Friday was the day. Our only child moved into her dorm room. The mixture and intensity of emotions is overwhelming. There is mental conflict and turmoil.
We spent 18.5 years working toward this goal. We did not have her in order to own her. We raised her with the goal of sending her out into the world to live her own life successfully, and this is a very important phase of that eventual goal. It is a Good(tm) thing, so why does it feel so craptacular?
The voices inside my head are fighting. There is one that keeps wailing, “This is the worst thing EVER!” while the other voices stare with disdain and correct the wailing voice harshly.
It isn’t a bad thing. Not at all. But it is a big, big change, and I am not very comfortable with it yet.
It took 18.5 years, but it also only took a minute, and my entire life.
Now we are at home, and she is in another city, 300 miles away, and life feels unsteady for all of us. It is a new frontier.
During our dark first year in Minnesota, a very good friend of mine died. I was in Minnesota, and he was far away in California, and he died.
I spent a little tiny bit of time in denial. Then I moved on to anger and stayed there for a while. Then I moseyed on in to the deep valley of depression, where I’ve spent large chunks of my life anyway. I just walked in a lot farther than I’d been in quite a while, and I set up housekeeping, with no particular intention of ever walking back out.
I was not wallowing in grief. I was mainly too numb to bother with grief. Flashes of rage aside, mostly I simply put away the fact he is dead in a box in the back of the closet. It isn’t the same as denial. I know he is dead. On a day to day basis, I long ago stopped needing to remind myself I couldn’t call him. It just wasn’t fully integrated into my world either. Like everything else from my old life, my real life, it was just on hold.
Which leaves me in an interesting position now that I am back “home” because I am drinking in all the sights and sounds and smells of my old stomping grounds, and there is always something there to remind me.
Which means the box has come out of the closet and I am needing to deal with the full blown reality that he will never go to any of our favorite restaurants with me again. He’ll never annoy the shit out of me with his bizarre ordering quirks again. We’ll never be sneaking the back way between the valleys to avoid the freeway traffic, spending the whole drive deeply engaged in meaningful and meaningless conversation again.
Yeah. Turns out I’m still really pissed off about him dying.
We finally made it to the motel, with all the humans and cats still alive, and an hour later were ready to go to sleep. Another problem with this motel, besides the fact they had a firm check in deadline, was they had a very early check out deadline too. I signed up for this and agreed to it when I reserved the room, but because of the detour, it was a major pain in the ass. The next morning arrived way too soon.
Still, we hit the road again, and had a very easy 400 and change miles planned, to get us into Vegas. The drive went pretty well, for a pleasant change. Getting back to more familiar vistas was very welcome. I could feel myself getting more comfortable as we got closer.
Really nice to see some desert.
We made it to the La Quinta Inn & Suites Las Vegas Airport South. Unfortunately, and hour after arriving, we were still not settled into our rooms. As a serious chronic pain sufferer, the move and road trip had been taking a toll. Our rooms were kind of midway from all exits, and not at all convenient. In the 140 room, 3 story inn, they had exactly 3 luggage carts. All of them had been taken and squirreled away inside guest rooms. The staff tried to ignore my repeated requests for help locating the carts. I found out from a long term guest that this is constant problem, and yet, they had not instituted any kind of check out process for the carts. I walked all the floors, but the carts were not to be found in any public areas. After a lot of my annoying presence the staff made a half-assed attempt at finding the carts and also failed. We finally moved into our rooms by using the rolling office chairs to load our stuff up and take it into the rooms. I know that the staff thought we should just get off our asses and carry shit to our rooms, but we really had a very large amount of stuff that wasn’t a good idea to leave outside in the parking lot at that location, and we were really not in any condition to carry it in piece by piece.
