Ready for Action

Well, I'm back home. And by "home" I mean my apartment, not El Paso (obviously, right?). I use the term "home" very loosely and interchangably to describe both my home here where all my stuff is and El Paso, which I guess will never stop feeling like home to a certain extent, at least until my parents aren't there anymore.

The drive back today was harrowing. It really was! For once I'm not being completely melodramatic. It was fine until just past Fort Stockton, and then it started raining and it rained the entire rest of the drive. And for those of you unfamiliar with the joys of I-10 between El Paso and San Antonio, Fort Stockton isn't even quite the halfway point when you're driving east. I spent, oh, about FOUR AND A HALF HOURS driving in the rain. Which may not sound bad to you, except that it wasn't just a drizzle, it ranged from, "Wow, guess I'd better turn my windshield wipers up to high speed" to "Fuck, I can't see anything!" I hydroplaned minorly five or six times before finally saying screw it and just cruising in the left lane for the next three hours because I was hydroplaning every time I tried to switch lanes no matter how much I slowed down. I contemplated stopping and staying the night in a motel several times, but every time I got to a town that was actually substantial enough to have a motel, the rain would let up just enough to make me think, "Okay, this isn't so bad anymore" and I'd cruise past the motels only to have a the downpour start again ten miles later.
When I was 160 miles from home I got the added bonus of fog, and by the time I got to San Antonio there was lightning, too. Just outside of San Antonio there was a wreck that caused another wreck as everyone else slammed on their brakes to avoid the first wreck. I was far enough back that I was able to come to a stop without hitting anyone, but even though I did everything I know to avoid hydroplaning, it's just impossible not to hydroplane when you're going 50 mph and have to stop rather abrubtly with an inch of water on the road, so my car zig zagged back and forth across two lanes several times before I came to a stop. It scared me. A lot. I'm just glad I had stayed out of the main crush of cars and avoided both wrecks. When I was just fifteen miles from home I watched as a pickup truck up ahead of me hydroplaned and plowed right into the barrier dividing the highway. By the time I passed him the guy had already climbed out of his truck and was on his cell phone so he was obviously okay, but man. It was bad.
I hope I never have to make a drive like that again in my life. Also, I hope the fact that I keep witnessing all these car wrecks is a fluke and not a new trend because that's not really how I want to spend my new year.

The other fun part about all the rain was that I got to unload my car in it! It was raining so hard when I pulled up to my apartment that Cohen flat out refused to get out of the car and I finally had to drag him from the car and carry him inside. Then I had to make about six more trips for the rest of my stuff. And yes, I did consider just leaving everything other than the basset hound and the cat in the car and getting it all out when the rain eventually stopped, except that it's 2 in the morning and still raining steadily so I'm glad I just sucked it up and brought everything in earlier.

I spent the night taking down my Christmas decorations, unpacking and reorganizing all of the animals' stuff and weeding out some of Cohen's toys (Does he really need three old chew hooves, or a half-chewed plastic frisbee? I don't think so, but I snuck them out of the apartment when he was sleeping in case he thinks otherwise), washing and packing up my old bedding and making up the bed with all my new stuff (it's all silvery blue and very soothing looking and I can't wait to go to bed), and catching up on two and a half weeks of mail. Plans for the weekend include organizing my closet to free up hangers for my new clothes, uploading my latest pictures, and trying to figure out if there's any possible way to fit another book (or seven) onto my already overstuffed bookshelves. I kind of want to do a total overhaul and organize all my books into categories, but eh...the thing is, I know I'm moving in less than five months so part of me doesn't even want to bother organizing right now when I'm just going to do another purge of all my junk in a matter of months. But the new year hype is hard to ignore, and the book situation really is getting out of hand. Really.

I. Am. So. Exciting!