o/` Stabbing Westward – High o/`
I’m home!
I just caught up on reading everyone’s entries that I missed, it took a very long time %) And now this entry will probably take most of the afternoon to write ;) I doubt anyone will read the whole thing, but it’s really a record of events for my personal record %)
:: Saturday June 7th ::
I woke up at 4 am. Took a shower, checked email, popped into IRC for a couple minutes, checked to make sure I had everything. We left home to get to the Glenside Station and catch my train which arrived at 6:59. I was a bit scared, I had never ridden on a train alone before (and even with other people I had only been on one about 4 times).. I told this to the guy on the train who collected the money for the tickets.
“Well, you’re in for an adventure today,” he said.
“Oh no,” I replied. My first through was that I was on the wrong train somehow.
“They closed down part of the line for repairs, so you will nede to take a shuttle bus half the way,” he quickly explained. So I was on the right train!
Still, ugh! Luckily people were very nice along the way, and I got where I needed to go, despite being terrified. The bus ride didn’t even take too much time off of my trip.
At about 8 I got to the philly airport. I got in line to check my bag and get my boarding pass, and while in line an airport employee said that people with e-tickets could do a self check in. Great, I got out of the normal baggage line, got in the short line for the e-ticket machines, only to finally get to one and find out you need a credit card “for identification purposes” to use it! I don’t have a credit card. I sighed and had to go back to the regular baggage line. Finally got through the line around 8:30 and got to my terminal to go through all their crazy security. I even had to take my shoes off! But everything was fine and I got to the correct gate without any trouble.
We boarded at 9 am and I ended up having to sit between two women (it was a 737, 3 seats on each side of the plane). They seemed nice enough, but the woman with the window seat quickly said, “Just so you know, I’m sick. But I’m on anti-biotics so I’m probably not contageous anymore. I will cough in the other direction.”
Unsure of how to respond to this I put on my most sarcastic voice and said, “oh, it’s not SARS right?” and then grinned.
“No, just a cold.”
“I was joking anyway.”
“I know, but it’s still a legitimate question these days.”
She seemed very nice though, we talked for some of the flight.
Getting my luggage and stuff was uneventful. The shuttle van from Boston to Nashua was very nice and comfortable, and short! My grandfather (Granddad) met me at the Sheraton Tera Hotel and brought me to see my grandmother (Nana) at their independed living home. They gave me the grand tour of the place, and I ate lunch there, which wasnt too bad. It’s a very nice place, and they are both healthy and seem to be doing good, even went out and played golf the day before! (Granddad is almost 84, Nana is 80). I took a few minutes to send an email to Myk to tell him I had arrived ok. All they have is an imac on AOL, ah! It was soooo slow! *g* I spent part of the afternoon speaking with Granddad, he was his usual self %) And explained some of the issues with my father. He also went into some of the concerns about Heather’s choice of career, and then went into exactly what I was doing, which he seemed to approve of (consulting type things, working for myself). In all, it was a nice visit, my granddad can be fairly intense sometimes and this wasn’t one of them.
We then went to see my aunt Elaine (not the one I usually write about, this is my OTHER aunt elaine). She seems to be doing well. Nana and her brought me to Borders so I could buy a small 8th grade graduation gift for Annette. Then we decided to go see my Aunt Meg. She seems happy, still into skydiving and was packing up her parachute when we arrived. Her place is quite nice, a big condo right on a river. From
there we went back to see my grandparents and have dinner. My cousin Brendon (who is is just a couple months older than me, we used to play often when we were little) and Aunt Meg (Brendon’s mother) met us there, which was nice because then all of granddad’s talk wasn’t directed at me.
Following dinner, Brendon and I went back to my Aunt Elaine’s house and met up with my cousin Erica (the one who lived in Philly for a little while) and proceeded to head out to a bar called the “Nashua Garden.” It wasn’t a bad place, I had some Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, and I felt really good about knowing what I liked in a bar, hehe. We met my cousin Melissa there, I hadn’t seen her in years, and this was really the first time I felt I could talk to her as an equal (Last time I saw her I was 15 and she was in her mid 20s). Bars arent really my thing, and at one point I went to the bathroom and while coming back this guy stopped in front of me, smiled, and said “hi” … as tired as I was I didn’t really know how to react so I just ignored him and kept walking back to my table… I avoided the restroom the rest of the night so I wouldn’t run into him again, hehe. It was really cool seeing my cousins, we all go along and had a nice time, and family is family! We didn’t have to be shy with each other, and it was nice catching up with each other and finding out what we were all doing. The only down side was a “friend” of Erica’s (Erica likes his friend, so she puts up with him) came by our table and was relucatant to leave *shrugs* eventually he got the message that he wasn’t too welcome and left. We all ended up talking until after 11, when Melissa said that she had to leave so she could get up early and go to work in the morning. I was exhausted too. Erica and I went back to my Aunt Elaine’s and ended up going to bed around midnight.
