Back for a visit
Dear Diary,
Last week we went back to New York to visit! Lots of stuff happened, and it was really hard, but also really good (I guess), and then this week has been really strange and stressful and stuff. If you want to read all about it, you can click below, but it's REALLY long, so beware!!
On Tuesday last week I spent the day doing stuff to get ready to go, packed and set things up for the cats and got the key to the neighbors and loaded the car and stuff. Lanse got permission to leave work at 2:00, so I went and picked him up, then drove to the doctor to get my prescription for Albuterol, stopped for gas, and we were off to Charlotte. Got there in time for dinner. Yay! My mom's folks were there visiting, and it was an incredibly frustrating visit because everyone's opinionated and factually incorrect, and it was torment to listen to mom and grandpa arguing some tiny details on religion over dinner. BLAH. It was good to see them though in a general sense; next week (I think, it's sometime this month) Grandpa turns 90 and he still gets out on the golf course a few times a week, so he's in pretty good shape. As is Grandma. But at that age, you never know. They live in Florida, so we don't see them often.
Wednesday morning I went to CVS to fill my Albuterol, and when I got there, I noticed the blue dash light for the high beams were on in the car even though the switch was off. Came out of the drug store to see the lights were actually on. I couldn't shut them off, and the turn signals were all wonky too. This was an hour before we were to leave for our flight, so I called dad at work in a panic and he said since we were leaving the car at their house he'd take care of it. Siiiiiiiiigh.
So then mom and the grandfolks drove us to the airport. We were supposed to have a connecting flight but it turned out to be on the same aircraft so we didn't have to get off the plane. Yay! We had prayed earlier for that exact thing, so that was cool. Go God! We got into Rochester around 5:30. Jungle Steve picked us up (that'd be Lanse's dad. He's gone wild with his hair, looks vaguely Man of the Mountain rough. I'll see if I can find a good picture. Suffice it to say, I was momentarily taken aback.) When we arrived at the airport it was all under renovations and it was weird how we really did not feel as though we'd arrived home. I'd mentally steeled myself to be fighting my emotions all week so it was very surprising to find that we really didn't feel like we belonged there anymore. But it wasn't a very good feeling, because we still don't feel like we belong here either, which sort of makes us emotionally homeless at the moment. I don't like that. But anyway....
We went back to the house for dinner and relaxing. I got voicemail at 6:58 from Scott at Walden who said, "There's a small problem with your application, call me before 7 your time!" So I called him and we got it straightened out. Lanse went to the evening fellowship group he used to go to and saw a bunch of friends. We hung out with Lanse's little brother Nick ("little" as in younger... he's 23) and it was really cool to see that he actually missed us. Previously it's been like pulling teeth to get him to sit and have a conversation, but we all hung around the living room and he talked and talked and talked with Lanse. *heh* It was cool.
It was really sad to see his parent's house though. I know that the Tryon men in general don't tend to care what their environment is like, but Corky (Lanse's mom) has always been the type to do major cleaning every couple weeks, but always maintained well on a day-to-day basis. Since the stroke though she hasn't been able to keep up. I really feel for her; it's hard to be physically unable, and have the physically able people around you just not care. But the house has sort of slunk into disrepair, and as a home-spirit it felt empty and unloved. It was very sad. I know that the environment around me affects how I feel and live day-to-day, and I can't imagine living in that kind of atmosphere.
Thursday we went to visit Pastor Dave and his wife MaryAnne (which I can never remember how she spells it). They were the people who took over the pastorate at Grace Covenant where I ran the school. They are amazing people; God's been using them like all get out, and we support one of their church plants up in Watertown, NY. Even though we didn't attend that church, our church had been going through a couple years of pastor searching, and Pastor Dave filled my personal need for pastoral leadership. He rocks. It was really really good to see them.
We stopped at the x-ray place to borrow copies of my x-rays for my doctor to look at. My spine appears to be curving, but I wanted to compare the latest scans to the ones from '05. It cost $20 each to get my own copy, so we borrowed them and we'll mail them back. Woo.
