Well like I said it would probably be a week before I posted again and I was right. This is going to be a very long post. Over break we had everything from someone claiming they were going to commit suicide to an uneventful Thanksgiving dinner. Not many parts of the break didn't have some hitch or annoyance of some kind going a long with it.
I left here Tuesday around 3:15pm and preceded to drive to Cathy's house in Charlotte. A normal 2 and half hour drive took 3 and half hours. Thanks to the rain and many traffic jams, some for no apparent reason, that slowed me down. So I finally arrived at Cathy's place just before 7pm. After eating real quick we loaded my stuff into Jeralyn's van and left around 7:30 for Atlanta. This part of the drive went fairly smoothly and we arrived in Atlanta at 11pm.
Wednesday I got up at 9:40am planning to have plenty of time to go get my haircut and all before leaving for Orlando. Our original plan called for my dad to get off work between 3-5pm and leaving then. But as I started eating breakfast I was told we were leaving at 11am. I called my dad to see if we could stall so I could get my hair cut and he said no and that if I wanted to get my haircut I better hurry up. So I was out the door at 10am and was back by 10:30am and got all my stuff ready to go and by the front door like my father had requested. He arrived home at 10:50 and by 11:15 we were on the road. William and I road with my dad in his car and Cathy, Jeralyn, Jillian, and Jacqueline road in Jeralyn's van. My mom was already in Orlando her and my Aunt Becky left that previous Monday. We drove to Macon and arrived there around 1:15pm or so and decided to stop at a Crackle Barrel there and eat. We did and after eating Cathy decided to do some shopping and next thing you knew it was 3pm and we had wasted two hours. Finally after getting gas we were back on the road at 3:30pm and now behind schedule. We drove and only stopped twice more for gas and food. Though like I had the day before we ran into almost non-stop rain the whole way and from Macon on we ran into traffic problems and didn't arrive in Orlando until about 10pm. So an eight hour drive took ten and half hours. We hung out for a while and finally around midnight we decided to call it a night. Cathy, William, and I stayed at my Uncle Kenny's like we did when we came down for Disney World during the summer. And Jeralyn, Jillian, Jacqueline, Aunt Becky, and my parents stayed at my parents place.
Now if you remember correctly Orlando got hit by three hurricanes this year and this was a mobile home park. There was still visible damage to many of the homes there even now in November. Like my parents place the entire back side of the screen porch was gone roof and all. The side part of the screen porch was still there but many of the screens were torn. The house itself was fine though. Many of the other houses had similar damage with their screened porches being ripped off or their carport roofs being peeled off. Even some had roof damage on their homes you could tell by the blue tarps on the roofs. You could tell where the houses that had been destroyed had been standing because the homes had been removed and only an empty lot remained. Though some people had already put in new homes some of which were extremely nice looking. Now the house that I saw that had the most damage that was still there was the one next to my Uncle Kenny's house. That house the roof of it was ripped off and the air conditioning unit had been ripped off and destroyed and much of the siding had been ripped off or was peeled back revealing the insulation in the walls. That house had been declared unfit to live in and was going to be moved out. It was weird to see that house almost completely destroyed and then my Uncle's house that was right next door have absolutely no damage what so ever. The forest on the edge of the park were a mess, either the trees where down and the ones that where left standing were practically stripped of all their leaves. To think that it looked like that a few months after the storms I can not imagine what it must have looked like the days following the storms.
Thanksgiving day came and my cousin David and his wife (Julie) came over. We watched the last half of the Macy's Day Parade which is almost like a ritual in my family especially with Cathy. After words was the only really boring time of the trip we all just kinda set around and did not do much of anything but talk and watch TV while dinner cooked. Finally around 5:30 we had dinner followed by dessert which was a pumpkin roll which was extremely good, Julie had made it and my mom got the recipe from her. After dinner everyone cleaned up and goofed off until Spider-Man came on at 8pm and we all watched that. After that Cathy wanted to go back and go to bed because she, my dad, and Jeralyn where getting up at 3:30am to be at the mall before it opened at 5am to do their Christmas shopping. So since neither William and I were tired we played Texas Hold'em poker and I beat him and then went to bed.
On Friday my mom woke me up by calling my cell phone at 9:30am saying that she, Jacqueline, Jillian, Julie, David, and my Aunt Becky where going to go to the mall to meet up with the others. So since William was up I decided to go ahead and get up and get dressed and head over there. We got there just as they were leaving. William and I decided to stay at that house why they went. So William and I played PS2 until they returned. My dad, mom, and Aunt Becky came back first. About 30 minutes after they arrived we got a phone call from Cathy and them saying they had been sitting in the parking lot for 45 minutes and had not moved. Then about 30 minutes later she calls back saying they were still in the parking lot and was going to call 911 to complain about the traffic in hopes they would bring some cops to direct traffic so they could get out. So finally after waiting almost two hours they got out and arrived back at the house. I later found out during this almost two hour wait David made an ass of himself by yelling and cussing at people out the window of the car this from a man that claims to be a very Christian. So once they arrive we have leftovers from thanksgiving dinner and dessert again and Jeralyn had bought the movie "Elf" so we watched it. I thought it was a very funny and entertaining movie. So Cathy, William and I left for Uncle Kenny's place after the movie only to realize once we got there we had forgotten the keys. So then on the way back to the other house to get the key cathy mentions that we had to be back at the other house at 9am and I asked why and she told me because Aunt Becky needed they car to go see her Father (also my dads father) and she wanted to leave by 10am. No my father did not go with her, my dad has nothing to do with his father. I myself have never met my grandfather and have no real want to since the man knows I exist and has shown little interest in meeting me so why should I try to meet him. So I asked then why are we taking dads car why cant we take another one so we can sleep in. So when we got back we asked if we could leave my dads car for Aunt Becky and take my moms car instead so we could sleep in and they said that was fine. So we took my moms car back and went to bed.
