Feeling: indescribable
Listening to: Brand New - Deja Entendu
Reading/Watching: Life as a House

I wondered which approach I should take, when writing an accounting of this weekend: the short/funny, or the long/unfunny?

So I will give you both, and you can stop reading anytime you like.

The three questions I was asked the most this weekend were:
1) "What did you do to your hair? Was it always that color?"
2) "So, when do you graduate?" and,
3) "Lindsy? Who's Lindsy?"

The one question I asked myself the most this weekend was, "Why did I leave Schoolville?"

Driving to Hometown Friday night, on a wet road, a blue Tahoe collided with Luna, and I spent an hour on the highway median, up to my ankles in ants and soaked grass, talking to police and the people in the other car. The three other accidents less than 100 yards from me were not so lucky, requiring ambulances and wreckers and fire trucks. But tell that to my father.

I got to spend the remaining three hours of driving thinking about what he would say, since I only received a tiny sampling over the phone when I called to tell why I'd be late.

Like I told Puppy, I don't hate being here. I just hate being here when I've done something wrong. And if something has happened to my car, then that means I have done something wrong, because something could always have been done better.

I got home to the good cop / bad cop routine, where one parent yelled and the other hugged, and finally retreated to bed. The next morning we drove to a fishing cabin to meet with uncles, aunts, and cousins.

It was fun, catching too much fish and giggling over the '70s decor of the cabins (the boards of the walls were stained in alternating rainbow colors, with gloriously tacky mustard-gold fake-velvet chairs), sitting on the dock looking over the water, talking to Puppy and Ana and sharing a jacket, out under a sky where stars actually exist. I didn't have to look at my poor car, with her black eye and busted hip.

Coming back was the difficult part, where Dad starting talking about my car again, and all the things I needed to get done. I knew it had to happen, but sitting in a car discussing it for three hours made the drive quite fun. And it became clear that leaving Wednesday was no longer an option, if I was going to have to get repairs done.

After filing the insurance claim (with him over my shoulder, correcting every word), I picked up my phone and my keys and charged out the door, deciding to search out the bike path I used to take through the woods which led to a green meadow and a little stream.

I haven't fled to the woods since I was twelve, maybe thirteen. I used to go there to act out adventures with friends, then to ride bikes with Puppy, then finally by myself, to sing or hide or just pick berries or wildflowers. It's been a while since I went there, because after a while other people found out about it, and there were kids on bikes and guys on motorcycles.

It's filled with spiderwebs now, muddy, covered in leaves, overgrown. I kept trying to dial numbers on my cell phone as I walked, faking a bright voice as I left messages on people's answering machines, until I lost the signal and couldn't reach anyone, and by then I was out of the trees and in the tall grass by the stream.

You know that melodramatic thing people do in movies, where they go to a big open space, fall to their knees, and scream at the top of their lungs? Well, it's overrated. In the end, I ran out of breath too soon, and hurt my throat, and didn't feel all that much better.

I feel bad for Chessa, though, because she's the first person who called me back, and as a reward got the whole spiel:

"I'm sorry, I just don't think I'll be able to make lunch tomorrow because I'll be taking my car around for estimates because it's wrecked and I'll probably be stuck in town the whole week while it's fixed which means I won't get to see my friends or my boyfriend and I'll be spending my entire spring break trapped here with my father with no car and it's like a prison sentence being extended and he keeps saying what I could have done better and what I've done wrong and how this always happens with me and it's making me crazy and my woods are overgrown and ugly and not mine and I can't breathe and maybe I never had asthma maybe it's Hometown, maybe it's just suffocating me and it's always suffocated me and I just never knew because I thought it was me..." until I wound down like an exhausted toy.

Poor Chessa. She did the best she could to bring me out of frantic-mode, but it couldn't really be helped. I just had to run out of my own steam, and walk home again.

Puppy volunteered to let me use his car, to take it back to Schoolville on Wednesday while Luna's being fixed, and I really, really, really could have kissed the boy. As it is, I actually started to cry. This is what makes my baby brother so amazing.

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