With the exception of several masterbatory "look what I did!" posts, I have been impolitely absent from the Breakfast table for quite a while.

Tomorrow I take Amanda to the JFK airport for her flight to Turkey. Unless I get my act together and go back to work so I can afford a London-Istanbul plane ticket, I will not see her again until December. This is another one of those things in life that I prefer to approach on a fictional level. Emotionally, I am in the middle of a sad themed movie with soft-indie oriented music at all times (think third quarter of the Royal Tenenbaums).

This is a really shitty movie, I think, because it makes people more uncomfortable than the beginning of "Meet the Parents." I am unbeleivably sad to see her go, and even writing about it like this is hard because I just don't know what to say. In 24 hours I will be inside of an airport in New York saying goodbye to the person I have seen almost everyday for the last year.

But after the airport, I am off to memphis. Like the fictional approach I take to my life, Memphis will help me get away for a while and not stagnate at home.

A month into the summer before seventh grade my best friend Dennis moved to new Jersey. I was 12, too young to work, too young to drive. I pretty much spent the rest of my summer at home alone in all of the places what Dennis and I would play together. I'd sneak of for cigarrettes or ride my bike downtown (peddling with my already full grown feet in my still 10 year-old body) for a mountain dew, but without Dennis to fight with and hide from our mothers with, it just wasn't any fun.

Memphis will be an amazing time and should keep me from the depressing stagnancy that comes from being 12 years old and playing video games alone in your basement. But with the impending trip to the airport, it is impossible to look forward to.

Like Junior high, only this time my feet are a normal size.