The next day, Saturday, the day Jeralyn, Jillian, Jacqueline, William, Cathy and I left for Charlotte my mom called at 9am to wake Cathy up and tell her to come over. So Cathy got up and got a shower planning to let me and William to sleep in a while since that was the orginal plan. Then at 9:30am my phone rang again this time it woke me up so I answered it and it was my mom saying to get over there soon. I told Cathy that and she said that we couldn't leave right then because we had to clean up. So we cleaned up and left and got to the other house a little after 10am. My mom then ask us where we had been and we said we had been cleaning up. William and I ate quickly while Cathy helped Jeralyn pack up the car. Then Cathy tried to eat and my parents started to get mad at us but mainly Cathy for not being there at 9:30. They claimed they had told us the night before to be there at 9:30 to go eat. But we had made it clear that night we wanted to sleep in so that way people wouldn't be cranky on the drive back home in the car. My parents claimed we never said that and a big argument broke out between my parents and Cathy. Cathy then refused to eat and rushed everyone out the door so we could leave. This was only the beginning of an eventful day.
Now the car trip home was far from fun. For the first 30 minutes everything was fine. Then Jeralyn and Cathy started talking about who was going to pay for what on this trip back. I knew right away this was heading for bad territory so I told them to stop several times but either neither of them heard me or they ignored me. With in a few seconds they were going at it. Cathy went off the deep end and completely started over reacting taking it out on her purse and the pillows she had up there with her. Jeralyn stayed fairly calm for the most part. But Cathy kept saying she didn't want to talk about it anymore but Jeralyn did not listen and kept going. At one point Cathy threatened to Jump out of the car and commit suicide if Jeralyn did not stop talking about it. It didn't work and Jeralyn kept going. Finally Jeralyn stopped that there was silence for about five minutes. But then Jeralyn started again and Cathy went off again finally after about another two or three minutes of fighting I stepped in and told them that if they did not stop that I would make the stop the car and get out and I would leave them there and drive the kids back myself. That worked and I never heard another word about it the rest of the trip. After stopping about an hour later to eat Cathy moved to the back seat and William moved to the front seat. Cathy seemed to get over it fairly quickly and started having a good time playing with the girls. Jeralyn on the other hand kept a sour attitude. When we stopped to eat she sat at a different table and then when Jillian finished eating she and Jillian went out to the car and sat out there and waited for us to finish eating. At one point Jeralyn even throw a CD at Jacqueline because she was complaining about Jeralyn not stopping at a song she wanted to hear on the CD. But we finally made it back to Charlotte at around 6:45pm or so. That night we just hung out and watched TV and played PS2 and eventually went to bed.
On Sunday I woke up around 11am and eat breakfast and played a round of golf on the PS2 with William before leaving just after 2pm with Cathy, Jacqueline and William to go eat and go to Lowes to help them pick out a Christmas tree. Before this time though Thomas picked up his car that he had left when he had picked up Cathy's to put new brakes on it while we were gone. He dropped her car back off. I didn't even know he had come until I looked out the window and noticed his car gone and Cathy's car there. Come to find out only Jacqueline had seen him and known that he had come. He had made no effort to come say hi to any of us and then later found out that he told my mom he was pissed because we didn't come down and say hi to him. We didn't even know he had come so how could we have come down and say hi to him. So when we did leave to go get the tree and eat we noticed the car was a mess with drinks with drink still left in them that he had left in the car plus other trash and the ash tray was broken which it had not been broken before he took it. So between the argument she had with Jeralyn and the condition the car was left in Cathy claims she was going to send Jeralyn and Thomas a letter in the mail with $75 in it and a note telling them never to call her again. If it wasn't for Jillian I would almost believe her but Cathy would not disown Jillian like that. I guess we shall see what happens. My mom said that she wants us all to sit down together and figure out what went on and try to straighten things out. So after getting the tree we got back just before 4pm in time for me to watch the Falcons game only to find out that the game was not going to be on TV so William brought down his radio and we listened to the game instead. We then went upstairs and unloaded the attic of Cathy's Christmas stuff and then got the tree put up. Cathy and I then tried to put the lights on the tree and got half way before realizing it looked like crap. So we started over. I called our mom to see if we were doing it wrong and she told us not to just put the lights on the outside but to stager them in and out. About 30 minutes later while Cathy was upstairs doing laundry I remembered that the lights clipped on the branches. So I started doing the lights myself and got 2/3rds of the way done when Cathy came down and so I plugged in the tree and she said it looked great. I stopped then and took a break and watched Extreme House Makeover with her and William and then watched Desperate House Wives with her before finishing the tree. After reading for a while I went to bed at 1am.
Today I got up at 10am and got everything ready to go and packed up the car and left Cathy's place at 11am. I missed my class at 10am but I was not getting up at 6am in order to make it in time so I skipped it. My next class after that wasn't until 3:20pm so I was in no big rush. The drive back to campus was easy and uneventful. I arrived here about 1:30pm and got something to eat before leaving for that class. Now I sit here at work typing this up. Well that's my Thanksgiving vacation in a nutshell. Hope you enjoy it took me over an hour and half to type this thing up.
|| Vespere Hesperian 10:01 PM
