Azure Jane Lunatic (Azz) 🌺 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
azurelunatic) wrote2016-02-27 04:07 pm
azurelunatic) wrote2016-02-27 04:07 pm
Entry tags:
Thursday, Friday: San Diego road trip & family reunion
Perhaps Doctor Mrs. Uncle Davy is not my favorite person in the world. (She made a point of telling me that my nice black lacy party skirt was "girly", and upon my dubious look, insisted that "lace is girly!" I found something to do which was out of the RV.)
Uncle Davy has a tiny mop-dog, as if Gabrielle had been hit by a shrink-ray and had rolled in some spilled coffee. The dog has a Tile chip on her collar, and a bell, because she will crawl into remote corners of the house (Uncle Davy and Doctor Mrs. Uncle Davy's house) to take a nap and no-one can find her. Uncle Davy's keys are likewise Tile'd. The Tile only tells you the rough geographic area, so the bell is necessary so you can hear when she moves.
Monday: Guide Dog Aunt noticed that her face was feeling kind of funny, went to her square dance class, noticed that specifically half her face was droopy and kind of numb, and went to the ER on her way home. It turned out that it was not a stroke, it was Bell's Palsy (facial nerve becomes angry and swollen in its little channel, hilarity ensues). I didn't know as of 4pm-ish Wednesday whether we were driving or flying. So my packing was somewhat haphazard. I delivered two bags of gear (air mattresses and some blankets/pillows and the CAH deck) to Guide Dog Aunt's on Wednesday night, with a side dish of gossip and complaining about getting effectively laid off, followed by a nice quiet dinner with Purple.
I then came back and packed some more stuff, knowing that I tend to get cranky when away from my creature comforts. I gathered the laundry I'd been procrastinating, and went down to the laundry room -- at which point I discovered that I did not have the laundry keys on my keychain. The little hook -- a Nite Ize tiny polycarbonate S-Biner clip -- that I used to connect that sub-cluster to my primary keychain had busted, and the lower clip (and the keys) were in Parts Unknown (possibly my car, but I didn't check). I had, fortunately, asked Guide Dog Aunt what the laundry situation was like at Eldest Aunt's place with an eye to not packing too terribly many clothes. So I laid out a clean outfit, then went through the dirty laundry and packed a few days' worth of clothes with the intent of starting a load of laundry immediately upon arrival.
Guide Dog Aunt was running a little late, and was a little frantic. I was carrying stuff out when she showed up, with the plan of ferrying them to my car and from my car to her car, but I got them loaded. Unfortunately that took up all the room, and I still had more stuff. I quickly reprioritized and took a bag back and managed to cram my pillows into corners. And fortunately I remembered to grab my phone, which meant going back and re-unlocking the apartment, since it was still on its charger on the desk. While my aunt tried to convince the GPS in her elderly Lexus (cutting edge in its day, but its day was perhaps 2005) that it could guide us in the right direction, followed by trying to convince her phone of this (with somewhat more success), I programmed my somewhat more modern standalone GPS. I had helpfully brought its charger cable and suction mount the previous night, so it was right there. My aunt liked its tone of voice and instructions better than her phone's, so she stuffed her phone back in her pocket and we were on the road.
My aunt drove us out of SF. I tried to get a nap, but by that time I'd had my morning meds and I only got about 5 minutes of sleep (slightly after noon). I picked up an adapter for the tape deck, so I could plug my iPod in if we wanted to. It was my turn to drive. My aunt called her sister and we wound up using the adapter for that, so she could hear properly (and we could both hear and talk). Eldest Aunt mentioned that the mailing address and the new house address were different, so I reprogrammed the GPS so we went to the right place. I drove up through the stop to seesithjawa, then my aunt took LA.
The original trip forecast had us arriving in San Diego (well, Eldest Aunt's end of it, out back of beyond) around 8pm, but that didn't reckon on LA traffic. I called a rest stop after getting through the worst of it, and took the next shift. That got us from LA to San Diego and through, and then we were on dark highways and twisty little mountain roads.
It's been a long time since I was out this way, probably 25 years. I did recognize the post office with its large flag, in a very remote sort of way, but it was pitch dark.
Introvert Uncle told me that the washer was usable, but Eldest Aunt knew what to do about the iron, and she could show me when she got back. I asked after the wifi password, and set my phone to airplane mode so it wouldn't keep searching for service and burn hella battery that way. Eldest Aunt called from the car on her way back with my parents, and we said hi. Then I told Eldest Aunt to hang up and drive. (She didn't have a headset with her, and she was dodging traffic and going about 80.)
I hugged my parents when they got in. Mama wanted to know whether I'd got time off work for this. Go, team communication. I really need to call her more often.