I did learn a few things from Erica that made me a little uncomfortable. Apparently a few weeks ago Granddad mentioned that once I come up to Maine and see the situation that I could probably move back to take care of my father and put heather on the right track (“every little girl wants to be a vet, it’s a bad field to be in!”). I guess Erica made it quite clear to him that he couldn’t ask me to do that, and it would be wrong for me to even consider it. I guess everyone there is sorta afraid of scaring me off again… I mean there were a couple years when I pretty much shut off all contact with all of my family, partially because I didn’t want to “hear it” from them. I do want to be part of the family more than I have been the past few years, but I won’t give up all that I have to go back to Maine where I will just be miserable.
:: Sunday June 8th ::
I woke up around 9, it was the best night sleep I got my entire trip. I got to see my Uncle Chris and then around 10 my Aunt Elaine, Erica and I left for the drive up to Maine. Stopped at a dunkin donuts to get the much needed coffee and muffin %) The ride wasnt bad, it was drizzling a little (like it was all weekend). It was funny getting back into Maine where I was familiar, everything is so small and slow! Hehe. We had planned to meet Heather and my father at the rehab place where my dad was, and got there right at noon. The rehab place looks ok, it’s not a dump, and the people there are all pretty scruffy. We waited around for my father to come downstairs. He came down and I barely recognised him. He has put on a lot of weight, his skin problems (chronic psoriasis) have gotten much worse, and he has not shaved in *months* so he has scruffy beard. And his hands were shaking, he was barely coherent. I was floored. A couple minutes after he came downstairs I had to go stand outside for a minute because I just needed to get out of there. Erica followed me and said that he was doing much much better a few weeks before when she saw him, and that she had never seen him this bad. “We were looking forward to you coming because he was so normal last time we saw him, this is the complete opposite, I am sorry,” she said to me. I nearly cried, but was able to
hold it back as my father came out so we could go to lunch. My Aunt pretty much took care of my father while we were out, making sure he got his food ok, trying to keep the conversation going, I tried to keep my father in it too, but I was just so shocked by his condition that I couldn’t do much. He ended up going back to the rehab place for a nap after lunch. Of course this bothered me since I only had that one day to spend with him, and he was doing so badly… my aunt and Erica left then, and I guess they felt *horrible* about leaving because of my father’s condition.
Heather and I spent the afternoon driving around to places. We checked into the motel we were staying at for the night, went to the mall for a bit to buy Heather some luggage for her trip to canada in a couple weeks, went to the grocery store to pick up some beer and popcorn for later that night (I needed it after seeing my father like that!). We bought some beanie babies too, picked up a little moose one for Myk %) We also went to heather’s place so I could meet her cat and hop online to write a quick email to Myk about how things were going. Then we stopped at the storage place that has all the stuff from the old house I grew up in, I got some old papers from school and stuff, we couldnt get to much since it was piled so insanely, but I couldn’t take much with me anyway. We went back to the rehab place around 6 to pick up my father for dinner.
At least he had improved to the point of being coherent and able to maintain a conversation with us. We went to the Weathervane, which is a seafood place in the mall parking lot. Heather and I ordered lobster and my father got the fish and chips. He was still rather quiet, and I tried to keep conversation flowing between all of us, and it hurt because it was the sort of thing I did grow up too, pretending things were ok and trying to keep people sane *sigh* … my father had a bit of trouble eating because his hands were still shakey, and I felt so horrible about seeing him that way… After dinner we went back to the motel so we could “Talk.” Apparently the test results reguarding his condition came back and were fairly bad. His liver is not repairing itself from the years of alcoholism, and he needs a transplant. Unfortunately he can’t get a transplant since they don’t do that for alcoholics for obvious reasons. They can do transfusions and such to clean his blood, but with all the other medical problems he has on top of the liver problems, they only guessed that he has another 2-5 years to live. That is sad, he’s my father, I love him despite everything… to imagine that he’ll be gone in that time? It really upsets me… and it saddens me that this could have been prevented if my father had not been drinking for so long. I find myself deeply torn between the sadness I feel for losing him in the near future, and the anger I feel for knowing that he did this to himself. Sure, there are millions of alcoholics, but he never could break free from it, he never had the strength to do it for himself or us.
