open road

I was able to go to a friend's family's house for Thanksgiving, thanks to a ride offered by a coworker and her boyfriend. It was only Wednesday, and I already had something to be thankful for.

I guess I have a lot of things, but I don't need to list them. I'm well aware of both the kick-ass and suck-ass aspects of my life, though I'm probably not nearly as appreciative of either as I should be. The break was nice, but I think I could use a few more days. I stuffed my face on more than one occasion, lazed about like a bloated sack of turd, splurged at Best Buy and saw The Incredibles, which would've been the coolest movie I'd seen in the theaters this year if I hadn't seen Spider-Man 2. There's more fodder for the thankful pile.

I had a rent a car to bet back home--a nice new 2005 Ford Focus ZX5 with leather seats and a six-CD changer. It drove really nice--nicer than the older Focus I rented once--though it didn't seem to be as good on gas as I thought it'd be. Maybe I just miscalculated. It was a long drive, and there was some mountain driving involved too.

Most of the trip, though, was the long flat expanse of the California valley. The valley kinda depresses me, especially once you get into the thick of it with the endless fields and agriculture and purple, shadowy mountains in the distance around you. It really goes on forever. Once you get away from the coast, California really isn't all that interesting. It's kinda like Nebraska, really, if Nebraska were surrounded by mountains.

I'd only gotten a couple of hours of sleep for whatever reason, and I had to leave early in the morning to get the car back in time. I only had it for 24 hours, and I couldn't afford an extra day. I didn't get really tired until about 45 miles from home. That's when I started rubbing my eyes and yawning and speeding up and slowing down sporadically. A Burger King seemed as a good a place as any to recharge, get out of the car, and fill myself full of poisons that would keep my body awake. This Burger King was situated in this little shit town to the south of here. I suppose I shouldn't say that, even the shittiest towns are someone's home, but this place just seems really shitty. The scene inside the Burger King was something out of an independent film--the kind that exposes the shittiness that belies the glossy, Norman Rockwell image of small town America. There was an old dude in a trucker hat by one window eating his meal and hacking up a nasty cough, two non-descript guys in the back, and two girls working the registers who had probably lived in this place all their lives. The one girl who took my order seemed nice enough. When she read back my order, I saw that she had a tongue ring. She was probably a high school junior or senior. Something like that. She was really trying to be responsible; she apologized when she handed me my food in a bag and not on a tray because I hadn't ordered it to go. I didn't mind, really. I hate carrying the trays. I'm always worried I'm going to drop the thing.

I told her not to worry about it. I was happy that they held the mustard.

The burgers were kinda dry and tasteless, but I was only eating them to wake myself up. The onion rings were pretty good, and the Dr. Pepper had enough sugar in it to keep me from falling asleep at the table. As I was eating, a ketchup packet hit the floor next to me. I looked back toward the counter to notice that the other girl--probably a high school junior/senior herself--had thrown it. The responsible one shrieked the ketchup hurler's name, and the ketchup hurler apologized to me and explained that she was trying to hit the people sitting behind me.

I thought it was pretty funny. I said don't worry about it, because my mouth was on autopilot. The ketchup didn't explode or get all over me or anything. Again, I was just happy that they held the mustard. The ketchup hurler then started talking to the people behind me--about this guy and that girl and this parent and that parent and how she should quit Burger King and get a job at the McDonald's (which was directly across the street, mind you. I wish I had a camera) again because that's the only fast food she eats anyways. It was probably the exhaustion, but it made me kinda sad; it just sounded so dead end and hopeless--like this was all that girl had. She didn't sound at all upset about it, just maybe a bit indifferent, which perhaps made it that much sadder.

This is getting pretty emo.

It's a long drive, and a pretty boring one at that. I only went through one proper city on the way here to there, and the rest was fruit stands, small towns invaded by fast food restaurants and fields. I had the stereo up pretty loud, but once I got tired, it kinda faded out, and all I could do was think. The whole situation made me think of some childhood story of mine, that I wanted to write down, but I've forgotten all about it. I don't know why I thought of it on the drive, because it really had nothing to do with what was going on--which was a whole lot of nothing, really--but it just popped into my head, and now it's gone. Maybe I'll write it down if I remember it again. Just before I started writing this, I tried to remember what the story was, and the fact that I couldn't remember reminded me of the song "The Way It Is" by Bruce Hornsby and the Range. It was one of my favorite songs growing up. I guess it's kinda schmaltzy, but I still think it's really pretty in that sad kinda way. Everytime I hear that song, it reminds me of being in my parent's car as a child on the way home from Christmas Eve at our relative's house in New Jersey. We were pulled into a gas station and I was nodding out in the back seat when it came on. The more I think about it now, though, I wonder if it really was on Christmas Eve when I heard it, because we always used to listen to the stations that played Christmas carols on the drive. Still, that song reminds me of Christmas every damn time.

One holiday down...