Grr-AAAAHHHT.
2004-05-17
1:52 p.m.

God, I have been drinking so much diet soda lately and it makes me bump in a very overwhelmingly non-attractive way. Like, I am woman, hear me roar! Literally! For miles! I'm afraid if I keep this up, my husband will Stepford Wife me. Grr-AAAAHHHT. The worst part is they come with no warning. I'm sitting, we're talking, tra-la-la how-was-your-day ErrAHHHHHHHGHT. Fun!

I don't know if I even like diet soda. I do, but then I don't. And then I burp. And then I want MORE. Plus, I can mail the tabs in for breast cancer research, and if I drink enough of it, I'll effectively donate more than the stamp it will take to mail them in. Har.

So, this weekend I went to Phoenix. Phoenix is just a short two hour heartstoppingly stressful drive from Tucson. I swear, every single driver between here and there is completely insane and has many, many death wishes. Many. I am a confident Boston Masshole driver who can change all the lanes on the Tobin Bridge in about 4 seconds, but the drive to Phoenix makes me want to wimper and hide in the trunk until we get there.

First of all, most of the way there, I-10 has only two lanes going each way. There is an assload of trucks. Massive, angry trucks who hate cars. The speed limit is 75, but almost everyone wants to go 90. Everyone who doesn't want to go 90 seems to want to go 60. About 4 people want to go 75-80. The people who want to go 77ish get in the fast lane to pass the inexplicable 60 mph people who should be banned. The people who want to go 90 then crawl DIRECTLY up the 77ers asses. As in, they fly right up to their bumper and then slam on their brakes. On the freeway. Nothing gives me a heart attack more than brake lights on the freeway. Lather, rinse, repeat until you have a line of about 10 cars less than a foot away from each other.

If you leave more than a foot, a truck in the slow lane will put on its blinker and change into your lane whether there is space or not. Your warning is the quarter second the blinker is on before the truck moves. Commence brake slamming, since the truck is rarely planning on going as fast as you were.

Add to this traffic weavers who squeeze into the smallest spaces ever with no warning and blown out tires everywhere, and this is the drive to Phoenix. I always wonder how I don't hear about more 19 car pile-ups after tire blowouts with cars stacked up behind trucks that pulled out in front of them. This probably has something to do with the fact that I don't read local news. I haven't admitted that I live here yet.

The moral of this story is that I don't like driving to Phoenix. I miss manuvering around Chelsea and being cut off properly and efficiently. Sigh.

In other news, I still have no air conditioning. The repairman can't even come peek at it until Wednesday. Tomorrow's forecast is a high of 99-102. I have 20 people coming over at 6:30 p.m., the exact time that the house has absorbed all the heat but that it hasn't cooled down enough to bring any cool air inside. Heh. Perhaps I'll just spray everyone with the hose when they get here. Thanks for coming! Sssssssssttt.

In other other news, I tried on clothes this weekend for the first time in ages, and I am a size I haven't been since I was in high school. (I think the sizes changed, though. But STILL.) Whoo! Too bad I cheated all over the place this week. Oh, In-n-Out, how I love you and how I passed you both coming to and leaving Phoenix.

While at In-n-Out on the way home, I was waiting for my order. My purse has long strings that you tie to close it, and sometimes I don't bother. I brushed a guy sitting near me with my string and apologized. Then, a minute later, I dropped a wee paper cup of ketchup on the floor. He said, "Gee, it's not your day, is it?" Does brushing someone with string and spilling ketchup make a day completely terrible? Maybe I have low standards for my days, but I'm thinking despite those major set-backs, I was still okay. Maybe.