alright so here's the thing

alright. the thing is that my car broke down after michigan after ohio after the last pittsburgh exit and we had to get out in irwin pennsylvania, home of ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, to probably get ripped off by a mechanic. my heart also broke down and also my body and it was just

so

rieugfdgvco8we7tfs dzoiugqwa !~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ha ha ha we are having so much fun in the prime of our collective youths

We Need To Talk About The Kids 

the Kids, specifically US: The Protagonists Of Life, are in distress and have been for a very long time. a Very Long Time!! it's a tiring life and it really is a precarious balance between existing as "normal" ("as normal") ("""""") and being sent into a tailspin that lasts for days and sometimes ends up with me almost dying because my Brain Is Broken. sometimes i forget to get out of bed or move. sometimes i just yell at everyone i love about nothing at all until they hate me. happens, you know!! 

we all have broken brains, to an extent, and many of our conversations -- conversations between 

US: The Protagonists Of Life -- contain the phrase "but other people must, like, be okay, right? like not everyone feels like this all the time?" lexi says that she isn't sure but i have faith that some of u guys out there in the wide open OK are just truckin' along, not waiting to be murdered in irwin pennsylvania and/or feeling very "terrified bt whatever who cares" about it all the time. right? please confirm that some, if not all, of you are okay out there.

ha ha ha here we are in some horror restaurant. (AFTER)
there was no bread here
none

scene: BEFORE
we are tired but not yet broken
everything is perfect and i have just purchased a lot of bread

it wasn't always this way! 

it was morning once and we left ann arbor and we yelled GOODBYE TRASH HOME at my trash home and then went to the whole foods to buy snacks. i bought 3 lumps of bread and we were very tired but went to buy an air freshener. lexi wanted "black ice" and i didn't want "vanillaroma" so we got "black ice" and it really smelled like teenboy deodorant. 

lexi said "this smells like your high school boyfriend!!!" with "you" referring not to US: The Protagonists Of Life but to the general "You, The American Public. Hello" 

to this i said "no, I smell like my high school boyfriend," which was hilarious to me because i bought deodorant that smells like ryan smith like three weeks ago and haven't been proactive enough to buy another one or not wear this one and have been reminding people that i smell like my high school ex boyfriend like 75 times a day. it's really funny and everyone loves hanging out with me! anyways. i smell like ryan smith and feel very ?? about it but whatever it's his own fault for wearing whatever type of deodorant i was able to buy in the basement of the michigan union (the nation's first student union!) using the things that come with a meal plan SO. once again i am blameless for my own fake problems. so typical! 

we drove and it was raining a lot and it was all ok. we said "what's that bumping?" and i pulled off the road into a CVS parking lot to determine that our tires were fine and we complained about black ice some more but it was fine. no tires were flat; neither were our spirits! then i ate several lumps of bread and felt gross, and then the car kept bumping for the next 150000000 MILES (like through ohio i guess which is about 200 maybe), so we threw black ice out of the window about it. that was good, highlight of the day. goodbye black ice. you were a veritable foe and quiescent frenemy to us all. 

 then we called "jonathan seltzer, MD MBA MA FACC" who said "you girls should probably get off the highway and check it out just to be safe. let me know what the mechanic says." 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JESUS
RESUMES ACCEPTED

that is a photo of FAIR IRWIN PENNSYLVANIA where we set our tale. it is a disaster town! i am always afraid we will be murdered, so it was a really fun time when we went to a mechanic who was at the bottom of a hill off the side of a highway! it was terrifying, and also not fun at all. quel bummer :( 


Mechanic Man Dan (not his real name) said "your car would have broken down also it did and it has been broken" and in my mind i said "hauhqwueifsbq adysgf97WOEIFDH!!!!!??SU9 " and in out loud i said "oh" 

"can you fix it i guess" 

"yes that's fine we can wait can you call us back when you're done" 

"it's okay we're happy to pay whatever thank you so much for looking at this" 

"he is definitely probably lying to us but i don't care i don't care i really just need to get out of here please why is this happening" 

