GADZOOKS

Okay, who's idea was it for me to move to Pittsburgh?! Wow, what a complete chaotic clusterfuckery last weekend was, lemme tell ya. I mean, it took us from 8 a.m. on Friday until 6 p.m. to load the 24-foot truck...Pete and his son Nate bragged about being "huge fans of the game TETRIS," so of course everything had to fit together like puzzle pieces, with clothes-line tied around various levels of stuff, so it took a long time for us to get it all in there the way they wanted it to be arranged. So much for taking off at noon like we had first estimated. I was packing like a wild woman while they were loading stuff, so it's all a mish-mash right now in boxes, I can't find anything, even though I labeled each box...

So then we drive to Pittsburgh, leaving at 7:00 p.m., getting there by midnight, all following each other on the turnpike, during holiday rush hour traffic...what a joy THAT was...my road rage was kicking in full force, but I was too exhausted to let it rip. We stopped for dinner at one of those road side service plaza places, at a pizza place called Sbarro, but all they had left (as they were closing) was some slippery spaghetti and 3 meatballs. There were no other restaurants open. What a crock, but it was yummy anyway because we were all starving.

We get to Pittsburgh, and Pete decides to back the truck up into the yard with the ramp right up to the front door...while he's maneuvering, I'm standing there saying to myself, "You're going to hit that sign, Pete, hey, there's a sign there, you're gonna hit it, you'd better stop or you're gonna..." SMASH.....yep, he hit the "no parking sign" across the street. I groaned, because "there goes our security deposit." But I don't think it did anything at all to the truck, so that's a good thing. Nate went over and bent the sign back to it's normalness, and we just kept working. We finally gave up and went to bed, but we got up at 7:00 a.m. to unload everything.

It's amazing how things are easily UN-loaded, compared to being loaded, into a truck. I don't know why that is. It's like some magical vortex or something. By noon, everything was unloaded and we were ready to shower and leave for Michigan. We had no idea that it would take us nearly three hours to return the stupid truck. We knew it needed to be re-fueled, with diesel, but we didn't know where any gas stations were in the vicinity of the truck return office, so we called to let them know we were on our way, but that we needed to stop and get diesel in it, and could they recommend a nearby gas station that had it? Well, the place they told us to go was, unfortunately, CLOSED when we got there. So Pete drove to 4 or 5 other stations, only to learn that NONE of them had diesel fuel. GRRRR. So then we took it to the return office to ask the person working there what we should do, only to find that the office had CLOSED at 1:00, so we had nobody to talk to. We ended up calling some 1-800 number to tell them this problem, and as of today, we STILL don't know how much they are going to charge us for this truck. The dude Pete talked to said we would NOT incur the $30 charge for not refueling, due to our upset at trying to find a place to refuel it at. Even that guy looked it up on the computer to find a diesel station nearby, but couldn't locate one for us.

It was 3:30 p.m. by the time we finished all this, and it would be another seven hours in a car to Michigan. At this point, I said SCREW IT, let's just skip the trip home, but Pete said we could still do it, and I could call for a hotel while we were on the road. Well, sounded like a good plan but as with all snafu weekends of mine, especially with it being a HOLIDAY weekend, that just didn't work. Everything was sold out. Even in my stupid rinky-dink hometown of Muskegon. What a lame-ass place Muskegon is. I mean, it's like the pit of despair, I call it MUSKRAT FLATS, it's so lame. It's like living in the armpit of America. Every time I go there to visit, I thank my lucky stars I got the hell AWAY from that depressing damned town. It sucks shit through a straw, and that's being NICE. There really is nothing there at all except Lake Michigan, and Michigan's Adventure park. Other than that, the only things to do are eat, or go shopping. That's it. There is one small museum I think, one large library, some schools, a mall, a ton of churches, and lots of lame-ass redneck people who are mostly unemployed. In fact, I'd like to call up Erin Brockovich, because that town has WAY too many people on dialysis with kidney problems...there has to be something in the water there, that's all I can figure. I make sure I drink only bottled water when I go there.

