I boogied home from a pet sit this morning before DD1 and her BFF embarked on their camping trip to Moab because I wanted to give them my pep talk about personal safety (gathered over my almost 48 years of being personally safe), but we hadn’t seen each other for a few days so when I got home we were all laughing and being silly, and Julia was complaining that she had probably broken her toe and I told Ellen that it wasn’t looking good for Julia’s survival so she had my okay to abandon (or snack on) Julia if it came to that so I got distracted and all I could remember was to give them a hunting knife,

a can of pepper spray and a few bits of wisdom thrown together: “be aware of your environment”, “resting bitch face is your friend” and a weird part where I started talking about how I’d never personally killed anybody. At which point Julia jokingly pulled out the knife and started jabbing at the air, promising me she’d take personal safety one step further by hiking while holding the knife in her hands and making stabbing motions, thus repelling from a great distance almost any person in the state who’s got eyeballs, a strategy I immediately approved of. Which made me flash quickly to a quote we like to share now and then: if you can’t spot the crazy person on the bus, it’s you. Yes. Stab the air. Be the crazy person, Julia. Please be the crazy person on the bus. No one mess with my kid please; trust me: that girl be f++king cray!!!!

Before getting in the car, I handed them 20 bucks to go buy themselves each a can of wasp spray (which is sometimes easier for self-defense than pepper spray) at which point Julia asked if I would bail them out of jail should things with the spray get out of hand to which I said “yes”, for how could I not? The girl is literally planning for every possible eventuality with the thoroughness of a Boy Scout. Of course, I’ll bail you out, honey. That’s my girl. 👍🏻

So long story short, the Universe is now tending my baby.   May it’s benevolence bring to her only as much as she can handle, about which I’d like to quickly remind It that she does have that broken toe.

[Migrating my stuff over here…again.  This was experienced and written 9/15/16 but it made the cut]