individually-wrapped apologies.

You tell me: can a bag of homemade granola bars make up for being a crappy girlfriend?

I guess the smart answer is to ask how crappy the girlfriend was and how good the granola bars are. Well, the bars were pretty good. I'd never made them before, but it was all from scratch, using honey from my dad's bees and whole wheat flour that my sister-in-law had milled. Does that make it better? I don't know, but I feel like these would make good bullet points on the granola bars' resume. And I used golden raisins, because they're nature's candy. And also chocolate. And love and support.

So how crappy was the girlfriend? Pretty crappy, I'm afraid. Not like, cheating-on-him-with-his-piano-teacher crappy, but more of a general whiny and selfish kind of crappy.

Here's the setup: Josh's band is on tour. You might not think this is a big deal, because Nickelback goes on tour all the time. Small local bands don't go on tour all the time. It takes a lot of work convincing bar owners in other states that they should pay some unknown band from Raleigh to come play. They'll be taking their band van, which still has the name of the church they bought it from on the side, and driving it all over the south and midwest. They left Wednesday morning, and will be back in about a month.

Here's where the crappy girlfriend part comes in. Rather than be excited for Josh, I fell into a glum mood every time it came up. I didn't really complain out loud all that much, other than to nag him ferociously about taking his phone charger. In my head, I worried about how he was going to be gone a long time and would be driving in an old van and there would be drinking and late nights and did you know that there are GIRLS in the south and midwest? But out loud, it was all about the phone charger. "Make sure you take your phone charger, do you need to borrow the one I use in the car, are you going to have a place to plug it in?" You see, kids, this is how to have an adult relationship. Rather than actually discuss what's bothering you, make sure and harp on a minor, only slightly related issue.

I'm sure he found the sudden importance of the phone charger pretty confusing. See, I'm going to be worried every single second that he's gone. But as long as I can call him to verify that he's still breathing, then everything is okay. I can function normally. But if his phone were dead, then that might as well mean that he, too, is dead. Or that he has R-U-N-N-O-F-T with some Alabaman floosy. Because men who like Alabama floosies never charge their phones.

About two days ago, it really started to sink in to me that he was going to be leaving on this trip. I also realized that I had been a total bitch about it. He was really excited and had been looking forward to it for a long time. But he couldn't share that anticipation with me, because I'd turned into an icy phone charger enthusiast every time the subject came up.

So the night before they left, I made granola bars. I put lots of chocolate in them and wrapped them individually in plastic wrap. I wished that I had time to make more travel snacks, and also that I hadn't been such a crappy girlfriend. I debated putting gushy love notes in the wrappers, but thought that might embarrass him in front of the other guys.

He ate one that night and raved about it. Maybe he could taste the love and support that I put it into it. I really had a lot of support lying around, seeing as how I had been withholding it for months. I don't know if he knew they were individually-wrapped chocolate-rich apologies or not. I told him that I was sorry about my behavior, but he sort of waved it away and helped himself to another granola bar.

I hugged him goodbye in the rain before he left. He loaded up his car with his bags, one of them containing a plastic bag full of relationship-healing granola bars and another containing his phone charger.