We had to bring my father back to the rehab place before 10. I guess he expected to get a motel room too (he had a pass to get out of the rehab place for 2 days), but he never communicated this request to anyone, so his disappointment was frustrating, what could I do? After dropping him off we went to Heather’s to pick up stuff she’d need for staying with me in the motel (I didn’t want to stay alone!), then we went to see Leslie, the only friend from high school who I still communicate with (mostly through this web log). Heather drove us, and had trouble backing out of the driveway (And I let this girl drive me all over southern maine? GAH!) so she went down to the bottom of the driveway to turn around and her car started making a squealing noise, at first we assumed it was her tires since she was making such a sharp turn, but when she finally got out on the road it still made the noise. Of course Heather was freaking out, but we just asked her to relax and we’d worry about it when we stopped. We stopp
ed and looked under the car, things looked ok, and nothing was burning %) So we just went into the Tim Horton’s and Heather and I got some hot drinks. It was nice seeing Leslie, she looks good, seems to be doing ok too %) Lost in that 20-something “what am i doing with my life?” funk, which most of the people I know are in, myself included. It was kinda funny talking to her since we have pretty much kept up with each other through web logs, so finding something to talk about was difficult. “Well just the other week I…” “I know, you wrote about it in your web log” .. but eventually we got to talking about things we hadnt written about in web journals, hehe. It was really nice %D 
And while I was there visiting, she showed me the little Compaq laptop she had thought about selling to me. It has so many demons! On boot up it takes forever because some virus has done some crazy things to the windows boot sequence. But it’s a little Compaq Presario 1245, 333mhz, only 32 mb of ram… which I will NEED to upgrade, but I am sure I can get a little 64 mb chip for around $20. It’s not a bad little computer %) I plan to put debian on it… with Myk’s help of course, since I know nothing about PCMCIA and he has been working on a couple laptops this past week. It also has an older NIC, which we will replace with a newer 10/100 one that we have, YAY! I have a laptop now. Sure, I’ll just be using it for word processing and a little chatting, but it’ll work, especially after I get the ram upgrade (unfortunately the limit to ram upgrades is 96 mb).
We left Tim Horton’s around 1, since we all needed to get up the next morning, and Heather was gettnig a bit antsy about wanting to figure out what was wrong with her car. We decided to drop Leslie off and then drive straight to the motel. The sound in the car wasn’t getting any better, but we drove on fast straight roads mostly and couldnt really hear it %) We got back to the motel, and heather is going on about how if her car is broken she wont be able to get to work and she’ll be all lost, etc etc so I said “ok, do you have a flashlight? We will look around the tires, and under the hood to see if we can find problems ok? We can’t do anything about it tonight though. She agreed. Nothing was stuck in the tires or anything that would cause such a noise, and then I looked under the hood, first thing I looked at was the power steering fluid thing. And guess what! She had NONE. Oh man… now I have dealt with old cars that need many fluids replaced often, so checking fluids in my car is like second nature to me, I couldn’t believe she had gone so far as to let it be empty! We decided to just head to wal mart in the morning to grab some fluid, and in the meantime, get some sleep! So we headed into the motel room, and oh, we have beer! I pulled it out of the drawer where we had hid it (couldnt keep it out in full view when my recovering alcoholic father came to visit now could I?), and got out some popcorn. By this time it was about 2 am. We each had two beers, some cheese popcorn, and some fudge while watching TV and finally got to sleep around 3 am.
:: Monday, June 9th ::
The alarm didn’t go off at 7:30 like Heather said she set it at. Maybe it was broken, I didn’t bother looking when I woke up at 8 am and got in the shower. We had planned to go right up to my mother’s house that morning, but I decided it would be ok to go out for coffee with my father first, since I didn’t get to spend much time with him. First we stopped at Wal-Mart to get the power steering fluid. I poured it in the car up to the proper level, she turned on the car and pulled out of the parking space, no more squealing! YAY! I fix0rd it %) Showed up at the rehab place to pick up my dad at 9:30 like we said we would, he was already waiting. But had to head up to his room for a minute, and the guy in charge of the rehab place asked us to come int
o a private room to talk to him for a minute. Apparently my father had stopped taking his medication for a few days, which could account for the shakes he was experiencing. And it sorta seemed like he was trying to accuse us of something, “I am trying to help him, now if there is anything I need to know…” I guess it’s his job though. I have no idea why he’d stop taking them, but that was probably why he looked so horrible on sunday. He looked better on Monday morning, nearly his old self again communication wise, and I was pleased with that, the man I saw the previous day I could barely accept as being my father. So we went out to Dunkin Donuts, just because we only had about an hour and really no where else to go. We had coffee and talked a little more, mostly just small talk, talked about how my life is going, how Myk is, what my plans are… it was nice. Around 11 we brought him back to the rehab place and said goodbye.
