Pink Huffy
2005-01-05
5:04 p.m.

I've been away and stuff. Also, like, Christmas and whatever. We did this New England loop of family visitation and I've been recovering in the fetal position for the past few days. It wasn't really that awful, but I am glad to be home.

Trip highlights:
-Being left in a snowbank on the side of the road by my father (I'll flesh this out in a bit. He did toss us his cell phone before squealing off.)

-There is a language that consists solely of grunts. My brother in law speaks it. Should I bother to learn it? Or does he say as little in that language as he does in English?

-My sister, who insisted that we don't buy gifts for our cousins, giving our cousins gifts while I, who was guilted (by her!) into not even packing the gifts I got them, sat there like a goon.

I think that's enough. There's more, but there is also always the possibility that people will stumble on this wee place, read about themselves, and then never speak to me again.

Let's go back to my dad and the snowbank. My dad lives in a small town which is surrounded by small towns. In order to get to the in-laws, we rented a car. Originally, my sister was going to take me to the car rental place, and she's pretty relaxed, so I just made a reservation and forgot about it.

My dad called for regular updates to the reservation. I don't know if he doesn't travel a lot, or if he's just high-strung, or what, but car rentals aren't complicated and he seemed to think that if I didn't have the times exactly right, or if I didn't call every few days and remind them I was coming, that there would be no car despite reservations, or that they'd charge me twice as much just for not being a pain in the ass. Anyway, I ignored him. My sister was taking me anyway, so I figured he was out of the equation.

(As an aside, my dad's dad came to stay with us for the weekend, and I enjoyed very much watching him micromanage my dad in exactly the manner that my father micromanages me. Even though this suggests that my father will continue to do this well into his 80s.)

The day before we were supposed to pick up the car, it snowed. It does that sometimes in New England. It threw everything into disarray, though. My stepmother was supposed to drive her sister to the airport, but my father didn't want her to go alone, so he was going with her. My sister decided not to go to our grandmother's, so I needed to find an alternate ride to the car rental place. Due to the aforementioned smallness of my hometown and surrounding areas, I assumed my dad knew where the rental place was.

Anyway, it wasn't at the airport, which is where my dad thought it was. Someone gave us crap directions, so my dad did his whole Enraged Thing, which was fun because it was super snowy. I used his cell to call the car rental place (something, I should note, that I offered to do before we even got to the airport, to check on location) and asked them for directions. However, my dad was screeching (or he would have been, if the tires made contact with the road at any point, which they didn't, because snow) around corners and down backroads so fast that by the time I described where we were, we weren't there anymore.

My dad helped out by yelling out locations we were passing, and then the person would say, "Oh! Turn right." but we'd be long past the right turn. It was awesome. Finally, the person on the other end of the phone told us to pull over and she'd come find us and we could follow her back. My dad had to go take my aunt to another airport, so we got out (we all know I'm pregnant, yes? So my father left his pregnant daughter in a snowbank in front of an abandoned gas station?), he tossed me his phone, and took off. It was awesome.

Anyway, Merry Christmas! Good times.

I should point out that my father vehemently disagrees with this version of events.

Now we're back and I'm so, so glad to be back. I heart the Northeast, but I heart having my own space more than anything else ever.