I asked Eldest Aunt about the washer. She said that she didn't want me to ruin my clothes in it, I insisted that I didn't care (and they were black anyway), she insisted that she didn't want me to ruin my pretty nighties and underwear with iron stains, I pointed out that they already had bloodstains. She said that we could go somewhere to wash them tomorrow. I figured we wouldn't get anywhere with that tonight, and just took off my bra.
I got the futon in the computer room. Eldest Aunt was freaking out about the lumpy mattress, which I thought would be fine, but she was having enough of a conniption that I inflated one of the little air mattresses and set up on that. I woke up around 4 with an incredible cramp in the inside of my right leg, all up and down my thigh, which I ascribed to the way I was in the exact same position I'd fallen asleep in, due to the frictional properties of the air mattress vs. my skirt. I evicted the air mattress from my bed and got some much better sleep.
Friday, I was up around 8:30, as there was a certain amount of banging. The aunts had decided that attempting to be quiet would be counterproductive, so they'd gone on an early walk, but they were back and trying to (actually) be not loud. I was okay with being awake. Eventually my parents manifested themselves. Dad was wearing a "Friend" shirt (from a Friends convention some years ago) and Guide Dog Aunt had brought pomelos. An entirely predictable sequence ensued. Eldest Aunt helped. Mama wanted nothing to do with it. Guide Dog Aunt and I got pictures.
Formerly Delinquent Cousin (Electrician Cousin) arrived with his partner Very Pregnant Cousin Janna (they're not legally married due to budgetary constraints: Electrician Cousin had said that they could have kids or a wedding, but not both; she went for kids) and Train Enthusiast Smolcousin (once removed), who is 2. He has a few words and is very shy.
Electrician Cousin occasionally comes back inside smelling of smoke. Ew.
I spent a good chunk of afternoon holed up in Introvert Uncle's computer room. His hobbies and enthusiasms include tech tat, the archaeology and history of the original residents of the area (in a way that does not ping my 'eww' radar), Zen meditation, music, hiking, sustainable off-the-grid living, and possibly also marijuana cultivation. And South Park. Of all my family, I think I particularly want to introduce him to Purple.
I am working on a conference. It's going to be interesting! It's somewhat frustrating to work on it on a slow computer on a slow internet connection.
Mama ducked into the computer room and we had a nice chat. She didn't really get to chat with me back in 2013 when we visited, because I was always sleep-deprived and there was so much going on and there wasn't really a quiet corner. She updated me on the doings of my sister, who is the current Source of Worry (we take turns). She advised me of a birth within my circle (having previously gotten permission from the parents to share) and loaded a baby picture. My sister had never wanted kids. I had often had kids in my plans; I told Mama that after I went off to college and discovered how I reacted to sleep-dep, body birth and infants were no longer in the picture. I am so proud of Ev, omg. I ... may possibly need more pictures for my phone...
Smolcousin Trains also likes phones, and was playing with the landline, picking it up and putting it back down again.
Very Pregnant Cousin Janna was traveling against her doctor's advice, who had told her that it wasn't a good idea, but what the fuck ever since she was clearly intent on doing the thing, and here are some hospital references. Eldest Aunt was hoping that Smollest Cousin would be born on Saturday, to have the same birthday as him. Janna was not enthused about the idea. She advanced the idea of mpreg, to share the burden 50/50. In the afternoon she started coughing a lot because of acid reflux, and was looking clearly miserable. She wasn't able to eat much dinner. She went to bed early along with Smolcousin Trains (who got the extra inflatable mattress that I had kicked off my bed), and borrowed my phone charger as she'd not remembered to bring one.
The rest of the grown-ups (Introvert Uncle, Eldest Aunt, my parents, Guide Dog Aunt, me, and Electrician Cousin) sat around chattering for a while after dinner. Eventually people dropped off and went to hide in various corners to sleep: Introvert Uncle first, my parents next, and eventually it was Eldest Aunt, Electrician Cousin, and me, sitting around swapping stories of various Wacky Hijinks.
Electrician Cousin has a crew of construction workers to supervise. This includes terrible hours and all the wacky personality and behavior hijinks which come with day labor. It started out with a story about "them dick-hardz pills, you know, the kind you get at the liquor store", and wandered into things he and his juvenile delinquent friends had got up to. It is possible to do donuts on some surprisingly small lawns without hitting the house, the mail box, or any trees! Instead of egging houses, they would "porn" them -- papering the outside with the inside pages of some very questionable publications. The final prank in this escalation involved stripping a whole block of its exterior Christmas decorations, and setting them up on the lawn of the target -- not just piled haphazardly, but set up all right and proper. It looked legit! Thus followed the whole neighborhood descending upon the target household, and the patriarch thereof getting angry (and reacting in a very un-funny way to the member of the crew who lived there). That ended the war, because it was getting too real.
