THE Weekend (capitals used appropriately)

[hkellick]

Well, this weekend may go down in my personal history as The Weekend. Good, in a roundabout sort of way, but not one I’d want to relive most of.
For those who were not “in the know”, this was the weekend Kristen and I were going to drive up to Rochester, clean out her apartment, pack what little stuff remained and drive back down to DC.
We did this, but it was… difficult along the way.


Let me move backwards. There are numerous other things about this weekend.
Starting with a couple weeks ago when I found out TMBG would be playing free in the Inner Harbor on Friday night. I wanted to go to this concert, really really badly, but I’d already promised I would help Kristen that weekend.
Jumping about a week ahead when it hit me how much it would COST to come to Rochester… By this time, the gas prices had skyrocketed to over $2/gallon across the state (Maryland, not NY, though it was evidently about as high in NY), plus money for meals all weekend (No cooking utensils unless we brought them with us), plus money to put the cats up.
I started to feel like this was a bad idea. I mentioned this to Kristen and we got into a mini-fight about it. The end result of the fight was, initially, really bad. She thought I was being whiny and trying to sneak my way out of it so I could see TMBG. I felt like I was being guilted and pushed into it.
Things moved on.

Fast forward to last week where, among everything else going on, we tried to figure out what the hell the plan WAS this weekend.
Kristen’s plans to have her parents borrow a flat bed truck from a friend were dashed when they said she has too much furniture and they’d need to rent a U-Haul.
Mom and grandma had planned on coming up Saturday to visit, but since we were actually driving up Saturday, we had to scrap those plans and make new ones for Sunday, which mom initially seemed crabby about.
Kristen was trying to juggle first week of work with trying to get her apartment packed up and loaded to Buffalo without her actually being there to supervise.
So, add all this stress with the normal every day stresses of both of us working and both of us living together and some of the every day stresses of real life (like not sleeping as well as we’d have liked that week.)

The end result of trying to deal with all that stress was a four hour knock-down drag-out fight starting at 9 Friday night and ending at 1.
I won’t get into the specifics of the fight. Basically, by and large, it was both of us letting out steam at each other, being overtired and unfair and finally, at 1:00, we realized we were still arguing BECAUSE we were overtired and stopped and went to sleep.

Only to wake up at 6:30 the next morning, as planned, so we could get an early start on the day. We get up, shower, talk about the fight a little, get dressed… and then I realize something.
Shit, Kristen didn’t put her car away the night before (until I get Maryland plates, which I hope will be soon, Kristen can’t park in my lot overnight or they’ll tow her.). I look outside and do NOT see her car. I panic, tell Kristen this, she checks and starts going into denial. Walk outside and, sure enough, no car.
Kristen’s car had been towed away last night during the fight. She realized this five minutes later, admitting she’d seen flashing red lights outside but couldn’t figure out why since she heard no police siren.
So I get the number for the towing company and Kristen tries to call, but it’s busy. I call again a minute later while Kristen is doing her hair and get through. It’s in Silver Springs (about 30 minutes north of us) and it will cost (I thought they said, though the connection was bad and very staticy) $80 CASH to get it out.
At this point you ask why not just use my car? My tires need replacing and we were both worried about trying to drive on the tires, so had planned on using Kristen’s car with her brand new tires)
So we finish packing, run to an ATM.. Kristen goes inside.. and the ATM isn’t working, so we drive the wrong way through a drive-through ATM (didn’t realize I’d driven the wrong way until it was too late), Kristen got out money and we drove off to Silver Spring.
Got there with little problem, Kristen hops out… and comes back nearly in tears to tell me I’d heard it wrong. It cost $180 cash to get it out. We went through my wallet and between the two of us we were still $5 short. UGH.
So Kristen calls the number on the back of her ATM card and they locate a bank about 5 minutes away. We drive there, find the plaza, stop at Starbuck’s (we hadn’t gotten much breakfast and we were both overtired and suffering from lack of sugar), then find the Bank of America.
Kristen puts her card into the ATM, starts punching numbers when a voice in back of the ATM tells her that she can’t get out any money or it’ll jam. At this point in time, we’re nearly dying of laugher because it’s just been THAT sorta day so far :p
Kristen writes herself a check (yay for bank being open on a Saturday), gets in line and, OF COURSE, the moment the teller gets to her, the ATM is fixed and can be used. Kristen just gets the money from the teller, we drive back, spring the car and go back home.
Rush around, getting directions together, herding cats into the cage and run out the door to drop the cats off at the Kennels and drive towards Rochester, now about 3 hours late.
Getting to the Kennels was no problem except that they didn’t have an “indoor cats” cage big enough for all three of them (the cat condos are divided into two “floors”, the bottom being for outdoor cats with a door leading to an enclosed area outdoor (enclosed with chicken wire), and the upper being for indoor cats, with a window where the cat can watch “Cat TV”. All they have is a bottom cage, so we decide that’s OK and anyways two of them like going outside (Cleo and Smokey), so they may really enjoy that.
We practically run out, stop off at the next exit for a quick lunch at BK and start the long drive down to Rochester.
The drive was quiet for most of the trip. Two things happened when we stopped for gas: 1) Kristen’s dad called to say that although they had put a reservation in to the Webster place for a U-Haul, they had called to ask if it was available and told it wasn’t but it would be… whenever. So Kristen’s dad was frantically calling around looking for another U-Haul and DID find out, about three times as large as Kristen would need (a 22 foot truck) 2) While on the phone with her father, a Cicada flew into the car and landed on Kristen’s steering wheel, she started to freak out, so I tried to whap it away with a piece of paper, and it landed square in Kristen’s lap…Poor Kristen’s dad must have gone half death as she freaked out.
The rest of the drive was quiet and uneventful… we sang, we talked, we found out that Kristen needs to burn a new Carbon Leaf mix because her CD was all scratched up, we each got a small nap in. Not much, really, to say about the actual drive.
Finally, we got into Rochester and drove right to dawnstar’s and kolys’s new house where we met up with hbbtrbbtbcnbt and family for dinner at Perkins and some games. Sadly, the night was far too short (we only got to play StarMunckin and Pop-Up Video, a game Beth had brought.) But we were both tired and Kristen was practically falling asleep, so we left early.

