Two-Week Flashback

It’s one thing not to update when I’ve got nothing going on, but once we get into a crazy time of year like this, it’s hard to remember everything that I wanted to say and didn’t get a chance to. I’ll try to be thorough but brief.

The trip to CT: Like I said in my last entry, the drive was exhausting, but uneventful. We packed some food so that we weren’t dependent on McDonald’s and truck stops, but by the time we were in Waterbury my tongue felt like a sweater. I tried to stay hydrated, but we had too much sugar, especially since I rely on Coca-Cola for my caffeine intake. If we’d left a half hour to an hour later, we would have been completely screwed by the weather in Kansas. I swear that state is terrifying for all that it’s monotonous. We had some transmission issues towards the end of the trip. It’s been struggling a bit even at home, usually when it’s hasn’t warmed up enough, but this is the first problem we’ve had once it gets going. It’s leaking, so we’re hoping it’s an easy fix like a seal or something. We do have to keep fluid in the trunk, just in case.

In Connecticut: We stayed in Waterbury on Tuesday, mostly relaxing and recuperating from the drive. I did discover that my feet and ankles had swollen rather alarmingly. I had noticed my fingers swelling on the drive, but I hadn’t really looked at my feet. So we took a walk around the mall, then picked up Zach at Walgreens and drove him to the tattoo shop where he’s been working and he tattooed Alan’s back. It was funny to watch because customers and artists generally wouldn’t bitch at each other quite so much. Apparently it was painful. But then, what did he really expect from a tattoo that crossed both his shoulder blades and spine?

We kind of took things easy the rest of the week. We went down to Norwalk, did some exploring of various places. We went to Stew Leonard’s the day before Christmas Eve, which is of course an exercise in complete fucking insanity. If you’ve never been to Stew’s on a regular day, you can’t possibly understand. It’s mostly a grocery store, but with a significant dose of theme park. And it’s worse at Christmas because they have wonderful food at decent prices and good quality additions, like wreaths, trees, centerpieces, flowers, etc. But the cookies were worth it, as is the soft serve ice cream, though we skipped that because it was chilly. We warmed up at Dunkin Donuts because there are just certain places that it’s appropriate to see certain people. Dunkin Donuts is just a "Tim" sort of place. So we hung out with him for a bit. We also picked up Lisa at the Aquarium.

We had dinner at the Colony one night, then at SBC in Stamford another night. On Saturday morning, Bill and Liz came up to Waterbury for brunch. Bill has lost some weight, which can only be a good thing. They tried to get out of coming up, but since Alan was absolutely NOT going to let me in their house, they relented and came for brunch. Christmas Eve, Kurt was working, so we drove through a park to look at the lights, then picked up Zach at the mall and went for Chinese food.

Christmas itself was fun. We got up whenever since Kurt was sleeping off a 24-hour shift  and had leftover brunch casserole from the day before and fresh coffee cake. Zach was working and Lisa was cooking. My mom came down from Vermont around 1 PM so we had a nice long visit. Richard and Kathy came too and brought Ken with them. He’s a friend of theirs, but doesn’t have much family, so it’s almost like he’s an adopted member of the family. It’s always nice seeing everyone.

For Christmas, Rich and Kathy gave us a Target gift card (which will be going toward a carseat very shortly). Lisa made a super cute sweater for Pippa and a beautiful little quilt. She also made me a scarf. Alan gave me a Kindle and some accessories… very exciting! I’ve already got a few books on there that Lisa gave me from her account, including The Hunger Games trilogy, which I technically finished in about 3 days… 1 per book. I had to make a concerted effort not to read them all at once. Zach gave me a figurine of Sally from The Nightmare Before Christmas. For dinner, Kurt deep fried a turkey, which was absolutely delicious. Plus sweet potato casserole, twice baked potatoes, sausage stuffing, green beans, homemade bread, and pear crumble. It was all amazing and tasty and fun to eat because eaten with family.

The next day, Alan and I gathered up our stuff, had lunch in Hamden with Lisette (I’m having real trouble with booths these days LOL) and then went up to Vermont. My dad was home when we got there and Fonzie was very excited to see us. She even jumped up on Alan and at ten years old, she’s really NOT a jumper. My mom got home not too much later and we had dinner and opened more presents. My mom gave me a gold horse ornament and two books (A First Rate Madness and The Boundaries of Her Body) while my dad got me a calendar, a baby album (not pink!), and the newest edition of Dr. Spock, which I’ve already started reading. Alan has basically gotten everything he wanted before deployment… a skinny fast camera, new wallet, and a new watch. Good thing too since his wallet and watch were both either dead or dying. He went skiing the next day while I stayed at the house with Fonzie and read and watched TV. The skiing wasn’t great apparently because only about half the mountain is open, but there were still tons of people around. I also took a short walk up the hill and back because it helps with the ankle puffiness. We had dinner at a pizza place in town, by which time the weather had gotten… interesting. My dad has a nerve-wracking habit of checking how icy his road is by periodically braking hard and seeing how the brakes lock up and skid. It’s terrifying, but at least I was in the backseat… Incidentally, I was IN the backseat because I knew that I’d be having a panic attack sitting in the front seat in that weather. Still, the pizza was good and I could actually fit in the booth with some degree of comfort.