"yes i definitely trust that you are telling us the truth thanks for specifically making the point that someone else would have taken advantage of us. this seems legit. here is $200 for things" 

"hahAUHewudfishAIUHSFiusahf IUGH siuha  everything is broken :) and nothing is really okay but there's not much i can do about it and oh god we are still here and we still have to drive and it is all just so bleak isn't it" 

"thank you" 

"it is such a shame that i continue to take up space in this world when everything else is breaking even though realistically this isn't even my fault a little bit except yeah it is" 

"thank you so much" 

this is the tragic mechanic place where we were

the car kept shaking when we drove off into the night. i'd had a breakdown in a sheetz and had to be left alone and we kind of just moved on from there. i insisted on driving because i couldn't handle the idea of our car continuing to break down with lexi at the helm and someone discovering US: The Protagonists Of Life in a ditch with her to blame and not me. it was a bad idea for me to drive but i did it and then i toyed around with the idea of forcing us to go to a hotel instead of driving more because i hated being in that car so much, but instead i wrote a lot of really terrified tweets and got some very kind "r u ok" messages from very kind friends. (thank you, friends!!! ily)

"of course i'm not okay everything is broken and i did this and 75 other things have gone wrong and everything else could go bad at every second of the day and this is just proof and i did this." 

"MY CAR BROKE DOWN haha everything is okay but also MY CAR BROKE DOWN IN RURAL PENNSYLVANIA!! " 

"i did this." 

"hah my car broke down in rural pa as you may have divined and it's still being weird but we are driving  back east anyways. yelling a lot because we have been driving since 10 am and have all of my stuff and are Very Tired Girls"

self-explanatory
really u should check out my snapchat
at classyseltzer it's dumb but i cannot figure out how to change name

oh man though oh man we drove back and lexi drove us back and it was okay. we made it back to the philadelphia area and we both nearly cried. probably we both did? it's fine to be broken, kids; sometimes even brave strong women like US: The Protagonists Of Life feel broken under the pain of our desperate reality, also always all the time is like that. 

we drove so much and alexandra drove us so fast because she is good at not being terrified of death all the time, for better or 4 worse. there's something to be said for speed. in high school my aim username was "speedonspeedster" for no good reason, so that's a thing you could say about it! or you could not say that; i'm not a king.

 i made US: The Protagonists Of Life go through every goddam nradio station between state college and phldlph in search of that one song by the vine teen with the vine teen voice. apparently there is no more line between "i know this song!" and "i love this song!," except that if i hear that fucking ellie goulding song one more time i'm going to kill myself or alternately not change the station and just be really mad. a sobering thought.

anyWAYS my computer is incredibly slow and awful, because it always is, and so this is the end of this post. byeeeeeE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! the lesson we learned is NEVER GO OUTSIDE again and now it is december 31st and so this is my resolution  for the 366 days yet to come: NEVER GO OUTSIDE AGAIN. b safe tonight, kiddos, and we will check back in in 2016 probably! 

Reality Bites

not the movie. actual reality. it does bite, as it turns out! also i really didn't like reality bites, 90s film starring winona ryder. too much whining! damn millenials.

foto courtesy of jezebel, a women's interest blogging website

It's now Wednesday... morning? A full day and then some after the last day of our trip which really took the energy out of us, so muhc so that we couldn't blog. we had to sleep instead. Here's some pictures b4 we get into the angsty part because cassie took NONE and i took a MILLION.

MICHIGAN IS BEAUTIFUL AND I AM NO LONGER AFRAID TO DIE

i had never seen a frat before so this picture holds a lot of meaning for me no i do not get out much

this is from when cassie lost her keys (they were in her pocket)

salvation army!

:)

:o

[These pictures are from zingerman's deli, the place where what's his name in five-year engagement works and has an affair on his wife in it? maybe there's just some kisisng. anyway, poor emily blunt and also that's a good movie but it's about Sad Adult Stress and there's a horrible part where someone gets shot in the leg with a crossbow. these sandwiches were Really Good my sandwich was mostly olive oil]

after a full day of watching tv and not sleeping some more after my sleepless night-- which was not my fault! there was a loud machine that kept yelling!-- it should be noted that i was in a kind of.. crappy mood? DESPITE having two really excellent meals. In between the packing and throwing out i oscillated between sullen silence and anguished mewling. it's fine. but i finally got to see cassie's house which was the dirtiest place i had ever been in my life (NOT HER FAULT) and we'll leave it at that. 