Sunday was… eh.
Got up early, did a quick run to Wegmans (god, we both missed Wegmans) for breakfast stuff for two days, and ended up with a little more (Fresh Peas for me, some Wegmans marinade and Gatorade for both of us) and then started to pack and clean.
The plan was to pack as much as possible as mom and grandma were coming for brunch and was willing to drive stuff to Buffalo if we needed it. So we packed first and started to load up the car.
Grandma and mom did arrive, just about 12:00 and we went to Denny’s for a quick lunch. It was nice to see them and I wish we’d had more time for them too, but we had a whole house to clean (All we’d gotten done, as so far, was most of the contact paper off the shelves)
The rest of the day is a complete blur. We stopped by blackfelicula’s house to get blankets and radio (thank you thank you thank you. That radio was a godsend!), and to go to Walmart because somewhere along the way Thursday, probably because of stress, I seemed to have acquired a stomach bug which was really annoying me.
And then we cleaned. And cleaned. And cleaned some more.
And I got more and more depressed, because I kept reliving the year worth of memories I, myself, had accumulated in that apartment: the first time I’d driven there with George in a big Harry Potter bag, watching Farscape with Kristen, taking care of Kristen when she started getting really sick, our first attempt at sex (Well, Crap!), the days of being emotional messes when Kristen started her job with EDS and when I got the news that I got the job in MD and was moving. And, maybe it felt, as we cleaned that we were wiping all those memories away. The most disturbing part for me was when we had finally finished for the night and the place had ceased being KRISTEN’S apartment and had become simply an apartment. The contact paper gone, the posters off the wall, the computer not there with Kristen’s playlist of choice on, even the stars not on the walls just sucked all the personality out of the apartment and left a big blank canvas instead.
We’d hoped that Dawn and Oli might join us that evening, but they couldn’t. Also that Gen and Michael could join us that evening to help us, but they also couldn’t. I wish any of these people had, as much for the extra pair of hands as for someone to help amuse and entertain us. (and, for me, someone to get my mind off how depressing this was)
We finally finished the cleaning about 8:30, looked around, held each other, and went off to do one final errand that needed to be done: Kristen needed to burn a few memories of a past she was no longer a part of. Things that couldn’t just be thrown out, but needed to be symbolically burned so that she could feel free and ready to move on.
We went to... I don’t know the name of the park… but it had benches and grills and was right next to Lake Ontario. We’d been there once before, sat on the beach and talked about stuff. And Kristen produced a bag full of stuff, the newest addition being from a vase of dried flowers (including flowers that I, myself, had given her – more on this later).
We lit the grill (thank goodness part of what she was getting rid of were some candles, otherwise that might not have worked so well) and started piling the stuff in… well, most of it. We both agreed it was OK to burn some of this, but it didn’t seem right to burn the flowers I had given her. So I thought of a different fate for them. Some of it burned nicely. Others.. not so nicely. In the end, we had quite a fire. Unfortunately, due to the antics of Saturday morning, I had left the jacket in DC and was getting cold fast, so we grabbed some sand and put the fire out, Kristen feeling symbolically cleansed.
Then we walked to the Lake and Kristen threw the flowers I had given her into the Lake. We agreed it seemed more fitting to do that.
Sunday, more than the rest of the week, was the day that was good for us in a roundabout way, for a lot of reasons. In the end, despite everything of the past couple weeks, we were there for each other and we got it all done.
Sunday night we held each other tight, Kristen murmuring numerous “thank you thank you thank you”s for me to being there, with her, for her. And it was good. :)
And we made love in her old apartment one last time. This was also good ;)

Monday, we’d decided we weren’t going to set an alarm for 6:30, so we slept in (I slept til about 7:00, she about 8:00), got up, showered, ate a quick breakfast, called Dawn and Oli apologizing and asking if we could drop the air mattress they’d let us borrow at Maureen and John’s, finished packing, cleaning, dropped things off at Maureen and John’s and hit the road.
The journey itself was quiet, but far too long. We, of course, hit traffic on the way home (especially around Selinsgrove), pulled into my apartment about 7:45, unpacked, put about half of the stuff away (especially stuff we were afraid might be harmful to kitties), called our respective parents to let them know we were home safe and alright. I spent about 15 minutes checking email, then crashed in bed with a book and went to bed. I don’t know when Kristen came to bed, but I doubt it was much later.

Many many thank yous and hugs to the Rochester crew for hanging with us and providing us stuff.
And much love to my Kristen who, with me, survived a long exhausting (physically and emotionally) weekend.

No TMBG concert for me, but I hear Barenaked Ladied and Alanis Morisette are performing in concert together and will be in my neck of the woods on August 10th. Of course we're going :)
And TMBG has a new album out soon. new album = tour = concert for LITE :)
So.. not too upset.

Comments

[dawnstar.livejournal.com]

It was SO good to see you both this weekend. I wish we'd had more time, but as it turned out, we were both sick a lot of the weekend as well - Oliver with allergies/cold and me with cold/tummy bug - so it's probably just as well.

*hugs and sends you both love* I hope we can see each other again sooner than later. I miss you both!