I just flew out to visit my Mom in Medora, North Dakota.  Every summer for the last, I don’t know, decade?, she’s worked at Teddy Roosevelt National Park.

She’s got a crew of girlios to hang around with, a bunch of grannies who travel the country in Winnebago campers.  I suppose it’s pretty cool that at the age of 76, she’s selling souvenirs in one of the tourist traps, not playing shuffleboard at the senior center.

She wasn’t taking my broken ankle as an excuse for cancelling my trip, not that I would have used it. She kept reminding me that we hadn’t seen each other in three years.  A little sympathy would have been nice, though. A you-poor-dear comment. Or some admiration in the form of a my-God-you’re-a-tough-critter.  Weird, the shit we seem to want from other people, particularly our parents.

I got myself in a real state long before I even got here.  Showed up at the Enterprise rental counter to discover that, if I wanted to pick up the car I’d ordered, I’d have to hire a cab to take me to the satellite location in downtown Bismark.  I don’t suppose I’ve been in Bismark since 1972, not that that matters, what with the city being the size of a bread box. It is North Dakota after all.  I cancelled that reservation and got myself a car at the next window.  Good old Avis.  They put me in a little Ford and off I went.  Until five miles down the road I got a flat. I called the number on the back of the documents and 95 minutes later some fellow named Josh with those big earlobe spacer things showed up to change my flat. Nice guy, but WTF?

Of course the donut he put on wouldn’t make it the 135 miles I had to travel, so back I went to the airport to get another car per Josh’s suggestion. This time those nice folks at Avis wanted me to fill in an accident report so they could charge my insurance company for my reckless puncture. Which  brought out a side of me I promise you you would not like to see.

But I’m here.  And I’ve just had dinner with Ma at the Chuckwagon.

And I’ve girded my loins for 5 days of piped in music. And for sleeping on an air mattress with a mysterious leak.

Tomorrow night we’re heading to the Musical if it doesn’t rain.  And during the week we’ll hit the Cowboy museum, and the Viking museum, and probably take a class on lefse making, and visit my Grandmother’s cousin, Gladys, who is 96 and is still, according to my Mom, totally rocking it. And I’m going to do my level best to surrender to the experience.  To just be pleasant and go with the fucking flow.  Because if I don’t I will end up killing myself.

That is all.