WooHoo-- made it through step class without any problems this morning! This confirms my assumption that the problem yesterday was an overly tough instructor, not my own lack of ability.

Went for Thai food for lunch, but it wasn't nearly as good as my old place in SB. It's a good thing I'm not planning to live in Ohio the rest of my life b/c I would go through serious withdrawal. There must be one or two places in Chicago that will live up to my expectation. Or I will have to beg a Thai chef to teach me how to make my favorite meal, which I have heretofore been unable to perfect.

Upon returning from Thai food I made Mocha lattes for Mom, B, and Claire with my brand-new espresso maker. Funny how I actually miss making drinks when I'm not working at a coffee shop. Maybe I should just admit that what I should do with my life is make coffee. Maybe.

Ok, now I must pack. For CHICAGO!

Step class this morning kicked my butt, so I didn't spend the whole day working out. Nor did I really accomplish anything. I was either too tired, too wired on caffeine, or way too cold to do anything, so I slept and watched TV most of the day. My goal tomorrow is to defeat step class. And then wash clothes and pack for CHICAGO. Yay!!

Quite an exhausting few days in Detroit and Parma. I'll leave the story-telling about Detroit to Laz, since he remembers more of the adventure than I do. (Amazing how quickly you can get drunk when you've had nothing to eat all day.) In any case, Detroit was a hell-hole, but we had fun anyway. Some day I may get my pics developed (used the film camera!) and I'll post them.

Christmas at the grandparents' (mom's parents) house was also fun, but really overwhelming. There were already 23 of us trying to fit into their house, and now my brother and five of my cousins had significant others there. And we're all getting bigger. I'm the oldest grandchild, so until recently there were little kids, but every year more of the little kids become big kids. It was a madhouse and incredibly loud. The nice thing is that my cousin Jennifer got married in September, so I don't get as much pressure from that side of the family to get married and start having kids. I'm also the oldest grandchild on Dad's side of the family, and there are only five grandchildren there, so my grandmother is constantly telling me how much she wants to have great-grandchildren and how she wants to live to see me married. She even offered to set me up with someone-- yikes.

Anyway, I am quite exhausted from traveling and seeing people, so I am off to bed. Planning to spend the whole day tomorrow working out since it appears to be a bad time to look for jobs.

Two Christmasses down, one to go. Off to Detroit tomorrow- GO CATS! And then Cleveland Saturday for Christmas #3. And them home for a couple day and off to Chicago for New Year's. I'm quite the jet-setter :)

Dude, Lilo & Stitch is STRANGE. But so, so Barlo. Mom asked me what about the movie I thought Barlo liked, and I just shook my head and said, "everything." Almost fell asleep wrapping presents last night. All of my cousins are getting DVDs from us, from their lists. No offense to any of them who may be reading, but they have the worst taste in movies! Wow. Although apparently everyone wanted copies of Finding Nemo, so there is a glimmer of hope!

Woke up really, really late today (for me, at least). I need to get back on a good schedule, although that's hard to do this time of year. I actually set my alarm this morning, but when it went off the deejay was saying that they'd be playing Christmas music (no silly notions of "holiday music" around here) for the next 48 hours, so I went back to sleep :) My brother actually woke up before me today. This is a boy who regularly stays up till all hours when he's at school. Of course, he had a dentist appt this morning, so he had to be up. No dentist for me this week... the four fillings I got a month ago seem to be enough for a while.

Ok, off to LOTR! Yay!

Well, still going crazy, but at least I get out of here soon to go to Detroit. Yay Cats!

Finally worked out today. Felt absolutely wonderful, even the cramp in my side while running. Maybe I can stop feeling like a lazy slob. Or stop being one altogether, which would be better. I think tomorrow I shall make time to do yoga, in between last-minute shopping, LOTR, and church. My flexibility is gone, so it would be good to get it back.

Today was shopping with grandma. It's incredibly frustrating. I don't like having her spend money on me, and I would very much prefer either no presents or practical ones. However, she love giving "fun" presents, so in a bizarre way the nice grandaughterly thing for me to do is to let her buy me clothes. Very strange, and I know it's an odd thing to dislike. Being at the mall today made me distinctly uncomfortable. I HATE the conspicuous consumption this time of year. Would it really be that horrible if we spent a little less money on finding the perfect gift for each other and gave it to charity instead? Alas, not many people seem to agree with me. And those that do in theory, like my mother, break down and spend the money anyway.

Ok, now I'm going to watch my Christmas gift from Barlo-- Lilo & Stitch. Haven't seen it before, so I have to learn why Barlo's obsessed with it, and why I shouldn't be surprised if my bridesmaid dress is Hawaiian-themed.

