More Whirlwinds, Part IV: The Exodus

(I apologize for taking so long to continue/finish this story -- the week back after break was killer. Now, let's move forward...)

On Sunday morning (the 18th), I woke up around 9AM or so. Lady, next to me in bed, was still sleeping like a rock. As I knew she would need as much sleep as possible, I kissed her temple and very gently climbed out of bed, slowly, because she's a light sleeper. Sunday was going to be a busy day for both of us; Lady would have to drive back to Virginia that afternoon, and after that, we were having a large party at my parents' house, involving a lot of friends and family.

The party was not my idea; in fact, I tried to get my mother to cancel it once we found out that we wouldn't be able to do it at the Lakehouse (a restaurant on the lake in town, which is owned by friends of the family) and instead would have to do it at the house. Because I know how much work this entails for my mother, and how much cooking and cleaning she would have to do to make the house presentable, I tried to get her to cancel it, but it was too late. The party would start at 4PM, and I told Andrea and my best friend from high school/undergrad, Brittany, to join us. I already knew Andrea was coming, which was good, but I hadn't talked to Brittany in about a week, so I had to confirm with her via text. Luckily she remembered the way to my parents' house, as she's been there numerous times before -- even if the last time was about eight years ago.

I let Lady sleep until around 11:30 or so, because, as mentioned before, I knew she'd need the rest -- she had a seven-hour drive back to Virginia ahead of her, a quick night of sleep to follow, and then a thirty-six-hour-long train ride back to the midwest to come back to school. In the meantime, I had my morning coffee and smokes outside on the porch, and languidly read a few comic books/spent time with my parents while she slept. When I returned to my room to awaken her so we could begin to get her stuff packed and ready for her to leave, I found her awake on my bed playing with her phone.

"Morning, love," I said, smiling.

About two hours later, she had showered and had gotten something to eat, and I'd given her a lot of extra food to take with her on her trip so that she wouldn't have to stop anywhere. It was a really sad moment when she had to get into the Prius and drive back to Virginia. I didn't want her to leave. My parents had already said their goodbyes, and I stood there at the car door trying not to cry. Yes, I can so totally be a puss when it comes to stuff like this. I'm not good with goodbyes, and I really didn't want to see her leave, obviously, yet it couldn't be avoided. After a really emotional few minutes for both of us, we finally parted ways, and she was on the road again back to Virginia.

As an aside, later, this exchange would happen between us this past weekend:

Lady: "The GPS took me down some really strange roads. It took me through what my aunt and uncle would refer to as 'the hollow,' or something. I got to see the real redneck side of West Virginia, with broken-down cars, loose dogs running around, and unsupervised children running around yards in nothing but diapers."

Me: "What, like Morgantown's student housing section? Sunnyside or something?" (note: this joke is doubly funny if you know what Sunnyside is/was like.)

Lady: "No, it was out by your house, before I got back to town. I went the same way we took to get into town, but halfway down the mountain it had me veer to the right down some back road or something. I can't remember what it was called. School or something."

Me: "...oh good god it took you down Summer School Road."

Lady: "Yeah, that's it!"

Summer School Road is a very, very winding and steep mountain back road between Morgantown and my parents' house. As Lady said, it would be best summarized as part of "the hollow," and her description of the houses/people along said road is quite accurate. Of all of the different roads, landmarks, people and places around my family home, it is one of those backwoods roads that is absolutely representative of the the stereotypical West Virginia redneck lifestyle. For the most part, anyway. The closer you get to Morgantown, the nicer the houses become.

Ahem. Anyway.

So, Lady left on her trip back to Virginia. A few minutes later, Mom found me standing in the yard in front of the porch, staring off into the distance.

"What's wrong?" Mom asked me, even though I'm pretty sure she already knew the answer to that question.

"I really wish she didn't have to leave," I replied.

This was truer than anyone else realized; while the time Lady had spent with me and my parents in West Virginia had been wonderful, I have already mentioned that because of her travel schedule, she would miss the party my parents were having at the house that afternoon. It had definitely been fun to go out with Andrea and Shainna (a picture of Andrea and Lady I took of them together, which I entitled "my two favorite women in the world," is my desktop wallpaper right now), but since the proverbial cat was out of the bag when it came to my friends knowing about Lady at this point, I wished I could have...ahem...shown her off a little to the rest of my friends and family. I know I'll get the chance eventually, of course, but still.

My dad and I went into Morgantown shortly after Lady left, in order to pick up last-minute party supplies (a cheesecake for the dessert, some fruits for a fruit tray, some ice for the cooler, etc). I texted Andrea and told her to come out to the house whenever she wanted or could, even if it was before the 4PM party "start time," partially because I was lonely and wanted to spend as much time with my sister as possible, but also because my mother loves Andrea and basically already knows everything about her I've shared here over the years, as she reads this blog.

While shopping with my dad, I found -- just sitting on the shelf -- a champagne-sized bottle of some sort of "special reserve" version of Blue Moon beer. I can't remember what it was called (for good reason), but it was supposed to be stronger and darker than the normal version, so I stuck it in the cart. I figured hell, this is my vacation, my lady love has just gone back home, and I will now be surrounded by family and family friends who will probably spend the evening interrogating me about my life. Let's get drunk.

Please note: I don't really drink. Like, ever. I can count on one hand the number of times I've been drunk since I started grad school, with the vast majority of those occasions being within my first year (and first semester, really, for obvious reasons). It's not like it's a hobby or anything, even though I'm a writer (and a poet at that). I just have no real desire to drink most of the time, not even when/if really depressed. But again, y'know, vacation. So without even knowing how much it cost, I stuck it in the cart, told my dad I'd pay for it if it was expensive, etc.

I won $10 on a scratch-off lottery ticket a few minutes later -- which, ironically, was how much said bottle of beer cost.

Anyway.

We returned home to finish preparing for the party. While waiting for Andrea to arrive (eventually, I mean) I sat on the front porch and cracked open this beer. This massive, massive beer. And within ten minutes I had emptied it.

It was, as you'll recall, the size of a champagne bottle. And I believe it was 12% abv. And I don't really drink, which means that you can guess what this huge bottle of beer did to me, especially on an empty stomach.

I walked back into the house and said, "Well, that was good. Now I'm drunk." And I dropped the bottle into the trash can. Yep. I actually did this.

I wasn't really drunk, but I had a good buzz going. Something that may be hard for most of my friends to understand is that I abhor drinking and actively try to avoid it most of the time, as said before, but when I do drink, I tend to drink to excess because the buzz makes me really happy and loosened up. Because of this, understandably, I get geezed.

I proceeded to drink three more normal-sized beers in rapid succession, so quickly and on such a mission to do so that I can't even remember what they were. I think one of them was a Yuengling Porter, but the others? Who knows. Andrea was the first to arrive, and she got to see me drunk for the first time ever (shocking, I know, as Andrea and I have been friends for a very long time). I slowed down, though; Brittany arrived soon thereafter, as did all of my family, my godparents, and important family friends that I so did not want to be a sloppy mess in front of. One good thing about being an English major (and teacher, and poet, etc) is that even when inebriated, with focus I can appear to be completely sober, as I am an eloquent speaker anyhow. Ahem, so I, um...I appeared sober while I was actually slowly sobering up. About an hour into the party, I was perfectly fine. That's another good thing about when I drink -- I must have some sort of super-liver, because I sober up quite rapidly, regardless of what I've drank or how fast, if I just stop. I don't know if it's genetics or what, but it's always been like that for me. So, by around 5:30 or so, I was right as rain.

The party, at its most populated, had about forty people attending it all at once. For the vast majority of it, I sat at the picnic table with Andrea and Brittany. I am made anxious by social situations, and most of the people there were my parents' friends, not my own. I did spend some time with the family, but that was later and after most of the parents' friends had left. Most of them barely spoke to me, but eh, that was fine. I heard the line "Hey, you're not in Kansas anymore" at least four times, and I internally twitched a little harder every time I did. Let's just say I was glad I was drinking before the party, because otherwise I would've been completely miserable. As it was, I had fun.

Most of the crowd dispersed around 8 or so, and went home -- including Andrea and Brittany. My dad's kids (read: my siblings) stuck around longer to relax and hang out, and I got some quiet time with them around the house -- they stayed until around 10 or so, roughly, despite the fact that they had an hour-long drive home. I didn't stay up too much later after everyone left; I was tired and sort of lonely without Lady there, so I called her to make sure she made it home safely to Virginia, which she had (my parents have free long-distance on their phones to basically anywhere) and very soon after, went to bed.

That was my Sunday. I didn't sleep that well, as I recall; I'd gotten used to sleeping with Lady over the previous two nights, and I tend to fall into a sort of pattern when we sleep together -- namely, both of us sleep like rocks (as previously mentioned), and after we part ways for however many days or weeks when we both go back to school, both of us tend to have a little trouble getting back into the groove of sleeping alone again. This usually means that I have to mentally and physically exhaust myself before I go to bed, otherwise I'll just lay on the bed staring at the ceiling. When I'm at my parents' house, I have no way to mentally/physically exhaust myself -- when I'm home, it usually entails doing a lot of writing/homework/chores/cleaning, etc. I can't really do that on a visit to West Virginia. So, needless to say, I tossed and turned all night.

Monday, when I awakened, was mostly uneventful. We'd decided before that we would visit my grandmother on Tuesday afternoon, and that evening we'd have dinner with my former boss from when I worked in the WVU Department of Microbiology, Immunology, and Cell Biology for five years. This left Monday as basically my "free day" of being at home with nothing to do. And for fuck's sake, I sorely needed that. Since Friday I'd been doing nothing but running around, and I was running myself ragged. When combining all the travel time with all the time with Lady and then the party, I had basically fried myself. I needed a day to recuperate. I haven't had a day just alone with my parents, at my childhood home, since 2006. I never realized that until this trip -- the previous two trips I'd made out there, the ex had come with me, and until Sunday night, I had Lady there with me -- as well as everyone at the party. For the first time in almost six full years, I was alone at the house with my parents.

And suddenly, I just felt this deep sense of restlessness. I don't know why. Perhaps it's because I was home, perhaps it's because I was worried about Lady's train trip back out here, perhaps it's because it felt so familiar to the situation I lived in for many many years -- just me and the parents. I remained restless for most of the day.

My mother at this point asked me what I wanted for dinner -- she wanted to cook me at least one home-cooked meal while I was home. I told her she didn't have to, of course, since she'd been cooking for the party since Saturday (and there were plenty of leftovers), but she insisted. To keep it basic and easy, I told her I'd be happy with steaks on the grill and baked potatoes, or something like that, just to minimize cooking/cleaning time. So that's what we decided to do. The problem? My parents, shockingly enough, did not have steaks in the house. This surprised me, as when it comes to food, my mother has basically prepped for ten years of nuclear winter. You folks should see the pantry in my parents' home -- I'm not kidding.