HIGH DRAMA AND ALSO THE DRIVING PART BEFORE THINGS WENT WRONG

Lexi (heart)

Monday morning started out well, because i had actually slept more than none and also someone wrote my name on a rock! why do all colleges have a rock that students paint. 

Oh i guess we can't leave the dirty house theme behind us after all because the house also had a very distinct, almost sour smell that we brought with us due to cassie's stuff, which smelled like her house, filling the entire car, so we bought car fresheners at a pharmacy before we really started driving. Cassie let me choose between "clean linens" and "black ice" and actually she didn't let me choose i just strong-armed her into letting me choose "black ice," because c'mon!

black ice!

Soon realized that black ice was a horrible choice and i'm sorry cassie. black ice did not smell like ice it smelled like your high school boyfriend turned out to be a 175-lb block of axe deodorant, just like you'd always suspected but were too afraid to find out. it smelled like this 175 lb deodorant-boy was sitting on our laps. heavy. insistent. not shutting up about reddit. it was one of those smells that you kept noticing even after you'd been occupying a space with it for over 5 hours. good times. 

but we had more pressing, urgent matters to attend to besides the air freshener being too strong and also making me really sick, which was actually my fault and stupid easily remedied, because the small problem we experienced two days ago with the car came back in a really real way....

WHEN THINGS STARTED TO GO BAD AND THEN STAYED THAT WAY

The problem was that for months if you accelerated the car (refresher: 2005 subaru forester. silver. pre-owned) past 70 mph the car would vibrate, just enough to let you know it was unhappy. "maybe this is just a thing that happens," we thought. You may also recall when i wrote about the car a few days ago and said that it rattles, and then didn't think about it anymore. but we had to think about it, a lot, because at around Pittsburgh the car started VIBRATING ALARMINGLY any time it was accelerated at all. 

everything was FINE in ohio

For reference Pittsburgh is still a good 4~5 hours away from home, on the exact opposite side of Pennsylvania we wanted to be. Cassie had me google the vibrating problem and you know what, in the manner of all internet forums, when you are on a car forum there's like an encyclopedia of technical terms you need to know to be in-the-know. put it in layman's terms, please! It was at this point we both decided to become mechanics but deciding to be a mechanic sometime in the future did not help us with the present fact that the car might be falling apart. it was also at this point that i threw black ice out the window (yeegh) because it was too much to deal with two stressful things, let alone one. the car immediately started to smell horrible like rotten house again, and we decided to pull over, both to maybe fix the car (girl power!) and to buy different car fresheners. 

after putting air in the tires i guess. go cassie. 

dog in car next to us!!!! 

strawberry! vanillaroma!

taking away a valuable lesson from the black ice experience, i did not hang vanillaroma around the rearview mirror but shut it away inside the cd compartment. still very pungent. but bearable! what was not bearable was how the car continued to shake horribly and after a quick call to cassie's dad it was determined that we should DEFINITELY STOP DRIVING and scurry over to the nearest mechanic.

Here's an excerpt from my notes from that time: 

4:17 pm: :(

IRWIN, PA WELCOMES YOU 

and i, i took the road less traveled by

Mechanic was located down a very steep hill lined by the corpses of a thousand fallen cars. Cassie was very scared because it was getting dark and the mechanic was set waaaaay far back from the road and i was grumpy but i have no concept of self preservation (see: time i missed my bus to boston and went to new york instead for no reason with nowhere to stay at age 17, time i took an 8 hour journey on public transport across LA by myself with a dead phone at night at age 20) so i was not scared. The mechanic diagnosed the problem as something-something-ball socket-axle- "all the lube fell out"--iwastooangrytopayattention and said it would be $200 and another 2 or so hours to fix it. greeeeaaaaaaaaaatttttttt. however he did recommend a restaurant! which we would have to cross the highway on foot to get to. also greeeeeaaaaaaaattttttttttttttt. 