I'm going crazy and need to get out of here!

I'm finally feeling better. Turns out that herbal tea can help ;) However, now everyone is going crazy trying to finish everything by Christmas, so I'm still not really accomplishing anything. I have a lot to say about this holiday, namely about the abitrariness of the date, the ridiculousness of stressing over material objects, etc. However, I'm not going to rant about it right now because I should spend this precious little free time I have looking for jobs. So off I go.

I desperately want to be able to BREATHE again. I'm wearing a Breathe Right in the hopes that it will help. I tried to avoid drugs for two day, counting on herbal tea to get me through this. I finally gave in to the Sudafed today, but it made me loopy and unable to do much productive work on the job search. Alas.

Quite the exciting Friday night at the parents' household... watched High Fidelity for the 1000th time. Never realized how much of the movie is about SEX until I watched it with my parents :) Saw the end of the Cavs' game-- they finally won on the road! Woo! Now I'm thinking about going to bed. I always went to bed early on Friday nights in SB, but that was because I was working fulltime+ and very tired. Now I'm just sick and bored.

Tomorrow I bake. And look for jobs again. And probably Christmas shop. And tomorrow my brother comes home!!

This is a sign of how my job search is going... I applied for management positions at Starbucks and Caribou Coffee. Now, to be fair, I do like working in coffee, and I think I'd be a great manager. And they have terrific benefits programs, which is pretty crucial. But still, I HAVE AN MA! Oh well. Honestly, they're the only jobs I've found recently that even look interesting. And I need to get a job soon!

Ok, no more distractions. I have a plan of attack. I've had my coffee, eaten my lunch. I took Sudafed, so that I might be able to go more than 2 minutes without blowing my nose. Now I will look for jobs. Oh joy.

My mother is driving me insane. I knew this would happen, but I was hoping I could last at least a week. No such luck. Now my mother is an incredibly good person. She was a great mother, at least while we were little. I have always felt loved, supported. Mom has always set a good example by trying to practice what she preaches. She teaches Sunday School, works at a nonprofit, donates lots of money to various charities, recycles (which hasn't always been all that easy in our little town in Ohio), serves on executive boards for different charitable organizations. In short, she's kind of a saint. But that doesn't make her any easier to live with.

First, she talks. Constantly. Now my dad and I are the kind of people who enjoy silence. It's not that we hate talking, but we only talk when we have something to say. My mother talks because she cannot handle silence. It makes her crazy. What does she talk about? Absolutely anything. She retells stories over and over. She will tell you minute little details of her day that you couldn't possibly care about. At some point Dad and I just stop responding. Instead of discouraging her, she just talks more and louder to fill the void.

All of this is bad. What's really awful though is the questions. Mom cannot accept that there are things she doesn't need to know. (Or probably doesn't want to know). If I'm sitting at my computer, Mom will ask what I'm doing. She will want to know where I am at any given moment if not at home. If I tell a story about a friend she must know the name and biographical details of that friend. The worst is sports. Mom has recently become a HUGE sports fan. I think it happened when my brother and I both left home, and she need something to fill the time. Mom knows more about the Indians than any other person I've ever met. She watches all the games, listens to sports talk shows, reads stories in the paper. She's always been a Browns fan, but now she's a crazy LeBron/Cavs fan too. Dad used to go downstairs and watch sports as a refuge, but now she's down there watching every game with him. The problem is that Mom has NO short-term memory. She makes herself crazy doing a million things at once, but as a result she is incapable of focusing on any one thing. So when she asks a question, we all know full well that she won't remember the answer five seconds later. Most of the time she won't even remember asking the question. While this drives us all crazy in the rest of life, it's especially frustrating when watching a game, and it means that while Mom has watched sports her whole life, there are times when she doesn't understand some very basic concepts of the game.

All of this makes me sad for a few reasons. One, I LOVE my mother. I really respect her as mother, as all-around good person. But I have a lot of trouble liking her. As long as we're a time zone or two apart it's fine, but living in the same house is definitely impossible. Two, I remember a time when my mom wasn't quite this flighty. The woman's IQ is higher than mine, she graduated summa cum laude, with honors, from Kent. And yet, she has serious problems following the plot of a simple movie now (in large part b/c she refuses to sit still or do just one thing at a time). Third, I'm afraid I'm a lot like her. Now to most people I probably resemble my father more than my mother, but at times I am frighteningly like my mother. I, too, have difficulty doing just one thing. In grad school, I often caught myself reading, watching TV, and eating lunch at the same time. Was I giving much of my attention to any of those? No, of course not. There are times when I watch those commercials that explain what life is like for people with ADD and I wonder if I'm one of them. Like my mom, I just have so many thoughts going through my head at any one time that it's sometimes difficult to focus, to figure out what's most important.