So, because of this, my dad and I decided to go out looking for steaks. This served a dual purpose, as the ladies at the local grocery store I worked at in '05-06 wanted to see me -- Mom had told them I was coming to town to visit, and I told them that whenever I visited, I would come up to see them. We also got to go to the new Walmart in the Kingwood area, a place that had not yet been completed when I moved out of West Virginia. At the Walmart, I found a Beatles t-shirt and a pair of DC Comics pajama pants, both on clearance, and I bought my mother one of those green ceramic frying pans -- but we found no steaks (my dad found some at the grocery store while I was visiting with the ladies there). We came home, had dinner, and made the plans for the next day. No big deal, and it was a mostly relaxing day with the parents.

While all of this was happening, however, Lady had boarded the train back to the midwest, and had been out of contact/cell phone service most of the day as she rode through the mountains by rail. She was technically supposed to be back in school that Monday (the 19th) but that was the earliest train she could get. The train ride was, as mentioned before, 36 hours long with two stops -- one in D.C. (I believe; correct me if I'm wrong, babe, since you read this too), and the other in Chicago. As our cell phones are really the only way we keep in contact when we're outside our homes and away from our computers, I figured that since I'd bought the refill card on Saturday while shopping with Andrea and Shainna, it was time to use it.

Except it didn't work.

I will refer you to my previous post, when I told the story of buying said T-Mobile refill card at Kmart, and it flashed on the screen saying that the activation had failed. The cashier had told me that happened with every card they activated, and that it was just what their registers did. Well, the registers were right. The card hadn't been activated, and upon looking at my receipt from that day at Kmart, it even said "ACTIVATION: FAILED" on it, yet the cashier sold it to me anyway.

So here I was, half an hour out of Morgantown on top of a mountain, out $50 cash I'd paid for the card, and unable to text Lady back and forth for travel updates.

Also of note: Lady has a Droid. It's a nice phone, despite the problems she has with it at times (short battery life, some of the apps crash for no real reason). She has unlimited calling/texting as well, because she has a plan. I don't. Since 2006 I've had a T-Mobile prepaid phone -- it still has my original Missouri phone number from when I lived there -- and up until recently, I never needed anything else. I rarely used my phone. When I did, it was to either call my parents or grandmother, or to text a friend or two in the department maybe once or twice a week at most. One $50 phone card lasted me almost a full year. Now I've bought three of them in the past three months or so. At this point I might as well get a plan of some sort.

But. That's neither here nor there.

So, in addition to the plans of going to see my grandmother and going to dinner with my former boss, I had yet another thing to do -- namely, go back to Kmart with the card and my receipt, and get them to properly activate the fucking thing, as I'd paid $50 for what amounted to a little cardboard card. Just add it to the list of running around things, I thought. We made tentative plans to leave early in the morning and get all of that stuff taken care of, go see my grandmother in the mid-afternoon, and then meet up with my boss at the local Mexican place at 4:30. I called Lady that night from the house phone to check in with her, as my phone minutes were completely emptied, and she was going through more mountains at the time, so the call got cut off about halfway through. But she was okay, at least, which was a plus.

And that was my Monday. Stay tuned, folks, for the next chapter -- when I discuss the last day in West Virginia and my trip home...as well as all of the other crazy stuff that happened over the course of the rest of my week.

More Whirlwinds, Part III: The Shopping

Spring semester: day fifty

Despite the fact that we were up late, Lady and I woke up the next morning, Saturday the 17th, fairly early -- around 9:30 or so. Neither of us could sleep any more, and I was not used to sleeping again in my bed back home; it's much, well, harder than the bed I have here in Kansas, and smaller (it's a full instead of a king), so sleeping on it gave me a bit of a backache. It didn't seem to bother Lady, though, which was good.

That morning, once we got up and about, Lady met my mother -- and my mother loved her immediately. This was an immense comfort to me, because while I wasn't nervous or anything like that, really, I've only introduced two other women I've been in a relationship with at the time to my mother. Even though I don't need her "approval" of the women I date, or anything like that, it's been clear over the ten years or so that I have been in a few relationships that my mother had some points of contention with the others, primarily because the women I've been with in the past have been so unlike her in so many ways that their personalities tended to clash -- either immediately, or after a while. Though Lady is not like my mother either, they at least share a lot of common interests and discussion topics, and Lady loves her sense of humor and general demeanor, and the same goes for my mother on Lady's own humor and demeanor. Because of this, I was made completely at ease very quickly.

I've also said in the past that my mother trusts my judgment, if at times (quietly) begrudgingly. She always has; she knows if I want to bring someone home to meet her and my dad that said person is really important to me, and someone I'm proud to "show off" to them. In the back of her mind I'm sure she also knows that there's a lot of trust involved, or implied at the very least, in doing so. My parents have only met a handful of my friends, let alone romantic interests. My point is that my parents didn't have to like Lady, but both of them did. A lot.

Anyway.

We had breakfast, my uncle called (and I couldn't get off the phone with him for a good, oh, forty minutes) and we got ready to leave the house. To do what, you may ask? Well, a full month prior to the trip-- long before Lady and I made our arrangements to meet my parents -- Andrea and I had made plans to galavant around Morgantown and go shopping, have lunch, and basically do what would be classified to most as "girly things" together. While I am not a very girly man (though some would probably try to vehemently debate that, as I am a poet, I like to smell pretty, and I spend way too much time on my hair oh god Brandon stop typing, stop typing), Andrea is my "sister" and my best friend, so really it's like going shopping with my little sister and doing all sorts of fun things with her. It's become sort of a tradition that whenever I'm in town, both of us stop whatever we're doing and spend a day shopping, enjoying the weather, going to all sorts of different places that I can only visit when I'm back home, such as up and down Morgantown's High Street (the main street in town), Gabes (a discount clothing/department store), etc.

In the weeks leading up to the trip, our mutual friend Shainna decided to come into town from Charleston that weekend as well, not only because it was St. Patrick's Day weekend but because she hadn't seen me in about six or seven years (basically since I graduated from WVU). We had also learned in the past week or so prior to the trip that Shainna had finally gotten pregnant, after months of trying with her husband, so we had that to celebrate as well. When Lady and I made our plans, it added another bonus to the shopping trip -- it's not like I'd go without her, so not only would we have fun BUT Andrea and Shainna would be able to meet the lovely woman I've been so enamored with for some time now.

Note: Andrea knows everything about Lady and I, and I mean everything; as Andrea is my most trusted friend, my best friend, my sister, Lady long ago gave me permission to tell Andrea anything and everything about our relationship, which made me really happy -- because keeping it all in was really difficult. Andrea loves her and is very happy for us, by the way, but we'll get to that a bit later.

So, with Shainna coming to town and with Lady there with me, we had two more people on our shopping trip than we were originally planning, which thrilled me. I texted Andrea for the timeframe, and then called her to confirm -- we were scheduled to meet for lunch at 12:30 at a new restaurant on High Street called "The Golden Finch." I'd never heard of it until Andrea told me about it a few weeks ago, but I was told that it was very, very good -- so Lady and I got ready for the day, hopped into the borrowed Prius, and made our way down the mountain to Morgantown.

We met Andrea and Shainna at the Golden Finch and had lunch, and both of them immediately loved Lady. The feeling was mutual, as well -- Lady got along with them very quickly, and all of us had a fantastic lunch. I had some sort of grilled chicken/curry rice dish, and Lady got a ciabatta sandwich with chicken and andouille sausage on it. It was really good -- I know this because when Lady left the next day, she forgot to take the other half with her, and I had it for my lunch on Sunday. But again, I'm getting ahead of myself.

It was a gorgeous (but hot) eighty-degree day in Morgantown. It was also St. Patrick's Day, so the streets were lined with hundreds of rapidly-drunkening college students (ah, WVU, how I miss your party school environment at times) wearing goofy green clothing. We parked the Prius in the Pleasant Street parking lot, but neither of us had a lot of pocket change so I had to go feed the meter again in the middle of lunch -- but it was still a really delightful lunch, and I got to meet Andrea's friend Rachel as well, who stopped by to eat after running some sort of marathon that morning. We had a blast, the food was good (and inexpensive), and afterwards we made plans to meet up at Gabes.

I've written a little about Gabes before here in the blog, not only in this entry but in previous years (all of the posts of which have now been long-deleted). Gabes is short for Gabriel Brothers, and it's a chain of stores based in Morgantown, but which appear all around the area. Most of the stuff they sell (now, anyway) are overstocks from different department store chains and clothing companies, but in the 80s and 90s it used to be a fairly sketchy place. People looked down on anyone who shopped there because they would sell shirts with three arms, pants with no zippers, jeans and shoes with holes in them that weren't supposed to be there, etc. Now it's become a much, much more refined place, and it's really no longer looked down upon to shop there because of the quality of the stuff they get now. While growing up (and even in my college and post-college years) the vast majority of my wardrobe came from there; I wouldn't be the fashionable person I am [insert uproarious laughter here] if it weren't for Gabes. Most of the clothing I've purchased from Gabes over the years, even back to high school and middle school, remains in my wardrobe today -- especially in my collection of shirts and shorts. Every time I'm in town and I go back there, I tend to spend about $100 on new stuff, which my parents then have the pleasure (sarcasm intended) of shipping back to the midwest for me, as I never have room to take it on the plane.

This time, I spent about $50 there with Lady, and mostly on stuff for her (I insisted). She did pick out a really neat shirt for me, though -- I don't know what company made it, but it was a t-shirt that has buttons at the collar and an all-over print with the dictionary definition of "industrial progression." It's really cool-looking, and I like it a lot. It'll be fun to wear when I teach my students, who are all engineering majors. I also found a $4 pair of rubber flip-flops, because in my sneakers my feet were killing me from all the walking. I'd made the mistake of wearing my black skate shoes to West Virginia, and while they are comfortable to wear and drive in, there's no arch support in them, and they're not comfortable for lots of standing or walking. I ended up wearing the new flip-flops for the rest of my trip out there, only switching them out for the other shoes when I flew back home (my big shoes wouldn't fit in my backpack for the plane).

For Lady, we found a nice pair of Puma running shoes that she adored, some hair bows (she loves bows), some socks, and maybe one or two other little things -- I can't remember everything we bought, because Shainna and Andrea used our cart as well, so it was piled high when we got to the checkout lane. People must've thought we were insane. Which, in itself, is highly amusing. The girls got a lot of stuff, which made them pretty happy. I have to say, going shopping with those three women was one of the highlights of my year thus far. It was one of the best, greatest experiences I've had in a long, long time.

And then there was the sauce.

Let me explain.

One of the reasons Shainna came up from Charleston to visit with us over the weekend was because she wanted to spend time with me and Andrea, and meet Lady, but the other was because of spaghetti sauce. I'm not kidding. She eats a specific kind of spaghetti sauce (I believe it was one of the Ragu flavors, though I'm not certain) and the only place she could find it was in the Kmart in Morgantown. Yes, she did a store search. Again, not kidding. Kmart is right next door to Gabes, so we were planning to go there anyway -- I needed to get a card with which to refill my phone minutes, and Shainna needed her sauce. Besides, I've been to a Kmart store only once since moving to Kansas -- they only have like two of them here within an hour or two's drive. One is in Hutchinson, about 45 minutes from here, and the other is waaaaay out in the middle of nowhere by the airport in Wichita. If there are others, I don't know about them.

