Appalachia Year

Ana hosted a Don't-Call-It-A-Going-Away-Potluck for me. Nick and Ana surprised me by making pizza soup - a dish that had, until last night, been only a conceptual inside joke. Last winter, in a feverish delirium, my active sites denaturing like it was going out of style, I demanded from my bed that Nick bring me "pizza soup". It became a staple offering of the restaurant/bar that Ana and I plan to open someday, tentatively called The Glory Hole. How do you make pizza soup? This incarnation was chunky tomato bisque with veggie ground beef in a bread bowl, topped with veggie pepperoni, green pepper rings, mozzarella and oregano. It certainly lived up to all the drunken raving about it we've been doing for the past year.

I thought that all those people around, handing me beers and hugging me hard, would bum me out. It didn't. I felt warm and content and the hollow, looming sense of dread that usually hangs out in the pit of my stomach didn't bother to show up to the party at all.