Dee Dee Dee!

Hey Yinz, this is Tony*, stupendous industrial designer, keeper of The Money Pitt, human party favor, and world-class doofus. He's also a proud resident of Pittsburgh, the latest stop on my whirlwind tour of the planet. And this is pretty much how I feel lately, trying to keep it all together, it being the writing and job searching and trip planning and general writerly duties.

I braved the wilds of the Pennsylvania Turnpike, armed only with rest-stop Starbucks that tasted like cigarette butts (like I would know), for Tony's Halloween party. As I focused on the road ahead, I thought how this could be the last trip to Pittsburgh for a long while. Lately, each thing Jenifer and I do seems like it's the last time -- a favorite restaurant, a familiar haunt.

And yet we don't know when. It's rare that we can see very far ahead, but now the stakes are higher than usual, the goal clearly defined. Moving to Los Angeles doesn't happen by accident, and I'm not the kid right out of college. We get attached to people, places, things. But we are not these things. We need to let in and embrace the new, reach out for the experiences that will change us and shape us, witness the interplay between event and character, write the story. And sometimes that requires patience. And the occasional "Dee Dee Dee!"

*Tony and I met when he audaciously disrupted my third birthday party with Big Wheel rumblings in the alley. I promptly marched onto the scene and thumped the earth with my bright green, oversized Wiffle Bat to let him know who was boss. We've been BFF ever since.