before we walked to the restaurant we stopped at the sheetz across the street and had a tense conversation about the restaurant. forgive us, you would have gotten into an argument too. this was too bad because i had never been in a sheetz before (a lot of firsts on this trip!) and it would have been cool to experience it fully. 

highway x-ing

walking down a residential street to get to snacks

merr chrusitnmas

it's a bar and a restaurant

:|

What's more to say about this detour? The entrees were $15 and either saturated in butter or frying oil. after we ate we went to sheetz to buy more candy and cassie had a breakdown in front of the candy aisle and had to sit down for a bit. in the sheetz. i was not feeling too great myself. it was one of those times where you start to question whether or not you are actually alive and not just living out someone else's pretty boring fever dream. After we paid the mechanic i gave him 2 of the 6 candy canes i had stolen from the restaurant. until next time, irwin!

BYEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

the rest of the trip was pretty uneventful in that it was largely the same as it was before we stopped to fix the car in that the car still vibrated most heartily while we drove it. and also in that the weather was terrible! lots of rain and some sleet.  i drove the last leg of the trip and took a chance on a late-night coffee, which was cool because i never drink coffee, let alone like after 10am. we also managed to memorize every top40. 

we got home at like 11:30 which wasn't too bad, all things considered. i took a shower and a bath and did a face mask and brushed my teeth for the first time since i left home (SORry ALL TMI). cassie tells me she did some therapeutic screaming in the car. honestly still recovering from this particular trip but we are fine now i think, for the most part. we even went shopping the next day. i have been listening to my "totally 80s" cassette in the car because i don't think i like top 40 anymore but i don't regret anything about the trip, and would totally do it again.

in the gap. i'm still the principle photographer for everythign

BEFORE/AFTER: REFLECTIONS ON A CRISIS YET TO COME

HEY THERE LOYAL READER(S? a girl can dream),

something awful happened yesterday and oh man does time feel fake right now. when something big and bad happens it divides things into BEFORE THE THING or AFTER THE THING and i'm going to talk at you about our time BEFORE THE THING now because that is when everything was a relative idyll and nothing was wrong.

SCENE: it is two days ago and nothing is wrong except how my ann arbor home is coated in filth. 

we drive from the cleve to ann arbor and lexi sleeps in the car. i woke up that morning and she was gone so i did some ab workouts and then worried about where she was and then found her when she came downstairs to tell me she was still in the home but had not slept. instead she had lain on the couch and counted whatever the opposite of sheep are (anxieties?) until the wee hours, while i and the other good boys and girls slumbered and dreamed and etc etc etc


in the morning we waited for her grandfather to come by and see her and the fam. the only other time i met her grandfather, he gestured to my nose piercing and said "what did you do to your face?" before walking away and never speaking to me again until that morning.

king lexi ate a pancake and then we left and i drove us a few hours to Ann Arbor Michigan while king lexi fell right asleep in the car like a tiny baby savoring the insides of her eyelids. what??? yeah

rough approximation of how lexi
felt about my home and also everything. hey babe

SCENE: my car is still working and we pull into the lot at XXX S. STATE STREET, APT X. 

king lexi said "wait, was the heat not on?" and i said "haha oh" and then we walked into my home and she said "oh" and i said "i told you so. did i not tell you so. didn't i warn you about this. i i tol d you it was dirty didn't i complain about this didn't i tell you and i am so sorry didn't i tell you though wasn't i right about how dirty it is" and it was very charming of me and super fun to listen to 

so after that wrapped up and i apologized for approximately 500,000 years, i packed up all of my things and king lexi said yes or no to all of my clothes and we threw two trash bags of them out. they didn't go to the trash though; they went to the salvation army and so we have all been SAVED.  you're welcome, brave soldiers!