Anyway, we got the sauce. Shainna bought every jar on the shelf -- ten or twelve of them I think; I don't remember. It filled the bottom of the cart, though. Then we wandered the store; I found a pair of dressy flats for Lady, because she needed a new pair of flats. She pleaded with me playfully not to get them, but I wouldn't take no for an answer. She loved them, and I'd already told her I'd get her anything she wanted the entire day we were shopping. And then there was this photo:

Yes, that is Shainna (and her sauce, in the cart) on the left, and me on the right, lounging on really expensive, but really comfy patio furniture in the middle of the aisle at Kmart. Andrea took the photo. We're classy people.

When we checked out, me with my phone card and Lady's shoes, the lady at the register activated the phone card, and it said "activation failed." She cleared the screen and said not to worry about it, that it always does that when someone gets a card there. I didn't think much about it, because hey, if it always happens, then it's not a problem, right? Right.

Trust me, this will become more important as the story goes along.

After we were finished at Kmart, it was getting dark and Lady and I were both tired. We said our farewells to Shainna and Andrea, and headed back up the mountain in the Prius -- I would see Andrea again the next day at the party my parents were throwing for me (that'll be my next post), but Shainna would go home the next morning. As for Lady and I, it would be our last night together in West Virginia; she would have to return to Virginia the next day in order to get the train back to school out here on Monday morning, and wouldn't be able to stay for the party either. So, since it would be our last night together for at least a week, and the last night she'd be able to spend time with my parents, that's what we did -- we had dinner at home and spent hours on the couch and on the front porch with my parents. Those few hours were very nice, very relaxing hours. My parents got to know (and love) Lady better, and Lady was able to be at ease and get to know them more as well. It was really fun; I can't remember the last time I was so at ease around my parents and comfortable, which is fairly strange because most of the time when I'm at home I'm a bundle of nerves and really stressed out (trust me, Lady can attest to this -- she saw it firsthand).

Eventually, long after dark, we both showered and went to bed. And that was our Saturday. I don't remember when we eventually fell asleep; it was probably mid-conversation in the dark, actually. We were so tired and the previous two days had taken a collective toll on us both, what with my flights and running around and her driving up from Virginia, then the day of running around shopping. Again, we slept like rocks.

So. There you have it; there's Part III. I'll try to cover both Sunday and Monday in Part IV, in order to speed this process along a little bit.

More Whirlwinds, Part II: Meet the Parents

Days of Spring Break remaining: one

As you folks may (or may not, since I've been so quiet) have assumed, I have safely ventured to, and returned from, West Virginia over my Spring Break. I've been back for four days now, but in those four days I've been quite busy. Busy with what, you may ask? Well, here's the entire story. Of everything that's happened in the past ten days. I'm not going to post it all at once (doing so would take hours to write and would create a blog post that would easily span ten pages if typed into a word processor), but instead in segments -- probably three or four more after this one, depending on how long it takes to tell the whole story. Suffice it to say that there is a lot to be covered about my trip. Really, really a lot.

Also: because this story won't make any sense unless I divulge this information (not that the vast majority of my blog's readers don't know it anyway), I've decided that it's time to let you folks in on the secret I've been keeping from you, the one that's made me so happy as of late -- I have been seeing someone new. Yes, I am in a relationship. With a girl. And she's wonderful, sweet, (fairly) local, and I am very, very happy. I am happier in my life than I've been for a long, long time -- which if you're a regular reader of this blog, you should already know. The two of us have been together for a while now.

I've kept this quiet until now for a multitude of reasons. For one, she and I have been keeping it low-key, under-the-radar, and we're both fairly private people about this sort of thing. It's really nobody's business but ours, and both of us intend to keep it that way. As mentioned before, the only reason I'm writing about it is because the story of my Spring Break -- both here at home and in West Virginia -- won't make any sense unless I mention this. To those of you who already knew about our relationship, you're probably sarcastically thinking "wow, shocker," right now. And, to be fair, most of you who already know this information know it because, well, you've met the girl already. Ahem. But we'll get to that.

Anyway. For the purposes of this blog, I will give her the codename of Lady, because that's what she is. She's my lady, I'm her man, and we're not defining ourselves as anything more than that in the confines of our relationship. Besides, Lady is a regal sort of codename. Like lady of the house or something like that.

Again, anyway. Let's begin the story.

Thursday night (the 15th), I was talking to Lady before I went to bed. To make this story make a little more sense, I should also mention that she originally hails from the east coast (which, of course, better explains my plans to look for work/teaching opportunities in New England and the Mid-Atlantic), but goes to school out here. However, while my spring break was just starting, hers was ending. Well, sort of ending, anyway. Because she has family in Virginia whom she was visiting at the time, and I was flying to West Virginia in the morning, she came up with what she thought was a "crazy, outlandish idea."

This idea was that since we were both going to be on the same side of the country at the same time, which would never happen otherwise unless we were to go out there together, that she should borrow her aunt's Prius and drive up to meet my parents while we were both still (relatively) close to each other on that side of the country before she had to return to the midwest again for school. This idea would entail not only getting permission from her aunt to borrow the Prius for the weekend, but would mean that all of a sudden, after barely telling my parents about her a few weeks prior, that I would have to ask my parents "Hey, do you want to meet my new ladyfriend when I'm in town?" and have them say yes as well. As it was going to be a lot of driving for Lady (seven hours, one way, in a Prius) this permission from both parties was, needless to say, important, as her own car was still out here at school, parked at the dorm parking lot.

Luckily (very luckily), my parents were fine with the idea, though a bit apprehensive at first -- understandably so. Because of the incredibly long drive Lady would be making, she'd be staying at the house with me, in my room, for at least one night. As a small aside, I wasn't concerned that my parents would nix the idea -- I knew they were curious to meet my new woman, and the arrangements wouldn't be any different than when my ex used to fly out to West Virginia with me to visit, which we did twice over the time I've been living out here. The only real difference would be that Lady and I would be traveling separately, though the end result would be the same.

Lady, of course, got permission to borrow the Prius for the weekend, as her aunt already adores me from everything she's told her about me, and tentative plans were set before I went to bed that Thursday night: I'd arrive on the ground in Pittsburgh, and she would be on the road shortly thereafter, using her GPS to plot the way to Morgantown (and, eventually, my home), arriving sometime that night. Excited, I went to bed.

On Friday morning (the 16th) I woke up at 1AM. My flight out of Wichita was scheduled to leave at 6. I talked to Lady for a while to cement everything (because she was still up), and then finished all of the preparations of the house -- making sure the cats had enough food/water/litter, locking everything down tight as a drum, etc. -- before leaving the house around 3:30 to drive to the airport.

For those of you who have never been to Wichita's Mid-Continent Airport, it's a really confusing route over three different highways and several access roads to get there, especially from Newton. And because my GPS is old, it gives me (at times) confusing directions. I had to turn around in a Kmart parking lot, then in a JCPenney parking lot, at 4AM, just to be able to get on the right road (twice) that would lead me to the airport. After that nightmare was finished and I'd gotten there safely, I put my car in the long-term parking lot and took a picture of it so I would know where it was. Said picture is now available to be seen in my "Spring Break 2012" photo album on Facebook, as well.

I got into the terminal and printed my boarding passes with about 45 minutes before the plane would take off, only to find the place stuffed with people flying out for their own Spring Break trips. I've flown in and out of Mid-Continent Airport many times; this was waaaaay above-average foot traffic, especially for a little after 5AM. The line for security stretched really, really far down the long hallway, until the TSA people decided to open a second line to lessen the wait.

When I got to the metal detector, I went through it and it buzzed the "you're a terrorist" buzzer. Apparently I had metal on me I didn't know about, even though I'd emptied my pockets and had taken off my shoes. The TSA lady asked me if I was wearing a belt, which I was. I figured that was the problem, took it off and put it through the scanner, and stepped through again. It buzzed again, and then played a little tone.

"Stand right here," the TSA lady said to me in broken English, "you've been randomly selected for additional screening."

Note: this is the first time this has ever happened to me, and my first thought was something along the lines of oh, okay, whatever works. I stood beside the metal detector, but they didn't feel me up or run the wand over me or anything like that. Instead, I was told to step behind the X-ray machine (which I did), and another TSA lady behind the counter swabbed my sneakers and then ran the swabs under what looked like a tricorder from Star Trek. She then looked up at me and smiled, and said, "Okay, sir, you're free to go." So I did. I gathered my things, put them in the appropriate places, and then went to my gate. Apparently, in Wichita, that's all "additional screening" entails. Okay, I'm cool with that.

It was only after I was walking about halfway to my gate, long after passing through security, that I realized my large, shiny metal aviator sunglasses were hanging from the collar of my t-shirt. D'oh. That's why the metal detector kept going off. You think the TSA people would've caught that. Hell, you think I would've caught that as well. But oh well, no harm no foul, and I was ready to get on the plane. I texted Lady and told her that I was boarding, even though she was asleep by that point, and then shut off my phone.

My mother, when she orders me plane tickets to fly out there to visit, will always fly me through Delta. She has experience with Delta, and a long history with them -- in her job she's always handled travel arrangements for the higher-ups, and for the most part she's always flown Delta when she has been able to. Therefore, when she flies me anyplace, about 95% of the time, she flies me on Delta. The only other airline I've flown through on trips home and back was United, which was fine as well.

Delta has a spotty history with customer service, from most of the stuff I know about them. I've never truly had any problems with them, however, despite how many times I've flown on them. Well, not until last Friday, anyway.

I got on the plane fine; it was a tiny little Embraer Canadair Regional Jet, known in the industry as a CRJ. It had less than fifty seats, though there are larger ones that have about 100 or so. This one was a small one; if it were any smaller it would've been a prop plane or a Learjet. I crammed myself into it, and then...sat there. On the tarmac. For half an hour.

This would not have been a problem if I had more than fifty minutes between flights. My flight from Wichita flew into Minneapolis, where I would get a connecting flight to Pittsburgh. I had a fifty-minute window after it touched down where I could get to the next terminal and relax.

"We are going to take off shortly," the pilot said over the intercom, "but we're running a little late this morning and we are seventh in line for takeoff. Should be another ten minutes or so."

This, understandably, made me really nervous -- I'd never flown into Minneapolis before. I had no clue how large or small the airport would be, and would have to quickly find my terminal to get to the next flight, wherever that terminal or gate would be. And I would have to find it in a very short amount of time.

Finally, the plane was in the air and I was on my way. We were, indeed, a little more than half an hour late. Though we were making what the pilot called "good time," I was counting down the minutes that I'd have once I was on the ground in Minneapolis. My only hope was that I would get off the plane, walk forty feet to the next gate, and get on the next one.

This. Is not what happened.

