NaBloPoMo: AM EMOTIONAL

Walking into the grocery store last night, I caught a whiff of my mom's perfume. It's an unusual perfume, by which I mean that it's not a fragrance many women wear, so it's something I come into contact with only around my mom. Anyway, I just about lost my shit right there, in Publix. It's the job search, I'm sure. It's longing for something familiar and comforting. We always knew it was a long shot to get back to Kansas. We braced ourselves for that reality, and came to terms with it. And yet, as October has slipped quietly into November, and the job ads are fewer and further between, it's hard not to feel a pang of disappointment that the Kansas thing probably won't pan out. We will probably always live a distance (big or not-as-big) from our families.

As soon as I got home last night, I called my friend Amy to talk me down from the ledge. "Well of course you're upset! You've got, oh I don't know, your job search and your dissertation to worry about! And as if that wasn't enough," she wisely observed, "you were at the grocery store! That's enough to push anyone over the edge!"