Monday, May 16, 2011

rain, tires, and guitars. in fifth gear.

so, i have this extremely detailed life plan. right now it's looking something like this.

have the time of my life at alma.
become fluent in spanish and graduate with a fancy michigan teaching license.
move my butt to arizona.
get a really sweet apartment with a little kid shower curtain.
buy a cello.
teach kids how to speak spanish and understand charles dickens.
be awesome.

i can honestly say that if anything deviates from this plan, i'm doomed. because i am so terribly set on it. and i know how pathetic and out of reach that fact is.

i left out the part about marrying matthew gray gubler. because that's just not feasible no matter how much i wish it to happen.

(who WOULDN'T want to marry this?!)


so. this weekend, not via the impromptu route, i drove to allegan michigan to visit my boyfriend jacob and spend two nights with his family. i stayed in their guest house because frankly, his house is just a gigantic asthma attack waiting to happen. that billboard that you see with the gold fish and the little kid saying he feels like a fish out of water? that kid knows what's up. anyway, our weekend, with me staying in their guest house, was going to be flawless. we were going to watch the life aquatic, hang out with his friends, cruise around kalamazoo, play frisbee golf, and go swimming. that sounds like a hell of a day to me.

well, the life aquatic part worked out just fine. but i must say, it is the most terrible fantastic movie ever made (and not just because it has matthew gray gubler speaking ten words and getting slashed by a pirate). if you like movies, you'll hate it. i adored it in all of its horribleness. the only horrendous thing i found about that evening was the fact that my back completely wrenched out and i had to sit with my back pressed into a gigantic ice pack and we ran out of popcorn entirely too quickly.

the flawless saturday began with me completely oversleeping, finding a wolf spider in my bathtub, and demanding to shower at jacob's house. i feel like the wolf spider is an omen about my summer. especially because my brother is missing my twentieth birthday to study their creepy crawly behavior.

anyway.

jacob insisted that i drive his seventeen year old stick shift escort to alex's house. i've driven a stick shift three times. the third time resulted in jacob's car getting towed (but for free, thanks to my friendly AAA card and the nice lady on the phone who called me miz hollenberg), so i was not game for this. once i got to the main road and was sure i was going to stall, it started pouring. and it was cold. and i screamed a whole bunch putting that ancient station wagon into second gear.

upon arrival at alex's house, i met jacob's best friend justice, and we stood around in alex's kitchen marveling at knives, talking about harry potter, and lamenting about the entirely shitty weather, which totally blew out our plans of swimming and frisbee golf. i still don't know what frisbee golf is, because here in indiana, we play corn hole. i feel like both of these activities aren't for me. once these plans were squashed, i ran into alex's gigantic dog that was a walking allergy attack and that i swear was going to die right there in the kitchen from extreme old age and exhaustion, and his cat that was passed out in a corner like a homeless drunk. his name is squire and jacob does not pet him. my weekend was off to a strange start.

jacob commenced to drive us to kalamazoo (it's totally real. and fun.) where a guy in a really ugly SUV rolled down his window, shouted something incomprehensible at jacob, flicked him off, and drove away. being with justice and alex made me very adventurous, so i definitely worked that middle finger muscle back. and it felt so good that it scared me. after that jacob missed the exit, we found a new one, and then the car started shuddering. violently. (his car and i don't mix very well, i've gathered.) once we got to kalamazoo, justice stuck his head out the window and found out that the rear passenger tire completely blew out.

we pulled into a lutheran church (prince of peace, totally.) and spent a long time trying to change it. jacob definitely knew how, i spent a lot of time dancing around the parking lot like a ballerina, and alex jacked the car up three separate times. then alex and justice wandered off and jacob and i hobbled the car to pepboys to buy a new tire. from there we met up again at guitar center where i quickly pointed out the most expensive bass guitar in the place. never mind that i have one in my room that i can play, no, i wanted that awesome green one that was worth as much as the college classes i start today.

even after shelling out sixty-seven bucks for a fancy new tire, jacob impulsively bought a guitar. does he know how to play it? no. does that matter? of course not. what mattered was how extremely cool the four of us looked standing at pep boys, waiting to pay for the tire, carrying a guitar in a cardboard box, and me excitedly discussing serial killers with justice. because he just totally doesn't understand how somebody "with cool hair like yours" can really be that crazy about jeffrey dahmer.

after we went to the mall with the new tire and the new guitar and me pining for a ukulele, alex and justice discovered my rather intense fear of escalators and insane love of auntie anne's. and the power of my dr. pepper addiction, because i almost cried when auntie anne's did NOT have dr. pepper for me to get my fix. by this time, it was almost six, my hair was flat, and i had a diet coke. my day was in complete shambles.

halfway back to alex's house, we spun around on a dirt road to meet stephen and jenaya at a taco bell. if you know me, then you probably know my taco bell story. if you don't, it's pretty simple: i'd never had taco bell. i had it on the way home from a marching band competition when i was eighteen. i got home from the marching band competition. i spent all night throwing up that mexican crap into the toilet.

taco bell has dr. pepper. i drank two medium cup's full, and then didn't use the bathroom. on the way back to alex's house, while listening to ben folds from justice's mac, i almost wet my pants.

i got the stick safely back to jacob's. we watched spider man. that was planned. we pirated up, the greatest disney movie ever (besides lion king, obviously) onto a VHS. that went as planned until i popped it into my vhs player fifteen minutes ago and got a big, fat, nothing. except the lord of the rings special on the history  channel that we honestly thought was taped over.

so my entire weekend deviated from the plan. i wish to GOD i'd remembered my camera to document everything, mostly the ballerina dancing in the lutheran church parking lot while jacob jacked up his car for the third time and alex ripped up the already blown out tire with a knife. (justice was cool and just kind of stood around and smoked a cigarette like we were in a movie. a really bad one.) repetition: my entire weekend deviated from the plan.

and i had SO MUCH FUN.

so maybe, this whole move to arizona and teach kids spanish and have a cute shower curtain, maybe if that doesn't work, i'll be okay.

i'm certainly hoping that it'll be okay.  getting lost on the ride home (my GPS is out to kill me!) was okay, too. but i think that's because i was singing "i just can't wait to be king" so loudly that other motorists were looking at me. and i had my windows up.