I’m still alive. I just thought everyone should know. We’ve been back in Las Vegas for a week or so now, and I’m itching to leave again.

Highlights if you’re interested:

1. The hormone test came back from the doctor. I don’t even think I mentioned the test. Results confirm what my husband could have told us for free. I am hormonal. Too much estrogen and testosterone. They tell me I have to go to a girl doctor to get checked for ovarian cysts. I can tell them already that I did the research and I probably have one. Eight to ten days out of the month, I have a very pinpointable pain exactly where my left ovary is. I’ve had it forever, and it never seemed annoying enough to do anything about.

Now for a bunch of reasons, it seems annoying enough.

2. It’s been a few months, and I’m still completely in love with my beautiful, white ibook.

3. We’re going to Malibu in July. I am taking surfing lessons and going scuba diving.

4. We have a gianormous ant invasion. The ants actually were coming out from under the stove in a very solid marching black line, going across the tiled kitchen, over the living room rug and up 10 feet to the first perch of the cat tree where we keep the cat’s bowl of dry food.

These fuckers mean business. Also, they bite. But, I am confident that I will prevail.

5. We spent a few days in Mesquite Nevada playing video poker and hanging out. Andy found a “play” the first ten minutes of walking through the casino. The payouts on a bank of machines were set too high. He didn’t believe it at first because we stumbled on it so easily. We went back to the room and he ran the numbers and confirmed that it was right.

As we were playing, a local hustler started chatting Andy up to see if he was a threat or not. He seemed nice enough, but had no interest in talking to me since my video poker kung fu was obviously weak. He told Andy that the machines had been set like that for over five months and no one had caught it, and no other hustlers had figured it out. He asked him to please keep it quiet.

That is all to report from the desert.

We’re back in Vegas, but we’re leaving again. We’ll be back Thursday.

We decided to stick around Denver last night and play internet poker and watch tv. My job being watching the tv, and Andy’s, playing internet poker. Right now, we’re five hours outside of Denver parked at a small rustic strip mall. It’s wood shingled with a Farm Bureau Insurance and Los Jilbertos taco shop. I’m looking across the highway at a red dirt and green grass mountain spotted with pine trees. Andy’s in back of the Eurovan betting the games. This American Life is on the XM. It’s a sad story about a restaurant opened in the memory of a son/friend/brother who was accidentally shot when he was 16.

When we were in Kansas we bought a wifi seeker. It’s a key chain sized thing that lights up and tells you when you when you’re in contact with a wireless signal. It’s marketed as a device to use in airports to find the strongest signal, but we all know the deal. Los Jilbertos and the Farm Bureau Insurance Co. do not have wifi, so Andy has dialed in on his cell phone.

It’s fun driving around in the passenger seat scanning neighborhoods and announcing “one bar…two bars….one….no two”, with Andy taking mad turns and sudden stops to triangulate on the signal.

We went through a minor snow storm in the mountains.

————-update to the update—————–

Utah is big.

We’re stopping in Mesquite to drink, gamble and take a shower. We’ll be back in Vegas tomorrow.

We’re in Denver. We stayed at our friend Vlad’s apartment last night. Andy played hockey with all his old Denver friends, and I worked out in the sad little apartment complex fitness center and watched the two worst movies in the world, but enjoyed them thoroughly.

I don’t mean to diss the workout room but aparently along with a water snob and a hair snob, I have now become a gym snob. Hopefully I can curtail the trend and not end up in LA with fake boobs and a little dog that I carry in my Gucci handbag. But, maybe I do want to continue the trend. Since I don’t have the cash for the boobs or Gucci, maybe I’ll just stuff some socks down my shirt and lug murphy around in a red wagon with the Gucci logo painted on it.

We’re going shopping today. Andy’s playing hockey later, and I am going to repeat the bad movie/workout routine and maybe join them for a drink later. We will be on the road late tonight, drive for a few hours and sleep in the van.

Posted by request:

Cindy,

This crush on you that I’ve developed is large. So large that it doesn’t seem quite fair to call it a crush. But there are many things I don’t know about you… important things, so I’ll call it a crush. You may be completely aware of this already, I feel pretty transparent, but for a number of reasons I’ve decided to tell you about it. I know interpersonal emotions aren’t your strong suit, and I’m sorry to do this to you, but I need you to know my feelings. This is hard for me, and I’m not at all sure that it’s the right thing to do. I feel very exposed, but I trust you. Though I fully expect some pain, I think you’ll leave me feeling good about myself. You always do.

