Monday, 10 December, 2001
We woke up fairly early... I had a crummy night's sleep, Karen told me that I had cried out several times, and I kinda remember that being unable to scream feeling. I think that I had some repressed stuff come up to the surface from watching... the Simpsons, of all things!
This idea was clarified as we were driving home... more on that later. We'd decided that we should come home early since the car was parked in the lot at the travel agency with the only key in Topeka locked in it. JD was willing to bring us home, but his truck has some problems and nobody felt good about taking it on a 1300-mile trip, so we decided to rent a car. We called several places, finally getting one at Hertz. Expensive, but available. Thinking back, it wouldn've been a helluva lot better if we would have driven down instead of taking the bus. We were hoping to meet people on the bus and have a good time, but that didn't happen. Tyler had gone to work Monday morning, but he came home sick about 09:30, so we got to see him again before we left. The packing that we had to get done was more relaxed, since we had lots of room in the car that we rented... it was a 2001 Taurus, pretty nice car, low mileage and everything. It drove like a Ford, though... We said our sad goodbyes and left about noon. Karen drove until we were south of Dallas, then I took over for a while. I finally got through Dallas going north without gettin lost! It's tricky, but JD showed me the trick and printed it out for me. He's a good boy! We stopped and ate north of Dallas, but not until after we'd stopped at a Texaco station with the filthiest bathrooms that I'd ever had to use. I will be writing Texaco a letter about that one... anyway, we had a nice meal at the Cracker Barrel, and then it was Karen's turn to drive again. Karen drove until about sunset, when we stoped at a Braums for an egg nog shake... which are excellent, incidentally... and then it was my turn to drive again. We were still south of Oklahoma City... I really hate driving through OK city, although it's better now than it has been, they're getting done with the construction. At one critical point, I decided to watch three semis changing lanes in front of me rather than the road signs, but we lucked out and got on the right road. Anyway, as we were going by Guthrie, I remembered something that happened when I was about eight or ten or so. It was after my sister had been killed, but I really don't know how long... anyway, uncle Charlie and aunt Rheaba had a weekend cabin on a lake outside of Guthrie, and I was down there with them for the weekend. I remember walking over a bridge and I suddenly felt like there were spiders all over me and I pretty much went hysterical. I remember sobbing into aunt Rhea's bussom for what seemed like hours...I don't remember anything else that happened, though. I'm sure that everyone has weird memories, things that pop up years later and just seem like they happened yesterday, thengs that were supressed, or at least not remembered until triggered by some chance event. I've had this happen to me several times, but triggered mostly by smells... Karen and I made good time the rest of the way, the last time that we stopped was in northern Oklahoma for gas and a small cuppa coffee. We got home at 23:00, the best time that I've ever done on this route... mostly 'cause I didn't get lost in Dallas! We picked the car up before we came home, it was OK, of course. Now for the unpacking...