Apology for Neglect

Hello, Blog. It's been a while. Almost two weeks by my calculations. But that statement shouldn't have much value to you. I despise math.

I'm writing now because Mrs. Fanny's room is being moved due to construction and that means we're in the library temporarily. It snowed this morning. Though it was just a little, it was very strange.

I've been fairly good about my goals (not watching too much TV or wasting time on Facebook) but I can't really credit the success to myself. I just haven't had time. Except for the past two nights when I watched the epic episode of house *insert sob here* and Fringe came on last night. I love Fringe. Soooo good.

OH! And guess what? I gave blood yesterday. But I'm going to call the blood bank and tell them to "destroy" the blood I gave as I believe I am "in the beginning stages of an illness." Which is very upsetting. It seemed like a lot of blood when the lady took the little bag away and it was all full. It really wasn't bad. If you're not too squeamish, you shouldn't have any trouble with giving blood, plus it's a really great thing to do. Saving lives is sort of helpful and nice on occassion, you know?

Also, being a donor got me volunteer time for NHS I think. Now I can joke that the National Honor Society is really willing to take anything you can give-- they even hold drives to drain members of their essence :) Some people like to think it's a cult. It totally fits.

I wish I had photos from Tockwogh to post. I don't have access to them here at school, otherwise you could see them. Sigh. Eventually.

On a brighter note, Nicolette and I went to a concert on Friday. It was a benefit concert for the children of Uganda. And guess what? I drove Nicolette, Dana, a fellow classmate and friend of Nic, and myself there. We got a little lost but it turned out okay. Until we left, that is.

Here's where it gets good. In order to take Nicolette home, I had to get on the highway. The highway, wonderfully confusing system of roads that it is, came ot a fork. I panicked and frantically asked Nic which one to take. One was an exit, the other continued in the same direction. Well, I wasn't sure what exit we needed but I believe I kept going. We weren't really worried at that point and since we weren't sure exactly where we were headed, just kept looking for exit numbers. We passed 156. I figured this was fine, we had just a little while before we found exit 162, the one we needed. But the next exit sign we saw, to our dismay, read 154. We were headed in the wrong direction. However, it was about then that the road became straight, merciless highway with no place to make a U-turn. So we kept going. When the road turned into a bridge over a canal that I recognized as one we took when my family went on longer trips, I was on the verge of hysteria. There was no way I could have held it together if Nicolette hadn't been there.

"BJ!" I wailed to a friend we had met when we came to a hayride/fair thing out here once, "BJ, we're coming! Where is your house? We'll be there soon!"

There were tears in my eyes. It was terrifying.

"Ashley. Get a hold of yourself."

That was Nic, the voice of reason. She said something along those lines. Probably lots of things along those lines actually, to calm me down.

I clutched the steering wheel like a sinking life preserver, I was drowning in a sea of endless highway, "We're just going to keep driving further and further away from home!!!"

We passed over the bridge. There were signs for a toll. These set me off again, "Oh my gosh. We're going to have to pay a toll... at least I have E-ZPass. At least I think I do. What do they do if you don't have E-ZPass and go through the E-ZPass thing?"

Nicolette must have been even more scared than I was. She was in a car being driven by me.

"I don't know... they bill you?"

I half laughed, half cried. Finally, over the bridge we were able to take the last exit before the toll and get headed in the right direction again. I was feeling a little better about the situation. So we continued to drive and I almost pulled into a liquor store to ask directions because I figured, hey, liquor store people give directions a lot. Nic was convinced we couldn't due to the fact that we are not 21. I assured her that wouldn't stop us from just walking in, but she was adamant and brought up the possibilty of a creepy man being in there. This lead me to get back on the road, drive for another while and find a gas station to pull into and ask directions. Except I accidentally pulled into the motel parking lot next to the gas station. I hopped out of the car and left Nicolette to guard it as I faked confidence in my stride while walking past a slightly creepy man at his car by the gas station and entered the place to find a plump woman reading a romance novel.

She looked up and I asked her if she could tell me how to get back towards our city but she said she wasn't really sure so she pointed me towards the man I had passed outside and mentioned that he was a friend of hers. I swallowed. To my relief she came from behind the counter and went out to ask him for me. I followed like the lost puppy I was. As it turned out, we were just up the road and headed away from the section of highway we needed to be on. The man who I had thought was creepy was actually very reassuring, nice and kind of cute. He reminded me of this guy from He's Just Not That Into You. Click. His name is Bradley Cooper and in my opinion, he is beautiful.

Anyway, I trotted back to the car to find Nicolette close to hysterical.

"Ashley. There was a man and his eyes pointed in two different directions. THEY POINTED IN TWO DIFFERENT DIRECTIONS! THAT'S NOT POSSIBLE!"

I covered my mouth with my hand to hide my panicky laughter and locked the car doors after I climbed in, apologizing profusely.

"Where did he come from?" I asked.

"He pulled up alongside the car. He said, 'This is private property,' and he was SO creepy."

"I'm sorry, Nicolette. I am so so sorry," I just continued to apologize as I found a place to make a U-turn and begin heading in the right direction. Pretty soon, we were on the right road and Nicolette, notorious for being unable to find her own house, recognized the area.

"Here," she said, "Wait, no. Wait, yes. Yes! Here."

You see why I get lost? I pulled into her neighborhood and dropped her off, then stopped for a second to go over my mapquest directions thoroughly and call mi padre. I then proceeded to jinx myself by telling him I would be home soon.

My directions got me to this "Basin Road" which I nearly missed and seemed to have steered me wrong. I'd been driving for too long without turning. This led me to pull into an empty parking lot by some concrete contractor. There was no Nicolette to hold me together anymore, so I was on the verge of breaking down. I called my father again and asked for his help. He said he would get me directions home if they could figure out where I was. I disliked this plan. The tears welled up and spilled out. I felt extremely pathetic.

"Ashley. Calm down. I want you to back out of the parking space."

I sniffled, "Okay." Backing out I didn't realize that there was a large curb behind me that separated the little parking lot from a bigger one in front of another building. KAH THUNK.

"Oh my God. I just backed over a curb."

"Are you stuck? Will the car move at all?"

"I guess. I don't know," I whimpered, letting the car grate forward just a few inches over the inconveniently placed slab of concrete, "Yes. It moved a little. Is it going to.. explode or something?"

Daddy laughed in a, silly-girl-who-knows-nothing-about-cars kind of way.

"Alright. You're going to have to put it in reverse and then in drive as many times as it take to get you over the curb. It's a technique called rocking--"

"Daddy, please. I'm just a stupid lost teenage girl and it's midnight and I've already been lost once and I just want to go home!" I sobbed, "I just want to go home."

Daddy laughed again. He put me on the phone with another of his friends to locate me. As soon as they did they promised they were on there way. Nic sent me a text asking if I was home safe. To here surprise she recieved a text in reply that said something like, "No, I'm sitting in the car, lost. I'm having a very good cry."

It was true. I hadn't cried that hard since my guinea pig died a few years back. My rescue crew arrived, my father and two friends, one of which I fell out of the car and into his arms. We aren't that close, but I was just glad to see someone who was going to get me home. They weren't actually supposed to be driving due to intoxication but Daddy got the car over the curb with a gigantic bang that I never could have manuevered. It terrified me as it was. After that, the adventure was over. I didn't even get in trouble with my stepmom or ruin the car. How anticlimatic. Not that that upsets me ;)

Now you know the story of Nic's and my wild goose chase across the state. I'm sleepy. Adios amigos.