By the time we managed to be in our rooms, it was getting pretty late. I needed to hit a grocery store because Indy had not been very pleased with the on the road meals I’d been preparing for her, and her general state of stress wasn’t doing well for her health. Also, the cats were not doing spectacularly. I wanted to get them all something special food wise to entice them to eating a really good sized meal. Then I arranged for the kid and my mother to eat dinner in their room and watch the dogs, while the husband and I went out and enjoyed Vegas a little. My first several restaurant choices were closing, so we ended up just driving down the strip to look for something. We decided to stop at The Cosmopolitan since their flash sign indicated a lot of late night dining options, and we’d never been to that hotel. The hotel has a very popular night club, and the hotel was crawling with young hip people and people who wanted to pretend to be young and hip. We went to The Henry for dinner and people watching. (Is it really a dress if it is so short you crotch is visible?) The meal was enjoyable. Husband had a Midtown Manhattan (Bacon Infused Makers Mark Cinnamon and Fig Infused Sweet Vermouth, Angostura, Fee’s Aztec Chocolate Bitters) which was very tasty, and prime rib. I had a Mambo Italiano (Garlic Roasted Vodka, House Made Bloody Mary Mix, Basil) which was also very good, and an excellent burger. We shared the
Millionaire’s Deviled Eggs (lump crab & truffle stuffing, thousand island dressing & caviar) to start. The next time I’m in Vegas, I think I’ll go try Holsteins. The menu made me drool, but it was way too noisy and crowded for me to venture into on a Saturday night.
The next day we got a late start. We were pretty wrecked from our trip so far, and the time zone changes had not been in our favor for getting on the road early. We headed out of town and soon were reminded why it is important to leave really early on Sunday morning. The traffic from Vegas to L.A. on Sundays is pretty nasty, often further hosed due to accidents or road work.
We dragged our butts into our house later than we expected when we first packed up the car, but we made it. It was really good to be home. We unloaded the crap from our car, and wandered over to a friend’s house for dinner. It was so good to spend some time with them, although in hindsight, probably a mistake. By the time we made it home we were exhausted, and then discovered that the movers had put our bed together wrong, so we couldn’t sleep on it without finding tools to fix it. We were way too tired to find the tools. So, our first night home we couldn’t sleep properly.
The cats were thrilled to be out of the damn car for good, at it was clear that they knew exactly where they were. They settled in immediately, although they were (and remain) annoyed by all the boxes in the way. Indy also recognized the place, I was wondering about that, since she was already had CCD before we left, but we did move into the house when she was “all here”. She even remembered that she isn’t allowed into the kitchen and dining room. Watson, of course, had no such memory of rules against entering the kitchen, which is the land where all good things come from. After a couple of corrections, he was going great.
Ahh, home, sweet home… for about 10 seconds, and then the overwhelming To Do list of getting our shit in order here comes crashing down on my shoulders. Lots and lots of stress, but really, it is good to be home.
Seriously, the damn breakfast room attendant was too busy chatting with another employee to keep the food stocked and when she wasn’t doing that, she was watching the TV, which was on way too loud.
Anyhow, the husband and I chatted and debated between drive two harder days, or three easier days. We opted for the 3 easier days, so I picked a stopping point in 460 miles. We got on the road with a plan of being at the Robbers Roost Motel by about 8:30 PM.
We stopped in Idaho Springs for a late lunch at Smokin Yard’s BBQ. This was good. Surprisingly good. This was, I’d enjoy eating there for dinner good, and random stop mid-roadtrip it was totally amazing.
While we were sitting next to the window stuffing our faces full of barbecued beast, we noticed all this white stuff blowing sideways past the window. Ash? What? Snow?! Yes, snow. When we finished up and got back outside, it had stopped. We took the dogs down by the river behind the restaurant, and gave them some time to stretch their legs.
Watson checking out the river near our BBQ lunch stop.
Then we loaded our stuffed selves back into the cars and began driving.
Within a couple of miles we were driving in a little bit of snow. A few more miles rolled by and we were driving in a full on snow storm.
This was not part of the plan.
Then, the plan exploded like Alderaan. You didn’t need to have any damn midi-chlorians to sense my spike in frustration levels. They closed the highway we were on, with no estimate of when they would reopen it. Our choices were to look for a room where we were, that would take two cats and two dogs, and eat the cost of the two rooms booked in Utah, or to take a long detour.
We took the long detour. It only added an extra 100 miles to our drive, but it was 100 difficult miles through two lane winding roads. Our rate of progress was much slower. Plus, the place we were booked to stay had a cut-off time for check in, and we were racing the clock, very slowly, while trying to avoid hitting large herds of deer and elk.
We finally made it back to Interstate 70 from our painfully scenic detour, and we were exhausted. Seriously, I had reached that state where I needed my passenger to talk to me about what was ahead on the road, because sometimes I could see two roads, and they weren’t going the same direction. I needed a bit of help following the one that was in the same reality that our vehicle was traveling in. Then it started snowing again. Hard. Snowing with big gusts of wind. The snow was mainly blowing straight into the windshield, but then the wind would send it swirling. It was like driving through a Star Tours hyperdrive special effect, and it was making me nauseous. It was at that moment that the cats decided they had truly had enough of each other, the car, and everything. They began screaming and hissing and trying to kill each other, right behind my head.
