Pictures!

Okay, I finally managed to get the pictures from my camera into my computer. They are here. [Edit: Oops never mind, I forgot that I don't post links to facebook albums here because this blog is public and facebook has my full name...so I'll email the link to people, but not right now 'cause I'm too tired. Sorry!]

We hung out with Andrew and his dad and sister for a few hours today. I don't know what to say...it was amazing, and perfect, and frustrating, and awkward, and surreal, and wonderful, and stressful, and natural...I think I have to wait a bit before giving details objectively. Just saying "we did this, then we did that, then we went somewhere, blah blah" doesn't capture anything about it...and I don't know what would.

I'm probably going to see him again tomorrow, but we'll see...

More later, when I've come back to earth a bit.

I am in love. This city is beautiful, the mountains are breathtaking, the wind is exhilerating, the clouds reflect off of all the buildings and the streets go sharply up and down and there are fountains and sculptures and the people are so nice and the trees are so big and...*sigh* It's amazing.

Okay okay, so I'm projecting my love for Andrew onto the city. Whatever! Love is love, right? I could totally live in this area; we keep driving through beautiful neighborhoods and little towns with fountains and restaurants and shops...All right I'll stop babbling in vague terms and get to the details.

Yesterday we played golf at a little course in Jackson Park--with only our pitch 'n' putt clubs, because that's all we brought. We sucked. But it was fun! I wanted to ask Andrew's dad if he could come play with us, although I was pretty sure he'd say no. Andrew didn't want me to ask him; he was afraid it would go badly. But he was really brave and finally agreed to let me call his dad and ask. Of course, he said no. But he seemed really polite and friendly. *laughs* So it wasn't too bad. Afterwards we went and ate dinner in Edmonds, at a really nice Thai restaurant. Edmonds is a really cute little town. Then we drove by Andrew's school!! He wanted us to come drive by his house--we were ten minutes away--but that would have been a bad idea, heh. So he told us where his school was and we drove by. It was really weird to think that this was where he spent every day and where all the stories he tells me about school take place.

In the evening we hung around the hotel and watched The Holiday, which was quite good.

Then today!! The cord we bought apparently doesn't actually fit into my camera, so I can't upload pictures yet, bah. We were gonna go to the aquarium, but at the last minute I wasn't in the mood, so my dad and brother went while I wandered around by the water where there's this amazing sculpture park. It was one of the best couple hours I can remember. I just felt so happy and I loved watching all the people and walking around and feeling the wind and seeing the mountains across the water and taking pictures of all the sculptures. I find it really interesting to watch people take pictures, too, seeing what they feel is worth capturing, what angle they choose...it's fascinating.

While I was standing by a fountain, two young women came up to me and said they were ESL students at UW and they wanted to ask me a few questions: my name, whether I live in Seattle, if not where I'm from, and what my favorite sculpture is. (At first I thought she was saying favorite "scripture", and I was confused...) They were really sweet! The fountain was quite compelling--there were two peaks, one surrounding a statue of a young boy, and the other a statue of a man, reaching out to each other. The first time I was there, the water completely covered the man but only came up to the boy's knees, and when I came back later, it was the other way around. I was taking pictures of it when a youngish man came up next to me.

"Now, how come they don't have one of them be a lady, huh? Just two naked guys--that's not what I call art!"

I laughed, and he asked me what I thought the sculpture meant and whether I thought it was art. I liked it, I said, the way they're reaching out for each other, with one of them hidden by the water. He suggested that the water represented life somehow, but he didn't quite get it. He asked me whether I liked it. "Well...I don't really mind that it's two guys," I said.

He laughed. "Well put, well put." Then he walked on.

I liked him. Afterwards we had dinner at a really good Indian restaurant near our hotel, and now we're just hanging out.

Tomorrow morning I'm seeing Andrew!

I keep thinking of little things I want to post, things I see or overhear or notice or muse about...and then of course I forget them. Gah! Oh well, hopefully I'll remember eventually. I should carry around a little notebook or something...

Mmmm, happiness.

Seattle!

I can't quite see the Space Needle from my window, but I know it's there, like five blocks from the hotel. Half an hour of driving would take me right to Andrew's house...

Don't worry, I'm not that stupid.

