As I write this, I'm sitting in my grandparents' living room in Michigan. I've been here since Friday and I'm leaving tomorrow morning, but not by air, no. I'll be driving! My wonderful grandparents were kind enough to give me a car as a gift for my graduation from Truman last year. Obviously, though, I've been living in Montréal since late August, and a car isn't really necessary up there. However, as you might've seen on my Facebook a while ago, in a few days I won't live in Québec anymore. So I'm here in Michigan to see my family and pick up the car. Tomorrow I'll drive it to Montréal and arrive in the evening before spending a couple days loading B.B. (short for Bumblebee, of course; she is a 2009 Chevy Aveo) with my stuff. Then I'm heading down to Tennessee (a seventeen hour drive, I might add) to live with my boyfriend, Theo.
Later
Okay, so I started writing that on Tuesday, August 23. It is now Tuesday, August 30. Now I'm in Tennessee, but I don't live with my boyfriend.
I live with my fiancé! EEEEE!!
I'm not excited or anything.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. It's gonna be a long post, so buckle up.
I had a great visit in Michigan with my family or, as my grandmother described it, "delightful." I got to spend time with my oldest sister and my niece, my other niece (the daughter of my brother, David), my aunt, and my cousins! Not to mention my amazing grandparents, who let me intrude upon them in their home for about a week. I love going up there to see everyone and wish I could do it more often. However, now I'm only living eight hours away and on the way from them to my dad, so maybe pit stops can be made!
Like I said, I left Michigan on the 24th of August and drove up through Ontario and into Montréal in one day. It was exhausting. Google Maps estimated about 10.5 hours and my GPS (a birthday present from the marvelous David and Deb) said about twelve. With stops, it took about fifteen. Two hours were stops for gas and food and one hour was for Toronto traffic. God, that was a nightmare. It wasn't scary, per se, which is great, seeing as I'm a very anxious person, but it was just long. So very long. I got into Montréal at about eleven. And that's where the real fun begins.
Now, it might shock you, but parking in Montréal is a real expletive. The apartment I lived in was situated on a one-way street next to Avenue Atwater. The street, Boulevard de Maisonneuve, is actually huge and eventually becomes a pretty busy street further into the city, but the section I lived on was narrow and more calm (outside of rush hour). Right next to my apartment building was a narrow parking lot set up by Indigo, a parking lot company (a lucrative business in Montréal, I imagine) with 24h parking. There were no street spots available, but luckily the parking lot had a few. So I pulled in and, to my relief, saw that when I paid for the spot, I had it until 4am the next morning, which was all I needed. So I went upstairs and collapsed on my bed.
Whilst trying to fall asleep, I had a cartoon moment of lying in peace and solitude when my eyes snapped open in horror and I realized: the payment receipt had said 4am of the 25th, which was a mere four hours away by this point, not over twenty-four like I had thought. As tempting as it was to leave my car there until a decent hour of the morning, I wasn't willing to risk my car being ticketed, or worse, towed, so I went back down to see if I could add more hours to my spot. I couldn't. I drove around and tried to find another spot, anything, but there was nothing. So I took the car back to the Indigo lot and went upstairs and tried to sleep for approximately three-and-a-half hours. I'd never felt such anxiety in my life, feeling hot and sick and wanting to sleep but completely unable to. At four o'clock, I went downstairs and, to my relief, saw that I was able to move my car to a street spot just a few yards away from my building. And, even better, it was free until 9am. So I parked the car and went back upstairs to attempt to sleep some more.
At 8:55am, I went back downstairs, thinking I would add 24h to the spot and everything would be great. (The original plan was for me to leave on the 27th and arrive in Tennessee on the 28th, but I wanted to surprise Theo a day early, so I only had one day to get everything ready.) Well, the parking meter, called a Pay and Go, would only allow me two hours. Great. But the "great" thing about a Pay and Go is that there is an app so you can add more time to your spot without having to physically go to your car. Well, for some reason, despite my phone being Canadian and my Google account having my Canadian address attached to it, the Google Play Store refused to believe that I lived in Canada and so wouldn't allow me to download the app. This meant that I had to make sure I was back at my apartment every two hours without fail. So instead of being able to go out and cancel my bank account, leave school, terminate my phone contract, and do all that fun stuff all at once, I had to keep coming back to pay more money for the parking spot. Luckily, the apartment was downtown so it wasn't very far, but still. It was a pain.
