8/11/06

like Holly did. I’ll let y’all know more as soon as I know what’s going on.

* * * (The last of the Maine recaps. You’re welcome!) Friday morning we got up and going fairly early, because we were all – my parents, Debbie and Brian, the spud and I – going to Kittery to spend the day shopping. My parents recently bought a car with three rows of seats for just such a reason, and I volunteered the spud and I to sit in the very back, since we’re the two shortest of the bunch. The very back seat wasn’t terribly comfortable, but it also wasn’t too bad (I think it took about an hour to get there). We got to Kittery just as the stores started opening, and we spent a good couple of hours shopping. I really love the stores in Kittery, because there’s a specialty store for just about anything you could imagine. I especially loved the store that featured stuff made by New England artists. Naturally, I spent too much money. After a couple of hours, my father and Brian were pretty bored – we really should have taken separate vehicles so they could have gone home after lunch, instead of sitting around looking like they were going to expire from the boredom – and we were all getting hungry, so we went for lunch, ending up at the same restaurant where we went last year, actually. I had totally decided to order the turkey dinner, because it sounded so good, but not ten seconds before the waitress came over, Debbie mentioned she was going to get the cold pot roast sandwich, and when it came time to order, my brain heard my mouth say “The turkey dinner”, but my mouth actually said “The pot roast dinner.” When it came, I thought “This doesn’t look like turkey.” But it was good, so I ate it. Toward the end of the meal, Debbie said “So basically we got the same thing, only yours is a meal, not a sandwich?”, which is when it came out that I was eating pot roast. Um. DUH. At least it was good. We left the restaurant and went on to do a bunch more shopping, including hitting the Kittery Trading Post (I could spend all day in there), the Bali store (where I should have been professionally fitted for a bra, but everyone working there was about 19, and NO I’m not taking my shirt off in front of a 19 year-old unless he’s REALLY cute and has a thing for saggy old broads), and Liz Claiborne, where I was going to buy some earrings, but I noticed they were asking for everyone’s name, address and phone number, and HELL NO am I going to give out that information for the sheer privilege of buying earrings from them, so I put them back and walked out of the store. I don’t remember what time we left Kittery, but it was probably close to 5, because we hit some rush hour traffic, made worse by an accident that had us backed up for a couple of miles. I was getting hungry and so was Debbie, so I suggested we stop and eat at LoneStar in South Portland. The spud fell asleep in the car. If falling asleep in the car were an Olympic event, she’d be buried in gold medals. We did, and I ordered a steak, and really? Not so great. I think that the steaks Fred has been grilling at home, and the Flo’s Filet I had at Longhorn have ruined me for all other steaks. Luckily, Brian was with us, so I pawned my steak off on him. We got home and pretty much just hung around the house for the rest of the evening. Saturday. I… do not for the life of me remember what we did Saturday during the day. Maybe hung around the house, ran a few errands? Oh, I know – at one point my mother and the spud and I went… somewhere. I don’t remember where! Then we stopped at JoAnn’s Fabrics on the way home and I bought a mesh hamper for the cats (confidential to Deb: Actually, the $5 hamper didn’t hold up any better than the $1 ones we’ve been getting at the flea market. When you’ve got a Booger-y bastard jumping on top of the hamper, no hamper’s going to be able to withstand that for long.) and some magnet picture frames for the fridge. Then we went down a few stores to the cut-rate card store (can’t remember the name), so I could buy some wrapping paper to wrap Brian’s birthday present, so I could give it to him before I left for home. His birthday’s not ’til the 20th of this month, but I’d seen a Life is Good t-shirt at the Kittery Trading Post the day before, so I wanted to give it to him since I never get to see him open his presents. We got back to my parents’ house and hung around for a while, and after a while people started showing up. Debbie bought Brian a Duct Tape calendar for $2 in Kittery. He was fascinated by it. He’s already pretty handy to have around, but I’m telling you – when this kid grows up, he’s going to