I couldn't post yesterday 'cause the hotel's wireless didn't work, so I'll catch up quickly. After South Dakota came Wyoming, which had a much more pleasant vibe eminating from the area around I-90; hardly any billboards except right around the couple large towns, and bigger and bigger mountains. So beautiful! I saw my first snow-peaked mountains, and took many many blurry distant photos out the window of the car. I'll never look at the little hills that pass for mountains in the Northeast the same way again...

Nothing much of note happened yesterday other than the scenery. I had planned out a day for us, since we were passing the most sparsely populated, and hence hardest to find food in, region of the drive. We had lunch (quesadillas) at a Perkins in Rapid City, amidst signs pointing us toward Mount Rushmore. My dad says he finds Mount Rushmore "grotesque", and I'm inclined to agree. There's something creepy about the idea. And, as he said, why spoil a perfectly good mountain? Still, as an engineering feat I suppose it's one of the most impressive. We didn't bother to go see it. Dinner was at an Olive Garden in Billings, Montana, which was by far the most built-up town we'd passed since, oh, possibly Chicago, or the suburbs thereof. It had a Barns & Noble, and strip malls with things like David's Bridal and other familiar chains.

Another reason I couldn't live in the middle of the country, in addition to the aesthetic claustrophobia of being landlocked, is just that it would take so long to get anywhere. Having grown up at the center of the world--or what feels very much like the center of the world--I would have a hard time getting used to having to drive hours to get to a large bookstore, not to mention an Indian or Chinese restaurant (which would take more than hours), or an art museum, or a baseball game, or an international airport. Where I live, I can pretty much find any kind of store I want within an hour, three or four major big cities and cultural centers within three hours, and if I flew I could get to any airport in the world within two days easily. That's just not true if you live on a small farm in Montana. I think that would bother me.

Again, I'm not accusing the people there of being boring or culturally deprived or out of touch with the world or anything. I don't know anything about the people there. And if I'd grown up in that environment, I'm sure it wouldn't bother me. It would just be an adjustment, and one I don't feel I'd want to make. I feel much closer to home in Seattle, being sort of right at a port of the transportation network of the world, than I did when we were technically several hundred miles closer to home. It actually made me feel happy when we crossed into Washington and suddenly there were malls and stores and chains I'd heard of, in the suburbs of Spokane--even though another part of me obviously regrets marring the amazing mountainous landscape with suburbia. But I am a suburb girl at heart, there's no escaping that.

I was also thinking how self-perpetuating the cultural divides of the country must be. Obviously, this isn't a very original thought. But driving through the midwest and northwest, feeling so uncomfortable and out of place and thinking how, beautiful as it is, I could never live there...I was just thinking how, because I feel out of place already, I wouldn't take the time to live there and come to understand the nuances of the culture better, or to influence it at all with my own worldview. And probably to someone who grew up in the mountains of the northwest, the big coastal cities would feel big and confusing and too loud and too crowded and too dirty--and why not; they are confusing and loud and crowded and dirty. But then that person might not take the time to live there and experience that culture and all the ideas of the people there. And it's all very natural but it means we have so many people in the country who don't know or understand or trust each other, and since the instinct is to stick to what feels right and familiar and supportive, it's hard to ever change that. So yeah, it's a pretty obvious fact, but it just sort of struck me when I was in a part of the country that I really don't feel I relate to or fit in to.

By the way, who left the first comment on the previous post? I couldn't tell if it was someone I know or not, lol. In any case, I didn't mean to sound like I was judging any individual people by anything at all. I didn't particularly interact with any people in South Dakota, and any that I did were perfectly nice and our interactions were superficial. All I was reacting to was the vibe I felt from the billboards and from the content of the tourist attractions and the decor of the buildings. Individual people are obviously complicated, but there's such a thing as the primary cultural attitude that a place projects, and that projected attitude felt hostile and unappealing to me.

We stayed at a hotel in Bozeman, Montana, which was perfectly fine except for the lack of internet access. Oh, and the wind! It was amazing! I do so adore wind...

