Thank you for all of your kind and supportive comments, everyone. I was pretty nervous and sad about moving, but now that I’m here in Georgia I feel much calmer about everything. I’m sure I’ll love school once it starts (I mean, it’s a full-time program in painting. I don’t exactly have anything to complain about) and once I move into an apartment and meet some people and become, you know, not friendless.

So, I have arrived at my dad’s and stepmom’s house. I am homeless and unemployed and living in a small southern town that is famous for its supply of both peaches and pecans. Industry, y’all! Progress!

The drive down from DC was reminiscent of the journey in that obsolete computer game others of my generation have come to know and love. Yes, I am speaking of OREGON TRAIL. In the sense that the trip took about six months, required us to fjord the wagon across a raging river, fix a busted axle, and lose one family member to a snake bite and another to “consumption.”

O, the journey of the crossing of the USA! It is filled with so much pain and bitter times. And by bitter times, I am specifically referring to the night spent sharing a motel room with my dad and stepmom in Spartanburg, South Carolina. You just have not lived until you have woken up to your dad reciting law mumbo-jumbo to himself in the shower at 7am.

Actually the drive was not too terrible. It was just LOOONG – two full days. Mostly because my dad is a strictly speed limit kind of guy. I drove as much as I can without making myself berserk, and every so often he’d lean over to check out the spedometer, recoil, and say, “Gettin’ a little fast there! Gettin’ a LITTLE FAST.”

Thank god almost all my stuff fit into their car too. I had to leave behind one trash bag (yes you read that right. What can I say? I’m pure class) of “random papers and knick-knacks,” (that is how I labeled the contents on the Post-It I had taped to the outside of the bag) but my mom can send that to me soon.

Thank god part two that my stepmom was successful in petitioning my dad to stop off at the big mall in Atlanta that has a Sephora. Sweet lovely consumerism! I love buying makeup. I only wear it at night, but I love trying it on and buying it. (Is there a name for that? It must be some really innate, instinctual thing, going back to cavewomen finding and hoarding the good boulders and branches for decorating their cave dwellings.)

Of course no road trip with one’s family members would be complete without the inevitable conflicts that arrive from spending every minute in such close quarters. I am referring of course to bodily functions, specifically farting. Isn’t the father figure of every family famous for his farting? (Wow, a lot of alliteration in that sentence.) When I was younger and took a lot of trips to the beach with my dad, stepmom, and stepbrother, who is two years older than me, most of the humor relief on any given trip was directly resulting from farting.

You could always tell when dad was responsible, because he would crack a window right before the sonic boom hit. Very selfless of him. There would be about a ten-second lag time, and then one of us backseat dwellers would start wailing and gnashing our teeth in agony. My stepmom claims that she could always distinguish my dad’s farts from anyone else’s olfactorily, which is just gross. Seeing as I was a preteen girl and therefore hideously self-conscious, I never actually allowed myself to fart in front of others. I think I’ve been holding one particular one in for like fifteen years now.

Speaking of farting, it is an ongoing discussion between John and I now. The second time he stayed over at my apartment, we were just falling asleep and he was like, “Did you know you fart in your sleep?” Thank god the room was pitch black, because I think I blushed from head to toe. But I’m cool, you know; I played it off.

Picture it: my apartment, lying in bed in the dark.

J: Did you know you fart in your sleep?
Me: Ha ha ha! I’m pretty funny.

{ten second pause}

Me: I DO NOT. TAKE IT BACK RIGHT NOW YOU LYING LIAR. I HAVE NEVER FARTED IN MY ENTIRE LIFE.
J: Ha ha ha haaaaa! You do! Ha haaaa! It kept me up all night long! It was hilarious!
Me: {on the verge of tears} I HATE YOU I WANT TO DIE RIGHT NOW.
J: It’s okay, I was just kidding.
Me: You were? I mean, of course. Of course you were. I don’t have digestive issues at all.

{ten second pause}

Me: {drifting off into sweet sleep}
J: I totally was not kidding.
Me: ARGHHHHHHHHH.
J: No, I was! I was kidding! You didn’t fart at all!
Me: Dude, YOU were the one who was farting all night long. I practically fell asleep at work the next day, I was so tired from being kept up all night long.
J: Oh please. You are the worst liar.

{pause}

Me: JUST SAY THAT YOU WERE KIDDING AND THAT I DID NOT FART IN MY SLEEP.
J: I was kidding.

{pause}

{both of us crack up}

J: No I wasn’t.

{I stop cracking up}

{Repeat this cycle about fifty times until we fall asleep from exhaustion}

Ah, l’amour

Anyway, classes begin in five weeks, so I’ll have a few weeks to slug around the house with my stepmom (who is sick and has retired already) before I actually move to an apartment in Savannah. It’s nice. I can hang out with her and my dad and it’ll be the long-awaited Period O’ Sloth I had thought the week at my mom’s was going to be.

And John and I are having an actual, successful, long-distance relationship at this very moment. We have talked every day. It has been four days. Four days down, two years to go! Woo, totally doable! Cakewalk, in fact! Har har. AND, we still have not farted in front of each other (at least during our waking hours), so the bloom is not yet off the rose.