"I'm spinning round the room in awe" ryan adams

Thursday, June 02, 2005

Memorial Day shenanigans and realizations

Jen and I woke up around 11 am and started our day with a little Kelly Clarkson. Shut up, you know you love it. While Jen was in the shower, I got my internet fill. Many rock related emails later, I finally put a dent in what work I had to do when I got home. I also heard from John Faye, and oddly enough we had JUST listened to “Awake on Wednesday” from Whirligig.

We were on a secret mission on Monday, so on the way to bagels, we stopped into a store to case the place. Could be iffy, we’d definitely have to synchronize ourselves and come up with an elaborate game plan. We waited in line forever for our breakfast sandwiches after noon. After we refueled, we went back to the store to complete our mission. After a little drama, we succeeded. Dentyne Ice and cell phones always come through when you need it!

We passed the zoo and I noticed the Tamarin (oh how in the hell was I able to name that monkey. Hehe.) on the logo. I commented on his tail and how it would be cool if we had tails...this is why I don’t speak after only being up for an hour. Having a tail indicative of our moods and intentions would be very efficient. No second guessing, no lying, and no wondering. I want a freaking tail. Or screw that, everyone else should have a tail. Oh, I also tripped right around then too.

We get back to Jen’s and steal music off of each other’s ipods. I now have Coolio on my ipod. In the midst of our stealing frenzy, Mark called me up and beckoned me to his studio to listen to some tracks.

After I packed back up, I realized that if I left there with everything, that means I didn’t lose anything on this trip and that’s a first (this will come up later). I get to Silver Spring yet again and spend a portion of the rainy afternoon in Mark’s studio listening to his latest production projects and going through photos.

I left and must have been in a daze, but I was completely lost in Silver Spring and my autopilot failed me. So I called Jen and she saved the day via mapquest. I was kinda in an area I should have been, it just was off the beaten path. I made pretty good time to DE once I was on 95, a little more than an hour.

So I get to my mom’s so she can drop me off at the DE rest stop so I can meet Laura and all hell broke loose. First off, she was pissed because she assumed I would be back early on Monday and we could do something together. So I can understand her wanting to do something, but there are more constructive ways to letting me know aside from being snippy with me. Also, I hadn’t hung out with Jen since New Years and hadn’t seen Mark since March 19 of last year, don’t get pissed because I hung out with two people I hadn’t seen in months. So then since I was running late, I didn’t have time to fill my gas tank back up...so I go to get my wallet...where the fuck is my wallet!?! So luckily at Notty’s I left my wallet in the car and took out my license and cash so I had money on me to give to her instead, but of course the lost wallet just let open her wrath. How I am irresponsible etc etc etc. Yeah. Don’t fucking yell at me. It’s not like I threw my wallet out on the highway, I seriously have misplaced it. Then of course this turned into the whole “I’m always broke” argument. Which I am. Which I can’t help right now. She tried to bitch at me for going to DC this weekend, but I think all in all I spent less than $20 so I don’t even want to hear it. So I tell her I have bills, etc etc etc and she’s yelling and I’m yelling. I tell her not to deal with it then. Sell my fucking car if you want to bitch on how I owe you for car insurance and what not. Take away my cell phone if you want to complain about it. Seriously, do it. And of course she didn’t expect me to come back with that. I can do this all on my own. I don’t care. She had no answer to that. And I felt awful for arguing about it, but she was honestly picking a fight with me, all stemmed from me losing my wallet. I’m the one who is going to have to deal with replacing my credit card, metrocard, insurance card, etc, not her. Her yelling at me for everything isn’t helping any situation. What’s the deal!??!?! We stop at Wawa so she can get gas and I toss her my keys saying that I am done with it. She pumps and I go inside and grab dinner and coffee. I get back into the car and now I get yelled at for not getting her anything. Get me out of the fucking car.

We pull up to Laura at the rest stop, I grab my bags, and get into the Roxie Mobile without saying a damn word. The rest of the ride out of Delaware was spent with me bitching to Laura about my car ride to the rest stop. Again, her and I are in the same boat and we have hit rock bottom. We both pretty much left everything on a whim and with about $50 in our savings accounts haha. Seriously, we are in such a situation, financially and emotionally, that we have no where to go but up, but of course that hasn’t happened yet.

On a related note, we both asked each other about our weekends and we realized how bittersweet it was to leave stuff so familiar to us to go back to NYC. All of the stuff we talked about on the way down kinda went out the window after our great weekends. I think we feel this way because when we are in NYC we are both busting our asses – we have long work days then when we leave its more work through calls and emails so we barely have time to go out plus we’re broke. We haven’t created our scene yet, like we are both so familiar with at our respective home turfs. Granted, we do have our circle of friends here, but it’s not the same as hanging with friends who really know you and going to bars that know what you want before you even say it. And it’s all about of growing up, and trust me, I know how fortunate I am, but did I really have it that bad before? Funny, south we had all the confidence, now heading back north we are wondering if the sacrifices were worth it. We also wondered why we can count on one hand the number of people who have come to visit us since we left. Hell, I talk to some people almost every day who don’t live near NYC that I hadn’t before, and some people I used to talk to all the time I barely hear from. Heck, I see Morita and Nate almost every weekend and haven’t really seen Aurora since Vermont, though she drives past NYC every time she goes to Boston. Heck, Jen is twice as far as she is and we talk every day. We’re all busy, I work with some of the busiest people I know, but there’s always time for friends, or else they wouldn’t be there.

Also on our ride home we talked about our crazy roadtrips. Another validation that I belong here, I’m around likeminded people who don’t think it’s strange to drive eight hours for a show or to pick up strangers at shows or crash on someone’s floor. Laura and I have shared some of the same crazy antics, so the final stretch was spent sharing stories on how we’ve slept on random peoples floors in random cities for the love of rock.

All in all, my memorial day weekend can be summed up with a GBF lyric:
“the good thing about where I’m from is there’s plenty room to run but the city is the place where you deal with who you really are.”