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