So, a lot has been happening, and none of that has been blogging.
I moved. I don’t live in Minnesota any longer. We moved back to Los Angeles.
It has been pure hell, but all in all, it is a very good thing. I am glad we made the decision that we did. I’m glad we moved. It’s just that moving sucks.
We knew for a while. My husband gave a month’s notice at work, but they didn’t want him to share the news right away, and while they can’t enforce that, we decided to give them some breathing room, and we kept it quiet for a reasonable amount of time. By the time it became more public, I was simply too busy to blog about it.
Leaving Minnesota was difficult. It was emotionally difficult and physically difficult. I wanted to move back to California, but in the two and a half years we spent in Minnesota, we’d made some good friends. I’d also put a lot of time and heart into working with ACT V. Friends that I made, I can keep. That is what the internet is for. It’s very difficult to continue fostering for an organization I was very happy to be volunteering for, from 2000 miles away.
To start things off, when we took the cars in for an oil change and a quick checkup, the mechanic discovered stuff wrong with one of them. Stuff that should be fixed before the road trip, and stuff that cost a bunch of dollars, because it always costs a bunch of dollars when the mechanic says “Well, we found…”
This got us on our road trip later than originally planned.
That, and our own insanity, but that’s another issue.
Seriously, we left our rental house at 11:30 PM. I know, I know, logically it seems like it would make more sense to just sleep there one more night, but it we just needed to go, or we’d find more reasons to linger the next morning.
So, we left our former home a total mess (because we knew that a wonderful friend had our back on dealing with the MN end), and we drove by the house of one of the ACT V people to deposit a final donation of blankets and detergent on their doorstep (much to the suspicion of some neighbors that saw us).
Then we headed out of town…
In a snow storm.
I’m not kidding. It snowed on us on the way out of Minnesota. We pushed ourselves to the point of exhaustion and got our butts to Iowa, so that we had left the state. There we stayed at Microtel Inn in Clear Lake that didn’t charge us any extra fees for the pets, and had a very nice and accommodating staff. Unfortunately it was also snowing and hailing on us in Clear Lake as we tried to unload the cars and get our butts into the room. In order to have enough space in the cars (because we needed room for 4 people, 2 traumatized cats, 1 large kitty litter, 1 cranky old dog, 1 puppy, food for all the critters, and a disturbing amount of wine, not for road trip consumption), we’d purchased a giant duffel bag to keep luggage in.
It turns out it takes about an hour to get 4 people, 2 dogs, 2 cats, and all the stuff the 8 of them need for one stupid night, settled into a motel room.
Did I mention the snowing and hailing? Oh, well also there was horrible biting, bitter, nasty, COLD wind. It was late April. We were dressed (and packed) for early spring. My husband got himself a minor case of frost bite on his fingers unloading the car that first night. Good times.
The next morning I set out our plan for the day by finding a motel that would take the pets and plotting our route. I’d been planning originally on aiming for 500 miles a day, but decided that day to stretch and reserve us a room just over 600 miles away, because of our late start and our race to get to California before we got charged extra by the movers for not being able to meet them on time to get our ginormous amount of stuff back.
So, we were aiming for Sterling, CO and Best Western Sundowner, which charged us an extra $20 to let our pets stay there ($12 for one animal, $20 for two or more), but had a larger room for the price than our other options, and after the first night, I knew we’d do better with a little extra space.
We got on the road planning to be in our room by about 10:30 PM. Unfortunately, it was an extremely windy day, and we hadn’t really perfected our strapping the giant duffel bag to the top of the car technique yet. It took all day to get that technique down. In total, about 3 hours was spent in various parking lots, rest areas (BTW, Iowa has the nicest rest areas I have ever seen.), and wide shoulders, working on that technique. This meant we got to the motel about 1:30 AM.
Watson at one of the rest area stops in Iowa.