We stopped at Heather’s for a couple minutes so she could feed the cat and email her boyfriend real quick, then headed up to my mother’s. Now, during the entire trip I assured Heather that we had money to do whatever she wanted. Nana had given me a few hundred dollars to make sure gas was paid for, and we had everything we needed, and STILL everytime I turned around Heather was complaining about money. She wanted to take 295 up to my mother’s, but got on the highway going the wrong way, easy to do, I’ve done it dozens of times! But then when I suggested she just go and take 495 she said “but that costs like $4” … I blinked, looked at her, laughed and said “JUST GO!” And she went %) It drove me crazy though, we went to the store and she was checking price tags every other second. Granted, I used to do that too, because we grew up in a home with very little money, but you need to let go sometimes, especially since I had assured her that it was ok. And Heather talks a lot. I’m sure it’s because she is lonely, but on the way up to my mother’s she just couldn’t stop talking, even about boring things… ugh… at one point (despite feeling bad about doingso) I turned up the music a bit to see if she’d stop talking, she didn’t. So I tried to stay interested, I was just so tired and so bored with travelling! And it was raining again, so I wasn’t in the best mood I guess.
We got to my mother’s around 2. She took us out for a small lunch, and mentioned that we were having hamburgers for dinner. I told her that I didn’t eat beef and they arranged to make some turkey burgers, yay! Lunch was good, and mom introduced me to some family member that owned the place, I don’t remember who he was %) But they were all impressed that I’m the girl from Philadelphia, oh the big city! Hehe… it was an interesting position to be in because they were asking me all about the city, and I really do just live in the suburbs! After that we went to a horse barn when one of Annette’s friends “works” I guess. And there is a horse there named Apache who was neglected, and she’s still pretty skinny, but my mother wants her, hmm, my mother never really showed interest in owning a horse before this! But I guess she can afford to keep her, and has every intenion of taking care of her, so we’ll see. Of course my allergies went crazy because of the hay and I had to go outside and use some eye drops before my eyes got all red and puffy. Maybe I am a city girl afterall! Hehe.
We then went back to my mother’s house.
Yes, that is her house. I am not going to say anymore about it because she’s my mother and it would be wrong. Extrapolate my feelings folks.
Annette asked me to look at her computer. It seems they bought it from Rent A Center, oh dear %) But it’s not a bad computer, I never did look to find out how fast it was or anything, but she had all sorts of crap running, errors everywh
ere… it was a mess, and she complained that she didnt have sound. First thing I asked was if the speakers were plugged in, she assured me they were (I should have looked). I proceeded to remove tons of silly programs, stop the dozens of things that started when windows booted up, and really made it run nicely, but the sound still wasnt working. Finally I moved the computer to see if I could open it and take a look at the sound card, and lo! The speakers weren’t plugged in. Goddammit. %) It’s good that I got things running nicely for her though. I think her screensaver broke unfortunately and I didn’t have time to look and see why. It’s not really important, she’ll live, it was probably some crazy program who screws with settings when it is uninstalled, who knows, not me, I don’t do windows %) Then Heather came to me and complained that my mother’s computer couldnt see either of the cdrom drives. I was still busy with a couple things so I suggested she run the new hardware manager to see if it would even see the drives, and told her I’d look at it later. Right before dinner my mother said she was going out to the hardware store to get a grill lighter, and dragged me along so we could have some alone time to talk. Luckily she wasn’t too interested in dwelling on conversation about my father, and was good about it when I told her I didn’t really want to talk about him. She just wanted to see how I was doing, explain how the situation with her was and stuff *shrugs* it was good talk, and it was nice to get away from everyone else and be able just to talk to her. It was then time to go to Annette’s graduation.
It was kinda boring, same old sort of thing every school has, awards are given to the same 20 kids over and over again, for an hour or so. I wasn’t sad when it was over. They all walked by and I took some more pictures, but I took them with the real camera, so I need to develop the film %) As she walked by I yelled “Yeah MONKEY!” … not many of her friend’s know about that nickname, so it was amusing. We got back to mom’s around 9:30.
