I arrived in St. Louis 45 minutes sooner than expected, which meant that I got there well before the rest of my family. They were scheduled to arrive and then go to Enterprise Rent-A-Car to pick up Father's sweet deal of a rental. He somehow managed to rent the car for only $18 a day, which was the only reason he rented a car at all.
I spoke with Father the night before, and he said "Southwest Airlines is nowhere near the rest of the airport, so we'll have to take a shuttle to the rent-a-car place." He then said "Meet us at the Enterprise Rent-A-Car" and then said something about a shuttle, which I thought applied only to him because he was taking Southwest, the black sheep of the St. Louis airport. I walked to the Enterprise Rent-A-Car and waited for over an hour. During this hour, I spoke to Sister who said things like "We're on the shuttle!" and "We're just outside!" and "Where are you? We don't see you!" I said "I'm sitting at the Enterprise Rent-A-Car terminal" and Father got on and rather crossly said "Did you take the shuttle?"
Ah.
Apparently I too was supposed to take a shuttle to the actual Enterprise lot and not go to the Enterprise in the airport. Silly me. My family was in a mad panic. I jumped a shuttle and was there in about 3 minutes. It had taken them forever, because, again, they took Southwest which apparently has its own airport. But seriously. If someone told you to meet them at the car rental place after you got off a plane, would you not meet them at the car rental place at the airport? I didn't think this was so ridiculous, but Father did.
I don't know. I was perturbed and moody, but all was remedied when I saw my family. Yay!
We piled into the red jeep and made our way to Edwardsville, IL, where we met up with Brother at his house. It was lovely to be intact as a family for the first time since Christmas.
Shortly after our arrival, we piled back into the jeep and drove to the SIUE campus, where we attended BB's show. BB is not only Brother's roommate, but his hetero life partner. They've known each other since the glory days of UMass, and have lived and worked together for the entirety of their printmaking times at SIUE.
BB's show was amazing. His paintings are technically remarkable, but I prefer his prints. Visceral. Empty. Fabulous.
Upon our departure from the show, I forced Brother and Sister to do rural things such as frolic in grass and blow dandelions at each other and at the camera. I am fortunate that my siblings don't mind this sort of thing. I am thrilled with the adorable photos I took of them playing in the midwest.
After the show, we headed to The Pasta House for dinner. Southern Illinois Italian food. We were ravenously hungry so it seemed like the best meal we'd ever had. There was amazing thunder and lightening when we left, the kind that accompanies torrential downpours and the kind where you know the lightening struck two feet away from you because the thunder is instant. People in the midwest take this for granted because it happens all the time. I loved it. It was beautiful.
After dinner, The Parents headed to the only hotel in Edwardsville while Brother, Sister and I went back to Brother's apartment. Sister and I were exhausted from travelling, so we demanded that Brother rent us a movie. He rented Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, which I'd been dying to see. Jude Law. 'Nuff said.
(Side note: One of my brother's roommates is Vietnamese. We'd originally hoped not to have to rent a movie, so I began perusing his videos and couldn't help but notice that he owned an alarming amount of Tom Cruise movies. I said "K, I couldn't help but notice that you have a lot of movies starring Tom Cruise. What's the deal?" He said "Asian men really love Tom Cruise. And Jude Law. They're both so good looking. Something about the facial structure, I guess." Who knew? I hate Tom Cruise. I guess its nice to know there's a whole set of men out there who love him.)
We were exhausted and couldn't quite conjure up the mental capacity to get rid of the closed captions, which insisted on being there no matter what we did. It was infuriating.
BB came home and assisted in our getting rid of the captioning, but by then Sister had fallen asleep in a chair and had started to sleep talk. Additionally, I just couldn't get into the movie. I felt a little bad about it. I imagine had I not just seen Sin City that I'd have been thoroughly impressed.
We retired to Brother's bedroom, where Sister and I would sleep on an air mattress. Brother inflated the mattress. It sounded like it was leaking. I said "Is it supposed to do that?" He said "Oh, no, there's a part missing." He found the part in BB's room (BB had been using it since his mother was in town for his show) and reinflated the mattress.
About two hours later, Sister woke me from a dead sleep by screaming "LEAH! MY BACK! It's ON. THE. FLOOR!!!! Is yours?" I woke up, startled, and said "Yeah, actually, it is."
The air mattress had mostly deflated while we were asleep, and we found ourselves on the floor. It is amazing to me that this didn't wake me up. I was truly exhausted.
Sister said "Well, hopefully that won't happen again, since its like the middle of the night."
I said "Wait, how do you know its the middle of the night?" since there were no clocks anywhere.
She said "Because we've been asleep forever."
"But how do you have any idea how long we've been asleep for? I don't think its the middle of the night."
Brother looked and said "It's only 11:30."
Shit.
Hoping that it wouldn't leak again, we immediately fell back asleep, only to be awoken, again, by our backs on the hardwood floor.
This time Sister said "Sorry," and automatically reinflated the mattress.
This happened a series of times, during which the three of us would utter nonsensical delirium-induced half asleep thoughts such as "It appears that this is happening every two hours" and "That's what you get for lending your stuff to people!" and "What an asshole!" and "I bet the missing part is in BB's room - why the f..."
In spite of all of this, I think we slept for over 12 hours.
Bliss.
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