A black eyed dog he called at my door...A black eyed dog he called for more
Tuesday before Thanksgiving I loaded up Rosie with a cooler full of snacks a few days change of clothes and a black eyed dog...He stayed in the truck through classes and we started to go home at 8pm. But I locked my keys in the truck at the gas station and spent an hour waiting trying to get inside...Baxter couldn't unlock the door no matter how much I tried to tell him how easy it would be. Finally, an old hillbilly went out there with the slim jim and slid it into the passenger side door and popped the lock open. It was 9pm Central Time. I took off down the road but I was tired...it had been a damn long tired day and I stopped at a Motel 6 in E-town. I'd wanted to make it home and not drive on Wed but it had been too much-a power outage and the trauma with the painting (there would of course be more trauma) and school all day and then locking my keys in the truck as if it weren't hard enough to travel with B. He's a sweetheart of a boy-but he does not like that truck...Not a bit.
We settled into the motel-I drank a beer and ate some peanuts for dinner-Baxter spent the whole night with his ears perked and everytime I fell asleep to the sounds of the all night X-Files channel (I think it's TNT-but I dunno-it's the soundtrack to my insomnia anyway---the episodes were when Scully was pregnant, before Mulder disappeared before we found out that the baby was Mulder's before the Lone Gunmen died...)it seemed like B would start barking during every episode and 4-maybe 5 hours of TV became a strange and incongruous episode that bled into a series of dreams and somewhere in them was a black dog with pointy ears and a deep angry bark unlike anything he normally sounded and I would roll over and mumble that it was alright boy-it's alright...
I got on the road the next morning with the sun in the sky and I thought I'd be home by 4 in the afternoon...I don't want to re-live what I went thru anymore than necessary....I hit Cincy at around 2 and got gas outside of town an hour later there was a lot of traffic I was moving slow maybe I wouldn't make it home before 5. Then the snow started, the snow started and traffic stopped. Outside of Wooster at 6:45 I'd gone 87 miles in 5 hours-I sobbed into my phone sure I'd not make it home sure I'd be on the road forever hysterical and crazy from sitting on I-71 with a frightened dog and my shoulders and knee aching like I'm not sure it's fair someone as young as I am should ache. I was horrified....I would be driving forever I would never get home me and Baxter were dead and we were in hell and hell was I-71 in the snow in a traffic jam with every MD and CD and song on the radio banging horrifying clatter and nightmare music inside my brain. I turned on the soundtrack to a Mighty Wind and figured that if I was in hell I would at least listen to funny hellish music.
I got home at a quarter to 9...a 7 hour drive done in 11 hours...I was shaking and I cried when I got home. Mommy and Daddy greeted me at the door and pulled me into a hug. We were going to get Spaghetti at Dano's but the weather was too bad and our fellows had opted out some time ago-so Daddy had made a pork tenderloin and big baked potato and Mummy had put together a salad. A Sunday dinner on a Wednesday night. I fell asleep in the guest room and slept soundly until Thanksgiving.
When I woke up to blizzard like conditions. But we had promised to be on the other side of the state at the relatives I like (oh, I like others-but these mostly-my Auntie and Uncle....they're completely mad...and thus big fun...) Dinner was fine-it was comfortable and familial...There were 2 weddings in the works but God willing there will only be one taking place. There's a lot of issues about that--the one couple that I like, they're so damn young...A is only 22 and getting married in 32 days. But, and I know a lot of the family doesn't know what to think of him-I think her Husband to Be is a good guy-a redneck for sure and probably a CCRWRSWAM-but we were sitting at a table talking and we talked about Walk the Line and stuff---I don't know he is a hard working guy and he seems really honest (tho he was angry about something that I don't think should've made him angry,bugged but not angry-he was articulate enough to explain what was bothering him) I'd like to think that this is a good idea...I love my cousin and I like her fiance (soon to be my cousin I guess...) they're kids tho-it's hard to say what they'll be in 5-10-20 years...cuz they're kids...
