Lesson # 1: Don’t drink the tap water as you travel down the East Coast. You will get backdoor problems.

Lesson # 2: Never assume that your family is still comprised of non-internet users.

My family decided to implode on me last Tuesday, which has caused a serious disruption of the whole trip and project and life in general. My aunt found the site and the log while looking for me (because somehow my father had become unconscious for the last three months and told them he’d no idea that I’d gone on this trip). She printed everything out and gave it to my grandparents to read.

Dear lord.

My grandparents are already having a hell of a time in their lives right now, with his heart trouble and his leg not healing from diabetes, and chest shunts and a foot amputation. I’m guessing that I just make an easy target for most of my family. I’d called to confirm me heading down what should have been last week and my grandfather wouldn’t speak to me, just handed over the phone to my grandmother.

She laid into me. She’s upset about the project and this log, that I would air family business for everyone to see. Seeing my site statistics, “everyone” certainly does not read this log. She says that I have said bad things about the Taylors, that they are bad people, and I said nothing about the Sinclairs (my mother’s side).

I hadn’t realized that it’d been so bad, all bad. Somehow I made my grandparents and aunt hurt and confused and upset, but I feel that somehow they’ve missed the point of this entire project, MY entire point after all I’ve worked to do. I love both sides of my family, and my grandparents and aunt have been there for me, my grandparents even took me in for a year when I was little. They are amazing people and it hurts a lot to even think that I’ve somehow disappointed them again.

They also make me cry the easiest. After my grandmother came my aunt, and all told, I cried for three hours that day, no exaggeration. I rarely, if ever, cry. Now the Florida part of the trip is and was a lion’s den. My cell phone isn’t working and the voicemail isn’t working, so I can’t make or recieve calls. I’m off my medication because insurance ran out and every program has a “preexisting condition” clause. My bank account is dwindling. I have no place to live after this trip, no job as of yet. Panic is setting in.

Leanne and I are trying to get a lease for an apartment that comes with two months free rent, so that’s part of the plan. If we get that place, I move to Atlanta for a couple of years, if we don’t, I go back to New England. I need to find a job, set stability. I have to rehome Owen with all this shit hitting the fan.

My grandmother and aunt don’t really believe me about my father, either. That somehow I am painting a fictional picture of him for my writing and I am taking my mother’s side.

I’m not taking anyone’s “side.” I love my father, but how many times have I tried to get through to him? Yes, I know he holds everything in, but there are times when the most stoic of stoics need to say something about their feelings and let things out and be honest in order to save what they hold most dear. With my father, we’re still waiting on that, and time is running out.

I feel the little dark tendrils of my depressive symptoms creeping in. Feeling overwhelmed, indifferent, having trouble sleeping, the crying (well, that one spell). Paige and Lora want me to call Todd, but Leanne’s place doesn’t have a landline.

…I also think that the cat that is sitting on the floor has awful horrible gas…

I had fun at Olivia’s, with Liam and Robert, and her husband Ron. Cool folks. Adrian’s was fun too, and Wes and his joking. Wes is a firefighter and is also a plumber. He had a job to do at this guy Sammy’s house. Now, Sammy is an Egyptian who has become a citizen. They were supposed to the the job on September 11th, but had to reschedule to the 12th for obvious reasons. So Wes looks at Sammy and says, “You realize that the price went up.”

“What?” Sammy asks.

“Well, your people just killed a thousands of my people, someone has to pay for the widows and orphans.”

“What?!” says Sammy. “One day I am good ol’ boy Sammy and the next day I am rag-headed bastard? I am Southern Baptist for the love of Pete!”

Damn, that was funny. It’s a better listening joke than it is reading.

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Six Flags. Woo boy. You know, I don’t remember it being this tiring when I was a kid. And when I say “kid” I mean 16 or 17, not six or seven.

I have so much to write and it’s all book-stuff not log-stuff. So tired. Bedtime.

photos

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I spent all day today in Gainesville. Strange how a place can change so much and stay so much the same.

Photos from the day.

Most of today’s adventures and thoughts will be in the book.

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photos

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Here we go. I actually have some time to sit down and write a bunch of stuff down. First I must attend to the blog so that the readers won’t get too antsy. I drove from Richmond to Atlanta. Little traffic, easy construction, and the awesome 70 mph speed limit on Southern highways made for an easy trip. The nine hours wasn’t so bad. Despite the application and reapplication of sunblock, my right upper arm and shoulder got nicely burned. Oooow. Good think I had the aloe gel with lidocaine in my trunk. Mmmm.

I told Chris about my sunburn and he immediatly said, “As bad as when you got sunburned through the window at Burger King?”

Damn him, I’d FORGOTTEN about that!

At Sara’s, she looks at me and says, “You are the whitest person I know.”

Her brother Grant, who is as white as me and who Sara said could be MY brother we look so much alike, said, “We come from the land of ice and snow.”

Stupid ice and snow!

Driving through the South makes me remember how large the states are down here. In New England, you can go through six states in five hours. Down here, it takes five hours to get across ONE state. I miss the DC radio stations, too. Down here it’s country and radio preaching. NPR is a constant and can keep me awake with their updates on Israel and Palestine. Another show was about Title IX. Problem with Southern radio is that it’s filled with radio preachers and preaching. About half of them sound JUST like NPR announcers until you hear “..and then God can save you, if you just open up your arms…”

My finger reflexively hits the scan button when I hear it. An NPR program mentioned something about lacrosse and it’s American Indian origins…another idea to look at for a story. If Dan Forbes is reading this (though I doubt it, he STILL hadn’t looked at the site when I left NH) then there’s a book he should pick up. It’s called “Go Girl” and is about girls’ sports today. 1) Dan has 3 daughers 2) Dan coaches girls sports teams 3) Dan has a penchant for saying “go girl” and embarassing the person he says it to if they’re over the age of 10.

A license plate I saw read: MCPOPE. Oh man. The nuances of that…the Catholic Church and McDonalds are in cahoots! You know what that means about Ronald McDonald…I was always suspect.

As I get further into the South and drive toward Atlanta to see Leanne and Chris and Ben, I think about Evan (not Brackie). He’s the one who introduced me to Orson Scott Card. He and Lauren were my best friends for a long time. A lot of things in my life I have associated with them. Now it’s like they’re tainted. How to untaint them? There must be a way.

No matter where you go, at least it seems in the US, when the windows are open and you’re bored driving on a highway, you’ll put your arm and hand out of the window and catch the air. When you’re driving at high speeds, the air is almost solid, like you can grab it. I see people in front of me doing that all the time, and I know that I do that all the time too. A universal wave of sorts, we’re all fascinated by some of the same tactile things.

Oglethorpe, the father of Georgia. In my 10th grade US History course, Coach Stokes used to ask Faith this every day. “Who’s the father of georgia?” Why? because she didn’t know the first time and EVERY Georgian should know that Oglethorpe is the father of georgia.

Who’s the father of Georgia?

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