In case you hadn't guessed, I've spent the past six days in Omaha (which is why I haven't written here in over a week; it is incredibly difficult to type more than a few sentences on my laptop at a time because of the way the keys are shaped/sit on the keyboard).
Whatever food poisoning I had last week was a 24-hour thing, apparently -- by the next night after I was sick, I had slowly burned it out of my system, whatever it was, and was ready to make my trip northward. I plan to recap that trip for you here and now, as briefly as possible (because while we did do a lot, there was also a ton of downtime in which we did little to nothing).
What I can tell you first is that I'm safely back home in Newton now, the cats/car/house/etc are all fine, and Daisy is sleeping downstairs so that she has enough rest and energy to drive back home tonight (her sister and nephews are in town right now, but I'll get to that). Everything here is as it should be, except for the fact that it's 100 degrees outside (again). Needless to say, after being gone for a week, the very first thing I did when we walked in the door this morning was turn on the AC and let it run all day, to cool down this hot-and-closed-up house as much as possible after being gone for a week. I offered to make Daisy some food, but she declined and went to sleep about an hour after we got home. I joined her for a short nap a while later before getting back up.
To start this tale and keep it relatively short/interesting throughout, I should probably begin.
Daisy had the 4th and 5th off -- she would have normally needed to work the 5th (Friday), but because whenever there's a holiday all of the employees of her company get a day's worth of time off whether they're scheduled to work that holiday or not, she chose to take hers on the 5th since I was in town. This is a longer span of time off than she normally has -- she works Friday through Monday nights. Our original plan was for her to get off work Monday night (the 1st), sleep through the day on Tuesday (the 2nd) and then come down that night when she got up, to return to Omaha on Wednesday the 3rd. Simple enough, right? That plan became modified when a few things popped up and I got sick, so we changed our plans -- she'd get up the morning of the 3rd and go, come down here, get me, and we'd return that night. Even though it was a lot of driving in one day, she said that if she waited until Wednesday she wanted to make the trip back up there in the same day so that we could have the entirety of the 4th together with the parents. I told her that was fine and that I was okay with that if she was, even offering to drive some of the way back if she was too tired to do so (the trip, either way, is basically driving in the shape of an upside-down letter "L," where the corner is the hook-up to I-80 in York). As you folks may or may not know, I don't take the Monte Carlo when we visit her parents; aside from the fact that the car isn't anywhere near as fuel-efficient as Daisy's Hyundai is, it's also falling apart, offers little storage space that isn't dirty (the back seat is ripped all to hell and is covered in dirt/dust, since I've never used it since I bought the car for more than, say, putting a small piece of furniture or two in it on occasion). My car also tends to overheat somewhat easily when it's over 100 fucking degrees outside, it needs an oil change/coolant flush, has no air conditioning and a loud/grinding wheel bearing, and without all of that necessary upkeep I wouldn't trust it to make a ten-hour, round-trip drive. Ever. In fact, unless I'm moving there (or somewhere close to there) I'm not even sure I'd trust it to make it there without hauling it behind a U-Haul or something.
As an aside, I always feel somewhat ashamed by this, honestly; I'm a thirty-year-old man and Daisy comes to pick me up/bring me back home when I visit her family because I'm too financially destitute and pathetic to be able to own a car I can trust to drive from one state to another and back with no issue. On some level that makes me ask myself where the fuck I went wrong in life.
Anyway, Daisy said that her game plan was to get up and go as early as possible on Wednesday morning, and that her projected arrival time would be "between noon and 2" that afternoon. She'd get here, rest a bit, possibly eat something if necessary, and then we'd hit the road, being back in Omaha by nightfall. I was feeling fine by then, so I told her that was good and we both went to bed.
I awoke on Wednesday around 11AM; all of the house cleaning and most of the other necessary stuff had been done by that point (I took care of everything I could before I went to bed, so that I could just get up and go on Wednesday when Daisy got here). The only thing I'd waited on doing was getting more cigarettes and cash back from Walmart, and preparing the cats' extra food and litter -- I don't set that up earlier than I have to, for not only does it alert them to my upcoming absence, but it just makes it messier to clean up later (again, I'll get to that).