This morning I woke up with a fluttery, tight feeling in my chest, and I've been fighting it all day. I've been an interested observer of my own psychology leading up to this trip; I had a few days of panicking about it, several weeks ago, and then I surpressed it pretty successfully, expressing my anxiety mainly in the form of over-organization, like making up inventory of all the clothes I was bringing, and about five different TO DO lists in slightly different formats. Driving along, so far, I hadn't felt anxious--I think it just wasn't sinking in. This morning, knowing that our goal for the day was Seattle itself, the anxiety finally rose to the surface. It manifests itself in little things, making a big deal out of them--like what music to listen to, or where I put my cell phone, or where exactly we eat, or whether my dad passes a slow truck. I tried to control it the best I could, and my dad and my brother were very understanding. I think I must react to intense anxiety by simultaneously desiring a lot of control and a lot of guidance. In other words, my tendency to be indecisive and to fret about making good decisions about little things that don't really matter increases, and so does my impatience with other people when their actions don't make sense to me. Like whenever I noticed my dad looking intently in a particular direction, I would have this increased heartbeat, sort of anxious shallow breathing reaction until he explained what he was looking at. And I got more impatient at people pausing before the end of their sentence, or losing their train of thought. After dinner my brother let me sit in front because I'd been having a hard time not getting frustrated with his following my instructions about the music player. When I momentarily couldn't find my cell phone, I felt panicked. It's kind of weird. I controlled it as much as I could and did a lot of apologizing.

Now, I say "anxiety" for lack of a better word...but it's not really quite right. I'm excited, so excited, and scared but not really because I think it will go badly; just because, well, it's a big deal. But I keep stressing about exactly what I'm going to wear, how my hair will look, when I can shave my legs...I've even been using all these body lotions and facial cleansers and creams that I never usually use. Will any of that have the slightest effect on what Andrew thinks of me? Of course not. I mean, I want to basically look as nice as I can, but does it matter if I use the best kind of body wash? No. But it just feels really important somehow. Maybe I'm just looking for something I feel I can control, as an outlet for a general feeling of...helplessness? Powerlessness? Sometimes I tell Andrew that in a way, I could feel more secure if I knew there was some specific reason he loved me--if it was because I used a certain perfume, or because I sent him a logic puzzle each week, or because I read him all the Amelia Peabody mysteries. Or something. Something where I'd know, as long as I keep doing this, he has to keep loving me. Of course, it doesn't work that way, and couldn't possibly work that way, and would mean so much less if it did. But as it is, all he can tell me is to keep being me...and it's hard to have faith in that. So maybe tricking myself into thinking that what clothes I wear and what lotion I've smeared on my face and the exact shape of my eyebrows really matters is just a way of giving myself something I can control.

Deep, huh? :-)

Meanwhile, I'm starting to fall asleep so I'll try to stop babbling. Now that I'm in Seattle I'm not feeling the fluttery feeling anymore, although I know it'll come back. The next two days are the torturous part--being here without being able to see him! Just a half hour drive...he's right there...so damn close!! Gah!

From one of the rest areas we stopped at, you could just barely glimpse Mount Rainier in the haze. I fell in love with it. I think that I love mountains, like real mountains. They give me this rush of awe and aesthetic joy. I can't wait to see Mount Rainier in the daytime from Seattle. I do so hope I like this city. I just might have to live around here someday... ;-)

Thanks for the comments! Love you all.

Welcome to South Dakota

Abortion: The Choice That KILLS!

Educated people know their Bible

Enjoy our famous beef

We Dakotans reject animal rights activists

Hunting, Fishing, Golf!

So the signs proclaimed as we made our way along I-90 in South Dakota. Cows and calves ambled in nice open fields right next to the signs advertising beef...They seemed happy, at least, right now. Whatever it means for an animal to seem happy. Is there any way to interpret that? Is there meaning to it? They seemed, at least, untroubled, calm, and free, and I suppose we tend to associate that state with what we call happiness, although for humans it's certainly not that simple. I was thinking about how I project into their future to a time when they'll be killed prematurely so that people can eat them, and how that makes me sad for them...but maybe that's sort of made up in my own human mind. Do they have a concept of death? If they live happy lives while they live, can we rightly say that their situation is bad? Well, I think we can--I think death is death and killing is killing. But I can only see things as myself. Still, I felt sad seeing all the cows.

My dad said he wanted to buy a billboard along that road:

Meat: The Choice That KILLS!

