You Made Your Choice

(READER"S NOTE-all names of people not directly related to me and therefore by virtue of an accident of birth can't help but figure into my narrative have been changed to protect my own ass.)

Good we got that out of the way...

July 29-Woke at 4am worked 5 hours at *$ came home changed into street clothes loaded the station wagon with cooler clothes and dog and began the 500-ish mile drive to Akron at noon. Got home around 9, just in time for beers and burgers in the backyard with family and friends in the cool of a summer's night. I poured beers down my throat and stuffed coconut cookies into my mouth for a couple of hours and listened to the peace of suburbia and the laughter and voices of everyone I'd left behind.
July 30-Sale at the Old Schoolhouse the pull was big since the place hadn't been opened in almost 25 years-lots of people came just to see the inside of the building and bought something since there was plenty of neat crap to be had. A small but significant hot war erupted between two consistently warring factions of the family. How quick and easy one forgets that old pissing contests never end in the old hometown. We ate donuts and sat around much of the morning drinking beer. (t's the breakfast of champions.) The schoolhouse doesn't have any plumbing and at about 11 (or beer 2-if you're being technical---during this early Saturday morning in conservative America I was walking my redheaded hippie self barefoot around the building-a Miller Lite in my hand and not a care in the world-my aunt-suffering from some sort of propriety I haven't acquired yet politely took my beverage out of my hand and wrapped a paper towel around it-as if that fooled anybody but that's family for you) After 2 beers I had to go break the seal-so I borrowed the Civic and drove home to do so. On the way I heard Chuck Klosterman (who I am not related to but he is a public figure who writes self-reverential memoirs and thus by this fact has voided the change of name claus mentioned above) he was on Whaddya Know or possibly that show about the news-what the fuck is that show called anyway-the one where you can get Carl Cassell's name on yr answering machine--RIGHT he was on that one or WYK? Some Saturday morning NPR tradition that is not Car Talk. And by luck he was calling from a hotel in dear old Akron, OH where he was going to be reading from and signing his newest book. I took this as a sign that I could have a great deal of fun doing somehting that didn't involve sitting at a sale being politely bored. After all, I wasn't making any money in the deal. I was just there for the community aspect. Of which I pretty much found myself well over by the time I got back to the sale about 45 minutes later when I had been told and I am quoting "Well, you have gained at least 5 pounds since last I saw you and that's only been a month. You're pretty heavy don't you think-you should be at least 10 pounds lighter than that you know you should." This brought my mood up considerably and I was feeling unbelievably chipper---or perhaps that conversation was on Sunday. At any rate, I fell into a week long depression during which I angsted about my fat ass and how I bring shame and embarassment to my family by being as unforgivably huge as I am. This mood was not improved upon when I was measured for a bridesmaid dress for a wedding I don't even support the concept of and refuse to recognize as an inevitability and I was told that I was a size twice (I am not making this up-fucking twice) the size of every item of clothing in my "fat wardrobe." The bitch at the bridal shop is lucky I didn't kick her scrawny old lady ass when she told me that and then told me that I'd have to sign a release if I insisted on ordering a smaller size. I dont' even want the dress, I certainly don't want the dress in a size wherein after the wedding I can use it as a tent on camping excursions.
Speaking of which...there is a camping excursion in this tale...but not yet.
The day before the debacle at the bridal shop me, the sister and the cousins went to Cedar Point. Which, for those of you not from the middle of the country-or just not into having your brainstem rattled loose at 75 miles per hour whilst being tossed about in multiple directions on 8 inch round pieces of pipe--is one of the finest amusement parks in the land. And bloody well it should be for the price $44.95 a person.
