Long Weekend Too Short - Part I

Yes, it was too short. Far too short. I am not relaxed. There was not enough time. There is never enough time.

Although I bet there would be enough time if one lived in western MA where everything closes at 8 pm.

Vacation in review (photos forthcoming):

- Woke up too early on Friday in order to get train from Grand Central to New Haven. On the way out the door D accidentally clocked me in the face with his extremely heavy duffel bag. We took a cab to Grand Central because I am slow when carrying a bag that weighs 1/3 of my body. D walked ahead of me through Grand Central without noticing that I was lagging behind due to my heavy bag. It felt as though I was being dragged around. I finished reading The Voice on the train and started reading The Confessions of Max Tivoli, and oh! the guilty pleasure of a romance novel disguised as serious fiction.

- We picked up the car in New Haven and I decided that I don't want to live there. We stopped at a Mexican restaurant where I made my own burrito and became less bitchy after finally eating something. D suggested that we go to Amherst because he wants to know everything about me. I consented to the detour because it meant a lot to him, and because he said "But you said the best cookies ever are at UMass!" "Yes, I did," I said, "but I can't eat cookies anymore." "Not even the best cookies ever?" "Yes, you're right," I said, and we headed in the direction of Amherst. I hadn't counted onrevisiting a place I lived for four years not feeling at all like vacation.

- We drove through Hadley and I was mortified. Media Play is gone. Everything is gone, replaced by chains and big business and freaking Target and Best Buy and other businesses that have no business being in Hadley. The movie theater has changed. D said "It's because college students have more money now." "Fuckers," I said. We parked near Hasbrouke because it was raining. Lots. We ran around the construction surrounding the campus center and I practically skipped into The Blue Wall, where I was mortified to find that the bakery is gone! GONE! Entirely! "Maybe they're at The Hatch now?" I said. I ran through the arcade in The Student Union and The Hatch was closed! NOOOO!!!! I stopped at the table that was distributing caps and gowns and said "Look, this is a weird question, but anyway, I went here a million years ago and The Blue Wall had the best chocolate chip cookies in the world and... do you know if I can get them somewhere else? Like did they move the bakery?" She said they were still available, wrapped individually, in The Blue Wall deli section. Yes! We ran back and no, there weren't any. NOOOO!!!!

- D wanted to go into town to check out some bike shop after we drove by Orchard Hill. I was surprised to see D overwhelmed by something. "It's so big..." he said, losing his sense of direction. I stood out in the rain staring at Amherst while he stared at bikes. We went to Mystery Train together. D went to Food For Thought and whatever that other record store was next door. While he spent too much money on used CDs, I spent too much money on clothes at Zanna. I finally bought a pair of shorts (I haven't bought shorts in like 7 years - nobody looks good in shorts! nobody!). I chatted with the ladies behind the desk about my nostalgia for the town. "I'm happy you're still here," I said. "Everything is changing."

- D wanted food so we went to Antonio's but he was too overwhelmed, again. "Let's go to Amber Waves," I suggested. It was gone. I think I knew that, but I was hopeful. We ended up at some new Thai place that had decent enough noodles and what D claimed was the best Thai iced tea he had ever had. We went to Newbury Comics and then got back on the road.

- We got to the hotel at around 8:30. They had DVD's available, including a DVD of a fireplace. Heh. It seemed decent enough. The room was fabulous, the bathroom bigger than my former apartment, complete with tub and gigantic shower stall with verticle gigantic shower head. Delicious.

- Things took a turn for the worse when we learned that restaurants in the area stop seating at 9:00. I was starving, of course. They had given us chocolates but needless to say I couldn't eat those. D said "I'll go to the grocery store. What do you want?" "I don't know!" I said, "I can't eat anything anymore!" We went back and forth for about half an hour and finally I said "Why don't you just go and get something for yourself?" He did.

- I spent the next half an hour crying and feeling bad for myself, until I sat in the bathtub where I cried all of the hunger and craving out before D's return.

- D returned with a sub from Subway. "The supermarket, and everything else, is closed," he said. "Do you want me to get you a sub?" "No," I said, "Because I don't want to eat at a chain on vacation." He ate his sub while I read more of my guilty pleasure, trying not to focus on the food I wasn't eating.

- I was exhausted but couldn't sleep, because I kept thinking of the last one and how he'd searched the entire planet for calcium-less multivitamins and turned up one day with chewable gummy children's vitamins saying "You have to take these because I want you to be healthy and not have any kidney stones" and how I gave him such a big hug and how ridiculously spoiled I was before this and how in the past the bathtub was something very, very, very exciting and how I felt very pretty and very important. I snuck out into the rain and ended up reading in the lobby cottage until around 3:30 am, when D appeared and said he was "worried" and wanted to know what was going on and when I started to tell him he seemed disinterested. I consented to going back to bed if and only if we could watch our Clive Owen rental, which turned out to be boring and sleep-inducing, thankfully.