Anyway, so we call my sister and she says they have a tent we can sleep in, out in her backyard, with an air mattress. So that's what we did. But, first we took off to the casino which was another 1.5 hours north, luckily my sister drove though. We got there at midnight, had some fun, living on caffeine fumes from all the free soda you can drink, and basically walking around like zombies from being overly exhausted. I didn't win a damned thing, as usual, but Laurie ended up winning $100 bucks, so that was cool to sit and watch her play. We laughed a lot. Then, we had a reuben sandwich---why in HELL somebody thought it was a good idea to put SAUERKRAUT on a SANDWICH, I will never know, that stuff is VILE---but ok what the hell, I didn't care, I ate some anyway. BLEAH. So then we got back to my sister's house at 3:30 a.m., and fell into the tent at 4:00 a.m. to sleep. Did you know that the goddamned SUN comes up at 7-friggin'-30 in the morning though? ! Yeahhh, it does. So basically, I got woke up by the sun, had to go pee, then my brain kicked in and that's all she wrote. I can't fall back asleep after that point. I always wake up starving too, no matter if I eat at 4 in the morning, I'm still starving when I get up...so I made everybody some breakfast, and then took a shower and stuff. I was like the walking dead, but I wanted to cram as much fun into the day and a half that we had there, as we possibly could.

So then the rest of the day kinda went downhill from there. We took off to visit Laurie at her house, but while we were on our way to Michigan Saturday, her husband (not my favorite human) had an incision from his surgery a couple weeks ago that was leaking, so she had to take him in to the hospital and they did emergency surgery on him to correct whatever the problem was (I don't trust doctors in that town either, they all suck), and so he was stuck there for a couple days. Laurie was a nervous wreck, the whole time we were there, her car is on the fritz, she's driving her mom's old mini-van everywhere, money is tight, the kids are going back to school so they needed clothes and supplies, etc., so she's been running around crazy doing all this stuff without anybody to help her. I swear she might as well be a single mom, that husband of hers is worthless.

We get to the new thrift store in my hometown, and her middle kid gets sick. So that cut the shopping trip short, Pete was asleep in a chair in a corner, and my mom shows up a half hour later than we had planned...my sister and her hubby had to go see a viewing of my dad's mother who just passed away on Friday...I never liked that woman...she never earned the name "Grandmother," so I never called her my grandma in my whole life...she was just a hag-and-a-half, that nobody liked. In fact, even my sister said she was crazy as a three dollar bill. Why she went to see her off, I'll never know, but she claims she wanted to be there for my dad. This ensued in a rather heated discussion about why I don't speak to my dad anymore, and "he's changed so much, I should really give him another chance," but then I dropped the bomb on her about how I tried to reconcile several times with him, only to have him be a chicken-shit loser with no respect for me whatsoever when all I asked was to keep it between him and I, NOT involve his new wife---but that apparently was too difficult for him to abide by, because she sent me a nasty letter telling me what a horrible rotten brat I was being---and so I opened the letter, read it, copied it, put it in my journal, sealed the original back into the envelope, and wrote RETURN TO SENDER on it, without replying. My sister was stunned into silence about that one. She didn't know. I said, "Yeahh, so tell me again just how NICE that lady is, cuz I don't believe a word of it. She's as much of a hag as his mother was, and he doesn't enhance my life one goddamned bit, so until he learns how to do that, I have no interest in having him in it."

Anyway, that was many years ago, but it left me feeling like, "Fuck off and die daddy dear, you're dead to me now." And that is how I still feel about it. I don't know him, and I have no interest in ever knowing him. What I do know of him from childhood is that we don't like each other, we don't get along, and we probably never will. I have no interest in beating a dead horse. He's getting up in age now, I think he turns 70 this year, not sure, lost track....but his liver will give out eventually due to his raging alcoholism, and when that happens, I do not believe I will be attending his funeral either. It's a shame things turned out that way between him and me, but none of it was any of MY doing, and apparently not worth an apology from him either.