I landed in Minneapolis and found that I was in terminal A once I got off the plane. My connecting flight to Pittsburgh was in terminal C. Terminal C was a tram ride away, a ride that could be a long one. After all, I've flown into and out of Dallas, and their tram goes about three miles or so (or feels like it). I had fifteen minutes before my plane lifted off.

Fuck.

I bolted to the tram, had to wait another three or four minutes for it to show up, and then rode it for another three or four minutes to terminal C, found my gate, and was one of the last ten people to get on my plane to Pittsburgh. No sooner than I had stuffed my bag under the seat in front of me and had buckled my belt, the plane's door was shut and locked, and we were lifting off moments later. I had just made the flight. I was really relieved.

I dozed off on that flight, as I was exhausted (I'd been awake since 1AM, remember?) and when I awakened, we were beginning our final descent into Pittsburgh -- where it was seventy degrees, bright, sunny and gorgeous outside. I met my parents outside in the short term parking, and was really relieved to see them.

"I'm here, we're having lunch with Jane and Wayne, and [Lady] is already on her way to West Virginia," I said.

As I mentioned previously, my parents knew very little about Lady aside from her name and that we'd been together a while. Neither of them are the type to really ask questions about any of that stuff; they know that when I am ready to give them details, I will. Before she and I had made our weekend plans, Lady and I had discussed what to tell our respective parents about each other, and we were still fairly committed to keeping it low-key. She didn't tell her mother about me, for example, until after she'd already left her parents' house and was in Virginia visiting her aunt and uncle; she didn't tell her aunt and uncle about me until the week prior to the trip. Until those plans were made, I was likewise planning to only tell my parents the barest of details -- something along the lines of her name is [Lady], she's wonderful, we've been together a while, she goes to school at [school] and this is how we met...here's a picture of us together, etc etc. The only person who knew the whole story of us was, and still remains, my best friend and "sister," Andrea. A few very close friends, such as Suri, knew a few smaller details, but nothing major.

"So what's the deal with this [Lady] person?" Mom asked me, once we were in the car.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Well, who is she? Where is she from? How did you meet? I'd like to know who this person is if she's going to be staying in my home."

Reasonable requests, to be sure. So I gave my parents the brief rundown. My Dad is a pretty go-with-the-flow guy; he doesn't really question anything in a specific sense, but he's happy I've found someone. My answers to my mother's questions -- all of which were up-front and completely truthful, as I am honest, honorable, and can't lie to my mother (not that I would anyway) -- put her at ease almost immediately. At least outwardly, anyhow. Whether she was still apprehensive up until Lady's arrival that night, I don't know, but she didn't show it.

I texted my friends from Pittsburgh, Jane and Wayne, and we made plans to meet for lunch at Red Robin at 1PM. I think. It was something like that. Jane and Wayne have been very, very good friends of mine for many years, and I have written about them at length in this blog on countless occasions. They have always been there for me, and likewise I've done my best to be there for them. When the ex and I broke up, they sent me at least two care packages containing kitchen stuff (knives) and tie-dye materials; when my Xbox died, it was Wayne who gave me his old one, shipping it to me in the mail. For my birthday, they got me a copy of Captain America: The First Avenger and mailed it to me. Suffice it to say that they are wonderful, wonderful people and very dear friends -- and because I haven't seen them in person in seven(!) years, we had made plans almost a month ago to meet up for lunch with my parents once I was on the ground...which we did. My parents loved them, too. Jane later told me that she sees that I have gotten a lot of my sense of humor from my mother, which is probably true. It was a very fun lunch, during which all of us got reeeeeally full of burgers and fries. I love Jane and Wayne; it has been way, way too long since I last saw them, and my fondest hopes are that we don't have to go that long between seeing each other again -- as far as to say that the next time (and every time in the foreseeable future) that I'm in Pittsburgh, all of us should meet up for lunch with my parents. Next time, of course, I will more than likely be traveling with Lady as well, and they'll get to meet her, too.

Meanwhile, on our drive back to Morgantown, I heard from Lady via text-message that she had been delayed in leaving, and that she was just leaving her aunt and uncle's place at around 3PM. This was fine; her GPS would take her straight to Morgantown, and the timeframe was that she'd arrive around 10:30PM or so. The plan that night was to get pizza from our town's best pizza place (which had recently split into two places with different names, but the same pizza) and that way we'd have food in the house for her when she got home, even though we would've eaten beforehand.

When we (finally) got back to Morgantown, I cashed my Kansas State Tax refund at my bank, as in West Virginia I actually have access to my bank, and then spent the afternoon and evening once I got home playing with my parents' cats, seeing my old dog, moving/cleaning wicker furniture with my parents, and sitting on the porch waiting for Lady to give me periodical progress reports on her journey to my house. If it was surreal to travel by plane alone (it was; I've never flown anywhere by myself before), it was even more surreal to be traveling separately from my love, to have her navigate her way to my parents' house in a borrowed Prius, and her never having met my parents before. Let me tell you, that wait was a very strange, very stressful experience.

Every two hours or so, Lady would text me a progress report -- first it was that she had to stop to get some coffee and a little something to eat, the next was that she got lost on a back road and that she'd be about an hour later than she thought she'd be, because her GPS was going nuts. I told her we'd wait to get the pizzas until right before the place closed, and when she got home she could eat because they'd be here and we could heat them up.

And then I heard nothing else from her for about three hours.

Imagine my mindset: my love was driving seven-plus hours in a Prius she didn't own, to a town she'd never been to, in the dark, following one of two GPS units -- her Droid smartphone has one, and the Prius has one built into the dash. And I heard nothing else from her for a long, long time. Needless to say, I was worried. Cell phone reception is horrific in the West Virginia mountains, and for a long time during my visit I had no service whatsoever unless I was in Morgantown proper, where I only had AT&T service. My phone is T-Mobile. Always has been. With only AT&T service I can only access about half of my phone's capabilities, and it screws up the timestamps on all of my texts and calls. Badly.

Anyway.

Around 8:30 that night my parents called in the pizza order for carry-out. We knew at this point that it was possible that Lady wouldn't be reaching Morgantown until after 11, possibly close to midnight, so we made the decision to get the pizza as planned, and if Lady needed directions from Morgantown to the house, we'd either go meet her or plot the route to my parents' house (about 20 minutes to the east of town).

Halfway to town to pick up the pizza, I got a frantic call from Lady telling me that she was still about 2.5 hours away, and that her GPS had gotten her hopelessly lost. She didn't trust the Prius GPS because it was sending her in really strange directions, and her Droid was at 5% battery without a way to charge it. I asked her where she was, where it told her she was, and she gave me the name of a highway I'd never heard of. We gave her an address to a street in Morgantown (Earl Core Road, in Sabraton, which is relatively close to the house) and let her zero in on that. She told me she had found route 7, which was good because it was the road that was not only really long, but would take her to Morgantown (in a roundabout way, but would still get her here) and I told her to follow that, follow the GPS, and to conserve the battery on her phone so that if she had to call me or anyone else in an emergency, she could. This calmed her down, and she said she'd follow the Prius GPS and let me know when she was close. She also said that my parents' street address didn't show up on the Prius GPS, no matter how she plugged it in. My dad and I were staying up for her anyway, so I told her to turn the phone back on and call me once she got into Morgantown, and we'd meet her wherever, and I'd guide her back the rest of the way to my parents' house.

Those next 2.5 hours were torturous, let me tell you. She had been freaked out by the drive, was really tired, and just like me, she hates driving at night. But around 11:15 or so I got a call.

"I'm at the McDonalds in....Sabraton?" she said, after asking the clerk at the counter where she was.

"Perfect," I said. "We'll be there in twenty minutes."

Those twenty minutes were somewhat torturous as well. I hadn't seen the girl in three weeks; she'd been away on her spring break, and her break is two weeks instead of one. The last time she'd been in town was the weekend prior to the beginning of her break -- she'd been back east with her family ever since. We don't tend to stay apart too long if we can avoid it; her school is a few hours from me, and if possible, we try to spend most weekends together in some fashion. For most of March, due to her break and my own schooling, we'd not seen each other that much. Now, not only would we be reunited after being apart for three weeks, but it would be in my hometown, in my childhood home, visiting my parents. I hate to over-use the word "surreal," but this time it definitely applied.

We met with her at the McDonald's and split up -- my dad took his truck back up the mountain alone, and I rode with Lady in the Prius, guiding her to my house. Once we got there, both of us were exhausted, but she got to formally meet my dad in the house, as well as meet my parents' cats and my old dog. My mother had gone to bed, so she wouldn't get to meet her until the morning. Completely worn out, she ate some pizza and we went to bed -- ending a very, very long day for everyone involved. We slept like rocks.

So that's the story of just the first day of my trip back home, travel included. It was one of the most eventful, stress-filled days of my entire life, yet so much got accomplished, and so many good things happened -- including my love arriving safe and sound at my house in West Virginia.

The Toyota Prius is awesome, by the way. I'm so buying one when I have enough money to do so.

Intermission

There are updates coming, I promise. I have a very fun/busy weekend ahead of me, but afterwards I promise I will tell the whole story of my trip back home. For now, folks, be patient.

More Whirlwinds, Part I

Spring semester, day forty-four

There are a lot of great, great things going on right now. However, I won't have the time, patience, or energy to write about them here until I return to Kansas on Wednesday. Suffice it to say, however, that you folks will get a full report once I'm back home.

Until then? I am off.

Mid Term

(yes, that spelling is intentional)

It is now past the technical "middle" of the spring semester, according to the calendar; our official "midterm day" at Flat State University was Wednesday, the 7th.

To me, and pretty much everyone else I know at the university, this means precisely dick.

Aside from, of course, that half the semester is over.

For those of you working in academia (as I am) or attending college-level classes within it, you probably already know that midterms mean nothing without midterm exams. This is the first semester of graduate school that I've not had any sort of midterm exam -- my previous three, up to this point, were loaded for bear with them. Now that I'm rapidly approaching the end of my second year, I have "turned the tide," as they say, and almost all of my requirements for graduation are accounted for. According to my calculations, I have but two more courses I have to take before graduation next spring. Two. Over the course of a full semester year. Two courses and six thesis hours (which, really, are just credit hours tacked onto my schedule so that I have built-in time to put together my poetry collection...which I plan to do this summer). Registration, apparently, starts next week for graduate students.

Despite several assurances and/or compliments from friends that I at least have a decent shot at it, I don't believe that I will win the department fellowship for my third year. While it would be nice, I am also realistic. Then again, I also strongly believe that most everyone else in the department is a better writer than I am, even if that's not necessarily true. To the best of my knowledge, the winners have not yet been announced, and probably won't be announced until shortly after Spring Break.

