But that's not what this post is about. This post is about the trip to Omaha to spend the New Year with Daisy and her family.
I will start out by saying again that Daisy's family had given me what amounted to, basically, an open invitation to come up and visit at any time from early July forward. They were very enthusiastic to meet the man who had, ahem, stolen their youngest daughter's heart. Putting it that way sounds a little creepy, I realize, but Daisy has two older sisters -- both of whom are married and have children. Daisy is, effectively, the "baby" of her generation, and her parents have invited me to visit numerous times, but something has always gotten in the way of that happening -- whether it was when I was teaching, when I had my own schoolwork to do (as you recall, I planned to go up there for Thanksgiving, but I had papers to grade and projects/papers of my own to complete), weather issues, or the fact that I was in West Virginia over Christmas. Omaha is about five hours to the north of me, roughly. I now know that a trip up there (or back) takes a little over six hours, depending on how much traffic we have to deal with and how many stops we make. For the vast majority of the trip either way, the drive is made on U.S. 81, which is basically a straight line north or south, depending on which way one is going. I don't know exactly how many miles it is; I just know how long it takes, and I also now know that Daisy's Hyundai will make it (plus driving around Omaha a fair amount) on a single tank of gas, which my car certainly wouldn't be able to do. In fact, as I've mentioned before -- citing concerns about how old and falling-apart my Monte Carlo is -- Daisy's father long ago insisted that I don't try to take it the round trip to Omaha and back, instead telling her to come get me in her car. In reality, now that I spent $1400 or so in September fixing up the Monte Carlo, it would probably make the trip okay, but I would also be spending roughly $150 or more in gas on each round trip, as the car gets (on average) about 20-22 miles to the gallon, and it has a small tank for the car's size.
But anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's properly start the story.
I got home from West Virginia on December 28th, two days later than expected. I was exhausted; traveling and doing all of the stuff pertaining to my trip was excessively draining not only physically, but on my psyche as well. I'd been in West Virginia for an entire week, it was colder here than it had been before I'd left (and colder than it was back home), and I came back to a house that was empty of most foods -- I didn't go shopping before I left because, really, what's the point -- and cats who missed me dearly but had torn up their room downstairs as well as vomited places I didn't think it was possible for cats to vomit in (i.e., behind the couch). This is why I ordered three large pizzas, a box of cheesesticks, and a 30-piece chicken nugget package from Papa John's and said "fuck it" once I got home; I was tired, I didn't want to cook, and I had a bunch of bills in the mail, a bunch of dirty laundry to wash, and a week's worth of emails, Facebook notifications, and other stuff to check up on, as my laptop was so slow on my parents' network that I couldn't accomplish a lot of that stuff (or write here, as I am not yet used to the keyboard of it).
The 28th was a Friday, and I got home that night. Daisy knew that I'd need some time to myself once I got home, time to decompress and relax and just be alone in my own environment, my own little bubble, but that bubble was also supposed to be two days larger than it ended up being. We had planned long before I left for West Virginia that I would come up to Omaha for the New Year -- both of her sisters were supposed to be in again (in reality, only one of them was there), and her parents had planned for a house full of mirth, New Year's Eve foods and the like, and fun. Because of this, Daisy asked me when I'd wanted to come up, as she would be coming to get me (see above where I mentioned this). I told her before I left on my flights that the 30th, Sunday, would probably be good -- it would allow me to be there before and after New Year's, and would give a little wiggle room to do stuff around the city, get to know her family a bit without it being an in-and-out trip, etc. So, really, we'd pretty much set that in stone.
The problem, however, once I got home was twofold -- one, I didn't get home until the 28th instead of the 26th, which meant that I would have very little downtime, and two, there was a snowstorm (yes, another one) that was about to hit me in Newton, as well as a lot of places north of Rt. 50, on the 30th. On the 29th, Saturday, every time I checked the weather, the forecast was worse than before. First they were calling for an inch or less. Then it was 2-4 inches. Then it was 3-4 inches, with Newton and north of here (between here and Omaha, basically) getting the worst of it. I told Daisy that I wanted to wait to see if the weather people could give any sort of accurate prediction of when the snow would roll through, and how much, before she got in the car and decided to make the drive -- there was no use risking her or both of our lives and her car just to get me up there for New Year's Eve the next day if it was going to be horrible weather and horrible driving conditions. I'd also reminded her that I'd just been stuck at my parents' house in West Virginia for two extra days during a snowstorm, and didn't necessarily want to repeat the experience in yet another family home without access to my car or my cats. I'm sure you folks can understand that I was a bit, ahem, shell-shocked about winter travel at this point.