I went upstairs to check the computer, as Daisy always tells me when she's leaving (so that I have an ETA for her) to find...she's still at home.
I really wish I could say I was surprised, but after being in a relationship with Daisy for over a year at this point and having been engaged for five months, I've really come to expect this sort of thing. Again, if you are unfamiliar, Daisy operates on what I call Daisy Standard Time, which roughly translates to "I'll do something/go somewhere/get there eventually." She knows how much this drives me up the wall (though we did have a somewhat jovial discussion about it on the way back down here this morning), but it's one of those things that with Daisy, I just have to tolerate, because I'm pretty sure she's not going to change that about herself anytime soon, if ever.
I also give her a lot of leeway because she works really strange/shitty hours and barely gets to see her family because of them, not to mention the fact that she doesn't exactly have a set sleep schedule (as she works at night, and the rest of the world/anything else she needs to do happens and functions, normally, during daylight hours). So, because of this I've become a lot more lenient and tolerant of her schedules, to the point where I work on her timeframe a lot of the time and that really doesn't bother me as much as it once did. I am nothing if not compassionate and understanding when it comes to anything involving her at this point.
"I plan to be out the door by 3PM," she told me.
Okay. It's a little more than a five-hour drive to get here. It's less than that, really, but regardless of which way we're going, and if we're going together or separate, we always stop at least twice in two towns -- Concordia, Kansas, and York, Nebraska. They've been designated, basically, as our "go to the bathroom and/or get something to eat/drink" places. We even stop at the same gas station in Concordia every time. They have vanilla syrup in their soda fountain. It's awesome.
Ahem. Anyway. I knew if she left at 3, it would be roughly 8:30 to 8:45 before she got here. This gave me time to take care of the last stuff I needed to do around the house. I told her that was fine and logged off; I got a shower, got dressed, went to Walmart to get the stuff I needed, and came back home. When I got back home, I locked the car in the garage, put everything away, and checked my messages again -- nothing yet -- before laying down on the couch for a bit to doze off. I'd taken care of everything I needed to take care of except for the aforementioned cat room, so I was able to relax for a bit. As it was only around 80 degrees last week for high temperatures, I was actually able to do that without sweating profusely through my clothing for once.
I napped for probably two hours on the couch -- I don't exactly remember now, as it was over a week ago -- and went back to my room and checked my messages. Daisy hadn't sent me anything else, but that's not unusual for her. She doesn't necessarily message me when she leaves the house, and she doesn't give me an ETA unless I ask her, and only then when she stops or glances down at her phone and can reply (again, straight lines on this drive, for many many miles at a time). What I do remember is that this was around 7PM, which means that I would reasonably be able to expect her in a little more than an hour, but much less than two.
"ETA, love?" I asked.
It was a few minutes before she replied, "three hours, 40 minutes."
...okay...
"You left the house two hours later than you planned to, didn't you?" I asked.
"Yep."
Daisy Standard Time.
I composed myself, and asked "Do you even want to try to turn around and go back tonight, then?"
Logistically, this would mean she'd arrive at my house around 11PM. If we took an hour or so to let her get out of the car, relax, come upstairs and eat/use the bathroom/decompress before getting back in the car, we'd be leaving the house at around midnight and not getting back to Omaha before dawn...and we'd end up sleeping most, if not all, of the day away. No bueno, as Daisy herself frequently says in conversation.
"It's up to how we both feel when I get there," she told me. "I feel okay now, though."
"Let's just wait until the morning then," I told her. "There's no reason to force it tonight. You're exhausted. I'm awake now, but we wouldn't get back to Omaha before 5 or 6AM, and there's no way I'll last that long. Screw it. Take your time, get here when you get here, and we'll just go to bed, get up early, and go then."
