My very generous month of vacation that I was required to take in the summer was nice. I decided to spend it in San Antonio, thinking that staying with my parents and seeing family and friends in SA would be a sound financial decision, that I might spend less money there, since I’m trying to save to travel for 2 months next summer. I was really wrong. And although seeing family was nice, staying with my parents for a month was a terrible, terrible decision that I will never make again. All of a sudden, it was like I was 15 years old again with the curfews and questions and “clean your room”. (I’d like to note that my room was indeed clean when I left.) I guess I thought that since I have been living on my own, working and paying bills, and most importantly, caring for children, driving with them, handling them in a big city alone, that I would have some brownie points marked under “responsible”, but no. In my dad’s eyes, I was still the bony, argumentative little girl who wanted her way or the highway, and he was still the man who wanted his way or the highway. My poor mother, as always, was stuck in the middle, and for that I am truly sorry. I love her so much, I just want her to be happy, but my visits home put so much stress on her that I’m surprised she doesn’t have a situational substance abuse problem.
On a lighter note, I had an amazing time seeing old friends, making new ones, and spending time with family. I arrived in Austin and my old friend Chris picked me up from the airport and let me crash on his couch. Only after I slept on it did he divulge that he and his roommate had actually picked it up from the side of the street. Luckily they did clean it up. I ended up sleeping on it a night more than I expected because my friend I know from San Francisco was driving from SF to NYC and was running a bit late on his schedule. Jose arrived on July 5th in the afternoon, and it was so nice to see him. I traveled with Jose in Greece and had a wonderful time. I was so happy he was finally in Texas! Chris and his roommate were so hospitable too. They welcomed not only me, but Jose to their place like an old friend. They took us to this local swimming hole to swim for the afternoon and we had a great time swinging from the rope swing and catching up over a couple of beers and flotation devices. When we got back to their house they cooked up this random and amazing dinner, complete with “darn-goods” for dessert. After letting our food settle and chilling out for a bit, Jose and I headed to San Antonio at around 12am. I misunderstood my mother when she said, “just stay there” and I said “we’re coming tonight”. She didn’t leave the door unlocked, like I assumed she would, so I unfortunately woke her up. Not a great introduction for Jose and my mom. Jose stayed a couple of nights in San Antonio. The FIFA world cup was in the finals so we watched a couple of times. I took Jose to downtown San Antonio and showed him the Alamo and the Riverwalk, and we ate at Casa Rio and just chilled out by the river after a walk around downtown. We arrived right at the right time, which meant that we didn’t have to wait for a table, and also that they had people waiting the whole time. The server came about 5 times to see if we had paid our bill = annoying as hell.
Jose eventually had to get a move on the next day to make his way to New York in time to catch his flight to Prague, and New Orleans was his next destination. I decided at the last minute that I would accompany him to New Orleans, then find a train/plane/bus to get back to San Antonio. It was nice to extend my visit with Jose, and as always, I had fun traveling with him. Due to the fact that we stopped to have dinner, and got lost in Houston in the rain, we ended up stopping for the night after the Louisiana border. It’s silly, but I even had fun watching late night trash TV (MTV of course) with him. We made it to New Orleans the next day and our first order of business was to get a drink. Hurricanes in hand, the second order of business was to find a place to sleep for the night that wasn’t super expensive. With the second order of business checked off the list the third order of business was to get another drink and walk around. This we did all afternoon. It was lots of fun, and we somewhat stumbled our way back to our hotel at night after some random corner concert.
You know you have a good friend when he wakes up early after a day of drinking to take you to the bus station. I sadly parted ways with Jose at the Greyhound station in New Orleans, and went to pick up my bus ticket back to San Antonio. I don’t think I will ever, EVER, voluntarily take a bus long-distance, through the South (yes capital S in South), again. Beyond the cramped quarters and nonsensical chatter I overheard was a smell that seemed to be exuding from my obese neighbor. I just tried to read a book and sleep as much as possible. I wonder what effect that awful smell has on dreams.
I went to Austin soon after that for Kellee’s birthday celebration. Again, I stayed with Chris, who came out to have a drink with us on 6th Street. I had never really done the whole partying on 6th Street thing (come to think of it, I did only once before I moved to France) and it was fun. Mostly hanging out with Kellee and Chris, since those were the only people I knew. Debi ended up coming with us really late, and had to leave early, so we didn’t see much of her. I drove back home the next day and got back to San Antonio with nothing planned, and nothing to do for the rest of the month. I got to go to a party with a bunch of people from Churchill attending and it was really nice to celebrate Kellee’s birthday (again) with them. After lots of beer pong, it turned out that I am SO GOOD at that game and played with a high school friend until very late. By the end of the night I was just catching up with an old friend of mine when some drunk idiot comes and starts yelling at me because I elaborated on his comments about Sarah Palin. Unfortunately for that guy, my comments were not in her favor and he didn’t like it. I successfully shut down every case he brought up and then he was literally in my face, about 2 inches away from my nose, standing over me while I sat in a lawn chair, yelling at me asking what I DO believe in, because it was clear I didn’t believe in what he did. Having recently returned from Russia, and wanting to see his reaction, I told him I believed that the United States should become Soviet, like the good ole USSR. He was irrate after this, and only after that was it brought to my attention that someone was behind me with a video camera. (This video hasn’t surfaced yet.) I didn’t get home until 5am after sitting and chatting with old friends, and my dad was thoroughly convinced that I drove home trashed. His evidence? The fact that I inadvertently rubbed the side of the tires on the curb and scrapped the tires, not the wheel, and marked the curb. I think he was mostly mad about the fact that his tire and curb were no longer in pristine condition. It didn’t matter that the party was just “down the road a piece”, as we say in the South. There’s that capital S again.
I was basically grounded after that, and ended up getting Elisa to come pick me up to go hang out at her house and help her move in. In reality, we just went shopping for a few things she needed and went to lunch. I take pride in the fact that I installed the remote control holder for her ceiling fan and made sure that her curtain rod was even. After that we just watched How I Met Your Mother.
