Jessie’s here.  I don’t feel quite comfortable saying “home” yet, but he is.  He’s been tired, and grumpy, and stressed, and anxious about starting a new job.  He’s not been all the pleasant to be honest.  But I get why he’s being like this and I understand completely.  My leg of this pain in the ass trip is basically over and now I do nothing but sit and wait.  Jessie’s part in this is MUCH more difficult.

He gets to have a 3 hour commute to work every day and then a 3 hour commute back home every day.  Isn’t that the worst thing you’ve ever heard?  I feel so bad for the guy over this.  And not two seconds ago we realized that money got stretched tighter than we had anticipated during this move and we’re both freaking out over paying for gas and train passes and toll passes (yes, he has to go through toll roads).  So yeah, he’s not being all that pleasant.

Still, I’m glad to be here.  I’m glad to be out of that alien place in which I could never become comfortable.  Here there are more possibilities for us.  More opportunities.  Hopefully after 4-6 months of poor Jessie killing himself in the worst commute ever, we’ll have saved enough to buy a house closer to Philadelphia.  Hopefully this whole being closer to family thing will be as great as we’ve anticipated.  Hopefully we can have the kind of life that we’ve always wanted out here.

Doesn’t matter, really.  I’m not fucking moving again.  Not a big move, anyhow.  NO WAY.

I’m so sorry it has taken me so long to check in.  This trip so far has sucked hardcore and the suckiness is only gradually decreasing as each day passes.  At this point in the game, I am currently being held hostage by my scared and out-of-place son and Jessie is somewhere in North Dakota, or as he calls it, Hell.

On Sunday, we arrived at the airport looking like a caravan preparing to cross the Sahara Desert.  One huge checked bag, one huge purse, one heavy-assed laptop bag, one toddler-sized backpack, and one faux crocodile carry-on stuffed to maximum capacity.  All of this was ON TOP of the enormous car seat for Lukas and the stroller for Lukas.  I think it goes without saying that getting through security was NOT FUN.  But we made it.  The gentleman behind us in line was very nice and understanding.

After getting through security, we had nearly 2 hours to kill before we boarded our plane.  I was so stressed and nervous that day that all I could eat all day was some rancid yogurt and some pineapple chunks.  When we finally got on the plane, we seated ourselves and lived through the longest five and a half hours of my life.  It was the worst plane ride ever.  Lukas was loud.  Lukas was tired of sitting still.  There was an old fart in front of us who huffed and turned around to give us stink-eye every time Lukas make an audible sound (even though he sat up there and coughed through the whole effing flight and his wife screamed and giggled loudly at something on her computer).  I’ll NEVER..and I mean NEVER fly with a small child again.  My stomach and bowels are still recovering from that day.

When you get off of a long trip like that and it’s been nothing but varying degrees of bad, the first thought that comes to mind when you get off the plane is “I wanna go home.”  Then I remembered that I currently don’t have a home.  I’m mooching off of my mom and step-father (and I really appreciate their hospitality and kindness).  I’ve displaced my family and after a flight like that, I really just wanted to go to a dark room and cry for an hour.  Actually, I’d still like to do that….but there’s no time.

After we landed we had a two hour car drive from Philadelphia to my mom’s house.  Lukas was just DONE WITH THAT DAY by the time we finally got here.  We all sat down and had a late night mini-meal and then I tried to put Lukas down in his new (temporary) room.   Oh, how naive and STUPID of me.

I didn’t honestly expect any problems from Lukas concerning sleep.  He’s never been a problem sleeper and he’s always been a fiercely independent baby.  Also, he hadn’t napped that day and I really thought he’d fuss for a bit and then go right down.

Ummm….no.

That child screamed bloody murder until I came into his room.  He jumped up, put a death grip on me and REFUSED to be put back in that bed unless I was with him.  I sighed and obliged him.  I climbed into bed with him still in my gross airplane clothes and slept with him all night.  I slept in an uncomfortable bra and blue jeans…so I think it’s safe to say I didn’t sleep all that effing well.

The next day I tried to recover from all the acid eating away at my lower intestine while Lukas remained attached to my leg.  Luckily, he knows my mom and is comfortable being left alone with her for short amounts of time, so I was able to get a phone call here and a bathroom break there.  When I tried to put him down for his nap and tried to leave the room….well you can guess.  That was okay though because I needed the nap so it was nice to snuggle up in a SUPER comfortable bed (it’s a pillow top mattress and you fucking float in this thing.  It’s AWESOME) and sleep for a couple of hours.  Lukas woke up being sweet and he and I explored the new digs and had an awesome dinner.   We’ve been living off of fast food and cheap take out for the past month and a half and even a simple home-cooked meal tasted like heaven.  Again, I was stuck sleeping next to a restless toddler last night.

Even right now, I am sitting in the room with Lukas.  Nickelodeon is on TV and the lights are off.  He’s lying there and being quiet, but if he’s not totally asleep when I try to make my escape, the blood curdling screaming will resume.  If he weren’t so darned cute and lovable…..well I’d still sit with him.

An upside to all of this is that this child is being the most affectionate that he has been his ENTIRE LIFE.  I’m not even kidding.  Kisses, hugs, snuggles, kisses!  I’m flabbergasted!  I usually have to force him to submit to affection, but he’s actually coming over to me and kissing me on his own.  It melts my heart.  Oh, I love this kid….even if he punched my in the face 5 times last night in his sleep.