The Holiday Inn we're staying at tonight has guns and arrows hung all over the walls of the lobby. We couldn't, obviously, comment to each other while standing right there how repulsive it seemed.

"Koko wa totemo warui desu neee..." my brother whispered to me.

"Kowai!" I agreed.

We figured no one there knew Japanese.

I know I'm a biased Northeast liberal, but knowing it doesn't change it. This state makes me uncomfortable. My brother reminded us that 35% of South Dakota voted for Kerry in 2004; still, those 35% don't have a strong presence in the public displays along our route. Guns scare me, hunting makes me angry, meat sort of grosses me out, and the anti-abortion billboards every few miles add a strange ironic and sinister sort of sense of moral judgment. Yes, I'm one of those evil heathen liberals who wants to take people's freedom (to shoot animals) away, who wants to kill lots of innocent unborn children for no particular reason, and who hasn't even read the Bible. I'm not saying, by any means, that I assume everyone in South Dakota thinks like that. It's just the vibe coming down off the sides of the highway. It feels so hostile.

I've driven into the South, down to Florida and down to New Orleans. In the Carolinas and Georgia and Tennessee there were plenty of anti-abortion billboards, lots of churches, signs for gun shops and hunting and so on...but somehow nowhere else so far has felt to me so agressively hostile toward liberals (again, the signs and decorations, not the people).

I've also been thinking how much I'd hate to live here. My aunt says that when she's too far from a large body of water she gets a claustrophobic, suffocated feeling, and I'm beginning to see what she means. Also, there's nothing to do! I don't think I could adjust to it, a life where I'd have to drive hours through farmland lightly dotted with houses just to get to a town large enough to have some restaurants and shops in it. I'm not trying to be critical of that sort of life--I just couldn't do it. I'm so used to being able to hop in the car and find lots of malls and restaurants of all sorts of ethnicities and museums and concerts and just people right around me.

I can't wait to be back on a coast!

I liked Minnesota much better; instead of anti-liberal billboards, the highway was lined with long posts waiting to be erected into power lines to carry the power from the wind turbines they were planting in many of the fields. I really find them quite beautiful, and uplifting. Imagine if a large percentage of the fields in this part of the country could be spotted with those. I'm not an expert on alternative energy, but it seems like it would be pretty damn helpful.

But I'm going backwards, so let me start going forwards and meet myself in the middle. This morning we had a very lovely breakfast at Alexander's, and then hit the road. We finished Illinois, passed through a bit of Wisconsin, which was pretty nice (lots of ads for cheese!), then Minnesota, and now South Dakota. For dinner we stopped at Perkins, a chain we'd never tried before. The girl who seated us was so sweet and friendly! Her name was Kandice, and she asked where we were headed and got really excited, since she'd gone to school in Tacoma. She started telling us all the places we should visit on the way--including the SPAM museum right in that town! We passed on that, but one thing she mentioned sounded pretty awesome--it was called Devil's Tower, I think, some sort of natural rock formation thing. Maybe on the way back. Our waitress was also nice--and also vegetarian! The quesadillas were the highlight, although the rest was good too. We took the little paper attached to the receipt with a website to give feedback so that we could say nice things about the two women who served us.

The sunset was amazing. We stopped at a rest area to take pictures, which I will get onto my computer as soon as I find the cord for my camera...which might be at home...

The only bad news from the day was that my grandma is feeling bad--an upset stomach for the past week and a half that's getting much worse. And she's already dealing with a heart arhythmia that's making it exhausting for her just to walk around the house; and to top it off, this week all three of her children are travelling out of the area! Lousy timing...My mom thinks it sounds like just a stomach bug and nothing to do with her heart, but still. Sigh.

We made reservations at a Holiday Inn right in downtown Seattle. It was more expensive than the ones ten or twenty miles outside the city, which were all on the side of big highways in the sort of neighborhood such hotels are usually in--a neighborhood of hotels, parking lots, truck stops, warehouses, and highways. Which is no problem for staying over one night...but for sightseeing around for four days, we decided to spring for the one five blocks from the Space Needle. Oh well. My brother doesn't need to go to college, does he?

Two more days and I'll be there, minutes away from Andrew. How am I supposed to survive Thursday and Friday?