Then there's the other impending marriage...Oh Lord, I hope that one doesn't come off. Not just for the selfish reason that I really don't look good in mint green and I don't have $200 spare dollars to spend on a bridesmaid dress that washes my pale self out to a deathly shade of grey. I talked about the girl and her intended back in August---he is a horrid little creature (not that he's little...)but he is a small man and nothing to be glad to be around.I couldn't support that union. Poor girl-she's never had the chance to have an identity, she has problems-she's paranoid and slow to mature tho I am not sure that she is slow-I think there is something holding her back beyond mental capability. I've heard some stories that let me think she has a mental illness---they tell me depression runs in the family...that doesn't help me much...But this horrid beast she said she would marry-he's 30some years old and he sobbed when he was forced to sleep in an house away from his mother and when he became angry with A (there's two in the family with that initial-she is the elder of the 2) he and his mother changed the locks so she couldn't get back into the house they were supposed to share. He makes me sick-I know him-I dated him-when I was mentally ill and had no personality I dated him-he had a different name but he was there telling me how terrible my family was and how no one would ever love me but him because I was crazy and weak and ugly and I should be happy I had him because that was the best I would ever get. I dealt with that and I got away (not without a criminal record and scars that a decade later still won't heal---but I got away)...I don't want to see that poor little girl stuck in that life that the beast she's engaged to will allow her to have. Rumor has it she broke up with him last week-but men like that have power and they can make things that never should happen, happen...I really hope that's not the way it goes...She may be strange and out of control but she doesn't deserve that.
Friday was non descript. I don't remember anything about it. I suppose we spent the day in the house working on our projects whatever that may entail.
Saturday we went to breakfast at a local diner and ran into cousin GA and later her sis and mom came over and she brough a lot of snacks and we sat around the table and chatted. C and her boyfriend T are coming down from Cincy on my birthday to see a show that I will probably go to just for fun not because I know anything about the performer...It'll be a way to spend a birthday at the least...course it'll cost many dollars but hell, ya only turn 29 once after all....Before that tho Mummy took me to the store and I got new jeans and 3 new tops...It was necessary as all of my clothes are for people that are different sizes than I am taller shorter fatter thinner but none of my clothes fit and Mum made fun of me and then bought me new clothes. I tried on a lot of pants and I had to settle on a size larger than I think I am but the jeans looked good so I don't care much about the size because of how I looked in them...I'm unused to looking decent in any of my clothes...I'm used to looking like I'm wearing someone else's attire.
I should've gone home on Sunday but I was still sore and tired from the journey home to Ohio...so I stayed on the couch and watched TV and read some of my school work but didn't do much. I worry sometimes about Mummy's health-she gets sick and I'm not used to her getting sick ever but she seems to be down with somethign at least twice a month. She gets cranky and doesn't eat. Her food issues seem to be strongest when she is feeling bad I worry about her....but then I see her maybe 2 or 3 weeks of the year over the course of a lot of days I don't really know anything except what I see in maybe 21 out of 365 days...I just remember Grandma going days and days barely eating and barely conscious and I wonder if Mummy will be there one day-maybe it's some sort of post-traumatic issue but I sometimes think that Ma has issues with me not be painfully thin because she has this trouble with eating regular meals or even irregular meals and that's why she's small because she can have for dinner one mini portabella mushroom and a corner of bread---if she can survive on that and be thin then why can't I---Mik is the same way she is just as food troubled and smaller still...it's my problem I like food and that's why I'm troubling because I like food and I eat...I'm a failure in that way because I'm not able to have one mushroom for dinner...Bad me...
I saw G too...he was out in the driveway raking the gravel. I walked up to him to say hi-I thought sure he'd seen me-I wasn't sneaking or anything...I walked over and said "hey." He jumped and spun around and I was sure I'd given him a heart attack. He was given 6 months last March-I remember the scene so well it's burned in my memory...the whole white, sterile, quiet deathly scene is in my memory forever. How often do you get to be there when someone gets a death sentence? How do you phrase that in a way that doesn't sound cold? I am not cold about it. I'm not. So here it is 9 months later and he was out in his driveway, raking the gravel because there was a deep indent where E's car peeled in everytime she pulled into the driveway. It hurts him to talk so I talked as much as I could--carrying the conversation you know. He sounded good-for someone that couldn't move his tongue I was able to understand him although at times I had to surmise words he was doing well. We talked for maybe 5 minutes-he thanked me for stopping over and I said that of course-since I saw him out I would stop by-I'd always said hi when I saw him...Before I moved to Nashville, maybe a month or so, we sat in his living room that hasn't been re-decorated in almost 3 decades and probably never will now and drank Miller High Life watching NASCAR and listening to Trans-Siberian Orchestra. That's what I remember-there was pizza involved too. Just hanging out. He can't eat now-hasn't been able to in months or drink either I suppose. It's horrible and unfair. Lots of things are unfair.
There's that old believe that for awhile you go home for holidays or weekends and then eventually it's for weddings and funerals and then one day you realize that you can't imagine when there will be a wedding to compell you to go home...Such is life