Ah yes, that's coming up soon too. Spring Break. A week from now at this time I will have been back home in West Virginia, visiting my parents, for three days. My plane leaves Friday morning at 6AM. That's about four days away. It will be the first time I've flown anywhere in almost a year -- the last time was last April, when I flew to San Antonio and back for the National PCA/ACA Conference, a conference I'm not going to this year. I make a (very short) stopover in Minneapolis around 8AM, and I'm on the ground in Pittsburgh by noon. It is just my luck that I will be paid on Friday as well, but I do have some spare cash for the trip as well, even if my tax refunds don't come in before then (read: they probably won't). I don't plan to spend any more money than I must while I'm there -- even when on "vacation" I am still fairly thrifty most of the time. For example, even when I was in the glittery Texan town of San Antonio, I didn't spend a penny that wasn't cash I'd saved beforehand. This trip back home for a few days will be no different, if I can avoid it -- if for no other reason than the fact that summer is rapidly approaching and I'll have to scrimp and save to be able to survive -- especially if I have to spend some time without work, however short, between the two semesters. You'd be surprised how fast money disappears when it stops coming in at regular intervals, especially when rent and bills are involved.

Some of you may be thinking but Brandon, you have tax refunds coming to you as well...that should help, right? And you'd be right, to a certain extent. I could survive on my tax refunds all summer if I were able to do so -- it wouldn't be a plush, extravagant life, but it would be survival, without many real/pressing issues. However, I can't do that -- as you may already know if you've been paying attention to my blog as of late, my car needs some serious work if I want it to keep running for the next year until I graduate and can get the fuck out of this state, and while most of that work isn't difficult, the vast majority of it is expensive. For example, four new tires. Yeah. They're not bald yet, but they're rapidly getting there. The spark plug job will be about $400 or $500 on its own, and it desperately needs an oil/filters change and a coolant flush/swap. So yeah. It needs work, and work costs money. Like I've said, the vast majority of my federal refund, at least, will be going into that stuff. I don't want it to, but I have little choice. That car must last me another fourteen months or so. It simply must.

After that, once I get out of here to wherever I'll go next, the fucking thing can fall apart if it wants to. Hell, as long as it will still (legally) get me back and forth for school, it can start falling apart now. I just need it to work for the amount of time I'm in school. While I love that car, make no mistake -- I am also fully aware of its problems and the fact that the poor girl's days are numbered regardless of how much work I put into her. If I can keep her running longer than she would otherwise if I put the work into her, then to me it's worth it. Without that work I'm not certain she'd last through the summer.

Of course, if I win the fellowship, I'll have a little more money to work with to keep her running, but not much.

I also say wherever I'll go next because, truthfully, I'm not sure where that will be. Because of some new, ahem, connections in my life, I've had an entirely new realm of possibilities for teaching and/or writing opportunities opened to me over the course of the last month or so, all of them on the east coast. And when I say "east coast," I mean just that -- the coast. Mid-Atlantic area. Amusingly enough, this is an area I'd never thought about before, really. I'm not sure why -- the areas are within a half-day's drive of my friends and family (traffic and weather permitting, of course), and aside from places like, say, Washington/Oregon/Northern California, the east coast is the last bastion of educated liberals like myself. I have talked to a friend who lives in the Boston area, who tells me there are all sorts of teaching/writing/editing jobs to be had in and around that area, and the fact that I'll have teaching experience as well as an MFA will make me highly marketable there to small colleges and publishing companies. To be more blunt about it, said friend works for an education publishing company, editing textbooks -- she said I'd be that company's "wet dream" if I were to look for employment there.

Do I want to edit textbooks for the rest of my life? Not necessarily. But do I want a job in which I can use my degree(s) and thrive in my environment? Yes, absolutely. Do I want to live on the east coast and/or in New England? Again, absolutely. It's better than West Virginia and a hell of a lot better than Kansas. By leaps and bounds. So, for the moment at least, that's a more focused plan than I had before -- start looking for places to work out there and see if I can get any leads and/or opportunities to pop up in the next year or so. It's at least a start. Yes, it'll be a huge pain in the ass to move cross-country again, especially now that I have a reeeeeeally old car and three cats to move with me when I do. However, I have realized more over the course of the past month or so that I really, really don't want to stay here in Kansas any longer than I absolutely must, not just because there aren't jobs here -- there really aren't -- but because while I like the people (well, most of them) as well as the geography, it's time for something new. Somewhere I've never been before. Somewhere that I can start the next stage of my life's adventure.

Besides, I probably would've ended up moving back home (or home-ish) after graduation anyway. So I would've been moving cross-country again anyway. Except there really aren't jobs in West Virginia either. Just so you know, if you didn't already know that. Just sayin'. So, really, for now it's east coast, mid-Atlantic job hunting.

I know I've mentioned here before that I've been looking at doctoral programs. While I have, amusingly enough, none of them have been on the east coast, but in the south. Well, no, that's not exactly true -- I did look at schools in Maryland and in the Carolinas. Briefly. I have already had my fill of schooling, however; entering a doctoral program may still be an option at some point, but right now? When I graduate, within six months I'll have to start paying off student loans. A doctoral program would more than likely just prolong the inevitable, and I'm almost thirty. I'm not young anymore, and I'm certainly sick of being a perpetual student. I don't have anything to prove to myself or to anyone else, really, but I do desperately want to settle into a rather relaxing career, become comfortable in life, eventually start a family, etc. I mean, these are life goals we're talking about here. As humans we only have so many minutes on this planet, so many hours, so many years. It's time to start using mine more effectively, starting upon graduation.

How is life otherwise? Well, it's good. Really good right now, actually. My writing has been inspired as of late, my car has been running, and I'm not completely broke. Those are all big pluses. And, of course, I get to see my family (and a few beloved friends, like Andrea) this week, which will be one of the biggest highlights of my year. There are, of course, other good things going on as well, behind the scenes, that I haven't written about yet. I'm sure I really don't have to say it, but 2012 is shaping up to be a banner year already, which is good -- because 2011 was a fucking trainwreck disaster for the most part.

I'll be sure to update you again at least once before the break, and my trip, starts. But yes, things are good for the most part. Very good.

Grind Away

Spring semester: day thirty-six

Today is March 6th. I know no less than five people born on this day, if not more. Apparently the beginning of June is a good time to, as the young folks say, get bizzay, because so many people have this birthdate -- including my oldest half-sister, who turns 21 today.

It is 6:04 AM as I write this, and upon getting up this morning (around 5:20ish) I realized that it was 55 degrees outside. During the first week of March, before the sun is up, in Kansas. This is, needless to say, highly irregular weather. While it is March, and the temperatures do tend to get gradually warmer from this point forward as spring and summer both approach, today's projected high is 74. And it'll be warmer than that in Wichita, almost guaranteed. That's more of a mid-to-late May high than a March high. Yesterday it was almost 70 here as well, if not breaching that 70-degree point in the afternoon. It was simply wonderful.

It won't last, though; the high on Thursday is supposed to be 41, which -- as I told my friend Jordan this morning on Facebook -- will barely give me enough time to break in my board shorts again.

As an aside, my board shorts are probably my favorite summer clothing item -- I bought them two years ago in Morgantown, when I was visiting and shopping with my best friend/sister Andrea at Gabes. Perhaps, when I'm visiting home again in a little more than a week and a half, I'll be able to find more.

It's not all upsides to this gorgeous, gorgeous weather, though -- because it's been very warm but also very windy, the pollen in the air has been stirred up like crazy and I have been experiencing some of the worst seasonal allergies I've had in years. I should keep tissues in a little holster on my belt, or something, because said allergies are that bad.

Today, it's back to the grind -- AWP has ended, and most (if not all) of us should be back on campus by now, having returned from Chicago. All of my normal classes are back in session, and it is two weeks of "the usual" before Spring Break starts. Technically, my Spring Break starts at 12:15 PM on Thursday, March 15, as I am done with everything at that point. I fly out of Wichita and arrive home to visit my parents/friends/family the next morning, and then come back on Wednesday the 21st -- which is just about halfway through my actual break. That will give me enough time once I return home to take care of any schoolwork/grading/what-have-you over the rest of my days off. I don't think I could've planned that better if I were trying. Like I mentioned in one of my previous posts, the month of March tends to go fast.

I didn't get a whole lot accomplished this weekend, or at least I didn't get as much accomplished as I would have liked to. Out of forty student papers, I graded about ten -- the rest will have to be graded during my office hours this week, which isn't really a problem as much as it is an inconvenience. I have to grade them as quickly and efficiently as possible not only so the students can get them back, but so that I can enter their midterm grades into the Banner system -- the official "midterm date" of the semester is tomorrow, though I can enter said grades at any time up until the day before I leave for West Virginia.

However, I did carefully revise one of my poems this weekend, and wrote another one yesterday that I'll be turning in to workshop tonight. Two very close friends have already read said poem (which in itself is really odd, since I don't tend to share my work if I can avoid it) and they both love it. I rather like it myself, actually, and I don't like a lot of my work. We'll see what the workshop thinks about it. I am also scheduled to be workshopped tonight, but depending on how long we take with the first poem before mine, who knows whether we'll get to me or not. It all depends on time.

Tomorrow I also have my normal editing class again, as well -- for the first time in three weeks. Two weeks ago, my car blew up and I had to miss it. Last week, it was canceled for AWP. None of us, I think, know exactly what we'll be doing in there tomorrow night, so I'm preparing myself by scanning through the book we're going to cover chapter-by-chapter in hopes that I can actually ready myself for what comes next.

On that note, folks, it's time for me to leave the house to start my week. Should be exciting.

Slogging Forward

I have slept an ungodly amount of time in the past two days or so, which sort of makes me a little ashamed (but not really, because I needed it). I passed out for five hours on Thursday afternoon, got up and stayed awake until around 3 or so on Friday morning, then went back to bed for another eight hours -- getting up around 11 yesterday morning. I stayed awake until around 2AM last night before sleeping until around 10:30 this morning, so that's another eight-and-a-half hours. So, of the past 48 hours or so, I have slept more than 21 of them. Yeah. That's a lot. That's almost half.

Due to my strange week, I've been able to get a lot of stuff done -- errands, shopping and the like -- that I wouldn't normally have time for until the weekend hit. Because of my short days this week almost all of those sorts of things were taken care of after classes, before I came home for the night. For example, there's already a fresh tank of gas in my car, and enough food in the fridge/pantry to last me another week or two -- as well as plenty of food and litter for the cats. Aside from grading my students' papers and performing a little weekly busywork for my poetry class, there's not a whole lot to do. I've seen most of my students' papers already, and for the most part they seem remarkably good, so I doubt it will take an incredibly long time to grade through them. There are, however, still forty of them. I technically started unit 2 on Thursday, but we're getting into the real readings/lessons of it this coming Tuesday, and they have their first quiz over assigned readings that morning as well.

I don't like to give quizzes in my class. I don't want to be "that guy" who expects his students to be perfect all the time, and know every little detail of their readings and assignments. I don't want to be "that guy" because when I was an undergrad at WVU ten years ago, I hated "that guy." While I try to hold my students to the highest standards possible in their work, as you know I try to be the most laid-back instructor I can be. Yes, I'm strict on many things, but I'm also fair and understanding whenever possible -- I'm not heartless. I know these students are engineering students with simply massive courseloads of work to do any given semester...but I also know they're some of the most intelligent, articulate students in the entire school, and skating the lines between departmental standards, my own standards, and knowing what they're capable of is, at times, quite difficult. I've always said that as a teacher at the college level, I learn just as many things about my students as they learn in my courses -- they're just different things.