I'm still scheming about that baseball game...

:-)

P.S. Speaking of cheese, I would just like to say for the record that a strong candidate for my favorite slogan ever is the slogan of Sargento:

Persnickety People. Exceptional Cheese.

Pussy Willow, Pizza, and Teapot

Last Night...

When you flipped the light switch right next to the door, one tiny light in the ceiling came on, a spotlight on a vase of pussywillows next to the TV cabinet. My room was huge, twice the size of the room across the hall that my dad and brother were in. The bed was oriented wrong, i.e. differently from in Holiday Inns, where we normally stay. All the new clothes I had just tried on had been horribly unflattering and depressing--and I'd been so excited to get them. They were now strewn around the sideways bed, on which I sat crying uncontrollably. Fortunately I had only thrown my cell phone, the clothes, and my book. I had resisted those damn pussy willows.

Dramatic, huh? In my defense, for whatever it's worth, it was already late, I was exhausted, and we'd been driving around for an hour finding hotel after hotel with only smoking rooms available. This one had only kingsize bed rooms left, and my dad had given in to the idea of sleeping on a pull-out sofa bed, after a minute of sighing and groaning. But of course, I should have reacted more calmly. There's no doubt of that. Somehow I had pinned all my real hopes, all my best daydreams on that baseball game, and everything had gone so well so far, it seemed such a reasonable proposal, that I hadn't really considered the very real chance that it wouldn't happen.

Turns out, it won't happen. Not the baseball game. Not the aquarium. At that point, as I sat there crying into the phone, it seemed like all I was driving across the country for was a half-hour lunch with Andrew and his parents. And Andrew gave in so easily, spoke so calmly, like he didn't mind. Oh, I knew that he wanted to see me. I knew he'd have preferred to see me for longer. But why wasn't he as upset as I was? Why wasn't he insisting on finding some way to convince his parents? Why couldn't he just reason with them, make bargains, plead, talk, explain? What is so damn hard about that? I wanted to scream at him but I couldn't; I maintained enough sense to know that if I yelled all the things I was thinking it would hurt him deeply and unfairly. I had already hurt him by getting upset and acting disappointed, by saying bitterly and almost seriously that maybe I should just turn around and forget it. What an ungrateful jerk. We were yelling at each other again...I didn't understand, he said. He needed to be alone, he said. He hung up.

He's absolutely right that I don't understand. I have no idea what it's like to feel you can't ask your parents for anything, can't reason and bargain and make your case to them even if they might not agree. He tells me, and I believe him, but of course I'll never understand. But I understood that I'd put him in an impossible position by getting upset. Confront his parents, or disappoint me. I wanted to just take it back, say "never mind, I'm not upset, I'm not disappointed, it's fine." Yeah right. Kind of hard after you've just cried for half an hour and flung things around the room. I know from experience of being on the other side, that sometimes an apology means nothing at all; once a reaction happens, it's happened.

I'm really very immature sometimes.

He went to bed early, although it took me a while to let him go, even though all we were doing was snapping at each other or crying (me). Don't worry, he said. Seriously, just don't worry, for this one night, just stop thinking about me, just read your mystery story, think about other things, and sleep, he said. But that's so hard for me. I tried. I did pretty well. I emailed his dad back, trying to keep the option of the baseball game open even though I know it's really closed. (Oh, that's too bad about the baseball game! If it's a logistic problem, we'd be happy to pick people up or drop them off. We can talk about it on Saturday...) I read of murder and gold and disguises and tombs and Ramses (ahhh Ramses...), and ate pretzels. I finally fell asleep.

My mom had gotten me the Compendium for the Amelia Peabody series. It has (supposed) pictures of the characters. There's a picture of Ramses as a little baby. It made me happy.

The pillows at this non-Holiday Inn hotel were amazingly comfortable.


Today...

I woke up miserable, after insisting on sleeping an extra two hours because I was up so late. When I am a parent, I hope I inherit my dad's abilities at cheering my children up. There's some combination of taking someone seriously (validation) and simultaneously making the situation feel brighter and less hopeless (cheering up). By the time we got to the car I was laughing, but still sighing between laughs.