We went from there to visit Tim and Susan and Sammy, our faboo friends who live next door to our old house. I expected this part of the trip to be the worst emotionally because we'd be basically visiting our old house without actually going in it. Because we had movers move our stuff after we had left NY, when we walked out of that house for the last time it still had all our stuff in it and was cleaned up for showing and things, so we were afraid we'd have to fight the feeling of just walking back in the front door. But the new owners have painted the house and added a beautiful wood storm door and sealed the porch and done some landscaping, and filled the backyard with toddler toys, and it really didn't feel like ours anymore. We had a good feeling of closure with it, knowing that the owners have made a bunch of improvements that we had wanted to do but couldn't afford. So it's all okay. :)
Sammy is now 2 1/2. When we left last year he wasn't talking yet, and now he is. He is SO wonderful. I'm in love. *grin* Tim and Susan are really amazing too. We basically just hung out and talked and ate dinner and talked and played and talked. Lanse took a walk around his favorite walking route and left some emotional baggage behind at various points, which is good. Some day I want to find a way to visit NY and actually stay with Tim and Susan, but I'm not sure how we'd manage to do it without insulting my in-laws. *hmmm*
Friday was July 4th, and also Lanse's grandpa's 87th birthday. So we had a gathering of family (also known as the Tryon Photography Convention *heh*) at the grandfolks' with grilled burgers and hots and stuff. One of the local uncle/aunt/cousins family had gone out of town so we didn't see them, but his two 20 yr old cousins from Chicago took the train up, and it was great to hang out with them. They're psychotically intelligent (and also just psychotic, like most of the Tryons). They're some of the very few people I know who I firmly believe actually COULD take over the world if they tried. :) After the cookout we took Nick and John (cousin) with us to see the fireworks, and then from there we went to Tim Horton's for donuts and coffee, and then back to the house where Nick and John stayed up till 3 a.m. watching Firefly. I think. I went to bed. *heh*
Saturday.... um.... gosh. OH! Right. Okay. So we got off to a slow start, and then went to Bella's birthday party at the park in Spencerport. Bella was in the Kindergarten at my school and her sister Hannah was in my class. It was good to see them, though sad to hear that they had a really hard year at the new school last year. Hannah went from being the only 3rd grader (in my class) in a tiny failing school to being one of 25 4th graders in a large and successful school. Apparently they weren't very nice to her. I'd like to think that 5th grade will be better for her, but as far as I can remember, that's when the pre-teen female psychological bitchiness started, so I haven't much hope. *sigh* But anyway, the party was fun and there were lots of people I didn't know, but I took lots of pictures that I'm going to email to her mom because her camera broke. *heh*
After the party we stopped for meatball subs at Amiel's where we liked them, and then went to Millennium. That's the store where we spent every Saturday demoing Reaper stuff for three or four years. This was the hardest part of the trip; most everywhere and everyone else we'd seen had missed us, yeah, but moved on and grew and changed without us just fine and we could slip in and catch up. Millennium, OTOH, sent most of the Reaper stuff to the discount sale next door. Pretty much everything we'd worked for just died, and the store changed to outmode us. Obviously reps work to get stuff sold, but we were in it mostly because we thought the stuff was cool, and ideally out of the dozens of people who participated in our stuff, a couple of them would agree it was cool and carry on the interest. Instead, no one picked it up and everything we put our hearts and efforts into just stopped and they were in the process of selling us off cheap. It totally sucked, and came as a really big shock. We did see some people we knew though, and that was good.
After Millennium we went to Dean's house where our gaming group had rescheduled the game for us. :) We had a blast, although Steve (not Jungle Steve) was DMing D&D and was very irritated and grumpy about how we got too silly and kept interrupting him. He was really pissed after a bit, so I tried to corral everyone into shutting up. *heh* We had fun though; we rolled stuff and shot bad things and so on. It was good. They're cool people.
Sunday we went to church, and then John and Grandfolks came to Steve and Corky's for pizza lunch, and everyone fell asleep in the livingroom. David (other cousin) got into town that evening and we all went out for coffee. We started out at a coffee place downtown that the cousins had googled for, but it was in a bad neighborhood and as we opened the door, we heard the open mic stand-up starting in on a joke on riotous bunny sex, so we turned around and went to my favorite store, the Leaf and Bean. Left at closing time, and David fell asleep in the car (he was running on 2 hours of sleep in a couple days), so we went back to the house where the cousins and Nick stayed up till 3 again watching stuff.
