and so it continues...

[omaewokorosu]

Bitty is a lot more adventurous now... For one thing, she will actually wander around the first floor and sniff things before marking them. I know she's trying to create an internal map of her surroundings, because that's what cats do, and she's still a little nervous about the changes happening all around her. This is her first FULL day here at the house, and basically it's like we brought her inside for the very first time. So it's gonna take a few days for her to consider this "home".

It's nice being able to have an Actual Breakfast. I did sleep okay even though I woke up around 6ish and got maaaaybe 6.5 hours of sleep according to Pokemon Sleep...my sleep score wasn't that great lol and outside of the dry throat and congestion typical for this time of year for me (because of the heat), I woke up okay. The bedding situation, though not ideal, wasn't terrible either. Despite the two blankets I was still kind of cold lol... (We have a ceiling fan we have on at night to better circulate the heat.) I miss having a duvet...

The bedding should be arriving today along with a bunch of other things, so... I will have my duvet tonight and be able to snuggle in.

I gotta say this "no internet" thing really fucking sucks. I want to be able to do things on my computer but no internet. Spectrum should be coming tomorrow though, so we should have internet before we leave to go back downstate for things.

But not today. Breakfast was fried egg, turkey bacon, and pepper cheese on an English muffin and it was so nice to have like, Actual Food instead of just snacking on whatever we had lying around and calling that "breakfast". We have our own fridge and freezer for things now, that we can stock up with all sorts of food and produce.

Aleks wanted to try out the shower since he'd never showered at home before, and I needed one anyway, so why not? He spent the first like 5-10 minutes just standing under the shower head because it felt good, the water pressure is forceful enough that it massages your scalp and muscles without being too harsh and that is why our hair feels so clean and any eczema BS is cleared up (for that moment anyway). It's actually able to do something about it. Wash out the shampoo and conditioner instead of leaving residue or whatever because the shower in the house downstate...the water pressure in that bathroom is like...you might as well have someone peeing on you. That's how it is. And that explains why the toilet is constantly needing to be plungered, and the sink too, because there isn't enough force for anything to work properly. It's gotten worse and worse and at this point I wonder when that toilet and shower will be unusable.

Not my problem though, that's an Egg Problem for her to not fix because it's not like she would be using it. God forbid Egg fix anything in her house. She wants all of the perks of being a homeowner but doesn't want to deal with the downsides (doing your own maintenance, getting things fixed/repaired/replaced, renovations, etc.) that come with owning your own house. Whereas Serena and I know that everything is on us and that's what we wanted. Yeah, when you rent you just dial up your landlord if something breaks, but there are a lot of landlords with the same mentality as Egg, where they want that sweet rental income to line their pockets and insulate their mattress, but they don't want to do the work associated with it (having to do maintenance, fixing/repairing/replacing things). But at this point in Egg's life she would be better off renting a place. She can't do any of these things herself and she has no one she can really call outside of her son, who lives almost two hours away.

Like it's nice to have a gas range where all of the burners work! (The stove at Egg's, only two of the burners work now; initially all four worked but within the last year it went down to two working and one that you had to wait a bit for it to ignite, now it's down to just two working [the right side ones] and who knows how long it'll take before only one works? Oh no you guys, Eggikins might have to buy a new stove! Not that she needs one, she doesn't use it for much except to boil water for tea, and she can just use a microwave for that tbh, which she'll probably do once the inevitable happens.) And it's nice to have a house with no weird foundation issues that were pointed out on the inspection report but then gone ahead with purchasing the house anyway for whatever reason...because Egg didn't have a clue as to what she wanted in a house and just went with the house that had first floor bedroom and first floor laundry in the description...

(And it wasn't for accessibility concerns either, because there are things you can do to make things like stairs accessible.)

~*~
WE DROVE DOWN TO PORT and traffic for the most part wasn't that bad? I felt like we went from Elmira to right outside of Scranton pretty fast even though according to Google Maps our total trip was two hours and 46 minutes (that also counts us stopping for gas). Nothing's really changed, there's still that storefront with a sign proclaiming TRUMP MERCH SOLD HERE with an arrow pointing towards the ramshackle building. There was a guy outside who looked like a stereotypical redneck trying to draw attention to his business. The house right next to it flew a Trump flag, but not just any one - this one had a picture of that image with his fist in the air surrounded by Secret Service agents with FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! superimposed over it in meme font of all typefaces. It is Pennsylvania after all, where they still have all their Trump-Vance signs out on their lawns still. Even in Port it's much the same. All the Harris voters took down all of their election signs, whether they had to do with her or not, because the election is over, it's time to move on.

