Well. Today was fun.

(I’m gonna talk cats for a bit, but I promise it’s brief.)

For starters, this morning I got a hysterical phone call from my friend, Al. She moved to Florida recently, leaving her beloved cats with her roommate, Liz, in Chicago. Al received a call yesterday from her old landlord, informing her that Liz had unceremoniously ditched the apartment, abandoning the kitties with very little food or water. Poor Al was distraught. She loves her cats, and felt terrible for leaving them with someone who turned out to be a deadbeat asshole.

So, tomorrow I have to perform a little feline rescue mission, and take Stinky and Snickers to my apartment for a while. I had a talk with Ziggy when I got home from work, and he seems okay with having the extra roommates. Still … three cats in my studio apartment? Man.

If Al and/or Liz are reading:

Al, I promise you again that your cats will be safe, so don’t worry, honey. I’m happy to help.

Liz, I don’t know the extenuating circumstances of your mad dash, and I hope you’re okay, but what you did was really shitty when there are plenty of shelters in your area.

Right.

THEN, my Uncle Chris phoned to tell me that work conflicts may make it impossible for him to help me move to San Francisco. I wasn’t entirely fair to Chris in that recent entry, because he’s a really great guy, and he and I were both quite looking forward to the trip. He so disappointed to give me the news, and I was disappointed to hear it.

And, of course, this means I may very well be making the drive by myself. That has a lot of appeal, in a way, because it means I’ll be able to blare the radio and yell at Rush Limbaugh and talk to myself, and it’ll give me lots of time to meditate. But, one thing I haven’t lacked, lately, is time to myself. It’s kind of a bummer that I might not have any other witnesses during this significant trip. I might get so lonely that I’ll ignore the fact that I’ll be on roaming, and run up a three hundred dollar cell phone bill. Thirty-plus hours in a moving van is a LOT of time to meditate.

Lookit:

The pink highlighter poop-smear delineates my voyage. At first, I was like, “Hey! That’s only a couple of inches.” Then I got all scale-accurate, and realized, “Um, that’s about 2,000 miles on route I-80. Fuck.”

Then I looked at the states involved. According to Mapquest, after Illinois, I’ll head through Iowa, Nebraska, some indistinguishable combination of Colorado and Wyoming, then Utah, Nevada, and on to California. And, cool. I haven’t seen any of those states but Nevada and California, and, for the last part of the journey, the Rockies will be involved.

But, my brain stopped after, “I’ll be driving alone through fucking IOWA and NEBRASKA.” As if cornfields aren’t mind-numbing enough to drive through, it occurred to me that I am now old enough to fall prey to the children of said corn. Might I add, “Children of the Corn” was filmed in IOWA, but takes place in NEBRASKA.

It will take me a good 6 hours to drive through Iowa, and probably another 8 to get through Nebraska. That is very weird to me, as I grew up in New England, where all the states are clumped together like a handful of jax. You can wake up in Massachusetts, have coffee in Rhode Island, make it to Connecticut for lunch, make it to New Hampshire in time for dinner, have a pleasant drive through Vermont, and spend the night in Maine. All in the same day. But not necessarily in that order, maybe. I’m geographically impaired.

Suffice to say, the states most familiar to me are little, and it’s foreign for it to take more than three hours to pass through one, and I’ll move on now, because this is boring.

I know I’ll freak out just a little bit when driving through the rest of the Midwest. Just little me and Ziggy and a big truck with all our shit. And fucking MALACHAI lurking in the fields with his goddamned SCYTHE. Awesome. If I see a single scarecrow out there, I might lose my shit.

Overlook Hotel. COLORADO. Whee.

I’ll just keep repeating to myself, “You gots da Shinin’ … You gots da Shinin’…” and my clairvoyance will keep me safe.

In other news, has it occurred to anyone else that Stephen King looks like the love child of Cornelius from “Planet of the Apes,” and (my boyfriend) Jean Paul Sartre?

Tell me I’m wrong. I’ll know you’re lying. And so will Tommy, the little boy who lives in my finger.

~ Last Five Entries ~

Arm-in-Arm Down Burgundy - 09.05.05

Motivated! - 08.25.05

Moths, and Relative Nonsense - 08.18.05

I Finally Have Internet Access in my Bedroom. But, No Ashtray. - 08.09.05

Here I Am - 08.02.05

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BUY JEN'S BOOK! BUY IT! DO IT!

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BUY DEAN'S BOOK, TOO! YOU KNOW YOU WANNA! SERIOUSLY.

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