Monday we had pretty much open and went driving around. Lanse and I had breakfast at the Leaf and Bean and chatted briefly with the owners (they just had a baby girl!) and regular employees we knew. Had good food and really important spousal conversation. It was good. Checked in with dad on the car status. The combination switch was shot, and it would take them a day to order the part and another half to put it in, so we had to decide what to do with it, since Lanse hadn't asked for Wednesday off of work. Then we went back to Millennium, and this time there was closure. There were only two other people there, and we wandered up and down and looked at stuff and talked to Travis for a bit (he's like.... Number One, or part-owner, we're not sure,) and it was all good. Lanse managed to recover from the shock and move on. Yay!
I also got a call back from Scott to learn that I was officially accepted for the July 14 start date of classes at Walden, and I reciprocated the acceptance, and now I'm waiting for the "packet" that I'm supposed to have gotten by now. I need to call him. *hrm*.
Then we picked up Corky from work and went back to the house and wound down. Nick and I watched Tin Man because Cork had given the disc to us and Nick wanted to see it before we took it home. It's really long, but really good. We also introduced Nick to mojitos. *heh* I assume he liked them cuz he drank a couple from the six-pack. Lanse met with some friends, and we packed up our stuff and went to bed.
Tuesday morning started more stress. We had a 7 am flight, so we got up at 5, discovered that their cat had peed on our suitcase but we hadn't noticed until we'd filled it with our clothes and zipped it shut and stood it up. We got on our plane, and the flight was fine, but we only got pretzels for breakfast. We had an hour and a half in Baltimore between flights, and I found a pizza place in the airport that was actually doing made-to-order eggs and omeletes and stuff actually in frying pans like real places, not like airport food, so we got some hot breakfast and tried to avoid the table by our gate where they were trying to get people to sign up for a Visa Card. *heh*
Dad picked us up at the airport in Charlotte, we went to their house and had some food... at this point I'm completely exhausted and about ready to totally flip out, but too bad! Dad has to get back to work, and our car is dead at his mechanics' shop. So we go to the shop where they jump the car, and we drove it to the Saturn dealer. We'd been trying for the last month or so to find a good deal to trade in the car, now that the AC was out and the right mirror sheared off and it was into the nickel-and-diming-us-to-death category; and now the combination switch and we knew the brakes and tires needed to be done in the next 6 months. We had gone car shopping twice here in Charleston and not found any cars (we tried 10 or so) that provided the right combination of 'works with my extension pedals' and 'trade in value high enough to cover outstanding loan'. So we figured we'd try the Charlotte Saturn, and it worked. We left there at 6:30 with a blue 2006 Mazda 3 hatchback. It's cute and sporty, has automatic tranny but you can also stick it into manual-sans-clutch, which will be fun once I learn how to feel the engine. It's black inside, and that's kinda depressing. It gets 28-32 mpg though, and our wagon was only getting 24-28, so this is good. And I think the hatchback is high enough we can fit my scooter in it. While we were at the Saturn, a HUGE thunderstorm came up and the power went out mid-print on financial paperwork and stuff. We were running on very little food and even less sleep and loads of stress, and it was amazing that we didn't both just have a major mental meltdown right there.
We were going to try to go back to my folks for dinner and then head out to Charleston and get in super late, but the pizza didn't arrive until almost 8:00. Lanse got permission to work from home, so we slept there and left at 5 in the morning to drive home, Lanse got all the luggage in (except the one the cat peed in, which he emptied into the laundry and left out on the porch) and went straight to his desk. I fell asleep on the screen porch, where it was warm but had a very nice cool breeze. I slept all morning and then got Lanse food, and he finished work and went to sleep for an hour and a half, then we went to Taco Bell and had dinner and then went to WalMart and got groceries, since our cupboards were bare. Came home and crashed.
And that was our really crazy stressful week. This week I have to figure out the school stuff, we have small group tonight which will be a baby shower for one of our members, we have dinner with the neighbors tomorrow night, Saturday is paint demo day at the Green Dragon, and Sunday we're hoping will be character creation day for our new Serenity game. Huzzah!