This, predictably, started a bit of a fight between the two of us. Daisy didn't want me to miss New Year's Eve with her family, while I on the other hand not only needed a bit of downtime, but didn't want to risk either of us getting caught in awful driving conditions for the ten hours that Daisy, at least, would be on the road -- she'd be coming down here to get me, using the bathroom or getting something to eat quickly, and then we'd be turning around to go back up north to Omaha. That's a hell of a lot of driving if the weather is bad during it. I told her that it may be easier to spend the night and then go back up in the morning, but with the storm coming in, that wouldn't be possible -- it was, in fact, possible that we'd be stuck here if it snowed/iced as much as they were calling for. Daisy explained to me that it was a big deal that I was coming in for New Year's Eve, and that it was very important to not only her, but to her parents, which I understood. I was more concerned with our safety than anything else. I worry about her. Even though her car is good and all four tires on it are brand new, that doesn't mean anything when there's a shitload of snow and ice on the road -- so I told her I just wanted to relax and wait a bit to see exactly when the weather was going to hit, and find out exactly what it would be.
We made up quickly, of course, and I learned yet another lesson about how to take care of issues the two of us have every once in a while. Our relationship is wonderful; there isn't a thing I would change about it in the least, but neither of us like conflict. When conflict comes up, I'm the kind of guy who storms away from an argument to avoid dealing with an issue until cooler heads prevail, and she is the kind of woman who hates being walked away from, who wants to discuss everything in a cool and calm manner to facilitate better communication, even if we're right in the thick of it, and wants constant validation on everything. When we're frustrated with one another, because of our personality differences, it can be difficult. We've been together for a while now, and each time we have a disagreement, it tends to be a shorter tiff than the last one, because we're each learning how to work with one another. And, I'll remind you folks, Daisy and I don't fight. At all. We've never had a yelling match or anything like that where we were both actually angered to the point of rage. For one, even though I tend to yell when I'm angry, I've never yelled at Daisy. I don't think I ever could. And Daisy doesn't yell at anyone (well, not usually). She is quite possibly the biggest pacifist I've ever met. Even our most heated disagreements or problems -- which are rare -- have been solved and/or smoothed over in a matter of hours, as was this one.
I found out that the storm was supposed to hit here in the overnight hours of the 30th, which was Sunday night. This meant that if she came down on Sunday during the day/afternoon, and we made it back up to Omaha that night, we would miss it and would be there before it swept through. So, basically, the original plans remained unchanged, and we'd had our little spat about the weather and the trip for nothing. Live and learn, I suppose. Daisy planned to leave on Sunday morning, get down here in the afternoon, and have us back up there to Omaha by the late evening hours.
I will once more remind you that Daisy operates on Daisy Standard Time. This means that there's no telling her when to leave the house, or how, or on any timeframe whatsoever. When she leaves, she leaves. When she gets here, she gets here. For example, she gave me a rough estimate of leaving before noon, which was about as accurate of a timeframe as I could get out of her -- and then she sent me a message at 3:30 PM that told me she was finally leaving Omaha. This allowed me a little more downtime, at least -- I'd been home for maybe 36 hours or so at this time at the most, and would now be re-packing everything and re-prepping the house for the cats in order to leave again. Was I exhausted? Well, I'd gotten one good, normal night of sleep in my own bed in the interim, and had some time to myself, but I have to say that I probably would've been a bit nervous about meeting Daisy's parents were I not so frazzled and tired from just getting home. At that point, I was still mentally drained, and while I was definitely enthusiastic about my trip to Omaha, I was -- as they say -- basically running on fumes. More people to meet, people who are happy to see me and spend time with me? Sure, let's do it. I was gung-ho for it, despite being burnt out. Daisy's parents had been nothing but incredibly kind to me in the few interactions I'd had with them via Facebook, so I was all for it.