Anyway, I'm not sure how to "cure" my mother or how she would react if I suggested she go to a doctor for ADD. I think she knows she has something like it. And she certainly knows that she isn't very happy. But I don't think she likes to show weakness in front of my father and me because we don't like admitting weaknesses in ourselves. So I'm not sure what the solution is here. Maybe there's not anything wrong with her at all. Maybe it is simply a case of personality clash. My brother is a lot like my Mom in the always-talking sense, though he is much better able to focus. So maybe it doesn't bother him as much as it does me and dad. Maybe the "solution" is that my parents shouldn't live together. Anyone who's know me for a while knows that I believed my parents would divorce as soon as my brother left for college. Why they haven't is a complete mystery to me. Anyway, I can't divorce my mom and wouldn't want to, so I need to figure out some way to make this situation more bearable. I don't want to not come home to visit, so I need to find a way to make this work.

I had all these grand plans for what I was going to accomplish once I made it back to Ohio... I was going to study French, workout every day, learn to play the saxophone, make Christmas cards, write a novel, and (oh yeah) look for jobs. What have I actually done? Mostly drink tea and sneeze, with a little sleeping and eating thrown in. I tried to go see Love Actually, with Mom, but the time in the paper was wrong, so we missed it. And I tried to go see LOTR, with Dad, but it was (not surprisingly) sold out. We did rent Pirates of the Caribbean, so I have finally seen that now. Interesting, but not wildly exciting. I have also managed to set up my router so as to be able to spend all my time online. For a brief moment I killed all internet connectivity in our home, to which my parents suggested we contact those nice nerdy boys at tech support. I scoffed and pointed out that I too was nerdy and didn't need any help. Of course I managed to solve the problem on my own (by unplugging everything and then plugging it back in). And I did organize/reply to some emails and mail checks I owed to various people (a terrifying ordeal when you suddenly have no income).

There's not that much to say about the trip across the country. I did not cry, though saying goodbye to Spikey Thursday night and then Rob Friday morning was almost too much. However, I have talked to both of them since then, so I don't think these goodbyes will be permanent!

Spent the majority of the 4-day drive just staring off into space. Dad never let me drive, which was hardly shocking. Had it been my car I would have insisted on turns at the wheel, but manuevering a 15-foot truck with car carrier didn't seem worth the effort. I read a bit and wrote a little, spent some time on the phone with Mom, B, Spikey, Barlo, and Chryssi. Dad and I did talk when we had something to say, and some of those conversations were quite intense. But mostly I stared. It was quite pleasant.

In lieu of a blow-by-blow recap, here are some stats from the trip:
# of states: 9
Total miles: 2,483
Miles per gallon: 10
Size of gas tank: 30 gallons (We ran out of gas once in NM, just past Albuquerque. New Mexicans, even the cops, didn't stop to help. But Penske was great and sent someone out to help within 20 minutes... so much better than U-Haul!)
Route: Garden St > 101S > 126E > 5S > 14E > 138E > 18E > 15N > 40E > 44N > 270S > 255N > 70E > 270N > 71N > 30E > 172E > 241N > 687W > Cliff Dr. > Windward Cir.

Daily journey:
Day one (12/12)- Santa Barbara, CA > Flagstaff, AZ (555 miles)
Day two (12/13)- Flagstaff, AZ > Amarillo, TX (622 miles)
Day three (12/14)- Amarillo, TX > St. Louis, MO (738 miles)
Day four (12/15)- St. Louis, MO > Massillon, OH (567 miles)

Hotels:
Days Inn, Flagstaff, AZ (ok, clean, free donuts)
Clarion Inn, Amarillo, TX (trying too hard to be Opryland Hotel, offered "scramble" eggs for breakfast)
Holiday Inn Express, Fenton, MO (very nice and clean, great free breakfast choices)

Restaurants:
In-N-Out, Barstow, CA
Cracker Barrel, Kingman, AZ
4B's Restaurant, Grants, NM
Pizza Hut, Tucumcari, NM
House of Hunan, Oklahoma City, OK
Fazoli's, Springfield, MO
Krispy Kreme, Fenton, MO
Denny's, Indianapolis, IN

All in all, a good trip. Avoided bad weather and made it home in time for Monday Night Football :)

I've been back in Ohio for two days now, and I have one thing to say: It's damn cold here.