Anyway, because all of my errands are pretty much finished, I have several small things around the house that I have time to do this weekend which I normally wouldn't. For example, I'd actually like to cook something -- a big pot of soup, or several days' worth of dinners, perhaps. I'd also like to make some more homemade laundry detergent (as much as I have the materials for, anyway) and work on a special tie-dye project I've been doing in secret for someone important. My allergies are killing me, too -- the weather's been alternating between cold and warm, and no matter what I do or what medicines I take, I've been fairly miserable for the past three or four days most of the time. I suppose spring is here -- my allergies become particularly violent in March until I get used to the weather shifts.

Ah, yes, it's March. It's that mid-semester month that seems like it will go slowly, but never does. In fact, March always goes really fast, whether I want it to or not. Not only are midterms during March, but so is the changeover to daylight saving time and Spring Break. My Spring Break is eleven days long, total and including weekends -- the first five days of which I will be in West Virginia visiting family and friends. There will also more than likely be a few days where I don't have my poetry class during this month, as our professor is on a month-long book tour (well, basically, that's what it is) where he's in and out of town a lot. Tenured, highly-respected/highly-paid professors can do that if they want to, and his book is fantastic, so I don't fault him in the least. I know I'll do the same thing if my work ever gets as highly-praised as his.

Of course, winning the department fellowship would be a good start down that path. Again, I don't think I will, but it would be nice. Several people I know think I have a good shot at it, at least, which makes me feel nice, but again -- while I may ooze confidence (and borderline narcissism) at times about everything else in my life, I am overly critical of my writing. Hardcore overly critical. And I tend to be pretty humble about it. I know a lot of people like it, yes, but it's really hard for me to look at it from an outside perspective.

I just took a picture of my cat Sadie, who on a beautiful Saturday afternoon, is laying in the sun on my Man Cave's floor and snoring. Yes, snoring:

See?

I love this little cat. Aside from a few humans (like Andrea, Brittany, and Suri), she's the best friend I have in the world.

So, the slog forward continues for the rest of the weekend. I don't have a ton to do, but I certainly have enough. Once everyone returns from AWP next week and classes get back to normal, my regular workload will resume for about ten days or so before Spring Break starts and I get to visit home for a few days. While I'm not looking forward to another two weeks of the daily grind before I get a bunch of time off, I am looking forward to getting my important stuff done and to getting out of Kansas for a few days, even if the flight schedule there and back may be a hassle.

I'll keep you updated, of course, on how things progress on all fronts over the next few weeks. Depending on how busy and/or sleep-deprived I get, I or may not be writing here a whole lot -- but of course, I will try my best to keep everyone informed on my life's events.

Well, what I can tell, anyway...

Ghost Town

Spring semester: day thirty-three

Because of AWP happening this week, the vast majority of my friends and colleagues are in Chicago right now attending the conference. This means that the English department very quickly became a veritable ghost town after Tuesday morning or so. Of the more than thirty of us GTAs in the department, I've seen less than ten of us left up there this week. Everyone else is gone, including at least a few professors and other faculty members. Campus itself, even, has been really quiet this week -- which is unusual as the weather here has been absolutely gorgeous for the most part. Today it hit 70, for example, without a cloud in the sky. It's just been strange, though, to see the campus mostly deserted at most times for the past few days.

How do I know it's "mostly deserted"? Well, due to my sheer exhaustion and sleep deprivation, I've had a really hard time getting out of bed in the morning this week. As in, harder than most days. I've been pushing myself to get stuff done, important stuff not only in my classes and for my students but personal stuff as well, and while all of these things are good, the downside is that I'm burning the candle at both ends -- which, if you know the old adage, means I'm burning twice as bright for half as long. I know it's been mostly deserted because I've been getting out of bed around an hour later than I normally would (dragging myself out of bed would be a more apt description), arriving on campus a half hour or more after I normally would, and I've still been able to get my normal front-row parking spot every day. During any average week this would never, ever happen. So yeah, I don't know what's going on, really, aside from AWP. Which is really just a conference for writers, not everyone.

As an aside, next year AWP is in Boston. As it will be my last year as a graduate student (and will occur during the semester in which I'll graduate), I do finally plan to go -- even if I'm not presenting anything or doing anything but working for the school's literary journal. I wish I had the money and time to travel to a conference this year, but I just don't. If nothing else, I do have some friends (several, actually) in and around the Boston area who would probably let me have a couch to crash on in order to save the money on a hotel room during said conference. Or, y'know, something like that. Whatever works. That's a year away, so it's not like I can think about it too much right now. I've got enough other planning to do in this next year or so.

In other news, the Monte Carlo is running really well. Like, really well. The serpentine belt and belt tensioner must have been going bad for a long, long time, because the car's been driving like it's new since I got it fixed last week, and seems to be getting a little better gas mileage as well. The car is, for all intents and purposes, much more responsive when it comes to driving it -- the steering is so much looser and more free, the engine is much quicker on the get-up-and-go factor, and the replacement of those parts also now allow the car to get warmer much more quickly -- as in, I don't have to warm up the engine for five minutes or so on cold mornings (or wait for her to hopefully defog/defrost completely by the time I get to Wichita). I turn her on, and the heater blows hot within about 30 seconds if I need it to. All of these are very good things. Once I get my tax refunds, I'm going to spend a fair amount of that money (read: most of it) to get the rest of the problems on that car fixed. I get the feeling I'll be doing a lot of driving in that car over the course of the next year or so.

In addition, those taxes have been completely done and have been mailed off to the IRS as well as the state of Kansas. Altogether I should be getting back around $1200, give or take. This is slightly more than last year, but I also made just slightly more money this year. I slacked off on finishing them for a very long time, but on Monday afternoon I sat down and completed them just so I could get them in the mail and figuratively wash my hands of them. For the first time, I opted for the "direct deposit" option on the federal taxes, to save me time and possibly to get them in the bank before I fly to West Virginia over spring break. I know there's not a lot of time between now and then, but I can at least hope. Can't use a lot of it there anyway since I'm going to be fixing up the car with most of it, but it would be nice to be able to do a little shopping back home, or buy dinner for my parents and/or Andrea once or twice.

The state taxes will still come to me in a check, however, and I can't do anything about that. Kansas mailed me a paper copy of their tax forms, and I just filled them out/stuck them in the mail. If I remember correctly, last year I filed the state taxes online, and they charged me $5 or something to do it. A forever stamp is cheaper. Seriously. So that, of course, I will still have to wait for and will still have to cash at Walmart, more than likely, since my bank account is back home. No biggie.

Still, finishing my taxes meant I could update and renew my FAFSA, which I did as well. All of my finances are now in order, at least according to the government. And I get paid tomorrow, too.

This week has been strange not only because of the "ghost town" scenario but because it's been relatively light in terms of work. As I mentioned before, all of my classes this week were canceled because of AWP. My time on campus was spent teaching my own students (a workshop day on Tuesday, and then collecting their papers/giving them a very short lecture and handouts today. Aside from that? All I had was office hours, my hour in the writing center, and my last visit with our visiting poet -- who also went to AWP shortly thereafter. I will and already do have my usual barrage of homework and/or other stuff to do this weekend, and will begin grading those papers soon, but other than that I'm just going to try to relax and catch up on sleep.

What else has been happening in my life? Well, I also completed the fellowship application for the department. It is due tomorrow, but I finished it and turned it in on Tuesday. Now, folks, I wait. We all wait, actually.

I don't think I'll win, of course. I really don't. I'm pretty sure I already know who's going to win, and I know at least one (if not both of them) read this blog on a regular basis, so I'll keep their names to myself. However, if my hunches are correct and they do win, they definitely deserve the awards. Generally speaking, everyone who gets the fellowships deserve them. They're usually the best students, and amongst the best -- if not the absolute best -- writers in the department. Because of this, if I were to receive the fellowship I would simply call it luck, or a fluke, because while I am a damned good student, my poetry I've always said is mediocre at best. Yes, occasionally I write something good, or at times write something really good, but those pieces are spread amongst my other works, and my inspiration is at times fleeting at best (though I've not really been having a problem with it this semester). I fully admit that there are other poets applying for it who deserve it more than I do, and I would be really humbled and possibly a little embarrassed if I did win it. But still, it would be nice. It would at least show me that maybe I've done something worthwhile in grad school, rather than just tread water and hope for the best.

So that was my week. Tonight I will more than likely stay up a little later than usual, but that's because I passed out for several hours this afternoon after I got home. I don't plan to wake up tomorrow before noon if I can possibly help it. I need the sleep.

Exhaustion

Spring semester: day thirty

It really seems like more of the semester has passed than actually has. It's around this time in any given semester that time seems to just. begin. dragging. on. Because of that, despite the fact that I've basically had an unexpected week off due to the car issues, I'm exhausted and really tired again all the time.

Please note: this is not necessarily a bad thing. The causes of my exhaustion are wide and far-reaching, but not necessarily bad. In fact, one of those causes has been exceptionally good. I've just been overly tired, overworked in some regards, and have been functioning for going on two weeks now with very little sleep. All of this, really, I'm pretty okay with. I'm still awake, alert, functional, paying my bills and going to school (when the car doesn't die on me, that is), and I've been me. Just a more-tired version of me. While I am in incredibly good spirits about everything going on right now (things which I will, eventually, shed a little light on, so be patient), I am still really tired. It's a good tired, though.

It's a Monday and I've been awake since 6AM. This may not be surprising or unusual for a lot of you, but keep in mind I'm off on Mondays. I usually sleep until around noon or 1 on Mondays, so being awake before dawn is really jarring to me on a Monday morning. Now that I've said that, watch me have to teach on Monday/Wednesday next semester at 8AM. Or, hopefully, I won't have to teach at all.

Y'see, amongst all of the other things I must do this week, I must ready my application for the department fellowship. I've mentioned the fellowship here before, briefly. The department usually awards two every year, one to a poet and one to a fiction writer. Sometimes they give out three, but that's a rare occasion. If you apply for and win the fellowship, it's basically a free ride for a year -- yes, you will be required to pay in-state tuition, but you get a paycheck (it balances out to a little bit more per month than a normal GTA makes), your own office (usually) and the bonus of not teaching for a full year -- which gives the fellow more time to work on his/her craft. For me, if I win it, I will be spending a lot of the extra time I have on finishing my coursework and reading/studying somewhat for comps. But, to win it, one must apply. And the application deadline is Friday.