Going home is always such a joy.

So then Pete and I decide we need a nap, but the inside of the tent was like an oven in the middle of the day, and indoors the couch wasn't big enough for us both to crash on, the kids were inside playing video games, and they have no air conditioning. So we decided to go lay on my sister's bed for a bit, with the fan inside the window. That was peaceful and quiet, and relaxing for about a half hour---then suddenly we both felt WATER being splashed on us, from the sprinkler that my sister just started outside in the front yard, coming in through the window...I jumped up, squealed, and shut the fan off...then I saw my sister and her husband zoom off in their car----I thought, "what a HAG!! she did this on PURPOSE!" So I go out to see what's going on, and Pete is fuming too, we're both feeling rather annoyed at how juvenile that was, and when they returned my sister says, "We don't like sharing our bedroom with anybody." Well, why not just knock on the fucking DOOR then, and let us know?! Instead, hit and run with a sprinkler...nice...Pete said it was juvenile, and if we've worn out our welcome, we'll just go get a hotel. So we packed up all our stuff, and hugged my mom, and then left.

My sister calls later in the evening to tell us that it was NOT something she did on purpose, she didn't know we were in there, and they had forgotten to get a toy for my nephew like they promised, so when they pulled in and she was going to get the sprinkler going, he was upset and crying about it, so they threw him into the car and took off to go get him one---not even giving it a thought that the sprinkler was going inside the bedroom window. I don't know if I buy that excuse or not, but I told her that all she had to do was mention this "house rule" when we first arrived, so we knew the boundaries. We had a discussion about it, and I told her that next time we visit, we'll plan ahead and get a hotel so there were no misunderstandings. She said we're always welcome in her home, but I really did not feel very welcome there at all.

Pete and I took off to visit my friend Annette about an hour away, and after talking with her awhile, we then drove to Lake Michigan a few minutes away and watched the sun set. We were both exhausted, but we grabbed some food for dinner, and drove down past Grand Rapids before we finally stopped at midnight to get a room at a hotel. I hit the pillow and was GONE.

The next morning, we took our time going back to Pittsburgh, and enjoyed the day. We shopped a bit, had lunch, and just took turns driving awhile here and there. It was the best day of the whole damned weekend.

So, now I'm here in Pittsburgh. I keep feeling an urgency like I have to go "home," to DC...but of course, I am here now, and that's not an option anymore. So it feels weird to me. I'm not used to it yet, it still feels like I am visiting. But I am slowly getting unpacked and settled in to my new apartment, I'm just getting burned out of doing all that stuff...taking a break right now. Baked some cookies earlier. Took a nap too. I do miss having a job though, so next week I'm going to register with some temp agencies. I feel like I have fallen off the face of the planet somehow, and I'm suddenly anonymous, without a job. I need to be needed though, so I have to get back to work. I also do not like asking Pete to pay my bills for me, that bothers me A LOT...my car payment and insurance are due tomorrow...this is disconcerting to me...and my pet sitter bill is due too....sheesh.

Well, this coming weekend we WERE going to Ohio to see Journey in concert, but the tickets were just too damned expensive, so we decided to skip the concert completely and instead, we're driving to Rochester NY to visit his mother for her birthday. The consolation prize for missing the concert is, Pete is buying me a brand new MP3 player from Wal-Mart that has Journey logos and songs on it....very cool...I'm getting one for Laurie's son, Noah, who is a HUGE Journey fan...he's 11 years old....he says he loves Steve Perry much better than this new guy too, but this new guy sounds "just like him," so he's happy about that. He just got the new Revelation CD and had it cranked up, dancing around the house watching the DVD....so I dug through my huge bin of Journey junk last week and found a size Medium t-shirt that I can't wear anymore, it has the Infinity log on the front and Evolution on the back, white with black sleeves, and I gave it to Noah...he squealed like a girl and put it on...."I LOVE IT!" he screamed....hehehehe...I've successfully converted one child to love Journey....my work here is done.

Bye for now.

Love, Sassy Girl