Into Ohio and the Good Service Areas! Ohio's been rebuilding the service areas along I-80 for the past several years, and the new ones are beautiful low round domed buildings that are airy and clean and cheerful. Some of them have Sbarro, and we stopped at one of those. We wanted five slices of plain cheese pizza. You can get a whole pizza, six slices, for the same price (actually, four cents more, said my brother). We noticed this, but since we didn't actually want six slices and we didn't want to risk overeating, we decided against it. Overhearing us talking it over, a guy behind the counter pointed out that we could get a whole pizza for the same price. We nodded and smiled. We gave our order to another guy (the first was busy putting together the pizzas or something). "Why don't you just get a whole pizza? It's the same price." We know, we said, but we only want five slices. Take the extra one with you, he suggested. We said we were on the road and couldn't store it. "I can give you a box..." No, we just want five slices. He seemed very confused. "We're willing to throw out a slice of pizza for you if you really want," I said cheerfully. He seemed more confused.

We had to wait a few minutes for a new plain pizza to come out, since there were only two slices left of the existing one. While we were waiting the girl at the register suggested we ring up our order. "Five cheese slices," my dad told her.

"We'll just give you the whole pizza then."

"No...we only want to eat five slices. You can sell the other slice to someone else."

"It's the same price..."

"Yes." My dad smiled at her. "But you see, we don't want to eat six slices of pizza. We would have to throw out the last slice. This way someone else can have it."

She stared at him. "Sorry, I don't understand what you're talking about..."

The pizza was ready. The guy we had ordered from brought it over to the counter. "So you want...?"

"Five slices," I said firmly. He and the girl exchanged a look of uncomprehension, and with a shrug he put five slices onto plates and gave them to us.

When we got back to the table we looked at our receipt. One cheese pizza, it said.

-___-;;

At the moment that we passed into Central Time, I lost vision in half of my left eye. First I was just conscious of blurry gray spots. When I closed my right eye, the entire right half of my vision was opaque light gray. I freaked--my vision is really important to me, and weird medical things scare me disproportionately. After another second, it switched--now it was the top half of my vision that was gray, and only in the left eye. I prayed I wasn't going blind--which, really, I knew, because who's ever heard of someone just riding along in a car and suddenly going blind without anything happening? After another minute, the gray patch was moving off to the right, until it finally vanished altogether. I called my mom, who confirmed that it was almost certainly a migraine, just a different kind from what I usually get. She read me a website describing exactly what happened to me, which is always comforting. (Usually, my auras take the form of a small patch of shimmery blurry lines just to one side of my focal spot, which gradually expands in on direction or the other into a semicircular arc of flashing colorful lines, until it falls off the end of my vision--much prettier than a big gray rectangle!) So I squirted some Imitrex up my nose.

Damn Central Time.

Just as the Imitrex was starting to drip down into the back of my throat and make me gag, Andrew called. It's impossible to control how our conversations will feel the day after some big drama. If it's still tense or awkward, we just have to wait for it to pass. I wasn't sure how it would go today, but luckily, it went great. He was still stressed, tired, sore from Friday, dealing with allergies, feeling guilty about last night...but he was ready to talk and laugh and give himself a shot at cheering up. I was still sad, and also feeling guilty, but more than happy to just tease and chat and feel normal. Besides, it wasn't going to be as bad as I'd imagined last night. The email his dad sent me suggested we meet at ten Saturday morning. Andrew has tennis at two in the afternoon; that's four hours. Besides, he's got a tournament for tennis that day, and I'm going to watch him, no matter what his dad or anyone says. That's perfectly reasonable, isn't it? Andrew says I'll just distract him, but I say he can deal. And I'm not giving up hope yet about that baseball game...even though I should...

So we talked, and teased, and laughed, and normalized. He wanted to play Teapot to cheer up. I love Teapot!! Here's how it goes: You pick a verb, an activity or action. Then people ask questions to figure it out. For example: Teapot = sing in the shower

Q: Can you teapot by yourself?
A: Yup.

Q: Can you teapot indoors?
A: Yes you can.

Q: Have you ever teapotted?
A: Sometimes, yeah.

Q: Can you teapot during a power outage?
A: I suppose you could...

Q: Do you use your hands to teapot?
A: Not really.

