So, as I mentioned, I'm going to be out of town - in Georgia, to be exact, visiting my family for a week. I'm leaving tomorrow, so I should be packing right now, except I think I'm still in some type of denial that I'm really getting on a plane and (more or less) voluntarily going to the place I regard as the Birthplace of All Things Redneck. Jesus.

Still, it's better than having them come here. When I go there, it's simpler to get myself into the appropriate mom-visiting headspace, which is: I do anything she wants. Yes, it's true: my mother is more dominant than I am.

I'm not giving her what she really wants, you understand, which is for me to move back to Georgia, preferably into a house not more than a mile away from her. I have gently informed my mother that if it somehow came down to: either I join the National Guard, or I move back to Georgia - well, then I'd be off buying body armor with my signing bonus.

So that's not going to happen. But otherwise, when I visit, whatever she wants to do, I do it. It's just my way of saying, "Hey, thanks for not drowning me at birth." Because now that I'm a grown-up myself, and I reflect back upon some of my childhood antics, I feel sure there must have been times when that seemed, just a moment, like a lost opportunity.

And God knows I learned some very effective getting-my-way techniques from her. It's just that she's the one person in the world I can't use them on.

I'll have the laptop with me, so there will be updates throughout the week, although probably not every day...So stay tuned for scenes from "A Seattle Dominatrix in Zell Millers's Court."