i ate like 500 sour patch kids while
we were in the donation line 

at this point i feel that it is important to say that nothing that happened this day was bad. everything was FINE IT WAS FINE we had no idea about the future and how much shit was about to go down very soon. 

it was a dreary day and after we did all the moving things we sat down. we sat on the couch and watched sabrina the teenage witch for 9 episodes and ate korean food and it was FINE IT WAS FINE 

SCENE: we have been watching sabrina the teenage witch for 9 episodes. i finally finish the one goddamn article i had to write and say the phrase "journalism isn't HARD" and it sounds mean. 

i matched i guess

 

we went out for SNACKS and had some nice sandwiches (japanese (phonetically): san-do-ii-chi) that i did not take photos of. brought half of sandwiches back and watched magic mike xxl and it was nice! it was nice. 

you might even say........it was FINE IT WAS FINE 

FINALE: it was late and i went to do more abs and then it was midnight and we both fell off to sleep. everything had not yet gone wrong and this my dear friends is what we will call a cliffhanger. hang on tight, bbz

hello from the other side (ann arbor mush)

hello! we have embarked on an adventure that will haunt our Girl Brains for years yet to come ------- that's right, folks, we are running to the wild wild west, also known as "ann arbor michigan 48104."

let's go back, back to the beginning: yesterday we were not in ann arbor michigan 48104, we were in philadelphia area pa 666 (not a real zip code) (that i am aware of)

for a comparison of how Philadelphia Area PA  and Ann Arbor Michigan differ, please observe this diptych of 1) my chinchilla, whose name is chinch & 2) a small rabbit i saw one time when i was coming home from the library at 3 am because i am a Slave To Academia and also bad at starting things more than a day before they are due.

fierce beast

blurry mess. what is this. 3/10

there was a car: my car, the car we live in (what). i was in connecticut but then i wasn't anymore, three glorious hours of making my sister listen to the hamilton soundtrack with me after we departed from connecticut. i picked alexandra ihwa up at the station (her home) and then we went on our ADVENTURE

we were at a wawa and i picked up two energy drinks and a sandwich and we also bought some candy. lexi did not buy any energy drinks, because she is a sensible woman and also does not have chronic mono that renders her useless unless she drinks 1000000000 mg of caffeine a day. i am also on drugs that make me stay up but because they have been prescribed to me, not because i am a Criminal.

here we are when lexi was driving my car, which was
later in the day and not what i am discussing right now At All.
also i have no irises i guess

lexi has taken some notes about the first half of our trip, but i was busy being a Responsible Driver so i did not do that and so will have to Take This One By Memory. we had many laughs and talked about how we were terrible tiny humans at age fifteen and how i, Cassandra, have no sense of where lancaster and westchester are (they are like two hours away from our homes but that still may not be correct. you will have to either trust me on that one or not care about it in the slightest - pick your poison!).


we had to go to ann arbaugh  (hah! just a fun little joke we like to tell out here in football hell country :) ) because i, Cassandra, will be departing to work at NASA, in case you did not know. yes, did you hear that? NASA? me? did you hear about that i'm not sure if you heard but i'm working at nasa. alexandra, lexi if you wish, agreed to come along because i am a Brat who bullied her into visiting icetown and performing physical labor so that i can have all my things with me when i thrust myself upon the kindness of my aunt and uncle in maryland so that i can work at NASA which is kind of near there but actually a pretty long commute.

gratuitous selfie of me in a shirt that says NASA
because it is where i work now at my job which is at NASA

NOW THAT i, Cassandra, am done talking about myself (lol as if) we will move on to the drive!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! there were many treacherous (sp?) mountains and twists and turns through fog tragedy time that i handled admirably, if i do say so myself, in that i did not scream for three hours straight even though i really really wanted to. i do not think alexandra, lexi if you wish, would really have faulted me on that one, do you?