He’s also taken to calling my mom “Bogmar”, which is probably his funniest translation to date.  I guess in his head, Bogmar sounds just like Grandma.  He called my step-father “Grandpa” last night and my mom got mad.

“He calls him Grandpa but calls me Bogmar?!?!  He IS your kid!”

I’ll find amusement in this for years to come.

Also, I’d like to apologize to Aschlie for keeping my texts short on Sunday night.  As the prefect friend, she texted me to see if we’d arrived and I was being short because I was at that time in the backseat of a car.  I’m one of those people who have face-exploding-scary-exorcist-barf when I read while in the car and my step-father’s car has leather interior and I didn’t want to compromise my living situation by barfing all over the place.  Please feel free to write, text or call me.  If I don’t answer, I’m probably in bed with my baby boy….being punched in the face.

In exactly one week (even down to the hour) Lukas and I will be at my mom’s house in PA.  Jessie and his father will be on the road headed towards Eastern Washington.  The move will be ON.  At this point, all butterflies and anxieties have run their course and only happiness at the geniusness of this move remains.  In fact, this weekend has probably been one of the best weekends we have had together as a family in quite a long time.  There was a lot of giggling, a lot of hugging and kissing, and a lot of easy going smiles.  It’s been a long time.

Jessie and I are both very guilty of throwing the happiness of our marriage on the backburner at the first sign of stress.  We will go weeks at a time without so much as a hug or kiss (and forget sex).  We bicker over the most ridiculous stuff, and then we keep bickering until we can’t stand the sight of each other.  The words “You are the most annoying person ever.  STOP LOOKING AT ME!” are uttered quite often…..by both of us.  A lot of eye rolling and hiding away from each other.

But this weekend we’ve been hugging and kissing and cuddling and we have noticed that it bothers Lukas.  We’re not being pornographic.  A hug here…a quick smooch there.  But it’s such an odd thing for Lukas to see that he runs over to us and physically separates us.  I think maybe that makes us crappy parents for not showing him in a SUBTLE physical way that his parents love each other.  We need to work on that.

I took a nap this afternoon while Lukas was napping.  I had a dream about my deceased grandmother.  I dream about her a lot.  I miss her so much it hurts….I can’t even talk about her without crying.  But in this dream, we were sitting on her kitchen floor eating and chit chatting.  My grandma was a hoarder and not a good housekeeper.  In fact, her house was downright dirty and smelly.  But I was always so happy to be there with her.  She complimented me.  She had pet names for me like Pumpkin, Sweety, and Super Pest.  She always told me that she was proud of me and that the people in my life who were hurtful to me were missing out on getting to know me.  And she made the best fucking pancakes in the world and it kills me that I can’t replicate it.  Oh I’d give anything for a stack of those pancakes and to sit on her dirty floor and have a grown up conversation with my grandma.  Ok, back to my dream.

We were sitting on her floor eating and I looked at her plate of food and saw that she was eating a lot of  red meat and a lot of fattening food (my grandma died of heart disease).  I looked at her and said, “You should start eating better.  I want you to be at my wedding some day.”  She stood up, dumped her plate and came back with a plate of chicken breast and broccoli.  She told me that if that had to be her reason for eating better, then she was happy to do it.  Then, in my dream, I thought to myself that she died before I even met Jessie.  She dies long before I get married.  And in my dream I started raging about how my subconscious had ruined my dream of having my grandma at my wedding.  I started stomping around and yelling “Goddamn you, reality!  Let me just have this one thing!  Let me have her sit in the front and cry when I marry Jessie!  Goddamn you!”

I woke up when Lukas climbed in bed with me.  To wake up to my baby’s smiling face after that soul-beating dream was good.  After Jessie took him downstairs, I laid in bed for a few minutes and cried it out.

When I go to Clarksburg to visit family in October, I’m going to take a few hours and drive to Center Point to my grandma’s grave.  Can I convince a friend or two to come with me?  It’s a long drive and I don’t really want to make Lukas sit through another long drive on top of the two almost five hour drives to and from Clarksburg.  I also want to sneak up and look at my great-grandparents’ house if it’s still standing.  That effing place is haunting me or something.  Both of my great-grandparents are dead now, but once a month I dream of that house and their ghosts haunting it and talking to me.  I haven’t been to that house since I was a little girl.  My great-grandmother was always mean to me, so I avoided it.  It’s a small house and the trapping inside are very very old.  The old telephone on the table in the living room, the old furniture in the bedrooms, the old television, the old outhouse out back (despite the perfect toilet inside), the cellar off to the side with jars of pickles and beans, even the smell.  It’s very very old.  I can’t say it ever creeped me out…it really didn’t.  And I don’t know why I keep dreaming about it.  It really bothers me.  Once a month.  And it’s usually my great-grandfather talking to me.  He says weird things.  He died when I was very young, but he was always nice to me.  It’s weird, but it’s withing a stone’s throw of my grandma’s grave, so I’d like to just go look at it.  If I’m lucky, it’s fallen in on itself.  After my great grandma died this past fall, I’m sure everything of value was pillaged and it’s now abandoned.

7 more days.  7 more days.