Because she left so late, Daisy arrived at my house here in Newton at almost 10PM. She stayed for maybe half an hour before we left again, closing everything up and first making a trip to the gas station for me to fill her tank (since she was driving all that distance and all), and to Walmart for foodstuffs before getting on the road. In the process, I lost my wallet (don't worry; I found it a few minutes later in her car) and dodged a Newton city cop who was eyeing us suspiciously before we left town.
The drive north was relatively uneventful; it was, as I said, basically a very long straight-stretch until one reaches the Nebraska border. It takes, ahem, a long time to reach the Nebraska border from here. I'm estimating about three hours of the five-and-a-half-hour drive is just driving north through Kansas. We were also doing it late at night, which means nobody was on the roads with us after a certain point, say, around 1AM or so.
Around 3AM, we reached the town of York, Nebraska. Mind you, until this past week, I haven't been in Nebraska in over twenty years -- my last drive through there was in 1991. York is about ninety minutes or so from Daisy's house in Omaha. We stopped at yet another Walmart to go to the bathroom, where I was able to post this update to Twitter from my phone:
I considered it one of my finest tweets of the year, though I think it went mostly unnoticed by most of my followers.
There was not a single customer in this Walmart at 3AM on a Sunday night. Not a one. We were the only ones there aside from the workers, only three of whom we actually saw. The rest of the store was deserted. Because I hate going someplace just to use the bathroom and leave, I decided to wander up around the registers and look for gum -- gum would stop my breath from smelling horrible around her family after trips outside to smoke over and over again, and while doing so, I remembered that my electronic cigarette was still in West Virginia -- you may recall that I left it there so that the TSA wouldn't think I was carrying a bomb back home with me when I flew back, as it had caused a hassle in the Wichita airport. If I bought another one at Walmart, I would be able to at least somewhat prevent the need to go outside every hour or so I was awake in Daisy's family home. So, I asked the cashier if they had any of the full kits (as it was in Walmart where I bought my first one, so I knew what they had available).
"We only have the kits in menthol," the cashier said. "You said red, right?" The red ones are the "full-flavor" ones, which is what I wanted.
"Yes," I replied.
"Well, I don't have those, but I have these things, whatever they are, and they're red." She held up a slim pack of what looked like the cartridges, but they had a different design on them. "It says there are six of them in there," she added.
"Can I look at those without getting in trouble?" I asked. She'd have to hand them to me over the counter before I bought them.
I'd never seen them before -- they looked new. When I examined them, I found out what they were -- disposable electronic cigarettes. Smoke them until they ran out of juice, then toss them. They did, indeed, come six to a pack, and never needed recharging or cartridge refills. Hm, I thought. How convenient.
"Yeah," I said, "I'll take those." They were $15 or so, based on my total with the two big packs of gum I'd picked out -- $20.01.
Perfect; I now didn't have to worry so much about going outside every twenty minutes while I was at Daisy's house; the electronic cigarettes, in case you aren't familiar with them, let out water vapor instead of smoke -- odorless, colorless, and non-toxic water vapor that quickly dissipates in the air once exhaled. They're not the same as real smokes, but they do in a pinch, and these ones I could toss once they were empty. I decided they'd be a good stop-gap measure until my parents mailed my normal one back to me with the rest of my stuff from back home. Satisfied, we got back into Daisy's car and made the rest of the trip to her house, arriving there (finally) around 4:30 in the morning.
Daisy's father had waited up for us; I was able to meet him, briefly, and shake his hand before we went to bed. We were both tired; Daisy had just driven ten hours. This is, roughly, the equivalent of driving from my house to Denver, Minneapolis, Houston, or Chicago in one day. Yes, I did look up travel distances/times to those cities, in case you were wondering. It's a lot of driving, and I wanted to put that into perspective. We were awake long enough to bring the important stuff into the house (my bags and the like) before we crept upstairs, quietly, and went to bed in Daisy's room.
"I hope your family doesn't think I'm going to be awake before, say, noon or so," I told Daisy. "Because it's 5AMish right now."
"Honey, they don't care when we wake up," she replied. "They know we were driving all night and they're not expecting you to be up bright and early with the sun or anything like that, even if they are."
And with that, almost immediately, we passed out.
The rest of the trip? Well, my friends, that story will be told in the next post.
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