be the handiest handyman around. He’ll probably build his own house out of mud and sticks, and it will be a MANSION. Someone tell me what this plant is. I want one. Unless it’s poisonous to cats. And then I want two. (Heh! Kidding!) “You pipple giffs me zee headache.” “Who weel trow zee ball for zee Bahnjee?” The t-shirt I got for Brian. (picture taken by Debbie.) “I hate you people and your flashy things.” (picture taken by Debbie.) People didn’t hang around too long; in fact, I think everyone cleared out by a little after 7. We planned to meet up at The Old Country Buffet in South Portland for a late breakfast, because 1. It being Sunday, it’s the law that you must go out for breakfast. and 2. The spud’s flight for home was leaving a little after 1:00. (I don’t know if I mentioned this, but when I was buying tickets for the spud and I, it ended up being about $600 more if I fixed it so we were on the same flight home, whereas if I left the day after she did, it was $600 less. She had to be home on Monday to pick up her schedule for school, and she’s almost 18 and has flown all over the place by herself, so I opted for the cheaper tickets.) I was poking around in the refrigerator looking for a snack around 8:00 when my father told me “You can have anything but that lobster in there!” Thursday, when we had lobster for lunch, the spud and I each had two lobsters, but my parents only had one apiece, and put the other two in the refrigerator to eat at a later date. I said to my father, “Didn’t you know it’s a crime in the state of Maine to leave a lobster in the refrigerator for more than 24 hours?” and he said “You can have it if you want, I probably won’t eat it.” He didn’t have to say THAT twice, so I had cold lobster for a snack and it was DIVINE. We went to the airport, and my mother waited in the car with Mireya while I went inside with the spud. Since she’s still a minor (for a few more months!), I got a pass to go back to the gate with the spud. I made sure she was sitting in front of the right gate and was all settled, told her we would stay in the Portland area until her flight took off, and that I’d have my cell phone with me, and to call if there were any problems, and hugged her good-bye. My mother, Mireya, and I went to the Maine Mall, where we walked around and looked in a few stores. There was nothing we hadn’t seen just the week before, so we mostly wandered around while waiting for the spud to call and tell us she’d boarded the plane. Except that instead of calling and telling me she’d boarded the plane, she called and said “They made an announcement and I don’t know what they said. Something about connecting flights.” So I said “Is there someone in a uniform standing near the gate?” And the conversation went on, pointlessly, for a few minutes before I finally just said “Well, we’re headed toward Lisbon Falls. Call when you’re boarding and call if there are any problems.” I was gambling that there wouldn’t be any more problems, but even if there was, Lisbon Falls is only about half an hour from the airport, so it isn’t like the spud would have to cool her heels for hours while waiting for us to come back. And I was tired of hanging around the airport. So we headed back toward Lisbon Falls, and when we were almost there, the spud called to let me know they were boarding her plane. I told her to call me from Cincinnati if she had the chance, and we hung up. We were originally supposed to have dinner at Tracy’s house, he was going to make chili, but by the time he got groceries and got home, it was too late to make the chili – it needs to cook for something like six hours – so we said we’d do it another time. Hummingbird outside the kitchen window. Liz called to see what I was doing, and asked if I wanted to go to Brunswick with her. I didn’t really want to hang around the house – my mother looked like she was ready for some quiet napping-on-the-couch time – so I told her I’d love to go to Brunswick with her. We ended up dropping Mireya off at Debbie’s house so Tracy could pick her up there, and wouldn’t have to go all the way to my parents’ house, and then we were on our way to Brunswick. We had dinner at Applebee’s first; Liz had something I don’t remember, with a side of coconut shrimp, one of which she gave me, and it was really good. I ended up with a dish that had garlic asiago chicken (WAY too salty, but also somehow bland. Don’t ask me how they did that.) and butterfly shrimp on the side. If I could eat shrimp for breakfast, lobster for lunch and shrimp and lobster for dinner every day, I’d die a very happy woman. When we were done