Love,
Me
Last week we went back to New York to visit! Lots of stuff happened, and it was really hard, but also really good (I guess), and then this week has been really strange and stressful and stuff. If you want to read all about it, you can click below, but it's REALLY long, so beware!!
On Tuesday last week I spent the day doing stuff to get ready to go, packed and set things up for the cats and got the key to the neighbors and loaded the car and stuff. Lanse got permission to leave work at 2:00, so I went and picked him up, then drove to the doctor to get my prescription for Albuterol, stopped for gas, and we were off to Charlotte. Got there in time for dinner. Yay! My mom's folks were there visiting, and it was an incredibly frustrating visit because everyone's opinionated and factually incorrect, and it was torment to listen to mom and grandpa arguing some tiny details on religion over dinner. BLAH. It was good to see them though in a general sense; next week (I think, it's sometime this month) Grandpa turns 90 and he still gets out on the golf course a few times a week, so he's in pretty good shape. As is Grandma. But at that age, you never know. They live in Florida, so we don't see them often.
Wednesday morning I went to CVS to fill my Albuterol, and when I got there, I noticed the blue dash light for the high beams were on in the car even though the switch was off. Came out of the drug store to see the lights were actually on. I couldn't shut them off, and the turn signals were all wonky too. This was an hour before we were to leave for our flight, so I called dad at work in a panic and he said since we were leaving the car at their house he'd take care of it. Siiiiiiiiigh.
So then mom and the grandfolks drove us to the airport. We were supposed to have a connecting flight but it turned out to be on the same aircraft so we didn't have to get off the plane. Yay! We had prayed earlier for that exact thing, so that was cool. Go God! We got into Rochester around 5:30. Jungle Steve picked us up (that'd be Lanse's dad. He's gone wild with his hair, looks vaguely Man of the Mountain rough. I'll see if I can find a good picture. Suffice it to say, I was momentarily taken aback.) When we arrived at the airport it was all under renovations and it was weird how we really did not feel as though we'd arrived home. I'd mentally steeled myself to be fighting my emotions all week so it was very surprising to find that we really didn't feel like we belonged there anymore. But it wasn't a very good feeling, because we still don't feel like we belong here either, which sort of makes us emotionally homeless at the moment. I don't like that. But anyway....
We went back to the house for dinner and relaxing. I got voicemail at 6:58 from Scott at Walden who said, "There's a small problem with your application, call me before 7 your time!" So I called him and we got it straightened out. Lanse went to the evening fellowship group he used to go to and saw a bunch of friends. We hung out with Lanse's little brother Nick ("little" as in younger... he's 23) and it was really cool to see that he actually missed us. Previously it's been like pulling teeth to get him to sit and have a conversation, but we all hung around the living room and he talked and talked and talked with Lanse. *heh* It was cool.
It was really sad to see his parent's house though. I know that the Tryon men in general don't tend to care what their environment is like, but Corky (Lanse's mom) has always been the type to do major cleaning every couple weeks, but always maintained well on a day-to-day basis. Since the stroke though she hasn't been able to keep up. I really feel for her; it's hard to be physically unable, and have the physically able people around you just not care. But the house has sort of slunk into disrepair, and as a home-spirit it felt empty and unloved. It was very sad. I know that the environment around me affects how I feel and live day-to-day, and I can't imagine living in that kind of atmosphere.
Thursday we went to visit Pastor Dave and his wife MaryAnne (which I can never remember how she spells it). They were the people who took over the pastorate at Grace Covenant where I ran the school. They are amazing people; God's been using them like all get out, and we support one of their church plants up in Watertown, NY. Even though we didn't attend that church, our church had been going through a couple years of pastor searching, and Pastor Dave filled my personal need for pastoral leadership. He rocks. It was really really good to see them.
We stopped at the x-ray place to borrow copies of my x-rays for my doctor to look at. My spine appears to be curving, but I wanted to compare the latest scans to the ones from '05. It cost $20 each to get my own copy, so we borrowed them and we'll mail them back. Woo.