Eventually we went to bed. I curled up in my blankets and felt very sorry for Very Pregnant Cousin Janna, who was still coughing miserably from the pregnancy reflux. There was more clattering and coughing around 3am, and then things quieted down.
Uncle Davy has a tiny mop-dog, as if Gabrielle had been hit by a shrink-ray and had rolled in some spilled coffee. The dog has a Tile chip on her collar, and a bell, because she will crawl into remote corners of the house (Uncle Davy and Doctor Mrs. Uncle Davy's house) to take a nap and no-one can find her. Uncle Davy's keys are likewise Tile'd. The Tile only tells you the rough geographic area, so the bell is necessary so you can hear when she moves.
Monday: Guide Dog Aunt noticed that her face was feeling kind of funny, went to her square dance class, noticed that specifically half her face was droopy and kind of numb, and went to the ER on her way home. It turned out that it was not a stroke, it was Bell's Palsy (facial nerve becomes angry and swollen in its little channel, hilarity ensues). I didn't know as of 4pm-ish Wednesday whether we were driving or flying. So my packing was somewhat haphazard. I delivered two bags of gear (air mattresses and some blankets/pillows and the CAH deck) to Guide Dog Aunt's on Wednesday night, with a side dish of gossip and complaining about getting effectively laid off, followed by a nice quiet dinner with Purple.
I then came back and packed some more stuff, knowing that I tend to get cranky when away from my creature comforts. I gathered the laundry I'd been procrastinating, and went down to the laundry room -- at which point I discovered that I did not have the laundry keys on my keychain. The little hook -- a Nite Ize tiny polycarbonate S-Biner clip -- that I used to connect that sub-cluster to my primary keychain had busted, and the lower clip (and the keys) were in Parts Unknown (possibly my car, but I didn't check). I had, fortunately, asked Guide Dog Aunt what the laundry situation was like at Eldest Aunt's place with an eye to not packing too terribly many clothes. So I laid out a clean outfit, then went through the dirty laundry and packed a few days' worth of clothes with the intent of starting a load of laundry immediately upon arrival.
Guide Dog Aunt was running a little late, and was a little frantic. I was carrying stuff out when she showed up, with the plan of ferrying them to my car and from my car to her car, but I got them loaded. Unfortunately that took up all the room, and I still had more stuff. I quickly reprioritized and took a bag back and managed to cram my pillows into corners. And fortunately I remembered to grab my phone, which meant going back and re-unlocking the apartment, since it was still on its charger on the desk. While my aunt tried to convince the GPS in her elderly Lexus (cutting edge in its day, but its day was perhaps 2005) that it could guide us in the right direction, followed by trying to convince her phone of this (with somewhat more success), I programmed my somewhat more modern standalone GPS. I had helpfully brought its charger cable and suction mount the previous night, so it was right there. My aunt liked its tone of voice and instructions better than her phone's, so she stuffed her phone back in her pocket and we were on the road.
My aunt drove us out of SF. I tried to get a nap, but by that time I'd had my morning meds and I only got about 5 minutes of sleep (slightly after noon). I picked up an adapter for the tape deck, so I could plug my iPod in if we wanted to. It was my turn to drive. My aunt called her sister and we wound up using the adapter for that, so she could hear properly (and we could both hear and talk). Eldest Aunt mentioned that the mailing address and the new house address were different, so I reprogrammed the GPS so we went to the right place. I drove up through the stop to see
sithjawa, then my aunt took LA. The original trip forecast had us arriving in San Diego (well, Eldest Aunt's end of it, out back of beyond) around 8pm, but that didn't reckon on LA traffic. I called a rest stop after getting through the worst of it, and took the next shift. That got us from LA to San Diego and through, and then we were on dark highways and twisty little mountain roads.
It's been a long time since I was out this way, probably 25 years. I did recognize the post office with its large flag, in a very remote sort of way, but it was pitch dark.
Introvert Uncle told me that the washer was usable, but Eldest Aunt knew what to do about the iron, and she could show me when she got back. I asked after the wifi password, and set my phone to airplane mode so it wouldn't keep searching for service and burn hella battery that way. Eldest Aunt called from the car on her way back with my parents, and we said hi. Then I told Eldest Aunt to hang up and drive. (She didn't have a headset with her, and she was dodging traffic and going about 80.)
I hugged my parents when they got in. Mama wanted to know whether I'd got time off work for this. Go, team communication. I really need to call her more often.
I asked Eldest Aunt about the washer. She said that she didn't want me to ruin my clothes in it, I insisted that I didn't care (and they were black anyway), she insisted that she didn't want me to ruin my pretty nighties and underwear with iron stains, I pointed out that they already had bloodstains. She said that we could go somewhere to wash them tomorrow. I figured we wouldn't get anywhere with that tonight, and just took off my bra.
