Okay, he really did not say that, but that was what he was conveying with his “Excellent work, as always Lisa” on the commentary on my ereet brushing skills. I owe it all to Sonicare. Seriously.
The other day I received a few “nudges” from people about updating my LJ. “Hrm.,” I thought to myself, “It hasn’t been THAT long since I’ve updated.” Apparently, it HAS. Nearly two weeks. Eek. Let’s recap with our heroine shall we?
Sunday, April 1, Sara and I drove to Detroit to see Snow Patrol play at the Detroit State Theater. Little did we know that the exact same evening at the exact same time, there was a WWE event happening at the Civic Theater right next door, something going on across the street at Comerica Park for the Tigers and another event was taking place in the same neighborhood. Parking was scarce and we coughed up the $20 bucks to park in the ramp near the State Theater. After watching OK GO perform (which, ironically, they were pretty damn awesome live), Snow Patrol came on stage to the thundering applause of all the teenyboppers and hipsters that were either drunk or semi-drunk. We had few cute Asian girls in front of us who were beyond adorable and also beyond sober. Sara and I had ground floor “seats,” which in short meant we were less than 25 feet from the stage. That was exciting.
The show was excellent, not as good as Bloc Party mind you, but still excellent. Sara and I decided to leave during the “encore game” to head home and beat the traffic.
Hah. Hah. Hah.
Remember the casual mention of the other events earlier in this entry? Yes, well, it took us over an hour to get from the parking ramp to the highway – which was less than two miles away. The traffic guards, not local policemen but simple hired hands, were screaming at all the moronic drivers (okay, this IS Detroit after all), “KEEP FUCKING MOVING!”
Sara is one helluva navigatrix when it comes to this shit. She got us out of the jam and onto the highway fairly quickly. If left to my own devices, I’m sure that I would have been screaming at the traffic while slamming my hands on the steering wheel.
As we were hungry and also needed some gas, we decided to stop at one of the towns that litter the 96 highway between Grand Rapids and Detroit to fill up both tanks. Again, thinking that we were over 20 miles from downtown Detroit (if not more so) and heading westward, there shouldn’t have been an issue.
We were wrong. Again.
We stopped in the tiny town of Wixom where after slugging back caffeine, filling up the gas tank, we pulled into McDonalds. Where we waited for nearly 20 minutes in the same damn spot in the damn line to grab our “all white meat” chicken and greasy fries! Every restaurant in the vicinity is showing the same issue: Long lines, one person seemingly working and every redneck from Detroit to Lansing getting the same bright idea as we had, which was evident by all the yelling and screaming and waving of the fake title belts that we saw from their minivans and SUTs.
We hopped back on the road and drove another 15 miles to Brighton (Consequently, TheEx and I realised on our own road trip the previous weekend to Detroit to see Bloc Party that a good portion of the ‘burbs around Detroit were named after English towns. Brighton. Manchester. Birmingham, Pinckney, Chelsea and even a nod to the north with Dundee. If we really were feeling Anglophilic, we could have crossed over to Canada and driven to Essex, Middlesex and London.), where the longs were similarly as long but not as slow. Stuffed with McDonalds goodness, we headed home, arriving nearly four hours after we had got into the car. The two hour ride home was more than doubled and we concluded next time we attempt to go to a show in Detroit, we WILL be double checking with other local events first to see if said show is worth seeing with the hassle of the damn traffic and moronic drivers.
I also came to the brilliant conclusion that damn near every female on Earth wants a Snow Patrol song written about or sung to them. Think about it.
This past weekend, Easter weekend, TheEx and I made plans to travel up north to unwind and just chill. Our plans were shortened by a night as I had a four hour job interview with a local insurance company Friday morning, thus, instead of leaving Thursday evening as originally planned, we left Friday afternoon.
The weather around here has deteriorated from high 60s one day to freezing and snow the next, thus, by Friday afternoon, we packed our winter boots, mittens, and coats and drove three hours north, where the weather was much worse and our plans for a weekend of wine tasting, driving along the countryside, and checking out the 45th parallel were shot to shit.
TheEx and I took advantage of his parents not arriving until Saturday to laze around a Jacuzzi bathtub for several hours, with Tori Amos and R.E.M. piped in the overhead speakers. We watched tv, read magazines, and had the obvious gratuitous sex. Of course. After his parents arrived, nothing much had changed other than we went out to Funistrada for another excellent dinner, capped off with snow angels and watching Ameros Perros, which I had already seen but loved. We drove back to GR early Sunday afternoon to meet up with my family for Easter dinner, chocolate, and the highly anticipated season opener of The Sopranos (whoa baby!).
Though we have only been up north several times, the patterns are already setting in. Pizza the first night we arrive from Bear Paw or Johnny Salami’s. Errands into the village to pick up perishables for lunches and breakfast. Dinner at Funistrada for Veal Saltimbocca and Anniversary Chicken. French toast prepared Lisa way in the mornings. F1 racing or West Ham games in the afternoon. Lots of reading, relaxing, and naps.
And our lives in GR aren’t that much different. We’ve been cohabitating a schedule that somehow works. We haven’t killed each other yet, haven’t had a single tiff as of yet in regards to anything. And it’s weird, in a way, of this whole “living together” because we don’t think of it as living together but as an extended temporary stay. Once the whole “living together” thing is mentioned and we both do the deer-in-headlights look and just shrug our shoulders. We’ve got our routines, our patterns and our duties, it seems. I’ve declared that one night a week is “date night” were we go out and have a date. This weekend we are seeing a hockey game on Saturday night, the following weekend who knows? We now have the McPaper (USA Today) delivered in the mornings and the local rag on Sundays. We talk about days, our domesticity and our plans for future events. Trips that planned, things we want to do, places we want to go and lofty goals that seem within our reach at that bright, shining moment even if they are really just lofty goals.
But we don’t talk about the future, except in hypotheticals. “If we hypothetically get an apartment together,” I said last night as we walked to dinner at YesterDog’s before walking to Billy’s for Mikey’s surprise party, “I would like to hypothetically get a place in Eastown.” “I hypothetically agree with you that our hypothetical apartment should be within a four block radius of Eastown,” TheEx replied. “With a hypothetically large deck for grilling” he added later on that night.
But of course this idea of hypotheticals gets blown to shit when his mother this weekend, in all of her lovable charm and graciousness, asked me quite sincerely, “So Lisa, what are you doing for Thanksgiving?”
Our six month anniversary is coming up in a few weeks and that in and of itself is kinda crazy, weird, and awesome all at the same time. Because I can recall from our first dates, how I tried to break up with him several times because I didn’t, couldn’t predict that we would ever be in the same place emotionally at the same time. Why bother stringing me along after going through a nasty divorce (that is STILL being dragged out by petty mind fucks and vindictiveness)? And apparently, I was wrong (for once, it does happen) and we’ve worked out series of communication and nurturing skills (heh, how professional) that seem to work. And of course not everything is perfect and it can’t be, but, despite my initial reservation, I fall more in love with TheEx with each passing day.
Damn, that took several hours. I have more to update but I have to motor for work.