I took a look at my mother’s computer while Annette got ready for bed. It’s a Dell on Windows XP, which I’ve never really used, but when I rebooted it it complained about not being able to identify what was on the secondary IDE. My mother said “It always does that, just hit F1” (F2 goes into the BIOS). Well of course that was why their drives werent showing up! I poked around in the BIOS and couldn’t find anything amiss. And apparently the drives never worked, and they’ve had this computer for months. I told them that they’d just have to call Dell tech support. Jerry (my mother’s new husband) asked if I would, hah! Have you ever been on Dell’s tech support line? I would have been on it all night. And the only other thing I could do was open up the computer and see if things looked right, but that could possibly void the warrenty, no thanks. I told him that they’d just have to call, they are used to newbies, and my experience would probably hinder more than help a call like that. Yes, I gave up! Hehe.
Heather, Annette, and Mom
My mother had a bunch of old pictures too. We went through all those, I picked out a few dozen that I wanted. I had the last two beers from the 6 pack I had bought the previous day (after asking if anyone minded), heather brought out the rest of the cheese popcorn, and after Annette went to bed, my mother, heather, and I stayed up and talked til about midnight. It was nice, just relaxing and talking, while munching on popcorn and chocolate.
:: Tuesday, June 10th ::
I woke up around 6:30 because my mother and Annette were getting up. We had planned to leave there around 9:30 so we could meet Erica at noon in Portsmouth. I took a shower, which was fairly unpleasant because the water there is so rust
y, ugh. After that I played with my chinchilla Merlynn for a bit.
Me and Merlynn
We were ready to leave around 8, and decided that we should just stop somewhere in South Portland and get some yummie breakfast. So we left my mom’s at 8:30, drove to South Portland (via 295 this time, I guess it’s faster). Ended up eating at IHOP. After breakfast I suggested we hop over to the Victoria’s Secret in the mall because they were having their semi-annual sale, and I didn’t feel like dragging Myk to the store to buy underwear, hee. We get into the store and Heather looked completely lost, when I asked her she just said “I just can’t see spending $3 on one pair” … Er, she was serious! Now I’m not saying that every girl should shop at a nice underclothes store like victoria’s secret, or that it will make them feel better for doing so, but it’s just a good example of how completely selfless she has become. She never does anything to benefit herself. I guess Erica recently took her out to get her nails done, you know, basic manicure just so the nails look nice, no colorful polish or anything, and she made excuses about how silly it was the whole time. She needs to realize that she can do good things for herself too! She can be selfish sometimes! *shakes her head*
We got to Portsmouth just before noon, met Erica there soon after. Erica and I ended up getting a quick lunch in Arlington, Mass (just outside of Boston) and then stopped for a little while at my cousin Keith’s house. He wasn’t home, but I got to meet his wife and his new son %) It was nice, but I was so exhausted so I dont think I made a very good impression! Doh! At about 4 we left and drove to the Boston airport. I checked my bags, got through the terminal I needed to, had about an hour on my hands. So I got a soda (because I could barely keep my eyes open) and some gummie bears and sat waiting for the plane. Got on the plane at 6, I got a window seat, YAY! And it was a clear warm day, the plane was hot inside, but at least I could see out the window. It was a nice view, and we flew along the coast almost the whole trip. The guy next to me slept the whole time, snoring sometimes, hehe. The plane ended up being 15 minutes early so we had to wait for the terminal, got off the plane and was able to grab my luggage by about 8:10.. just in time to miss the 8:09 train to Glenside! Gah! Now I had read that I’d have to take a bus or something, but I guess I was just mistaken. When the train came around 8:40 I was confused because I was supposed to take the R1 and this one was the R2… and… oh I am such the anti-train traveller! I was confused, but the guy taking tickets was very helpful so I got back alright.
Myk was waiting for me at the station when I finally got off the train at 9:30ish. I was so travel worn! And I felt horrible, and I was hungry. So Myk took me to Friday’s YAY! I had a chicken sandwich, it was good %) Got home around 11, I was so exhausted. I came in the apartment and was so glad to be home, I started emptying out my suitcases, and showed Myk the laptop, and then realized that I wasn’t awake enough to put everything away just yet, so I piled it up, got a glass of water, and went to sleep.
:: Today ::
I did laundry, cleaned up my suitcase mess %) And wrote this, hehe. I still have to get caught up on my email, ugh… Now I’m getting ready for dinner and to go to the Philly Chix meeting, ah! Hopefully I Won’t be late, I’ve never been to this location before. After this meeting I’m going to come home and stay at home for weeks! Hehehe… so so soooo tired! *wanders off to make dinner*
And congrats if you read all this, you are crazy ;) A couple more trip pictures here: http://www.princessleia.com/images/MyImages/Photos
/mainetrip2003/
