ever, (who is having a bit of a time herself), take my beloved dog's cremains to the beach in Ventura County, CA she loved and played on as a puppy and throw them in the pacific ocean, and bond with my 2 youngest sons. I would love to bond with all 3, but my oldest is 21 anad has to work and can't come. It is what it is and that is part of what this trip is about, embracing what is. So I begin.