We went from there to visit Tim and Susan and Sammy, our faboo friends who live next door to our old house. I expected this part of the trip to be the worst emotionally because we'd be basically visiting our old house without actually going in it. Because we had movers move our stuff after we had left NY, when we walked out of that house for the last time it still had all our stuff in it and was cleaned up for showing and things, so we were afraid we'd have to fight the feeling of just walking back in the front door. But the new owners have painted the house and added a beautiful wood storm door and sealed the porch and done some landscaping, and filled the backyard with toddler toys, and it really didn't feel like ours anymore. We had a good feeling of closure with it, knowing that the owners have made a bunch of improvements that we had wanted to do but couldn't afford. So it's all okay. :)
Sammy is now 2 1/2. When we left last year he wasn't talking yet, and now he is. He is SO wonderful. I'm in love. *grin* Tim and Susan are really amazing too. We basically just hung out and talked and ate dinner and talked and played and talked. Lanse took a walk around his favorite walking route and left some emotional baggage behind at various points, which is good. Some day I want to find a way to visit NY and actually stay with Tim and Susan, but I'm not sure how we'd manage to do it without insulting my in-laws. *hmmm*
Friday was July 4th, and also Lanse's grandpa's 87th birthday. So we had a gathering of family (also known as the Tryon Photography Convention *heh*) at the grandfolks' with grilled burgers and hots and stuff. One of the local uncle/aunt/cousins family had gone out of town so we didn't see them, but his two 20 yr old cousins from Chicago took the train up, and it was great to hang out with them. They're psychotically intelligent (and also just psychotic, like most of the Tryons). They're some of the very few people I know who I firmly believe actually COULD take over the world if they tried. :) After the cookout we took Nick and John (cousin) with us to see the fireworks, and then from there we went to Tim Horton's for donuts and coffee, and then back to the house where Nick and John stayed up till 3 a.m. watching Firefly. I think. I went to bed. *heh*
Saturday.... um.... gosh. OH! Right. Okay. So we got off to a slow start, and then went to Bella's birthday party at the park in Spencerport. Bella was in the Kindergarten at my school and her sister Hannah was in my class. It was good to see them, though sad to hear that they had a really hard year at the new school last year. Hannah went from being the only 3rd grader (in my class) in a tiny failing school to being one of 25 4th graders in a large and successful school. Apparently they weren't very nice to her. I'd like to think that 5th grade will be better for her, but as far as I can remember, that's when the pre-teen female psychological bitchiness started, so I haven't much hope. *sigh* But anyway, the party was fun and there were lots of people I didn't know, but I took lots of pictures that I'm going to email to her mom because her camera broke. *heh*
After the party we stopped for meatball subs at Amiel's where we liked them, and then went to Millennium. That's the store where we spent every Saturday demoing Reaper stuff for three or four years. This was the hardest part of the trip; most everywhere and everyone else we'd seen had missed us, yeah, but moved on and grew and changed without us just fine and we could slip in and catch up. Millennium, OTOH, sent most of the Reaper stuff to the discount sale next door. Pretty much everything we'd worked for just died, and the store changed to outmode us. Obviously reps work to get stuff sold, but we were in it mostly because we thought the stuff was cool, and ideally out of the dozens of people who participated in our stuff, a couple of them would agree it was cool and carry on the interest. Instead, no one picked it up and everything we put our hearts and efforts into just stopped and they were in the process of selling us off cheap. It totally sucked, and came as a really big shock. We did see some people we knew though, and that was good.
After Millennium we went to Dean's house where our gaming group had rescheduled the game for us. :) We had a blast, although Steve (not Jungle Steve) was DMing D&D and was very irritated and grumpy about how we got too silly and kept interrupting him. He was really pissed after a bit, so I tried to corral everyone into shutting up. *heh* We had fun though; we rolled stuff and shot bad things and so on. It was good. They're cool people.
Sunday we went to church, and then John and Grandfolks came to Steve and Corky's for pizza lunch, and everyone fell asleep in the livingroom. David (other cousin) got into town that evening and we all went out for coffee. We started out at a coffee place downtown that the cousins had googled for, but it was in a bad neighborhood and as we opened the door, we heard the open mic stand-up starting in on a joke on riotous bunny sex, so we turned around and went to my favorite store, the Leaf and Bean. Left at closing time, and David fell asleep in the car (he was running on 2 hours of sleep in a couple days), so we went back to the house where the cousins and Nick stayed up till 3 again watching stuff.