an introduction: alexandra, lexi if you wish, is a wannabe napper and full-time owner of two lovely brown eyes and a very fast-moving brain. she is too kind and allows people to do things like be male in her presence and convince her to come to ann arbor michigan in the dead of winter to pack up a room and carry everything down many flights of stairs even while her body is screaming with stomach pains

here is a pic of L.H. that i do not think
she was aware that i had on my phone

lexi remembered several times that a librarian is an actual thing that people can be in the course of our trip, which i know because she told me every time she remembered it. we have driven together very far before, usually to see magic mike xxl in theaters or go to new jersey and one time we did both at the same time. BY THE WAY HAVE YOU SEEN MAGIC MARK (YES) XXL ENOUGH TIMES BECAUSE YOU HAVEN'T. I'M WATCHING IT RIGHT NOW. EVERY MAN HAS SO MANY ABS YOU GUYS THEY HAVE SO MANY ABS YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND HOW MANY ABS. 

i, Cassandra, did 30 mins of abs this morning so now i look roughly the same as joe mangunaneednnnello because that is how that works. ANYWAYS this is kind of relevant because our trip is a road trip just like how mmxxl is a road trip movie and yeah ok. i was driving for a while being terrified and upset about mountains and really it is all a blur. 

here is lexi driving Before Darkness Fell 

when lexi took over it was great because i had just thrown up in a rest stop bathroom because  i, Cassandra, am a delicate flower whose body is decaying rapidly! alexandra, lexi if you wish, is a faster driver than i am, which i respect and fear. it became dark at like noon (5 pm) and then it started raining incredibly hard, but alexandra, lexi if you wish, did not capitulate to the wishes of the Meteorology Gods and continued to be quick. we drove so much on such flat grounds through the GREAT STATE OF OHIO and stopped many times to put gas in our car and, wouldn't ya know it, made it to the Cleve by 8 pm. 

sleepy lex looks at a phone
what a marvel of modern innovation

there was Cousin Confusion but her family purchased sustenance for us to throw in our tired little faces and i may have possibly been rude to her aunt very unintentionally and then i ate some sorbet while the normies had ice cream and then we scuttled off to bed to dream of a new day, in ways which we will update you about tomorrow.  

anyways, love you!!!!!! bye!!!!!!!

Saturday, December 26, 2015: Day 1

Blag 1: A Premise, introduction to our winning heroines, and also the best dirty gray color-scheme a girl could ask for

A JOURNEY BY FOOT, and/or 2005 Subaru Forester (Silver) (pre-owned) (rattles) 

sometimes, you get an itch to travel.  a good time to go is the day immediately following christmas, boxing day to our UK readers and also christians (??). get out your map, close your eyes, and let your right index finger choose your destination. omg the university of michigan! why not, you say, since you've always been drawn to the midwest, having been born in ohio, and anyway everyone knows the best part of any trip is having awkwardly long stretches of driving between destinations. a quick 3-day jaunt from philadelphia to ann arbor (referred to as "ann" henceforth) and back is almost exclusively awkwardly long stretches of driving. perfect. 

First stop: the cleve, ohio (ft. on day 1). Second stop: ann, michigan (day 2). But first....

WHO's THAT GIRL

Cassie Seltzer: blonde. 2 nose rings. has real purpose to go to ann, b/c her things are there. this is her story. 

not a recent picture!

Lexi Howdah: brown hair and brown eyes. shorter than cassie. along for the ride and also for navig purposes. enthusiastic snack enabler

pictured at a manhattan uniqlo. more recent picture but still not thaaaat recent

OFF TO A GOOD START

We left at 12:30 pm on saturday and not earlier because cassie is so dedicated to travel and also cars that she had to not only pick me (lexi) up from my house which is 10 minutes away from her house but she also had to drive from connecticut to pennsylvania that morning-- about a 3 hour ride! she made great time, all things considered! had a good attitude too, and how nice to be greeted by a smiling face in the driveway after bidding a tearful goodbye to both parents, my sister, and my brother-in-law. they were still celebrating the christmas holiday with a rare day off. but for me and cassie, adventurers, one never takes a day off, not even the day after christmas. all in a day's work

Our 7-hour drive to cleveland was prefaced by a trip to wawa, which for those not in the know is a popular pennsylvania gas station //store that also sells sandiwches. destination for the day was cleveland because driving all 10 hours in a row to michigan from PA in one day seemed daunting to start, and i have very nice relatives whom i called the night before to ask if we could stay on their couch! good going, all, and thank you so much this trip was made possible through you!