I've known that the application deadline is Friday for several days now, probably about a week, actually. I just haven't yet put together a "packet" of sorts for the application. Poets are supposed to include 5-6 poems, I believe, or something like that. While I've been creating what I would consider exemplary work (for the most part) during the past year or so, I'm not sure any of it's good enough to win the fellowship. I'm really negatively biased about my own writing, though -- stuff that I think is really good other people end up hating, and vice-versa. I've tried to pare down my style quite a bit, make it more barebones and build from there, but I'm not sure how successful I've been in doing so. I think one of the reasons I was passed over for it last year was because everyone else who applied was just so good, and indeed the poetry fellow who won completely deserved to win. But I also think a large part of it was that all of my works then were just so unpolished, in so many different styles, wordy, etc. I've tried to completely revamp my entire writing style as well as the mindset I go into when I write poetry, and sometimes it's more effective than others. Regardless, if I want even a chance at winning the fellowship for my third year, I have to hastily ready an application sometime this week and drop it off in the department office. That I will probably at least attempt to work on this afternoon, as I have a bit of free time.

The "week off" has brought to light an interesting scenario. I mentioned previously that about 80% of the department is going to the AWP conference this week; it starts on Wednesday. I may have also mentioned previously that because of this, all of the classes I'm taking are canceled this week, aside from my practicum session with the English 102 director and my last meeting with our visiting poet this semester. My classes that I'll be teaching, of course, are still in session, and they need to be now more than ever since my car blew up last week. I'm starting a new unit in my class on Thursday (as well as collecting papers), so it's rather important I be there this week regardless of whether I have classes of my own or not. Because of my schedule, on Tuesdays and Wednesdays I always have a ton of other stuff going on aside from classes. Tomorrow, for example, I have afternoon office hours and my meeting with the visiting poet, and should make up my missed writing center hour as well. Wednesday? Office hours and practicum, if it's not canceled. And my normal writing center hour, which is sort of important if the department is shorthanded on that day. Which it probably will be.

Despite all of this stuff going on, I have still not finalized or filed my taxes. At all. Which is my other big task for the rest of the day. I have to get it done TODAY, because I need to renew my FAFSA form online for Flat State University by March 1st. That's Thursday. Even with a somewhat easier week, if I don't do all this stuff today, it's going to drive me nuts and I won't get it done before then. Plus, I still have students' workshop copies to look over/grade (a few, anyway) and will be getting a new, fresh stack of final copies to grade on Thursday. These next few weeks are going to be somewhat busy, I think.

But, things are going well. Things are going right in my life for once, for the time being. And I'm really happy about that. I just have to keep the ball rolling on everything that needs to be rolling without getting too strung-out or sleep-deprived. And even if I do, I need to keep going. What was the line from Frost? Promises to keep / Miles to go before I sleep? Yeah, it's like that.

The Monte Carlo Story, Part II

Spring semester: day twenty-nine

The Monte Carlo lives. And lives much better, too.

Around 11 yesterday morning I was called (awakened, sort of, as I had just been laying in bed daydreaming and slipping in/out of consciousness since 9) and told that my car was finished and that I could pick it up any time. The lady asked me if I needed a ride up there, and I gladly accepted.

"Well, are you ready now? Because I can get you now, or within the next 20 minutes or so, but may not be able to later."

Mind you, I was still in bed. But I did want my car back.

"Absolutely," I said to her on the phone, leaping out of bed to vault upstairs and get dressed.

About half an hour later I'd thrown on a t-shirt, hoodie, and shorts (as it was still around 60 outside) and was picking my car up from the auto repair shop. The total was slightly lower than I thought it would be -- $279 or so -- but I got the mighty Decepticon back and brought her home, all patched up for the time being. I will say that she drives a lot more smoothly now; apparently the belt/tensioner must have been going out for a long time. Her steering is so much easier-handling than before, and she doesn't idle or run as rough at all. Because I can more easily steer her, the huge turning radius I used to have to worry about with the landboat she is has now become almost nonexistent.

But yes, I paid for her repairs, very graciously thanked the techs and mechanics who worked on her, and drove home. Once I got here, I started on the catch-up homework/housework I need to do this weekend. And there's a lot of it, let me tell you.

That $279 took a big chunk out of my bank account, but it's not insurmountable. I still have plenty of money to eat, pay bills, etc. -- without any worries for the time being. That, of course, will change for the better once I get my tax refunds as well, most of which will also be going into the car for tires and other maintenance/repairs for a multitude of reasons. I need to make, and keep, that car as reliable as possible for the foreseeable future. If that means spending a lot of spare cash on it, then I have to do it -- otherwise this incident will be the first of many.

Still, as my mother told me, at least I got a long(er) weekend out of all the car problems. And there are times that, if given the option, I would certainly pay $279 for a few more days off. Does it balance out? Logically, not really. But spiritually and in a rest-and-relaxation sense? Yep. At least, good enough for me.

I've been severely sleep-deprived over the past few days for a multitude of reasons, most of them exceedingly good ones. My lost hours of sleep are beginning to take their collective toll, though, and I see myself going to bed at a reasonable hour at least tonight. A "reasonable hour" equates to "before 3AM" for me. And I have to shower first -- I've been so busy all day that I haven't had the chance. I've not been eating a whole lot either, for the record. Just haven't been that hungry. Maybe I'm entering some new phase of life.

At least, I hope so...

The Monte Carlo Story

Spring semester: day twenty-seven

This is my car. I love my car.


As most of you know, it is a 1996 Monte Carlo Z34, 3.4L DOHC V6, 215hp engine, automatic transmission. Super-fast, despite a large number of cosmetic and a few mechanical issues. I call it "The Decepticon," as it sports a large Decepticon logo on the hood. I also refer to it as a "she," because, after all, I'm a guy and this car is my baby.

I have owned this car since last June, when I purchased it for $500 (the last of my tax refund money from last year). She is one of the few things I own outright, and one of the few things that nobody can ever take from me. Since I bought her, she has been incredibly reliable for a car of her age and a car with her problems (she needs new spark plugs, an oil change, new tires, a coolant flush, etc etc). I have put over 3,000 miles on her since June, almost all miles from driving back and forth to school every day.

And as of last night, I was pretty sure she was trying to commit ritual seppuku.

I will tell this story to you now, of course, but I will also preface it (because I know I haven't written here in a long time) with the fact that I've had a lot of personal ups and downs in my life over the past few weeks, and that's why I haven't written here. Honestly, however, I've been incredibly happy for the past several days, with no signs of that happiness and contentment going away anytime soon. I'm telling you this because I don't want my readers (who are mostly my family and friends) to worry about me. I'm wonderful. Just worry about the car.

Anyway.

Yesterday was a typical Tuesday. Got up, drove to school, taught my classes, fulfilled my office hours and went to class, and came home. The coming home was the really bad part.

It's approximately 24 miles from my driveway to the parking lot at Flat State University and vice versa, give or take a tenth of a mile or so. It's a straight-stretch drive for 90% of it, up and down Interstate 135. While I do like to speed a little (yes, I admit this), the drive isn't particularly taxing on the car. At least I don't think so, anyway. She's been a daily driver with no real issues since June, even with her problems.

About halfway home last night, I noticed that my lights were dimmer than usual. As in, at about half-power. That's not a good thing, I thought. Then, on my dashboard, the "volts" light came on. Oh, so not good. This had never happened before in all the months I've been driving the car on a daily or almost-daily basis.

Almost immediately, the car began to overheat. Quickly. A lot. Like, the temperature gauge redlined within three or four minutes, and the "hot" light lit up on my dashboard too. Shit. Shitshitshit.

I pulled off at the nearest exit and parked on the side of a gravel country road. I was easily ten or eleven miles from home, still, at this point. I turned the car off completely and popped the hood. The car's cooling fan was still running even though the car was off, as some vehicles have that running automatically even with the car off to cool down the engine until it reaches a certain temperature (it does kick off after a while, obviously). I was shaking. I was scared. I've never had this happen in a car I've been driving. Something was quite obviously wrong, because even in the extreme temperatures of last summer -- close to 110 every day -- the car never overheated. Ever. In fact, she barely had the temperature gauge run higher than about 150 or so, and that was on the super-hot days.

I waited for the fan to kick off, pacing back and forth at the side of the car, examining my options in my head. There's a rest stop seven miles from my house, and it was two or three miles away from me at that point. If I could get it running again and it started heating up really bad that quickly, I could stop there, call a towing service from one of their phone books (one of the only remaining places on the planet where phone books are still really, really useful), and get a tow to a shop and a ride home. But, more than anything else, I wanted the car to make it home. Just so that no matter what else happened, at least I'd be home and could deal with it from there, in my natural environment, where I could take care of things myself.

I started the car again after about ten minutes of waiting. She fired up immediately with no problem, the lights were strong, and the "volts" and "hot" lights were off. She seemed normal.

For about a minute or so.

Then the "volts" light came back on and the lights dimmed again. I turned her around in an attempt to get back onto the interstate, only to find that my power steering was intermittently going in and out as well. This was not good. However, she had cooled down, and wasn't overheating yet. So, I put my faith in her and got back on the interstate. And I drove very, very slowly. Like, 45 or so. She slowly heated up again, but not to the redline. Power steering kept going in and out. Accelerator wouldn't send a lot of power to the engine, and when it did it felt like it was in rolling spurts of short bursts of energy. Her temperature didn't begin to redline again until I was past the rest area, and when it did, I let her coast for a few hundred yards until the "hot" light went back off. Once I was past the rest area, there wasn't really any turning back -- Newton was about four miles away, and I always get off at the first Newton exit. I kept her speed really low, kept her between 45 and 55 most of the time, just coasting sometimes but desperately trying to get to town. It was the longest and most frantic, palpitation-inducing four miles of driving I've ever done.

Finally, I got her to the Newton exit, got her off the road, and onto the city streets, heart beating really fast in fear, saying things like Fuckfuckfuckfuck over and over under my breath like some sort of automotive mantra. A few moments later, as I was desperately trying to go as slowly, yet as quickly, as possible to get home, the "hot" light turned off again. I crept down the city streets until I made it home, going about 20 the entire way. When I pulled into my driveway, I felt so much relief. So much. I'd made it home. No matter what problems the car had, I'd made it home. I immediately turned her off and popped the hood again, so that her overheating engine could cool down. The automatic fan ran for about ten minutes after the car was off, during which time I checked the coolant levels (seemed fine) and added a little more, also adding the rest of a quart of oil to the engine as well in hopes that would help. Nothing under the hood looked amiss -- no smoking, nothing appeared to be broken, no belts appeared to be off-track or off-kilter. The engine, for all intents and purposes, looked normal. Yes, it smelled hot, but that's because it was hot. But then again, it was dark. And it's hard to see anything under my balcony (where I park the car) when it's dark, even with the outside lights on. So, to my view, everything appeared normal.

Once I was sure the car wasn't going to burst into flames or anything like that, I went inside. I was, well, shaken, for lack of a better term. My heart was beating very fast in nervousness and fear, and I was really twitchy. I wanted to know what was wrong with my car. And now that I was home, my head started going through all sorts of possible scenarios.

By the way, if you own one, never Google "monte carlo + overheating + volts" because the results will absolutely make you ten times more paranoid.

