Girl on the Brink: Surviving Desperate Times with Desperate Measures

Ann's Luggage Tag

My luggage sports a tag that says, “I love not camping.”

But guess what? I’m camping.

After a foreign language class, I sped away from my basement apartment (yes, cringe, with my ex) and two sons in a rented car. I am not doing this to rekindle any romantic cinders left from my divorce last November. I’m doing it for the kids. I do a lot for them (ex, too).

Since I wrote this blog the day before I left, I’m left to imagine what it’s going to be like eating beans and franks around a campfire and changing my Tampax.

Yes, I started my period. I guess I’ll have to follow the same instructions described in the book, How To Sh*t In the Woods. The book says it’s so “uncool” to bury your soiled wiping materials after you clean yourself. That means I have to take it and the wipes with me in a resealable plastic bag.

I’d rather be sailing and dropping anchor off St. Barts than tent poles in the Shenandoahs.

I don’t think of bird watching; I think of other things. Bugs. No hot water. Mud. Bringing enough Ambien. This sleeping pill came in handy when my girlfriend and I slept on a Farr 65 in Antigua last April (See Day 44—Finding Spirit). I plan to make good use of it tonight, along with a bottle of red wine my ex said he’d bring. Maybe I should just go for the moonshine.

I will try to have fun and enjoy the solitude of being in the middle of nowhere, sort of like I am now, and pretend that I’m writing my own fairy tale.

Sometimes, I feel the government has abandoned me in the woods, much like the woodcutter’s wife convinced her husband to do with his children, Hänsel and Gretel.

I don’t know if I’ll find a child-devouring witch like they did, but I do hope to find my way out of this unemployment mess without starving to death. I also hope that I’ll find Prince Charming—even if I have to kiss a frog.

Are you my Prince Charming?

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