roundtripping.

all the ingredients were there,
all the elements of the plan were in place,
and all the people who could've made it were all in attendance.
....that's the stuff that makes a berfday party pretty good.
y'know what was even better?
it was a pizza party.
F* yes!
pizza parties are the best parties,
and that's always the big juicy hottness for everybody!
no jokes.
and also, on the real-real-
if you can't hang out with pizza, i hope a bug bites you on your side-lip
and you look all dumb and swollen all day.
take that.
the cake?
teleport:

the cake got rave reviews.
don't be dumb.
that mutha-'ucker was true expertism in fully-formed flavorful full effect.
the thing is,
i had to ask ampy-d to go grab candles,
because the multiple molto molto mom brigade (that's 1-2-3-4-5 of 'em)
didn't remember to bring any.
womp womp.
well, no worries.
we got 'em, anyway, and we lit 'em up, obviously.
y'can't have a berfday without the song, and the candles, and the huffin' puffs.
rules is rules, guys.
i even used my own lighter to spark the wicks on that wax.
what?
oh, believe me-
seven of the dozen people there are smokers,
(even if two of them keep it a poorly-concealed secret)
but lighters are some sort of creepy $0.50 treasure not to be handed over.
lucky for us,
i was closest to the cake,
and i always keep one handy in case i've got to activate some arson.
is that weird?
i mean,
neighbors, you never know if you're gonna need a firestorm to purify;
or simply candle-light a happy berfday cake;
or maybe set off a sprinkler system to alert the authorities to an armed-robbery in progress.
it's clearly better being safe than feeling sorry.
........oh,
and yes,
it was a vegan cake, and since that toofoo will turn you queer,
my ol' man abstained,
preferring to err on the side of caution,
and not tempt bakery-fresh flamboyance too severely.
yikes.
the other other critics were all silenced,
or if they weren't pleased,
i couldn't hear them over the shovelfuls of cake they were stuffing into their faces.
hahahaha.
the pizza was good.
the service was beat.
(which i expected at a place called BAR, yuck.)
the company was polite.
the family togetherness was some high-level omega jauns.
and it all really happened in a haze of road-trippin' transitions from here to there.
*
was it fifteen fahrenheit degrees warmer?
it was.
like a hot doodie-ball dome oven,
we sweltered in site-specifically climate-accurate autumnal mountain-appropriate garb.
i never fully appreciate how much harder the styles are up here in new hampshire
because i'm too busy trying not to shiver myself to death every night.
ugh.
hot and cold and wide awake.
that's how it goes.
up early to drive there,
up earlier to drive back and get to work.
damn.
i grind harder, for less smoothness, and i don't really know how that's real,
but it's real.
to add a few extra levels of complexity to my scene,
i also caught a case of connecticitis while i was down there.
sniffles and drips, coughs and aches,
and eardrums thrash-metal bass-blasting to their own secret universal rhythms.
i get beat up by that trip every time.
i saw everybody,
i slept four out of forty winks,
i drove home before the sun rose,
and i waited around for some sort of work to make it worthwhile.
sometimes,
it doesn't happen the way you'd hoped,
but it still keeps happening the way it's supposed to.
i saw half the people i should've,
and thrice that number in ex-tended family.
that's a pun.
there will be other trips.
in fact,
i've got one on sunday that should really take this Folk Life to eleven.
more on that later;
never quiet, never soft.....