Anyway, I knew that whatever was wrong with my babycar (yes, I call her my "babycar," stop looking at me like that) had to be serious. This wasn't an isolated incident. It was something that had to immediately be taken care of. Almost at once, I emailed my students and told them my office hours would be canceled today. I also emailed those in charge of various sections of departments or classes at school and told them I would be unable to make it in. I knew, instinctively, that whatever was wrong wasn't going to be able to be fixed in the span of a few hours, so I would most certainly miss class and not even go to campus at all today.

After that was done, I talked to two friends and told them what was going on, and one of them suggested that it might be a belt issue, because she'd just had that fixed on her car and it was giving her much the same symptoms out of the blue. If one of the bigger belts goes out, apparently it'll screw the entire car's mechanisms. Hm. Strange. I mean, it makes sense of course, but because of the "volts" light being on, I was worried about the battery a little as well as the alternator possibly being the culprit. Of the two, I was more worried about the alternator. The battery, at least, I know is new. The car's previous owner had put a new battery into the car less than a month before I purchased it. So that left the alternator as a possible culprit, along with the aforementioned belt(s).

I did not, of course, want it to be the alternator -- though that would generally be a simple fix. Alternators are expensive, in case you didn't know. On specialized models of cars like mine -- the Z34 version of the Monte Carlo -- they tend to be even more expensive. The belts are at least cheap and fairly easy to replace, and they should be replaced every once in a while anyway.

So, after that was done, around 10PM, I began Googling auto repair places in town. There are only two that do any substantial engine work, which I figured is what I needed. The first one I took the car to about a month after I bought it, and they told me that it was going to be $400 to get spark plugs replaced. Both of them have online contact forms/requests for service appointments, which was the only way I could reach them between 10PM and the morning -- and possibly have an appointment waiting for me as soon as I woke up. So, I contacted both of them. I was fully prepared to have to spend $1,000 on this car to fix it, even though I only paid $500 for it. I would not have had a choice -- living alone in Newton and making graduate student money, I simply cannot quickly buy a new car, and I must have a working vehicle that will get me from home to Wichita and back three (sometimes four) days a week. Because of this I also sent one of those "possible desperate pleas for money" emails to my parents, even though at this point all of my readers should know how much I absolutely hate asking anyone for help, even though I know most people in my life would provide it very quickly if they knew I was in need. Most of all, I hate begging my parents for anything. They raised me, they provided for me for so many years that I feel really guilty about it. I'm almost thirty years old, and it makes me feel like a huge leech or mooch.

Then I stayed up really late, knowing I didn't have to go in this morning, and finally fell asleep -- taking my phone to bed with me in case I were to receive a call from one of the body shops. I found a third one and sent them an email when I awoke around 10, as well, making my morning coffee and trying to wake up. The events of the car trip home last night seemed so long ago, so far away, yet I still knew I had to deal with it today. Which sucked, but still.

Around 11 or so I got a reply email from the third body shop I contacted. I never heard back from the others, by the way. The tech told me that by the symptoms, it sounded like I'd blown a belt, or that one had come loose and was flapping about, and could possibly be the one which ran the water pump (which would explain why the car was overheating). He set up an appointment for 2PM and told me to bring it in; if that was the problem, he could more than likely fix it today. This, of course, made me ecstatic, regardless of how much the repairs might have ended up costing me. So, I took a shower and got dressed, and went downstairs to leave around 1:10 or so.

Here, of course, was the real test. I still did not know what was wrong with the car, at all. In fact, I didn't even know if it would start, much less make the four miles or so to the repair shop. For all I knew, if it were the alternator, I could turn the key and nothing would happen whatsoever. If I had blown yet another spark plug instead, it could be just as bad. It could start up, run fine for half the trip to the shop, and then die on me in the middle of Newton's main street. If I'd blown a head gasket, then the rest of the drive home probably did damage enough. All sorts of different scenarios were running through my mind, is what I'm saying -- I wasn't sure what would or could happen.

I started the car. She started just fine, just like normal. And no lights came on the dashboard. This was a plus. I paused for a moment, and as my hand left the wheel to shift the car into reverse, the "volts" light came on again. Well, here goes nothing, I thought. Let's just get her there and see what they say.

I drove carefully, slowly, through downtown Newton, hitting what seemed to be every stoplight. Of course, this made me super-apprehensive, especially as with each stoplight and the longer the car was running, the temperature gauge slowly crept up a little further. Also, of course, the power steering wasn't working at all after I backed out of the driveway, which made the drive that much more harrowing.

I did make it, though, in about fifteen minutes, with the temperature gauge slightly to the right of the halfway point -- nowhere near overheating, but still much hotter than the car normally runs. I parked, went inside, and gave them my information before handing over the key and sitting in the waiting room for about an hour while they evaluated things. Occasionally I would flip through one of the many magazines there, but it was just me and nobody else. Every once in a while someone who seemed to be one of the shop's "regular customers" came in, made small talk with the manager guy who had emailed me and had been working with me, and then left.

I also noticed that it looked to be a rather high-end repair shop -- not only did I see a pristine 1968 Ford Galaxie 500, but another guy was having his DeTomaso Pantera worked on. No, I'm not kidding. I've also never seen one of those in person until today. Who would've guessed that someone in Newton owned one? They're pretty rare cars.

Finally, he came out and told me "Well, we figured out what's wrong with your car..."

"Oh?" I asked. "How bad is it?"

"Well, like I thought before," he said, "it was indeed a belt problem."

This made me relieved. By a lot. The rest of the conversation followed as such, to the best of my memory:

"But it's not just the belt, it's the serpentine belt, and the belt tensioner. The belt tensioner went bad -- it burned out completely. It got hot, and melted the belt itself."

Okay, that's bad, but not incredibly, kill-the-car bad.

"Anyway," he continued, "Since that belt turns pretty much everything, nothing inside the engine was moving. That's why the car was overheating; the water pump wasn't running, and why your power steering was out. The good news is that it's not really expensive and it's pretty easy to fix once we take out the old tensioner and put in a new one, but..."

He paused. I got the feeling that the other shoe was about to drop here any second now.

"Well, you have the 3.4L engine. The only one we have is for the 3.1L engine in those model years, and we've checked...there's not a single one in town."

At this point I knew yep, my classes are going to be canceled tomorrow. No doubt.

"However, we're getting one brought one in here, and we'll be able to put it on tomorrow. We move things really fast here; we don't like to make people wait on their vehicles any longer than they have to. If we had the part today we could put it on now and you could drive 'er home."

Through the plate window behind him, I could see the mighty Decepticon in the garage with her hood up, and a tech installing what looked like a new belt already.

"That's great," I said. "What a relief. I didn't know what it was. To me, it could've been anything from a bad alternator to a blown head gasket. I've just never had that happen to a car I was driving before, so I apologize if I seemed a little too nervous before or a little too relieved now compared to some of your other customers."

"Oh no, it's okay. If it were an alternator, we'd be looking at about $800 worth of parts and labor. Especially on a car like yours, because the alternator on yours is waaaaay back underneath everything else. You almost have to take apart the entire engine to get to it."

As an aside, I may have mentioned here before that the engine in my Monte Carlo is widely considered to be one of the absolute worst engineering designs in GM's history. To fit an engine that size and that powerful (again, 215hp) under that car's hood, GM sacrificed a lot of accessibility in order to cram it all in. Hence why the battery is underneath the washer fluid tank, and the washer fluid tank has to be completely detached and removed to change the battery, then replaced. It's a pretty reliable engine -- I mean, look at mine, with 220k+ miles on it -- but it's just an awful design, and really hard to work on for even most regular maintenance, like spark plugs.

"But no," he went on, "your alternator is fine, and this won't be that expensive to fix -- but still expensive. We're looking at $287.09 here."

The first words out of my mouth were, seriously, "Are you serious? That's fantastic!" which I'm sure shocked him a little, judging by the look on his face. "No, seriously," I continued, "I was expecting this to be something like $800 or $900 to fix, so I'm glad it's not that bad. That's a relief."

Mind you, $287.09 is not a small amount of money, especially when I have to pay the rent this week as well, and just paid my credit card bill and cable bill earlier this week. And it is an unexpected expense that, just a little over a month ago, would've been my death knell. Right now, however? If it puts my car back on the road and keeps it running with no other major problems for the moment? I'll take what I can get. I'll pay it and deal with it. My Monte Carlo is my lifeline and I desperately need it to last me at least until I graduate, if possible. After that, I don't know what/where I'll be in life, but I need it at least for that year-and-change I have left. So I'll do whatever I can to keep her running, piece by piece. If she needs a belt and belt tensioner, then that's what she gets. I do still have to do all of the other work on her as well, but right now that's not really an option until I get my tax refunds. Believe me, a very large chunk of those will be sunk into car repairs and upkeep.

I thanked him, shook his hand, and waited for a free tech to give me a ride home. I pick up the car tomorrow and pay the bill. How I'll get back up there remains to be seen; the tech said if they had the ability to let him go for a few minutes, he could come back and pick me up again. If not, it looks like I'll be getting about four miles' worth of walking exercise tomorrow when it's done and I can pay the bill and take her home.

But, of course, who knows when that will be. Once I got back home (which is weird to look at without a Monte Carlo in the driveway or garage for once) I canceled my classes for tomorrow via email, and later this evening I sent an email to the office admins in case they wanted to put signs on the doors of my classrooms in the morning, just in case not all of my students check their email. They usually do. I hate canceling my classes, but there's enough wiggle room in the spring semester to where I can move a few things around a little bit and keep them all on the same page. It wasn't until I'd done this to where I realized I could've just emailed my officemate and asked him to do the same thing, as he teaches in the same building -- if not the same room I do -- at 8AM. But oh well. I still want to go by the book for everything, lest anything happen. It's very, very rare that I cancel any of my classes on the spur of the moment. I think this is only the second time I've had to do so since I've been a GTA, and the first was because I was deathly ill with a sinus/ear infection close to the end of my first semester.

Of course, I missed my editing class today, too. I asked my friends to get extra copies of the handouts/reading assignment for me, so that I can play a little catch-up when I get the chance, but I have no clue if anyone did. If they did, they haven't told me. Oh well. Can't do much about it until I get back to campus next week.

So that's the Monte Carlo story. It could've been a lot worse, but as it is, it wasn't that great. Still, I'm grateful that it wasn't a blown head gasket or blown alternator, which would've cost a lot more. And I think the situation probably raised my blood pressure by a good ten points or more over the past day or so. But, on the good side (due to canceled classes), I get to extend my weekend a few days longer than it normally would be, and I have a lot of plans for this weekend. There's a lot of work that must be done around the house, the weather's been gorgeous (high today? 73, at the highest I saw it here), and I can get a little relaxation time in.

By the way, next week I don't have any classes of my own. Both of them have been canceled due to the AWP Conference going on next week, a conference which about 80% of the department (no kidding) is attending. So, all I will have to be there for are the little things like my office hours and Writing Center hour, practicum, etc. Oh, and teaching my classes, of course. Less time on campus every day makes me happy, and I'm already becoming pretty happy in my life right now -- despite things like the car problems.