I don’t feel like I’ll ever meet anyone remotely like you again, that’s part of what makes this seem so important. Your thoughtfulness, playfulness, intelligence and generosity are disarming. There can’t be many out there with your insight who also like to play with blocks! You’re one of a kind and I’m so drawn to you. Every single day, things that you wrote or said will come randomly into my head and cause me to involuntarily smile or start laughing. I’ve never experienced that to this degree before.

I was about to say that this isn’t the way I’d normally handle something like this, but how would I know? This is not a situation I’ve been in. I don’t really know you, but the things I do know make me want to know everything else. You don’t really know me, and I feel you’ve yet to see the better parts. I’ve been so nervous but I think that getting this out, though terrifying right now, will help me relax and be myself in the future.

We live in very different worlds. We deal with emotions in very different ways. Most of the time I think these differences are too great for you to be interested in me as anything more than a friend. But sometimes I wonder if it is possible that our differences would collide in a beautiful way.

I hope you can be flattered by all of this, and not feel too much pressure. No matter what your feelings toward me, you have all of my respect and I will always do my best to be a good friend to you. I don’t need much from you right now, but if you’re certain that I could never be more than a friend, I need to know that. If you’re not sure, that’s all I need to know, too. I’m not asking you to go into your feelings to any greater depth than that unless you want to.

Having these emotions running rampant through my head (heart) has been keeping me up at night. I’m trusting myself that this means they should be let out. I hope I’m doing the right thing, but I guess it doesn’t matter. I will hit the send button or I won’t. Either way, you will be an amazing person and I’ll consider myself lucky to know you. We’ll both be okay, I’m sure.

Thank you for everything. I’m glad there’s at least one person like you out there.

Love,
Andy

We’re still in Kansas. Breakfast with the in laws (it still sounds so weird to me to say in laws) then they nap and early dinner with the in laws. Nothing dramatic, exciting or even mildly interesting to write about…Sorry.

Here’s a story from last week while we were still in Vegas.

We were starving. Usually our eating out food agenda is a trip to the raw food cafe for some bizarre concoction for me, and then through the Taco Bell drive through for Andy. Then we eat together in the front of the Eurovan, listening to the XM and watching cars stopped at the traffic light.

The problem at the moment was that we were going through the drive through with a hundred dollar bill. Taco Bell does not accept hundreds. The drive through lady said she would hold the food while we went somewhere other than Taco Bell to get change. Andy starts to drive and talk to himself, noting that there are no gas stations close by. I put on my crisis hat and decide to take charge of the situation. I tell him to drive into the Wall Mart, I’ll jump out, buy something and meet him out front. He agrees and I jump out.

I run in and grab three tomatoes and a bag of mixed greens, or as people who do not eat as lofty of salads as I….lettuce. I turn from the produce section and march with speed and purpose to the self checkout lane at the other end of the store.

I don’t know if it’s a well known fact about me or not, when I go into “crisis mode” I become focused to the point of only being aware of the situation at hand and the solution I need to arrive at. This mode has caused me to jump in between Murphy and an attacking neighbor dog and also without thinking, plunge my hand into a toilet I had just peed in to retrieve my glasses that had fallen in….that last part was too much information I think.

As I’m walking I feel someone brush up against me and, I think, cop a feel. I decide it may possibly be an honest mistake. I say “excuse me” and step up my pace. Again a few seconds later I feel a person behind me, and someone most definitely grabs my ass. I spin around, ready to punch this person in the face. I’m already over hungr, jangled and getting more upset by the second and this person is going to receive every ounce of my rage.

I turned and inhaled ready to let fly some choice swear words and came face to face with my grinning, proud of himself husband. The hunger, the focus, the pressure the rage at the anonymous ass grabber flowed out of me as I yelled, really loudly, “You JERK!” and threw the bag of mixed greens as hard as I could at my fun loving, well meaning husband.

Here’s another thing that you may or may not know about me. I can call you an asshole, motherfucker, cocksucker, shithead, looser and we can laugh about it. If I call you a JERK, I’m really mad.