Remember the one hour to get everybody settled in the room thing? It takes even longer when you are on the second floor of a Best Western that doesn’t have an elevator. WTF? Also, their free wireless internet sucked frozen possum testicles, or as I like to call them, possnutsicles. I needed internet in order to send a very detailed email to a friend, including floorplans of our house that I’d edited to map out the placement of all of our furniture. The movers had made amazingly good (not good for us) time getting the load to CA, and the path of least resistance for dealing with that, was to have a friend manage the unloading of the stuff. Between the battling with the internet, the super slow connection, and the occasionally drifting off between keystrokes, I finally hit send and got to sleep at 5:30 AM. Then up early to battle the internet again in order to find the right stopping place for the night. By the time we were ready to head out, I was 31 flavors of cranky.
Now we’ll pause for a message from our sponsors. Actually, we’ll pause so I can sleep. You’ll have to wait for another day to find out more about our road trip.
Since feeling sorry for myself is essentially useless, I also looked for an acceptable, although not optimal, solution.
So, husband’s boss is now on the form, since at the very least he is likely to know where husband is and a secondary way to get in touch with him. A touched based with him to make sure that was not a problem.
Form filled out. It will only have the one emergency contact. Done.
Kid is enjoying being on crew, more or less, mostly more.
Tonight I go see the preview show.
Honestly, I’m still feel sorry for myself today, but *shrug* I know damn well that things could be a lot worse.
This morning I feel fucking sorry for myself because I need to fill out a little yellow piece of paper because Z is stage crew on a show.
I have no fucking answer for somebody to put in the Emergency Contact space in case we cannot be reached, much less two names.
We have no fucking friends here. We are just here, all alone.
Now, mind you, in all the years of her doing stuff, I’ve never had a situation where the emergency contact needed to be contacted, but in L.A. I always had a number for that spot, and a number that I knew would reach somebody who would handle it as I would want it handled.
I am paying bills, eating salt and pepper pistachios, and trying not to think too much about the fact that my laptop is on a downward slope and will soon either need to have money and time spent on it, or will need to be retired to the junkyard.
My mood is shit, due partly to paying bills, partly to teenage attitude, partly to the ridiculously frustrating behavior and actions of a friend, and mostly to just being me.
In moving news, I am still completely NOT unpacked and settled. Yes, I do realize it is because it is my own way of not really moving. I want to be with my family, but I don’t want to be here. The behavior is ridiculous, immature, and self-destructive. It is easy to create an atmosphere where I cannot possible be happy (surrounded by chaos, disorder and boxes, and unable to find things I need), and thereby prove that I cannot be happy here. I am working on it. Even if I create an environment where functionality is possible, it may not lead to functionality, but if I neglect to even try to create such an environment I am not even giving myself a chance. That might be fine as a personal choice, but since I live with two other people, it would be fucking unfair. So, I am working on it, but I am not happy about it. I don’t feel better because I am working on it. I am just working on it.
Today I hung something on the wall. I screwed something of ours to the wall. This is the first time I’ve done that. I don’t mean EVER. It is the first time I’ve done that in this house. I attached something to the house. I’m not sure that the fact I’ve done it is symbolic, but I am damn certain that the fact I hadn’t was. It helps that it was a less than $10 something that I probably won’t even bother to take with me when I leave. It also helps that is a knife magnet bar, meaning sharp things are now easier for me to reach.
I sort of more or less chilled this weekend and tried to relax, but today came and the overwhelming stress of all I need to get done hit and I could not stop kicking myself for not staying on task. I was so busy kicking myself, I couldn’t really manage to get back on task. It was a shit day.
I did make a small batch of chicken stock, which is now cooling. I much prefer homemade stock to store bought, because I control what goes in it, and it is more cost effective too. Chicken stock is a staple item in my kitchen. I think that is pretty much the extent of my accomplishments today, and it was a small batch.
I did a little bit of grocery shopping today, but that was also an exercise in stress. Basically anything that I cannot find, that was a regular thing for me to purchase “back home” sends me into a fit of feeling sorry for myself, as if I need any extra help with that. I am really just pathetic and annoying at this point, even to myself, and I know I am a pain in the ass for other people to deal with.
It is no help that I am leaving in a few days on one trip, and then getting back and leaving almost right away on another trip (but having to cram in a work party in between). This will be basically another whole month without my husband and I am just already so done with being apart.
I also just utterly do not have the energy or patience to be the mother to a teenager. Yet, there she is, every day. It isn’t just the act of parenting that takes so much energy, it is being near the orbit of all that teenage baggage. It just sucks the life out of me.