This also let me relax and not have to worry about getting everything ready to go and closed/locked/turned off that night. I hate leaving the house for a trip late at night anyway -- as much of a night owl as I am, I get more meticulous and twitchy at night as well, and as I'm basically night-blind, I'm always paranoid I'll leave a door cracked, unlocked, or that I'll forget to do something really important/leave something really important behind. It's worse in the summer, too, since there's the added factor of needing to make sure the cats will have more than enough fresh water due to the heat. But this time around I'd done everything beforehand, it was (at the time) really comfortable and cool outside, and I figured that as it was supposed to rain the next day down here, it would be another cool, cloudy travel day -- and much easier to navigate than at night when both of us were tired. So, I did what every other red-blooded American male would do when he realizes he doesn't have to leave the house again for the rest of the day -- I removed my pants. Giggity.
"However," I added, "you should get something to eat on your way down here if you haven't already done so, since I've already been to Walmart and back and didn't get anything new or vegan because we'd planned to turn around and go home."
Again, this is true. I purposely try to eat everything I have on hand and avoid grocery shopping before I go on an extended trip -- I don't like leaving anything in the fridge that could or would spoil or otherwise go bad, since that would just be a waste of money (which, as you know, is at a premium while I'm still unemployed). What I'd purchased at Walmart was some Herr's Ketchup chips for Daisy, cat litter, cigarettes, and little else -- just the stuff I needed shortly before, during, and shortly after the trip. As a result, there wasn't much I had in the house I could feed Daisy.
Daisy arrived around 11 or so, and I could tell just by looking at her how tired she was. She hadn't eaten anything, either, but she didn't want anything. She actually was relieved that we wouldn't leave until the morning. After doing a spider-check of the basement and finding nothing, we went to bed. I told her I'd let her sleep as long as she wanted, and when we woke up, we'd get everything situated and we'd leave -- whenever that was. Because she couldn't find it, the only charger she had for her phone was the charger in the car, so shortly after she got here and texted her parents to let them know she was okay and that we were waiting until the morning, her phone died.
I woke up around 8AM or so on the morning of the 4th and got up quietly, letting her sleep. In that time I came upstairs, went through my morning routine, double-checked to make sure I had packed everything I needed, and once she woke up (around 11:30 or so) I fed her waffles and readied the cat room. I also sent her mother a text saying that Daisy's phone had died, her only charger was in the car, and that we'd be on the road shortly. Once everything was situated, we were on the road -- around 1PM or so we left the house, locking everything down, getting gas first, and then hitting the highway.
I want to describe the weather to you on the 4th, because to me it was bizarre. It wasn't even 80 degrees here in Newton when we left the house at 1PM; it was breezy and cool, and was mostly cloudy. I don't ever remember a July 4th since I've been living in the midwest that was so pleasant and calm instead of blazing, scorching hot and unbearable. Because the weather was so nice and because the hottest it was supposed to get over the week I'd be gone was 88 (again, remember, this was a forecast which was predicted well over a week ago), I had closed up the house completely, including my windows, and I'd turned off everything -- I'd even shut off the big power switch on the furnace/AC fan unit, since there's no reason to leave that sucking power when I'm not at home, and the cats didn't need it. It was so nice and cool in the house, and outside, for once in the summer, and according to the weather forecast, that was a trend that would continue. Because there was the chance of storms almost every day (at least a small chance, anyway) I'd even locked the car in the garage, which I mentioned earlier. For all intents and purposes, the house was sealed, my car was protected, and the cats were cool, safe, and well-fed. I was satisfied.
By the third day I was in Omaha, however, the weather had done an almost complete 180, and it was fucking scorching hot again.
But I'll get to that.
We arrived in Omaha pretty quickly and without incident; the trip seemed short, actually. Her parents were getting ready for dinner (grilled foods and picnic-like stuff, including a potato salad Mama made that was easily the best potato salad I've ever had), and then our plans were to stay up late sitting out on the porch watching fireworks throughout the neighborhood -- which we did end up doing, as loud and cacophonous as it was (oh, and it was). Daisy's dad supplied me with rum and Coke, as well as good beer, and we watched part of a Pawn Stars marathon as well. It was a very nice evening, and I was incredibly relaxed and enjoying being in a house with not only good air conditioning, but great air conditioning. I marveled at a house that could be kept at a comfortable 74 degrees at all times and actually kept you cool when you needed and wanted to be cool.
I'll tell the rest of the story, or as much of the rest of it as I can, in my next post.
No comments:
Post a Comment