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otherwise. We had deer all over the place in Pennsylvania, but this was a sight to see and I‘d almost hit him.
    I got out of the car, snapped a few pictures of the moose, then a couple selfies with the moose in the background. Never in my life would I have thought I would cross paths with a moose outside of a zoo.
    Now I had to pee again, thanks to my iced coffee…and my laughter. I was laughing. I was actually laughing. It felt almost foreign to me because I hadn’t laughed this much in a long time…and there was no one here to see it.
    I think the moose was actually smiling at me.
    Did moose smile?
    As I pondered the idea of whether moose smiled, I decided to make a quick video since he seemed so photogenic.

    “Hey guys, I would like you to meet my buddy, TINY. He made me laugh today. A moose warmed my heart and made me laugh. Maybe this is a sign, Tiny is my buddy. Say Hi, Tiny!”

    I proceeded to focus and zoom in on the moose I’d named Tiny. I could’ve sworn that moose was smiling at me. Let Facebook be the judge. As I uploaded the video, I thought, Sometimes you have to stop and smile with a moose. Fuck smelling flowers, I needed something bigger than a rose .
    Tiny decided he was done with his fifteen minutes of fame, and just like that, prodded off into the dense tree line. As I got back behind the wheel, my GPS read that I had less than an hour before I reached Eastport. I called Ethel, my new landlord, and left a message letting her know I would be arriving soon.
    When I finally made the decision to leave Nazareth and called Ethel for the first time, we were on the phone for over two hours, and I knew then, that was where I needed to go. She described the small apartment of her mother/daughter style house. It was completely furnished with all utilities included. Ethel had a two-bedroom apartment on her side and a smaller one-bedroom apartment was on the other, adjoined by a mudroom.
    She said the apartment was vacant going on two years and she was more than happy to rent it out. Her home was paid for, and she’d given me a huge deal on the rent.
    One more hour of this drive and I was still amazed I hadn’t popped one Xanax. I’d laughed today, a full belly laugh that almost made me piss my pants. For once, the tears in my eyes were of joy, not from thinking of my boys’ death. It was a start. Maybe the sign “Welcome to Maine-The Way Life Should Be” had been a big hello from my boys along with Tiny; you couldn’t get any bigger than that!
    It was a nice 69 degrees with clear skies and I was surrounded by gorgeous scenery. It was distinctly cooler here for June, and I knew I was closer to my new home as the smell of salt carried heavy in the breeze.
    I hadn’t seen a decent place to grab coffee for hours. This was definitely something I’d need to navigate because I needed my iced coffee. A nice big mall would be nice, too. I haven’t shopped in a while, either, except for the basic necessities.
    Well isn’t this some shit, don’t take a Xanax for a day and the compulsion to shop returns. Well, they certainly didn’t list that as side effect on the bottle .

     



Ryan
Thursday

    The last eight months had been a long road served in a wheelchair. Regardless of how much sensation I had or how high something was jacked up, I still couldn’t walk. I had resigned myself to that fact a long time ago, before the doctors and therapists did, but I went along with it anyway. I knew they thought I’d given up, but quite the contrary. I just wanted to go home.
    I was probably in the best shape of my life right now, aside from my non-working legs. I had physical therapy sessions every weekday. Besides sitting around and trying to figure out what to do with myself, or reading a book, there was nothing else to do in rehab except eat. The food was great here, but these guys, all they did was eat. It was one thing to be disabled, it was another thing to be fat and in a double-wide wheelchair. That was not