eating, we went over to Wal-Mart to do a little shopping. Liz had a grocery list of stuff she needed, and I picked up a few things I didn’t really need, but that’s never really stopped me, has it? I think we spent about half an hour in Wal-Mart, watching people and talking, and slowly shopping, before we left. We stopped at Debbie’s to drop off a hamburger for Brian (he’d requested we get a burger from Applebee’s for him). Debbie was sleeping on the couch, so Liz quickly checked her email, and I went up to say good-bye to Brian, since I was leaving for home the next day, and then Liz dropped me off and told me to give her a call when I got home. Later that evening, I was poking around looking for a snack AGAIN, and my mother told me I could have her lobster, which was still sitting in the refrigerator. Suh. Weet! That was the second night in a row I’d eaten cold lobster for a snack, and it’s a snack I HIGHLY recommend. I ended up eating a side of tuna salad (my mother’s tuna salad is basically twirly pasta, tuna, mayo, onion, and green peppers), which was odd, because I haven’t been able to stand the thought of eating tuna salad in years. I ate too much tuna as a kid, I think, and as an adult I haven’t had it even once. But I tried it at the cookout Saturday night, and it really hit the spot. In fact, I ate the rest of the tuna salad with a scrambled egg for breakfast the next morning after I showered and finished packing. I don’t like green peppers, so I just pushed the pieces of green pepper to the side and ate the rest. Since my flight wasn’t leaving until mid-afternoon, I had a chance to go to the post office (I had a couple of packages to mail home) and then I drove into Durham so I could go down Shiloh Road and take a couple of pictures of the Shiloh Chapel. This yellow house is directly across the street from the Shiloh Chapel. Very “me”, dontchathink? I went back to my parents house, and we hung out until about noon, when my mother and I went to The Muddy Rudder for lunch (I had a lobster wrap, which isn’t on the menu, but they’ll happily make it for you), and then went from there to the airport. We ended up at the airport about 45 minutes earlier than I would have liked, but I had the laptop with me, and figured there’d be a wireless connection I could hook up to, plus I had a couple of books with me, so I knew the time would go by quickly. (By the way, have I mentioned I hate the laptop? Not because it’s a bad laptop – it’s a good one – but because it is SO FUCKING HEAVY that it kills me to carry the fucking thing around. I need one half the size and a third of the weight. I swear, if I took the laptop in to my physical therapist and told her I had to carry it around the airport, she would GASP IN HORROR.) I was able to hook up to the wireless network, and I actually ended up in the “business center” at a desk, where I surfed the web and listened to someone talk VERY LOUDLY on his cellphone (“Did I mention I’m important?“). Luckily, I ended up in a row of seats by myself on the flight from Maine to Atlanta, and so I spent most of the time reading, drinking water, and listening to other peoples’ conversations. Despite the fact that I was wearing a long-sleeved shirt and had a fleece jacket on top of that, I was still cold, so I moved over so that I was sitting by the window, and the sun was shining directly on me, which helped a lot. The trip from Atlanta to Huntsville wasn’t bad, though I had to sit directly next to someone, because the plane was packed. But because I weigh quite a bit less than I used to, it wasn’t nearly as uncomfortable as it used to be. The guy sitting next to me was kind of a big guy and encroached on my space a bit, but you know what? That didn’t bother me nearly as much as it would have if I’d been encroaching on his space. Weird, huh? We made it to Huntsville on time – if not a little early – and I got my luggage and met Fred outside. We stopped at Applebee’s so I could pick up a salad, and got home just in time to lay down and talk for a while, before Fred headed off to bed and I came downstairs to check my email and start going through the mail that had come while I was gone. DAMN it was good to be home. And it still is! (All of today’s uploaded pictures can be seen here.) * * * Previously 2005: God, I love the internet. 2004: Three days into the school year, and I’m sick to death of bus issues. 2003: My weekend can be summed up thusly: long periods of mind-numbing tedium broken with a stretch of horrified disgust, with a soupcon of panic tossed in for good measure. 2002: Maine recap. 2001: No entry. 2000: No entry.]]>