The Chronicles Of Jessica

The Chronicles was already having kind of a lousy summer, what with the decrepit air conditioning and the Lost hiatus, and then we had something happen which put all the minor lousiness in perspective: My stepdad Charlie had a stroke. He is going to be okay, but he's still in the hospital and probably won't be out for a little while. I won't provide a lot of details, because they include grisly terms like "cerebro-spinal fluid" and you might be reading this while you're eating your lunch or snacking or something. (If you are the type who likes medical details you can email me. Or watch Discovery.) Suffice it to say, he knows who he is and is perfectly cognizant, he has full mobility and motor function, and he is all too aware of his hideous new haircut, even though Paul told him it was decidedly European.

So we've driven down to Richmond the last couple of weekends and I really have to say, we have got to figure out teleportation soon, or people are going to start losing their minds. Richmond is about 90 miles south of DC and it's highway the whole way, so theoretically that should make the drive about an hour and forty-five minutes. At most! But it takes three hours. It takes three hours if you leave at 10 am, it takes three hours if you leave at 10 at night. Doesn't matter if it's sunny and beautiful without a cloud in the sky. The traffic is so unbelievably bad and there is usually never any reason. There's no accident, there's no crazy oil spill or airborne event. You'll just be going along at 65 miles an hour and then all of a sudden - traffic jam. Then after twenty minutes or so it'll ease up and people will get going at a pretty good clip again and you start thinking, "This isn't so bad, I should get there by dinnertime," and then BAM! All the cars stop again. And every time you get to actually get up to the posted speed limit and you start to believe, really believe, that you're through the worst of it, you hit another one. And this goes on for three hours; longer if you've said that you'd be there at a certain time, or if you kind of have to pee.

Paul takes this stuff in stride but it makes me crazy. I'm not a great car traveller. If I'm not driving I pass out asleep. If I am driving but it's really sunny then I also fall asleep, especially if I've had Chick FilA, which of course I have, because I'm on a road trip. You find yourself eating all kinds of crap on a road trip. Julie and I, for instance, always wind up eating Combos on road trips. Combos! You probably didn't even know they still made Combos, but they do. Either that or they just made a whole bunch of them when they first came out and the stores just have an endless supply of them that have been around since 1985 (which is how they kind of taste, come to think of it.) Probably the trucking industry has singlehandedly kept Combos afloat, because I've never actually seen them for sale in a regular store, only truck stops and gas stations. One doesn't eat Combos in real life but on a road trip they somehow become acceptable fare.

I also find that being in the car for long stretches, especially in horrible traffic, creates a weird mentality for me. It becomes us versus them. But 'them' can take many forms, many subtle distinctions. People in SUV's. People with more than two bumperstickers. People with Bush/Cheney '04 paraphernalia displayed in a non-ironic manner. (Seriously - razor blades and nail polish remover are cheap, people. You don't have to live with that mistake forever.) People on their cell phones or douchetooths. People dumping their cigarette butts out onto the pavement. The road trip is supposed to be the great American experience but oddly, the more I see of America from I-95, the less I want to experience it.

Anyway. I know a lot of my peeps are big fans of Charlie so if you want to send him well-wishes you can do so through my email and I'll print them out for him. I would just put up his email address but then he'll be flooded with penis enlargement offers and I don't think he wants to drag this hospital thing out any longer than neccessary.

And glance over this sometime.

http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=4742