July 17, 1998

Here I am...home, happy and at peace with the world.

At freakin' last.

Today was a Stress-A-Thon. Hours of stress all clumped up together after a relaxing day. I wasn't prepared for it.

For reference, my parents went to orientation with my sister up in Geneseo. Also for reference, my father has a van...actually there are four of them, but the red one is my father's. I went out in the afternoon and when I came home I put my car in the driveway. This is usually not a problem when my parents aren't around to park the vans behind it.

So at 9:30pm, Darryl called me. He was at Baldoz's house and wanted me to come over and join the party. I said "I'll be right over" and prepared to leave. Cleaned up quick, grabbed my wallet and my keys, and opened the front door.

My father's van was parked there, behind my tiny red car. "What the hell? Oh....someone had it and dropped it off." So, I go inside the house to find the bauble that turns off the alarm for the van. (Which is necessary as heck, that alarm goes off for CRICKETS!) There are no alarm baubles other than the ones for my car. Damn. The bauble must be locked in the garage in case someone needs it. So I look for the garage key. It's a standard door key...with three little holes in the top.

There are seventeen keys matching this description in my home. Seventeen.

So I tried them all. One, two, three....the seventeenth key opened the door. I should have figured...it was on Dad's keyring. BUT...I hadn't found his keyring until after I tried several keys already from other places in the house. So I get the door unlocked. I tunr the doorknob. THUMP. I try again with the same results. "What the..." and I see the nifty bolt across the door. With a padlock. I swore a few times, then went inside to find the key to the padlock. There were five of those, but only two on my father's keyring, the second of which opened the lock.

The bolt didn't want to move. It took my five minutes of violent convincing to move it. Very violent convincing.

So there I was, drenched in sweat, standing in the garage staring at two alarm baubles. I took them both and locked the door behind me. One of the baubles made the van beep and I opened the door.

My father is 6 foot 2". I am 5 foot 6". I was sitting on the very edge of the seat, holding myself up on the steering wheel, barely touching the pedals, trying to back this huge van out of my narrow driveway. I have done this only once before in my life. Once. And I have never seen so many cars go past my driveway in such a short span of time. Never.

But by a miracle, I got the van around the block into our back driveway. I got the van halfway into the driveway before it hit the curb with the back tires and couldn't be convinced over. So I had to back up and try again. And again. Finally I got it into the driveway. Three feet from the fence and the back fender hanging out of the driveway. I threw up my hands in defeat and walked through my back yard.

Spiderwebs.

Having experience nature in that fashion, I went straight into the house and locked the back door on my way in. Then I went out the front door and locked it behind me.

"Where are my keys?"

But they were found in my pocket...deep in my pocket. Along with the keys to the van. "Damn...I have to put these back in the garage." Back into the house, find the door keys and the padlock keys.

One, two, three, four....click. One, two...click. "Urrrrrrrggggggg!!!!! OPEN!!!"

Tossed the keys on the table, locked the door behind me. Tried to muscle (HA!!) the bolt back over. Gave up. Considered asking one of the four college men next door to close it for me. Briefly. Banged it closed with the padlock. Tried to close the padlock on the bolt.

"Urrrrrrrrggggggg! CLOSE!!" Deep sigh. "Please....just....let....ONE DAMN THING.....be.....EASY!!!!" Click. Walked in the back door, out the front door, got in my car and drove to Baldoz's house. Got there at almost ten....drenched in sweat, stressed, and hungry.

I related my tale of woe...and everyone thought it was hysterical. Okeh. Then Darryl and I went to get a pizza. Half plain, half meatball with an order of breadsticks. Simple, right? No. We waited about a half hour, then were handed a half plain, half mushroom pizza. At least they can't mess up breadsticks, right?

We took the pizza because we were tired of being there, and left. Got back to Baldoz's after a quick and painless stop to get soda and stogies.

Darryl and I ate the pizza. And the buffalo wings. Yep. That's right. Buffalo wings. They managed to mess up BREADSTICKS!!! Grrrr.

Then a bunch of people showed up and they made me retell the whole story. I was very dramatic and exaggerated a little (Me? Exaggerate? Never!!!) and they loved it. It shames me that my stress is so amusing.

Then I talked to Baldoz, the Moody Ninja, about life, anime, and watersports. Mostly anime and watersports. And I mentioned antagonizing Ann's poor little prom date.

Me: "Did you focus your chi?"
Him: "What's a chi?"
Me: "If you don't know you need to FOCUS IT!!!!

And then I went home and went to bed.

And to think, the whole time Brian was seeing Jerry Cantrell and Metallica in concert at Giants' stadium.