catching up with you

ok, it's been a good few days and i need to write about them before i forget.

last tuesday i drove to morgantown to meet my friend schmaaron. her mom had made banana nut bread for me!! i LOVE bnb, especially her mom's!! (but don't tell my mom!!) we went to a bar to watch the WVU women's basketball team lose the championship. :( we stayed at her parents' house and it was really good to see them again. i knew them when we all lived in p'burg, but haven't seen much of them since we all moved away from there. anyway, she had to get up early the next day to go to work...she lives and works in maryland. since she had the bad luck to have to be up by 5 a.m., i got the spare room and slept like a baby!! well, not really. ha. i mean, i really did get the spare room, but didn't quite sleep like a baby.

her mom had warned me to be sure i shut the bedroom door all the way--"'til it latches!" so the dog and cat wouldn't get in. the cat thinks it's his room. so i was sure to shut the door all the way. but after a couple of hrs of sleep, i got up to use the bathroom. i figured they were asleep somewhere else by this time so i left the door ajar while i went to relieve myself. big mistake. when i came back, the 25 lb cat was sprawled out on the floor. now don't get me wrong, i love animals!! so much so that i can't make myself leave them alone. but i'm allergic to them. so i try to chase him out. he let's me roll him across the floor until we get to the door. then he whips out the claws, digs into the carpet and refused to go through the door. i hiss at him. he hisses back. i try to pick him up. lol, i'm not kidding about the 25 lbs thing. what a lug. again, i make it to the door. then he hisses again. it scares me (cause i'm already nervous and thinking he might scratch me) so i drop him. finally i realize the more i fool with him the more hair and dander i'm going to disturb so i figure letting him sleep in the floor is the best option. well, really the only option at this point. ha

just as i'm dozing off, i hear this THUD and feel something hit the bed. yep, 25 lbs of fur. so i nudge him off with my feet. this happens three times. finally i decide, again, that i'm causing more harm to myself this way so i finally let him stay. he curls up between my feet and sleeps soundly the rest of the night. not too bad. and i didn't have an allergy attack. thank goodness for allergy meds!

next morning i got up around 8:30. schmaaron was long gone. her mom had gone to work also. so i chatted with her dad a bit and ate some more banana nut bread then headed east. i stopped and got gas. i could have kicked myself. on the way into town the night before gas was $1.12. this morning it's $1.18. i took 81 east to 70 south to 270 south. along the way i stopped at a rest area/scenic overlook in a national or state park. i think it was called green ridge. i took some really cool pics.

as i got close to her exit, i realized i was very near to DC. i wasn't sure what she had planned for the wknd and i would have hated to have been that close to DC and not gone on into town. so i stayed on 270 south to 495 south. (i think it was south). that's known as the outer belt. i had an atlas in the car, but it's very small and not very detailed and i couldn't reach it. but i have traveled some and i figured 495 went all the way around the city. thing was, i wasn't sure how much of the city i could see from there. i didn't want to stop anywhere, just wanted to see things from the road. so i took an exit that said downtown. this was 395. i went through one tunnel and entered a second one where traffic stopped. dead stopped. and i'm not a big fan of tunnels. however, i didn't think these tunnels were under water and that helped. (if they are under water, please don't tell me.) then i saw a sign that said 395 ends 1000 ft. hmmm. well, that would explain stopped traffic. but there has to be another road or something...well the something turned out to be new york street or ave. i think. all traffic must turn right. by this time i had found my atlas. it was almost no help. i could see i was heading northeast and i wanted to go northwest. well, straight west would get me back to 495, but i was going east. i thought, no sweat, i'll just turn around up here. i was in the left lane. there are 3 lanes of bumper to bumper traffic and i have no hopes of getting to the right lane. and for several miles, left turns are not allowed!! by this time i'm almost in delaware. HA. i finally see a sign that says 495 straight ahead. low and behold i finally ran back into 495 but am on the opposite side of town from where i need to be. but i head west on 495 and end up back on north 270 to my exit. it just took a lot longer than i thought.

schmaaron came home from work and we decided to go get something to eat at olive garden. her friend jamie joined us. we had a good visit. i started to get a cough though. no sore throat, no other pains, just a cough that won't stop. it was very annoying. and it started to rain. jamie left and marna and i headed to a book store. neither of us bought anything, we just love bookstores. then we tried to find a store that has cough syrup. well we went to a grocery store. they have gobs of cough syrup, but none that are just for coughs. i found some cough drops and some of those new melting strips that are just for coughs, but alas, everything is cherry flavored. blech. i hate cherry flavored anything. :( i finally decided on the melty strips though because i'm afraid i'll choke on a cough drop if i fall asleep.

saturday we thought about going to either gettysburg or harper's ferry. i have been to gettysburg, and i loved it!! i would go again in a heartbeat, but i also really wanted to go to harper's ferry cause i've never been there. so i asked her if she had been to either; she had not. so i decide on gettysburg cause everyone needs to see that. but it was all a moot decision, it rained really hard on saturday!! so we went shopping instead! we went to virginia and shopped at IKEA then went to a mall called potomac mills. OMG what a huge mall!! again, neither of us bought anything. haha. on the way there we ate at a place called hamburger hamlet. this was her idea--and she's a vegetarian!! it was really good. and the waiter was cute too. don't tell howard. i mean, i already told him and he didn't take it very well. LOL so we'll just keep that between us.

we were going to head back towards maryland and eat in a mexican restaurant, but when we got to the interstate, traffic heading north was backed up for MILES!! so we decided to eat where we were. we found a chile's and had a good dinner. we were worn out from the mall experience. we went home and crashed. all night fri night and all day saturday i sucked those stupid cherry flavored melty strips. YUCK. but they do work.

sunday i got up and showered. when i got out of the shower, she was watching the movie "love actually." no i'm NOT a big hugh grant fan, but this movie is so funny. i do like liam neesom and colin firth though, so it was ok. we talked for a while about relationships after the movie. then i had to hit the road. i was going to visit howard!! :D

the woods

Just beyond the potato patch was a patch of woods. I had lived all my life in town until we moved to Letart. I experienced a lot of culture shock. While I loved the gardening and few other things about rural life, I was deathly afraid of the woods. I never ventured past the last row of potatoes but David often did. That boy worried me to death!; so much so that I had a recurring nightmare.
In this nightmare, he had gone into the woods and I was sent in to get him. I found him in a cave with a monster! In the middle of the cave was Ruth’s black metal phone stand and their phone. The monster refused to let us go and refused to let us use the phone. Then it started raining. The cave started to flood, but still the monster kept us. Soon the water was at David’s chin. The monster instructed me to hold him on my shoulders if I was afraid of him drowning. So I did. When the water to my chin, the monster finally said I could call for help. When the phone rang, I woke up.