Here is where I explain in vague terms why I don't want to be in the wedding I have agreed to be in. My cousin, she's 24, she's never lived a day in her life. She's afraid of everything. She never had a date before she met and became engaged to this guy-this relationship is a year old-they've been readying themselves for a wedding for over 6 months. I am not one to judge-we all know that I may toss about advice but I don't really know anything worthwhile about relationships and I certainly don't know what makes one work. But I can say that two people with no other friendship, that have never lived on their own, that have no social skills and are controlling and probably abusive in some form (this I think of the male in question-I know, I think that about most men, but he just LOOKS evil. Fat face, bad hair, squinty shifty eyes he looks like that person Mummy calls "the Scumbag" and his personality hasn't given anyone involved in this adventure any indication that that adjective doesn't apply to him as well) and a person who refuses to take her anti-anxiety medication and is prone to very public freak outs---
Such as the one she threw in line for the Millenium at Cedar Point when she began making angry bitter phone calls to her mother every 15 minutes talking about how "the princesses" (this term being applied, I presume to her sisters and not to me and my sis---tho of course she could've meant everyone but her) got off scot free and could do whatever they wanted and no one should bother to remember we'd come in HER car and she paid the car note and-and honestly I have no idea what she was talking about. My aunt took a hard lined stance that it would not be acceptable that those of us that were enjoying ourselves on the rides at the park should be left there to fend for ourselves as to how we were to get back to the house half an hour away. This annoyed by strange and probably unbalanced cousin to no end and she took to alternating calls between my aunt and her creepy fiance during the time the rest of us were on the roller coasters and yelling strange and ackward insults and clumsy epithets at her sisters. It would've been funny had it not been so uncomfortable. I stayed out of it. My only slung insults were at some of the bastard rides, Yes I'm talking about you Mean Streak, I still have bruises from your sumbitching 2 minutes of pain and terror that I would be the first registered death by beheading in the history of Cedar Point. That ride fuckin sucked, as did the Mantis. Good Lord, whose idea of fun was that.
So we survived Cedar Point in multiple pieces. Went back ate egg salad sandwiches and I fell asleep on the couch before it was very dark out. Was good to spend time with my wonderful aunt, my well meaning but hard to bear uncle and my two fully grown and charming cousins...And then there was there other you know...I feel really bad for her-by 24 even I'd come out of my shell makes you wonder if she ever will and what will happen when she marries this guy and he moves her 30 minutes from the only support group she's ever had. And how are they going to take care of themselves? But, it isn't my life.
Then there were several days of Mik running around trying to pull herself together for the move to LA and all of that entailed. As I do with most situations that I don't know how to cope with, I stayed well out of it. The day before her last day in Akron we went to the local and ate spaghetti dinner and drank Killian's and I fed money into the jukebox to play Van Morrison ("Gloria) Rod Stewart ("Stay with Me') Billy Joel ("Movin' Out (Anthony's Song)" and "Summer, Highland Falls") but there were dozens of songs before me and I can only assume that the late hangers on were left to be confused as to who the hell was playing less popular Van the Man songs in a bar full of people who think Jimmy Buffett wrote "Brown Eyed Girl" But that's THE bar. Da told a story about a white haired dude of the Norm type, always at his corner barstool who on the day of the Blackout made his first phone call (he I guess works in a job that in some way involves providing electricity to the Eastern half of the country) to the bar to tell the owner to put some beer on ice because it was going to be a long night. And I can tell you because I was there-it was, a very long and wild night at the local pub.
The day the sister left my parents house it stormed all night and Baxter made it his duty to keep the family awake by alternating which room he would freak out in and in what manner said freakout would manifest itself. We were all so glad he provided this service the next morning when we woke up to a power outage we were barely able to speak. So we sat in the dark and drank French Pressed coffee-thank goodness for gas stoves.
She loaded the last of her things into the truck and was off. We drove to Columbus.
Our story will continue in Columbus-or not really Columbus but a town very near there that is one of the more boring places in the state 362 days out of the year but for 3 days is the home of one of the grandest gatherings of people that ought to know better than to think that anyone looks good in kelly green that can be had anywhere that I've been.