The fury lasted for three seconds and then dissipated. He felt horrible, then I felt horrible for making him feel horrible. He said, “I’m correct in thinking that if circumstances would have been different, that would have been funny, right?” I agreed. And really it was funny by the time we walked to the self check out lane.

I’ve told that story a few times, and I always have to specify a bag of lettuce because automatically they think I chucked a head of lettuce at Andy’s face or something. It is for a funnier visual, but it makes it not so funny since with a head of lettuce you could break your husband’s spine as pointed out by my husband. “It only takes four pounds of pressure”.

P.S. I was going through the emails that Andy and I sent each other while we were dating, and I would like permission from Mr. X to post the best love letter in the history of the entire universe written by Mr. X to Mrs. X, formerly known as girlfriend of X.

We made it over the boarder of Colorado into Kansas last night. We thought we had ten more hours to drive but Andy re checked the map and it’s only six. That’s a very exciting development for me. We’re stopping in an hour to bet the one o’clock games, make some phone calls and eat.

This morning I woke up at six and had to pee. Unfortunately, we didn’t park close to any trees or bushes so I had to walk across the parking lot, through a wet field to a pile of crates and shrubs. As I decided that this place was appropriate, turned, pulled down my sweats, squated and was face to face with a Rottwiller. Okay, he was thirty feet away, but I could see his face, and he could see mine.

I made a few scrabbley, crab like, pants hampered foot slides so I was more behind a bush so we wouldn’t be face to face and figured that I should just pee now. If the dog attacked me, I didn’t want to be caught with my pants around my ankles, and or running screaming back to the van while peeing.

So I did, and stood up and the dog was gone.

———————————

We caught up to the storm we left in Denver. While driving down I-70 the weather was sunny and bright. We rounded a curve and were plunged into complete blackness. I have never seen clouds like the ones I saw today. They were low and brooding, but brooding doesn’t even describe it well. I felt like maybe the gates of hell were opening, and we were at the front door.

It seeemed like I could almost touch the sky, or at least the telephone poles could. The clouds began to spin in a circle like water going down a drain. Darkness was everywhere except in the emptiness of the swirl, where light was shining down. It looked very apocalyptic. I confirmed with Andy the procedure if we were actually witnessing the birth of a funnel cloud, or if we experienced any others. The consensus was to abandon the van and jump into the ditch, or just stop, since the storm was moving away from us.

Making the four o’clock bets was a little dicey since we couldn’t get a proper cell signal but we’re at four bars pulled off on the side of the highway off ramp watching the storm move away from us towards Kansas. The problem now is that portions of I-70 are closed, and the storm is ahead of us going forty miles an hour. I feel that our two hours outside of Kansas may be extended. Everyone is parked on the side of the road, milling around and talking on their cell phones watching the storm leave, and waiting for the standing water to recede. AM radio is telling everyone to stay home, and that although there have been no tornados spotted, the conditions are right.

——————–

We just arrived in Kansas to lightning, torrential rain and tornado sirens.

a story from Cass….

Today we were driving across Utah on our way to Denver and then Kansas. We left yesterday. We were supposed to leave at four but decided to have dinner at the Hilton and then Andy half jokingly asked me if I wanted to play Pick ‘Em (video poker) I said sure. So we left at midnight a hundred dollars up and me drunk on Red Bull and vodka. Because drinking free drinks is my part in the video poker equation.

At midnight we drove to Mesquite where I told Andy he was very lucky that I wasn’t driving and commented several times at the high rate speed the the car seemed to be going. We camped in the surprisingly quiet Wall Mart parking lot and slept well.

This morning we went for a hike and hung out until we felt like leaving.

Now it’s Utah, Utah and more Utah.

——————————-

We made it to Vlad’s house in Denver, took showers, ate Thai food sat in the hot tub and made a half hearted attempt at the steam room which was like Murpy the dog breathing on your calves more than anything. A half hour after we arrived, Denver was flash flooded and pelted by hail. The worst portions of the city being where Vlad lives. The tornado sirens were blaring, fire engines were at the next apartment, and the news 4 helocoptor was hovering over the apartment as we watched submurged cars and baseball diamonds and parking lots turned into lakes. We were joking that, it would be funny to see the Eurovan on camera, and then we became serious because the parking lot was on the other side of the building, and we had no idea as to what it’s condition was.

The rain has stopped. We’re about to leave again and be on our way to Kansas.