I got the futon in the computer room. Eldest Aunt was freaking out about the lumpy mattress, which I thought would be fine, but she was having enough of a conniption that I inflated one of the little air mattresses and set up on that. I woke up around 4 with an incredible cramp in the inside of my right leg, all up and down my thigh, which I ascribed to the way I was in the exact same position I'd fallen asleep in, due to the frictional properties of the air mattress vs. my skirt. I evicted the air mattress from my bed and got some much better sleep.
Friday, I was up around 8:30, as there was a certain amount of banging. The aunts had decided that attempting to be quiet would be counterproductive, so they'd gone on an early walk, but they were back and trying to (actually) be not loud. I was okay with being awake. Eventually my parents manifested themselves. Dad was wearing a "Friend" shirt (from a Friends convention some years ago) and Guide Dog Aunt had brought pomelos. An entirely predictable sequence ensued. Eldest Aunt helped. Mama wanted nothing to do with it. Guide Dog Aunt and I got pictures.
Formerly Delinquent Cousin (Electrician Cousin) arrived with his partner Very Pregnant Cousin Janna (they're not legally married due to budgetary constraints: Electrician Cousin had said that they could have kids or a wedding, but not both; she went for kids) and Train Enthusiast Smolcousin (once removed), who is 2. He has a few words and is very shy.
Electrician Cousin occasionally comes back inside smelling of smoke. Ew.
I spent a good chunk of afternoon holed up in Introvert Uncle's computer room. His hobbies and enthusiasms include tech tat, the archaeology and history of the original residents of the area (in a way that does not ping my 'eww' radar), Zen meditation, music, hiking, sustainable off-the-grid living, and possibly also marijuana cultivation. And South Park. Of all my family, I think I particularly want to introduce him to Purple.
I am working on a conference. It's going to be interesting! It's somewhat frustrating to work on it on a slow computer on a slow internet connection.
Mama ducked into the computer room and we had a nice chat. She didn't really get to chat with me back in 2013 when we visited, because I was always sleep-deprived and there was so much going on and there wasn't really a quiet corner. She updated me on the doings of my sister, who is the current Source of Worry (we take turns). She advised me of a birth within my circle (having previously gotten permission from the parents to share) and loaded a baby picture. My sister had never wanted kids. I had often had kids in my plans; I told Mama that after I went off to college and discovered how I reacted to sleep-dep, body birth and infants were no longer in the picture. I am so proud of Ev, omg. I ... may possibly need more pictures for my phone...
Smolcousin Trains also likes phones, and was playing with the landline, picking it up and putting it back down again.
Very Pregnant Cousin Janna was traveling against her doctor's advice, who had told her that it wasn't a good idea, but what the fuck ever since she was clearly intent on doing the thing, and here are some hospital references. Eldest Aunt was hoping that Smollest Cousin would be born on Saturday, to have the same birthday as him. Janna was not enthused about the idea. She advanced the idea of mpreg, to share the burden 50/50. In the afternoon she started coughing a lot because of acid reflux, and was looking clearly miserable. She wasn't able to eat much dinner. She went to bed early along with Smolcousin Trains (who got the extra inflatable mattress that I had kicked off my bed), and borrowed my phone charger as she'd not remembered to bring one.
The rest of the grown-ups (Introvert Uncle, Eldest Aunt, my parents, Guide Dog Aunt, me, and Electrician Cousin) sat around chattering for a while after dinner. Eventually people dropped off and went to hide in various corners to sleep: Introvert Uncle first, my parents next, and eventually it was Eldest Aunt, Electrician Cousin, and me, sitting around swapping stories of various Wacky Hijinks.
Electrician Cousin has a crew of construction workers to supervise. This includes terrible hours and all the wacky personality and behavior hijinks which come with day labor. It started out with a story about "them dick-hardz pills, you know, the kind you get at the liquor store", and wandered into things he and his juvenile delinquent friends had got up to. It is possible to do donuts on some surprisingly small lawns without hitting the house, the mail box, or any trees! Instead of egging houses, they would "porn" them -- papering the outside with the inside pages of some very questionable publications. The final prank in this escalation involved stripping a whole block of its exterior Christmas decorations, and setting them up on the lawn of the target -- not just piled haphazardly, but set up all right and proper. It looked legit! Thus followed the whole neighborhood descending upon the target household, and the patriarch thereof getting angry (and reacting in a very un-funny way to the member of the crew who lived there). That ended the war, because it was getting too real.
Eventually we went to bed. I curled up in my blankets and felt very sorry for Very Pregnant Cousin Janna, who was still coughing miserably from the pregnancy reflux. There was more clattering and coughing around 3am, and then things quieted down.
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Shitball earned his name from his habit of perching on the roof below Eldest Aunt's bedroom window and screaming in the middle of the night.
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Shitball liked to perch on the roof and scream at midnight.