Monday we had pretty much open and went driving around. Lanse and I had breakfast at the Leaf and Bean and chatted briefly with the owners (they just had a baby girl!) and regular employees we knew. Had good food and really important spousal conversation. It was good. Checked in with dad on the car status. The combination switch was shot, and it would take them a day to order the part and another half to put it in, so we had to decide what to do with it, since Lanse hadn't asked for Wednesday off of work. Then we went back to Millennium, and this time there was closure. There were only two other people there, and we wandered up and down and looked at stuff and talked to Travis for a bit (he's like.... Number One, or part-owner, we're not sure,) and it was all good. Lanse managed to recover from the shock and move on. Yay!
I also got a call back from Scott to learn that I was officially accepted for the July 14 start date of classes at Walden, and I reciprocated the acceptance, and now I'm waiting for the "packet" that I'm supposed to have gotten by now. I need to call him. *hrm*.
Then we picked up Corky from work and went back to the house and wound down. Nick and I watched Tin Man because Cork had given the disc to us and Nick wanted to see it before we took it home. It's really long, but really good. We also introduced Nick to mojitos. *heh* I assume he liked them cuz he drank a couple from the six-pack. Lanse met with some friends, and we packed up our stuff and went to bed.
Tuesday morning started more stress. We had a 7 am flight, so we got up at 5, discovered that their cat had peed on our suitcase but we hadn't noticed until we'd filled it with our clothes and zipped it shut and stood it up. We got on our plane, and the flight was fine, but we only got pretzels for breakfast. We had an hour and a half in Baltimore between flights, and I found a pizza place in the airport that was actually doing made-to-order eggs and omeletes and stuff actually in frying pans like real places, not like airport food, so we got some hot breakfast and tried to avoid the table by our gate where they were trying to get people to sign up for a Visa Card. *heh*
Dad picked us up at the airport in Charlotte, we went to their house and had some food... at this point I'm completely exhausted and about ready to totally flip out, but too bad! Dad has to get back to work, and our car is dead at his mechanics' shop. So we go to the shop where they jump the car, and we drove it to the Saturn dealer. We'd been trying for the last month or so to find a good deal to trade in the car, now that the AC was out and the right mirror sheared off and it was into the nickel-and-diming-us-to-death category; and now the combination switch and we knew the brakes and tires needed to be done in the next 6 months. We had gone car shopping twice here in Charleston and not found any cars (we tried 10 or so) that provided the right combination of 'works with my extension pedals' and 'trade in value high enough to cover outstanding loan'. So we figured we'd try the Charlotte Saturn, and it worked. We left there at 6:30 with a blue 2006 Mazda 3 hatchback. It's cute and sporty, has automatic tranny but you can also stick it into manual-sans-clutch, which will be fun once I learn how to feel the engine. It's black inside, and that's kinda depressing. It gets 28-32 mpg though, and our wagon was only getting 24-28, so this is good. And I think the hatchback is high enough we can fit my scooter in it. While we were at the Saturn, a HUGE thunderstorm came up and the power went out mid-print on financial paperwork and stuff. We were running on very little food and even less sleep and loads of stress, and it was amazing that we didn't both just have a major mental meltdown right there.
We were going to try to go back to my folks for dinner and then head out to Charleston and get in super late, but the pizza didn't arrive until almost 8:00. Lanse got permission to work from home, so we slept there and left at 5 in the morning to drive home, Lanse got all the luggage in (except the one the cat peed in, which he emptied into the laundry and left out on the porch) and went straight to his desk. I fell asleep on the screen porch, where it was warm but had a very nice cool breeze. I slept all morning and then got Lanse food, and he finished work and went to sleep for an hour and a half, then we went to Taco Bell and had dinner and then went to WalMart and got groceries, since our cupboards were bare. Came home and crashed.
And that was our really crazy stressful week. This week I have to figure out the school stuff, we have small group tonight which will be a baby shower for one of our members, we have dinner with the neighbors tomorrow night, Saturday is paint demo day at the Green Dragon, and Sunday we're hoping will be character creation day for our new Serenity game. Huzzah!
Love,
Me