Thanksgiving Eve

Traveling, you realize that differences are lost: each city takes to resembling all cities, places exchange their form, order, distances, a shapeless dust cloud invades the continents.
-- Italo Calvino

Wednesday, November 25, 1998
One year ago: Irresistible Force

Nnothing happening at work. Even my one meeting that was scheduled got canceled, when the man I was meeting with was delayed by tardy windows installers (real, literal windows, not software).

I went over to Jack's house. He wasn't home yet, but his daughters were. They were desultorily doing some cleaning, but his older daughter did offer me some tea, which was hospitable of her. I didn't accept, since I'm not really a tea drinker. The dog got over my being there in a few minutes -- it's a small, yappy dog -- and settled down next to me on the couch.

Things got more lively when Jack got home from work. He wanted to get his house cleaned up and straight before we left, so he started getting the girls back on task with loading the dishwasher, sweeping, mopping, and vacuuming (after he put together the new vacuum with the clear canister. Cool!). Each daughter took turns feeling put upon and unfairly treated. Then there was scurrying around as Jack and the girls packed their bags. Why wasn't this taken care of the night before? I don't know. I just stayed out of the way while this was going on.

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Finally we were on the road! The weather was still terrible, as it's been the past few days. Traffic was still pretty heavy, even though it was past seven o'clock. I was glad Jack was driving! We stopped for dinner at the Denny's in Kent. Bonus! Burgers were two for the price of one!

We dropped the girls off at their mother's place, near Olympia, and kept driving south. By this time it was ten o'clock, and still raining heavily. Jack likes to drive fast, but he did tone it down when the conditions got really bad.

Zipping along with the thwack-thwack of the windshield wipers, I was comfortable and cozy. I was telling Jack about the latest journal happenings with Kim and Wil, and that somehow got us onto the poly lifestyle (though that's not directly applicable to those folks). There's so many different kinds of polyamory, and it's so complicated! Only those with a high tolerance for discussion and negotiation could be successful in this lifestyle. I told Jack what I had written on the topic last year, how I thought the only variety of polyamory that would work for me would be four or five guys, all exclusively focussed on me.

When Jack and I were both yawning, and the rain was coming in cloudbursts that hid the interstate from us, we pulled off and found a small, cheap motel. This was more difficult than it sounds, since after we made the decision to stop, there was a distinct lack of "lodging" signs by the exits. Jack got the key. We only made two errors with the room: they gave us a smoking room, which we should have changed as soon as we walked in -- the pillows in the room gave me allergy fits during the night; and we should have gone back out to the truck and fetched the pillows we had with us -- the cheap motel room had only two pillows, and we needed more to sleep comfortably.