So amidst all of this, I also needed to pack and load B.B. with all my stuff. And doing this in a non-air conditioned apartment is very difficult. Not to mention the fact that I lived on the fourth floor, so I had three flights of stairs to climb each time. It was exhausting. More parking troubles popped up around 3pm when I went to go add more time to my spot. It would only allow me a half-hour. I looked at the hours posted on the meter and it said "Monday-to Friday, 9am to 3:30pm, 5:30pm to 9pm." Now, after 9pm it's free, so I thought, "Maybe that means it's free for these two hours?" But that didn't make sense for rush hour. Thank God the Indigo lot had spots available. I pulled in and, instead of dealing with a machine, I talked to a guy who said I could park there for the evening. The ticket didn't give me a specific time, and when I asked him, he just said, "Until tonight. You know, 10 or 11." Great. But at least I had several hours where I didn't have to worry about.
I decided to leave my car there all night since the guy had said I had it for the evening. (Plus, around 10 or 11, there was no where else to put it.) I managed to get everything loaded into the car around 12:30, which had been my goal, so I collapsed and went to sleep. I woke up at 6:30 and went downstairs to add more time to the spot. The woman said that I could leave now and everything would be fine, or I would have to pay another $11 even though I just wanted a couple more hours. Yay. So I coughed up the money and finished packing and cleaning. I got out of the apartment around 8:15 aaaand I was off.
I headed west and got into Ontario, filled up on gas, and crossed the border into New York a few hours later. The plan was for me to stay at the exact halfway point between Montréal and Bell Buckle in Beachwood, Ohio, a sort of suburb of Cleveland. So I followed Lake Erie and headed down through New York (which is one of my favorite states to drive in since it's so gorgeous), Pennsylvania, and finally Ohio. I arrived at about 7pm and died.
The next morning, I left at about 8:15 again with my thoughts fully on "I get to see my love today!" My GPS had me arriving at about 4pm, which was perfect and not bad at all. So I headed down through Ohio, met a little traffic outside of Cincinnati, and then through Kentucky. I got some unfun weather around Louisville, but the weird thing was that the dead leaves on the ground weren't being blown sideways, but up, which is never a good thing. So I lit on out of there. Everything was fine until I got to Nashville. At some point I realized that my GPS was giving me my arrival time in local time, which meant that it was an hour later than predicted, since I would be in EST until the last second. Poo. But when I got to Nashville, the heavens opened and unleashed a horrible downpour. Honestly, I've never driven in such bad weather. Visibility was practically zero and some people didn't even have their lights on. We were going 35-40 in a 70mph area and that didn't bother me at all. I just wanted to get out of there safely. And I did! (I always pride myself on being a safe, cautious driver, thank you very much.)
I arrived at the house around 5:30 or so. AND THEO WASN'T HOME. I had a key, however, so I let myself in and collapsed on the bed after calling him and telling him to get his butt home.
And yesterday was a big day! It was my twenty-fifth birthday! Yay! I'm a quarter of a century old! Theo and I started off the day in a big way: we went to the dump! It was magical. Then we headed to Tullahoma to a really pretty area with the Rutledge Falls. Oooo waterfalls. There was a bit of climbing down rocks and hitting my head on one jutting out above me. We reached a flat rock in front of the pool and the waterfall and Theo proposed! AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!
I said yes, obviously.
I also cried even though we'd been talking about it for weeks and I knew it was coming. Because I'm sappy like that. My ring is gorgeous and very "me." Behold:
It's like he knows me or something.
That evening, we went to Bell Buckle Park where his wonderful, amazing family held a birthday party for me! I felt so special. There was fried chicken and cake with piles of chocolate frosting, so obviously it was a good time. I love his family. And him. He's pretty cool, too.
Aaaand that's been my week. I'm still recovering from driving. Noodles.
