The Journey

"Brittni, Brittni, look at me. Brittni, open your eyes. Open your eyes. Stay with me." Dim lights appear overhead as I am being moved through some kind of a corridor. I hear muffled voices and people are moving fast all around me. Who is calling my name? Where are they taking me? I feel so tired. I cannot keep my eyes open.  "Brittni, Brittni, Bri..." Christmas Eve is not at all magical when your home is turned into a secondary site for a terribly busy, very disorganized, and extremely tumultuous catering business. I used to tell my ex-husband the name of the business should be Chaos Catering. He laughed, but secretly agreed. This was not the first Christmas Eve I had to endure the turbulent scurrying of servers, bartenders, and chefs. Food flying on meticulously decorated fine silver platters, wine glasses hurriedly loaded into crates for transport, more food flying...and language that would make a sailor blush. (Sometimes, that was me. Ha!) This year was more d...

Photo by Kyle Sudu For 7 years, I lived in Atlanta, Georgia, with a population of 416,474 (as per the 2000 census population posted by the Mayor's office.) For the first couple of years, I lived right in the heart of Buckhead, sometimes referred to as the Beverly Hills of the East.  We used to say our front door was a revolving one because there were people coming and going all the time. Late-night bar-closers would stumble in at 8 a.m. for a beer and pregame bantering until the bars and restaurants could legally sell booze again around 12:30 in the afternoon.  Our very non-traditional Sunday mornings would involve the early service at one of the most prestigious churches in Buckhead where the pastor told humorous stories about his weekend adventures including one account of the Willie Nelson concert, he attended the night before. Then, we would walk to the trendy eatery around the corner from our house. Finally, after splitting a $12 burger and paying a tab which was usually ...