Alan skied the next morning, while I was supposed to be hanging out with my mom at work, which is at the pool in Solitude Village. The security guard was a real Nazi though… clearly he’s a retired or failed cop. So Alan ended up having to drop me off there, then drive down to the Jackson Gore parking lot and take the shuttle. Apparently the condo owners hired private security to deal with people parking there, but it’s just as clearly backfired on them. He actually followed me into the pool and I had to tell him to fuck off. He then came back and "tattled" to my mom about my language (I’d already told her) and scold me because apparently I’m 12. He also threatened to complain about me and have it rebound on my mom… which is funny if you think about it because she’s been working there 4 years now and is employed by Okemo… NOT the condo associated that hired him. Her supervisor basically told the guy to fuck off too. At any rate, the asshole kind of ruined the day, so Alan didn’t ski for long. Which was just as well because the snow and rain that had been falling all night and morning turned nasty and cold toward the evening, so everything froze up and became very scary.  We had breakfast at The Hatchery with my mom in the morning, then packed up and headed back to Waterbury.

As it turned out, I never did get tosee my grandmother because she decided not to go up to Vermont or to come to Christmas dinner in Waterbury. Only I didn’t know this in time to make plans to see her. So now Lisa has taken her Christmas present to work on the idea that she’ll have to go to the Aquarium to pick up her lighthouse anyway. I was planning on calling this morning, mostly because it meant that she’d be at church and less likely to answer the phone, but I forgot until it was too late. So I’ll have to take the chance tomorrow. I don’t particularly want to call her because that means having her try to make me feel bad that she didn’t make seeing family a bigger priority than a Girl Scout trip. It also means her disapproving our decision not to have the baby Christened, which I would consider hypocritical since neither of us is religious and we have absolutely no intention of bringing our children up in any particular faith. So to go to a church and promise just that is a lie and despite being irreligious, I don’t particularly approve of lying.

Anyway, we left for home on Friday morning. We hit some rain through Pennsylvania and Ohio. It was so bad at one point that we had to stop driving, which is just as well, since it was dinner time. We went to Denny’s, then got back in the car with me driving. We didn’t pack much food this time around… a decision I eventually came to regret because the food you can get on the road is almost exclusively salty or sugary and sometimes both. We had some apples, but there are only so many apples you can really have before they’re just exhausting. The worst part of the trip was Kansas this time around. It was okay for a while, but then the wind picked up and the driving got very physical. Between the effort of keeping the car in the lane and the sun beating on the side of my face, I was sweating. We also encountered our first road closure. I called the info line, but it was remarkably unhelpful, so we stopped for gas and some real life information. According the guy at the truck stop, there was a pile-up on I-70 involving several cars that had shut down both sides of the thruway. After stocking up on food and water, just in case, and extensive map consultation, we decided to take the chance on the thruway, figuring that even if there was a major accident, by the time we got to the area that was closed, they would have at least cleared  it up partially. Enough to get through, at any rate. Well, it turned out that it wasn’t anything… Not an accident, anyway. What it was was seriously fucking windy with driving ice and snow. It got scary for a while, so I mostly hunkered way down in my seat clutching a pillow and whimpered. Alan got us through safely though. We did hit a tumbleweed at one point, which was scary because they’re sharp and we heard a bang, followed by a hiss. Fortunately, it was just the sound of the tumbleweed catching and dragging under the car, not a popped tire.

Seriously, I fucking hate Kansas.

We got home around 7:30, safe and sound, but very tired and more than a little stressed out. It’s so good to be home. I immediately went into nesting mode and put away absolutely everything, then took a hot shower for as long as the water held out. There’s nothing quite like wearing the same clothes for 30+ hours to make you feel really disgusting. We watched some "Psych" and some "SVU’ on Netflix, but mostly we just crashed and cuddled the kitties, who were very happy to see us. It’s wonderful to sleep in my own bed again and to be meowed at the moment I seem to be waking up. Alan went down to the grocery store this morning for bagels, eggs, and a few necessities. We’ll do the real shopping tomorrow, but we had to have something to eat. I’ve been slowing chipping away at the pile of laundry and putting away our new things. Alan’s been playing Skyrim. No arrows to the knee yet. 😛 The cats have been obsessively snuggly and unwilling to let us out of their sight for fear we’ll go away again. I also measured the shelves on the changing table that Sgt. Baumiller gave us, so we can get some baskets for it. I figure that at least for now, that will work just as well as a dresser. When she has bigger clothes and more of them we’ll look into a dresser, particularly once that’s her bedroom full time. Clearly our next place will need three bedrooms and some really amazing storage.

My feet are still puffy from the long drive back, but it’s going down very slowly. Hopefully by tomorrow they’ll be normal sized again. I have pretty feet and ankles and it’s disturbing to look down and see tree stumps in their place.

I’m doing a 365-Day photo challenge this year. I may very well start with one of my feet. Just so I’m not terrified in a few years when I’m pregnant again and have forgotten that this happens during pregnancy and start panicking. Anyway, it’s about dinner time and I’ve got yet more laundry to do. Pictures and a rant about my parents house are both forthcoming.

~Liz