Cassie right before getting on highway! sandwich

We went to the wawa in conshohocken, which is close to the entrance to the i-76. this is also the wawa i frequent on my 6-am jaunts to the airport.

By 22h00 all that remained of chex mix was pretzels (ew) however as of 12/27 we still have most of both bags of sour patch kids to work through don't worry

 Not only did we buy sandwiches (6-in ""shorti"" rolls, turkey for me, veg for cassie) but we also bought too many snacks! does anything say "palate has not evolved since 2003" more than 2 bags of sour patch kids (regular AND watermelon) and a thing of chex mix? cassie bought 2 energy drinks also.

"Are you sure this sandwich is only 6 inches it seems bigger"-- quote by ME

Add caption

At this point in the trip, pulling out of the wawa parking lot, we realized the gas tank was on empty but "we've got about 30 miles left"-- a fact about empty gas tanks that could be accurate (as ben seltzer, psu freshman, for more info. later addendum by cassie: "that was a number i made up") and we chose to test because gas was 2.30 a gallon or somehting and we knew we could get better, cheaper gas further west. we were right! we saw another wawa 20 mins down and filled 'er up and prepared for a Really Good Time with Lots of Pop Music.

:)

GROWING PAINS AND THOSE AWKWARD MIDDLE YEARS

After successfully navigating us through a several hundred mile and very winding stretch of highway, Cassie handed the reins to me. memorable things that happened while she was driving were that cassie was calmed by a slow truck (1:11 pm) and I dropped avocado mush from my sandwich all over my coat (1:18 pm). at 1:39 pm cassie recognized a barn. at  1:52 pm cassie hated a long turn

Knowing my luck, as soon as i took the wheel it immediately started raining very hard however i am a GREAT driver and got us the last 3.5 hours to cleve safely, although stressed-ly. It is really something to lose track of the lines on the road because it is Too Rain and come out on top. This is to say that we can all forget how i crashed my mom's car at the end of the summer :) and let us all remember only my competence and road-savvy from now on :)

Quick comment here to say that the only thing i want to listen to on road trips is top 40, but there are only so many times i want to here both of justin bieber songs in one day. that being said, i was glad to hear the most overplayed song of 2014, "why u gotta b so rude" on the radio one time. that was a very good 3 minutes, in which i demonstrated to cassie my ability to sing all of the lyrics. other songs which i demonstrated having memorised include: hotline bling, by drake; same old love, selena gomez; cheerleader, by unknown???

?????? a Memorable Avenue

a tunnel poses a lot of philosophical questions

WEARY TRAVELERS GET THEIR DUE

 At 7:45 pm we arrived in westlake, oh, a suburb of Clev and promptly scared my aunt at the door of her house. great first impressions, girls! to be fair, the location sharing feature of iphone told her we would be there in an hour and we did not call ahead-- sorry! must have been the rain?

But generous family-- Uncle, aunt, 3 cousins included-- brought us Thai food anyway, and we spent a good few hours catching up and telling stories. AND! We went to the best ice cream place, Mitchells, for dessert at 10:30 pm, which is a real luxury. unfortunately i fell ill in the stomach and could not eat my entire ice cream, which really made me sad. we'll get em next time, folks.

At this point it was time for bed, because even though we did not have a full day of driving ahead of us at this point, we were both really exhausted and you should always be on top of your game anyway no matter the sitch (blog disclaimer: unsolicited advice is my game). More evidence to the generosity of my family, a fully equipped bedroom setup awaited us in a spacious basement, complete with memory foam pillows! Have two last-minute travelers ever experienced such luxury? I wouldn't know, dear readers, but i'm willing to say they haven't.

With that, I bid all goodnight, and look forward to part 2., THE JOURNEY TO AND FUNTIMES IN ANN, MICHIGAN, TOMORROW!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (which happened today. trippy, i kno)

over n' out,

lexi

a Good Couch was had By All