And so on and so on. Of course, as my brother kept pointing out from the back seat while Andrew and I were playing, the game is, as he put it, "just an excuse for making lots of ambiguously dirty statements in a short time period." And what's wrong with that, I say? Making lots of ambiguously dirty statements is a great way to cheer someone up, especially teenaged boys. Andrew's verb was "forging a signature", and then mine was "singing in the shower". Then we spent a few minutes talking about various designs for showers and bathtubs. And then he had to go.

Gary, Indiana is the most dirty-looking place I've ever seen. The Skyway into Chicago was crawling along, and even over Chicago there was so much haze that from a mile or so away the Sears Tower was only a faint dark rectangle against the brownish sky. Sad. Also sad to pass so quickly by Chicago, especially since my brother's never been there. Maybe on the way back, we'll give ourselves more time there...

We hadn't eaten since the adventure at Sbarro, but my dad suggested that instead of trying to get off in Chicago and deal with parking and all, we keep going on I-90 into the northwestern suburbs, where, he was sure, there'd be plenty of little roads filled with nice Italian or Chinese restaurants.

He was wrong.

As we left the city, I-90 passed through mile after mile of hazy, desolate land, spotted with big business headquarters, warehouses, and occasional hotels. Nothing residential, nothing commercial, no nice family Italian restaurants jumping out from amongst the hills and driveways. It was getting darker and darker, and although we'd gained ourselves an extra hour--yay Central Time!--we were nearing the time when most restaurants would be closed, even if we could find them. Indeed, when we got of at one exit because we could see a large shopping center, all we cound find in it were a sandwich store and an express Chinese place, both empty with employees sweeping the floor and emptying the garbage. They'd closed at nine, ten minutes before. I was hungry, and hence, crabby. We were over three hours behind the schedule we'd sketched out for the day. It looked like it would be peanut butter and jelly for dinner, with a side of potato chips. And did I mention it didn't look like I was even going to have a minute with Andrew without his father around? I was not in a good mood.

The next exit had a Holiday Inn. Why do we always stay at Holiday Inns, you ask? Because of a certain small dog show held near Albany in late May of 1995. Held, in fact, on the grounds of a Holiday Inn. It was to that dog show that my dad and I drove to pick up our second dog, a puppy. Polar. We've favored Holiday Inns ever since. And this was a nice full-service one, likely to have some sort of restaurant.

In fact, there was a free-standing restaurant right next to it, in addition to the Bennigans attached to the hotel. Alexander's, it was called. I was still grumpy and inclined to see the worst in any random restaurant that crossed our path, but my dad investigated the menu and said it looked good. And they were open until ten--half an hour longer. We went in. We ordered--mozzarella sticks and penne with butter for my brother, an order of potato skins for me and my dad to share, a garden burger for me, and fettucini marinara for my dad. The mozzarella sticks came first, eight of them, while my dad was outside calling my mom. I'll just try one, I told my brother. I tried one. It was amazing. One of the best mozzarella sticks I could remember; in the Friendly's genre, but thicker and more flavorful by far. I grabbed three more. My brother objected. He tried to steal them back. A fierce battle ensued. Finally I let him take one, while I took a big bite of each of the other two. They were so good! When my dad got back my brother accused me of stealing his food. I had done no such thing; he had no legal claim to ownership. My dad ordered another serving.

The rest of the food was amazing too. Apparently it's not a chain, which is too bad--we were hoping it would turn out to be a midwestern chain, so we'd bump into more of them. Next to the register they had a plastic dog and cat into which you could put money for various humane animal shelters. We're going to go back for breakfast tomorrow morning.

As my dad says, you just never know. Things happen the way they happen, and barring an actual tragedy, it's always for the best. We're lucky the Panda Express had just closed.

Now I'm in my room at the Holiday Inn right next to the restaurant. We're still three hours behind where we'd planned to be, but we're in fine shape to get there by Wednesday evening. Tomorrow our goal is a Holiday Inn in Chamberlain, South Dakota. New states for me! My brother got two today, Indiana and Illinois. Right now I'm farther west than I ever have been. Well, unless the restaurant was farther west, I suppose.

Andrew says he's with the Sbarro people. Who turns down free pizza??

Goodnight!