Yeah, so, um, I haven't left town yet. I haven't even finished packing. I really am going away and I am really doing so soon -- like maybe tomorrow afternoon? Right, so I have to be quick at this so I can get to the packing.
Friday night Ellie, Emma and I went to the Ani Difranco concert in Cincinnati. It was Ellie's birthday party. We stopped on the way up to have a drink, and the park where I took us to drink was having a prom. My roommates were not willing to carry the alcohol past prom or get drunk in the parking lot, so we skipped the beautiful view and had our drinks on a picnic table elsewhere.
The concert was good, we missed the entire opening act. The crowd was pretty obnoxious, screaming inappropriate things at inappropriate times. I wasn't the only person who thought they were rude (my roommates did too).
Then after that we went to the bar where my cousin works and had some drinks and the best french fries we have ever had.
Saturday I woke up to the sound of my mother's voice on the answering machine. She just wanted to make sure I got up on time. Thanks to her, I did. I went back to Cincinnati for my going-away/Shelly's in town party.
My mother thinks she's a pioneer (not really, really she just understands that it's too fucking hot to cook indoors), so we had lunch out of dutch ovens in the backyard. We had a nice group of people and a good lunch.
Around two pm, Mom sounds absolutely shocked that I am not planning to spend the night. My plan had been to go home and pack for a few hours before having people over. I told her that I hadn't expected to spend the night, since, you know, the party started at noon.
Instead of packing, Shelly and I went to Rabbit Hash. We did some shopping, and then sat down and had a Sasparilla. A trip to Rabbit Hash is always fun, but it's even better with my sister along.
After that, we went to Big Bone Lick. We tried very hard to check out the bison, but they weren't feeling sociable; so we headed over to the diarama. We both remembered it from many camping trips there as children, but I don't think we properly appreciated how depressing it is at the time. I suspect Mom just walked us by it really fast.
We read all about the formation of bogs and the last ice age and the big animals and how they all died at Big Bone.
Mom took us to Cedar Bog one time when we were teenagers. She had a Day Trips From Cincinnati book and she picked this trip out against our wills. I'm sure it would have been fascinating if there just hadn't been so damned much for us to be nasty and sarcastic about... like the hundreds of varieties of mosquitoes and spiders or the fact that the road there just ends in a cornfield...
Right, so we looked at the plastic animals depicted dying in a marsh, complete with guts hanging out of one and plastic vultures picking the bones. There's even one mammouth standing at the edge of the scene frozen in horror. It's really something.
After that we headed to the Appalachian Festival. On the way there, Shelly hopped out of the car at a red light to get some ice cream from the store on the corner. I'm sure the cars behind us were very entertained.
I nearly wrecked the car on the way there, but we did make it. We laid down for about an hour in a "pickin' area" and dozen in the shade while random folks wandered in and out playing music. Then we considered going out in a peddle boat, but we decided to wander around a little bit instead.
We checked out a variety of dead animals... bones, skins, paws, etc. Shelly stuck her hand into a dead skunk skin and had a real blast watching me get the creeping horrors while trying not to cause a scene as she used it like a puppet to crawl all over me.
When Mom finally called to say she was there, we were playing with the llamas and a donkey and a camel in a pen. I'm not sure what the camel had to do with Appalachia, and there wasn't any signage to explain it to me. If you know, you should tell me.
Once Mom and the stepfather arrived, I got to leave. I managed to get home about ten minutes before people started arriving at my house. Em and I stayed up until like three, drinking and dancing and talking. We've decided we're not ready to talk about how sad we are to be seperating... Ellie's moving to Cincinnati and I'm moving to Arizona and Emma's staying behind.
Then I woke up yesterday morning to the sound of my mother's voice in the answering machine letting me know that she just woke Shelly up so it was time for me to get up too. We met halfway between Lexington and Cincinnati for breakfast. Then Shelly and I came back here for a minute and headed off further into Kentucky to see Nikki.
She got in some trouble and has to spend a couple weeks at this acedemy, so we went to visit. Poor Nikki looks pretty miserable, like she hasn't slept in a week. But she seemed pretty sincere when she said that at first she thought she was cool for getting into this kind of trouble, but now she's totally over that and wants to stay out of lock-up for good.
After some time with Nikki, we got back in the car and drove back to Cincinnati to have dinner with our uncle. While we were driving along the parkway, my sister asked if I had an atlas in the car. I told her I have a little one in my trunk. So, she hopped up and scurried to the back-seat to fetch it. "Just a little danger. Not too much." was her assessment.
Along the way, we stopped for Skyline (if you've never had Cincinnati-style chilli, I am very sorry and you should. If you're vegetarian, the Skyline Black Beans and Rice is much better than the GoldStar vegie chilli).
We had a very nice dinner and I got back home at ten thirty.
So, today I need to be motivated to pack. I'm supposed to have the day off from driving to Cincinnati. Tomorrow I have to go and take the cat and my plants to Mom's and pick up some stuff from her. I would also like to leave tomorrow afternoon, but I don't know if that will be okay or if she'll have more things for me to do. Shelly leaves tonight so that should cut down on the "I thought you would..." potential.