Tomorrow I get to go be around dozens of teenagers. Also I get to go to a church. That is where an area homeschool teen group has their monthly meetings. If I never post again, assume I burst into flames, from one or the other. Or perhaps it will be having to meet the homeschooling parents that will do me in.
We are also supposed to bring some sort of potluck dish for lunch (which I failed to remember about while grocery shopping), a tray of cookies to share, which I think I am just going to refuse (Holy shit, a TRAY of cookies from every family? I don’t even want to be around that many teens when they haven’t consumed 4 pounds of sugar each), plus a can or two for the church food pantry (which I also failed to remember while grocery shopping). Tomorrow morning I will go to the grocery store and sort something out for that meeting, and no doubt have another pity party over not finding what I want and am familiar with.
Is there a magic potluck dish that will make them like my daughter and make her feel welcome and happy here? Is there one which will make them hate her and make her so miserable that I never have to go to one of these damn meetings again? Can I just bring a bunch of eggplant and okra? I suppose what I really need to do is the same thing I do at every potluck. Eat before I go.
I am not unaware or unappreciative of the good in my life. I’m not. There is a lot that is good. I know it.
However, I don’t feel like writing about it right now. I don’t want to look on the bright side or focus on the positive. What I want to do is vent about the negative. I want to do that here. I am going to bitch and complain and dwell on the dark side and wallow in the muck and I really don’t need anyone to help me see the positive side. Not only do I not need it, I don’t want it.
So, please feel free to scroll right past my pity party (which I suspect will be going on for quite a while), but don’t be trying to aim a bunch of sunshine my way. It just isn’t what I need right now.
It’s fucking cold. I don’t mind the cold, really, but I have lived in Southern California for the past 13 years. I didn’t own any winter clothes. Cold without decent clothes is just fucking miserable. In order to rectify the no winter clothes thing, I need to shop.
You know what else makes me fucking miserable? That would be shopping. I’ve had to do more shopping in person in the past few weeks than I’ve had to do in… I don’t know how long. I hate it. I hate the stores. I hate the parking lot. I hate the crowds. I hate dealing with the check out. I hate trying shit on.
Also, it turns out I basically hate winter clothes. Or at least most of what I am finding. They are not flattering to me. I feel ugly in them.
I have found several cute things for the kid. Actually we are close to done on the kid stuff.
The water pressure problem has not been solved and I need it to be dealt with soon. There is this whole odd thing with this house as far as the owner and the property manager goes (I’ll write about it later) but in the meantime, my water pressure problem is not being handled. I know it will be soon, but really, I want it handed 2 weeks ago.
Every night I go to bed without enough done. Every morning I wake up with too much to do.
I can’t find a good breakfast place. Breakfast is easy enough to do at home, but as a family we really enjoy a breakfast out every other weekend and since we got here we’ve been eating out a lot more often than that as I try to beat this kitchen into shape. Breakfast is easy. How can everyplace be so lame? Ugh.
The stove here is electric. One of those glass top ranges. I hate it. It is a pain in the ass to cook on, and I haven’t gotten the knack for it yet at all.
Produce is noticeably more expensive here. Wandering through the grocery store causes a fair amount of stress. First of all… it is shopping. Secondly, I don’t know where anything is because they are not “my” grocery stores, so I have to wander around a lot. Then they don’t care the things I want, or the prices are high enough to make me cringe. The cheapest turnips I’ve found so far are more than twice as expensive as back home (which is still how my brain thinks of it). I went to a Trader Joe’s here, which is a story in itself, damn what a shitfest of a parking lot, and everyone shopping there was cranky. Actually I suppose I fit in well. They don’t carry several of my staple TJ items though. When I am back in CA, I am going to pick up those so I can bring the packaging back here and give it to the manager and see if they can look into carrying them. They are all TJ branded items, so… maybe.
Also a LOT more expensive? Finding somebody to do yard work type stuff for you. I am getting quotes for yard maintenance and snow removal. They are not pleasing to me, and I keep getting tempted to just try doing the snow removal thing ourselves this year out of sheer cheapness, but I also know that since every person in our house has serious back problems, that I had better factor in the medical costs to the whole thing.
Alright, time to go to bed. At some point I should probably get a new comforter to replace the one that Willow peed to death. The nights might be a bit warmer then. Not that I’d be getting enough sleep because the dogs are determined to wake me up several times a night.
