Day Two: Getting better.

Day two was much better. I woke up somewhere in a Denny's parking lot, but I can still say that I have never been inside of one. I continued to finally get much needed sleep and woke up in the upper-middle Keys. 

After I woke up and started taking pictures of each key sign. 

Not yet on Vaca Key but Marathon seems to be taking over. 

Giant dolphin. Why not?

Finally a survivable temperature. 

The house for the week. Right on the canal and close to the beach. Lance and Samantha have already kayaked around Key Colony. 

Day One: Long long looooong.

So cold leaving Philadelphia.

I couldn't find the southbound sign from the car. 

Merrie's homeland!

Samantha found my camera.

Gas station in Georgia. I had just finished driving us through the Carolinas and everything seemed really funny at 2am. I found a neon Hooters sign that only had Hoot lit up. 

Almost there.

I'm so close I can almost taste it. I have almost everything packed, I just have to go downstairs and fold my laundry and repack everything and then I will be set. Today was a monster of a day. I have been up since 4am on Wednesday and have been moving nonstop ever since. I briefly fell asleep this morning around 7am and woke up at 7am crying because I convinced myself that I had overslept my 10am midterm. It took me several minutes to realize that I still had two hours before I had to leave for school. I had to rush from my midterm to work because I thankfully switched shifts with The Ballerina. I had to get there early but I was able to leave at 8pm and have since then cleaned, folded, packed and showered and am almost ready for the rest of my family to get here. They're not expected until sometime around 2am or 3am so until they get here I'll just be up doing a little work and watching movies. Not the most exciting Thursday night I've ever had.

I'm thinking that I might not write so much while I'm in the Keys, but instead do a photo blog. Instead of lengthy posts I'll just show pictures of the day and have only a caption or two. I have family and friends that read this so posting daily photos will be much easier than having to call everyone all the time. Pictures are more fun to look at anyways than read some of the stuff than I write.

Book of the Day: Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. A story about a hermaphrodite growing up in Detroit during the 1960s and the history of how their family carried the mutated gene through the generations.

Song of the Day: Pyro by Kings of Leon. Not their best technically but still sounds good and has been getting a lot of air play.

Shoe of the Day: Green corduroy slip on Keds. 

So so so so TIRED.

Im going to make this short and sweet. Sugar. Sugar is sweet. I am super tired today, but this may end up being the longest night ever. I have so much reading and writing to do and since I stupidly told my boss I could work a longer shift than I normally do I have to get laundry and packing done tonight too and set out the spare bed and make sure I have clean linens on hand for when the rest of my family arrives on Friday. It's going to be a very long night for me and an even longer day tomorrow. Readers who actually know me, feel free to comment or text me tonight just so I stay awake. I could really use your help here.

Me after the next 36 hours. 

Steak 'n Shake on Friday

Argh I wish I were a pirate out at sea instead of a student in Philadelphia. I've been working all morning since I came back from the first half of my American Lit. midterm and then I fell asleep. I just woke up a little while ago and I am starved. I have absolutely no food in the apartment unless you count soy sauce and a few slice of American cheese. I'm going to go out and get something, but I'm not sure what I want to commit to. I have a feeling that it's going to be a very late night and since I have BOMF in the morning I'm almost tempted to get something take a nap for a couple of hours and then eat again and work until it's time to go running. Decisions, decisions.

I'll update this post later.

The lines at Acme were atrocious. They only had the self-serve checkout lines running and I didn't want to wait in line so I walked laps around the store until the lines shortened up. I didn't get much just some stuff to tide me over for the next couple  of days. Im trying to get as much of the perishable food out of the fridge before I go away. I'm almost there. Hopefully the rest of my family won't be expecting anything from me in terms of food when they get in Friday morning.

I still have laundry to do and some homework to finish and now that I've eaten a little I feel much better. I just need to take a shower and clean off the futon and open it up to put all the stuff I need to pack on it. I have to pack light and I'm limiting my clothing to only the barest of necessities. I also want to be packed before I head out to work on Thursday. I have an ugly habit of packing ten seconds before I go anywhere. When I left for college my freshman year I packed my room up three hours before Lance wanted to leave for the city. What a nightmare!

Anyways, sometime on Friday I will finally be able to get to Steak 'n Shake. The greatest fast food chain ever to come out of the Bible Belt. The place makes the world's best milk shakes in just about any flavor and combination. Someone in the car always gets a strawberry banana shake, I prefer something with chocolate, but their banana flavor is simply amazing. Yonni's never heard of the place and most people out of the south haven't unless you've driven through. Yonni doesn't drive to Florida so I'm going to have to tell him about it when I get back from the Keys.

Three days until takeoff, four days until the beach.

Okay last words of the night. I've decided to follow the Andy Botwin sleeping method. Three pillows, one for my head, one between my legs, and one to cuddle with. Makes for some very comfortable sleeping.

"Once a sociopath, always a sociopath."

They always give the best lines to Rebecca.

Two in one night.

It's very late, but I can't sleep. I was up late last night and then slept in so my sleep pattern has gotten off again or it could be the bottle and a half of various wines that I consumed between 5pm and 9pm. Either way I am very much awake right now and I have a small throbbing pain in the middle of my head right behind my nose. I feel exhausted and my body is lethargic, but when I close my eyes sleep does not come. Not even the white noise of Murder, She Wrote can help me.

The restlessness that I'm suffering from had made me think about my bed and the pillow top mattress that I am laying on.  My parents replaced my mattress a few years ago. I was very against getting anything new as I was very attached to the ancient mattress that had been with me since The Red Brick Apartments. My mother did her best to convince me that a new bed would be a good thing for me, but the first new I could barely take it. The mattress was much to soft compared to the old stiff one that my back was used to. I tossed and turned all night. My mother had to rub my back to keep me calm and get me to fall asleep. Now I love my mattress. When I moved to Philadelphia I had to beg my parents to just bring down the one in my room so that I wouldn't have to buy a new one and readjust all over again. Of course whenever I go home to visit my parents I have to pay the price my sleeping on the refugee bed and often I end up spending the week on their couch.

When I have people in my bed I end up letting their preferences dictate where I sleep. With Marg I was always on the left. Of course it was because she only uses the right side when she's awake so the only way I could fit in with her to watch Summer Heights High in the hotel was to stretch out on the left and move closed to the foot of the bed so her husband pillow wouldn't jab me in the back. With The Physicist it always depended on whose bed we were in. If it was his then I most often slept on the right. In my bed I was on the left. I never really got that since in my own bed I most often start out in the right before ending up in the center under the netting. For some reason he always positioned himself on the right by the light letting him dictate whether the lights were on or off. In the summer this came in handy for me. During the summer when the sun comes up early I would wake up earlier than The Physicist and could read in bed while he still slept. I created a nice Nancy and Andy situation with the pillows so that I could move around and be comfortable without disturbing him and read for a few hours in sunny silence.  Yonni is the most polite person you could ever want to sit in your bed. He always seems to be aware of personal space and knows that I prefer the right. Even when he's all alone writing or reading something on my computer, he stays mostly to the left and when I sit down next to him he always makes sure that there is enough room.