(Trumpists don't know the meaning of that phrase.)

I can't wait to hear my father-in-law's thoughts on this area, where you can get cigarettes, alcohol, and purchase a gun all right across the street from each other. There are many smokeshops and places to purchase alcohol in this area of Matamoras, and even more over the bridge in Port, where the downtown is mostly pubs and bars, with a new one being opened or built every month it seems. That's the only thing you can really do in a "small town": drink and smoke until you can't do either one anymore. It's not like there's anything else to do. The place is a desert in many ways but especially recreationally and medically.

We turned onto Water Street and I swore there was, lying in the street drain gutter, a charred corpse. In reality, upon driving closer, it was just hunks of snow embedded with leaves. But the way things were positioned and the colour of the leaves and just the distance, I thought it was a body someone disposed of poorly. I wouldn't have been surprised either way, because things are getting bad again, like they were right before the city almost went bankrupt.

I'll let Aleks take over from here because this was him fronting.

We pulled up, prepared ourselves for the bullshit inside and potential encounters, before heading inside. Right away Egg has a question. She always has questions and none of them are ever important. We hadn't even taken more than two steps inside before she opened her mouth and spoke the name we've been correcting for months now. I sighed; Serena and I share a look. What could she possibly have to say, and can she stop asking questions about things that don't concern her?

Egg: "What are you doing for Thursday? Are you gonna be here?"
Aleks: "No."
Egg, who never once thought of lowering the volume of her TV so she could hear, as is thus being rude: "Huh?"
Aleks, a little louder: "No."
Egg, who would be appalled if someone didn't mute the TV if she were the one talking: "What??"
Aleks, practically yelling but not to that point yet: "No!"
Egg, sounding a little offended, because nothing is ever her fault: "Oh okay! I just wanted to know because I'll be spending Thursday at [Rob's]. He's coming to pick me up on Wednesday and I'll be gone for a couple of days."
Aleks: Okay...?

Serena and I shared a look. This was too good to be true.

Egg: "So what are you doing for Thanksgiving?"
Aleks: "We're spending time with family upstate."
Egg: "Are you going upstate?"
Aleks, taking a deep breath because his nerves are frayed: "Yeah."
Egg: "So you won't be here then..."

We won't be here not just because of that, but because as of Wednesday if all goes according to plan we will no longer be taking up space here. I was going to say "occupying this house" but we haven't been living down here since Saturday. Not that Egg knows that, of course. She has no idea what any of our plans are save for us "going upstate for Thanksgiving", which is true.

So to make things easier, or what I thought would make things easier, I decided to leave the trunk open while we went inside to quickly grab some things and then easily stash them in the trunk. Unfortunately this led to a "concerned neighbor" knocking on the door allegedly saying that the trunk lid was open. So cue Egg shrieking up the stairs, "[Deadname], your trunk is open!" two or three times and Serena and I yelling back, "We know!" but Egg, between her TV and just her being unable to hear anything, I guess, despite how loud we can yell, still couldn't hear us. So I had to stop what I was doing to go out into the hall and tell her what I'd just said.

To which she'd responded, in her typical defensive manner, "Okay! I was just asking! Someone knocked on the door and pointed it out, I swear! I'm not meddling or sticking my nose in" yadda yadda you get the point, this long drawn out explanation that could've been solved with, "Okay, I was just checking because someone asked about it and I didn't know." Did someone actually say something? I don't know. I never heard anyone knock on the door and I never heard the front door open, so she's likely the one who noticed it and then made up some story. Yes this is typical narcissist behavior. Deflecting blame. "It wasn't me! It was insert person here! Honest!" Very little kid behavior.

Suffice it to say we packed more shit up into bags and brought that out along with the stuff originally planned plus a few more things because we certainly had the room for it. As we took a breather outside to collect our thoughts and also take a small break because going up and down stairs carrying things of varying weights is exhausting, Egg mentioned about the garbage.

Make sure you take out your garbage because it SMELLS! That cat food or whatever SMELLS so you NEED to put it out tonight!

Bold of you to assume that we're going to be here tonight, but I suppose we can toss it in the outdoor trash can on our way out...

Apparently she mentioned it multiple times to Serena and she said it three, four, maybe even five times to us. Like yes, Egg, we get it. You don't need to repeat yourself so many times. Who is this for? You? Me?

Once we were done packing up the car we went through the yard to the driveway where Serena's car sits. She wanted to make sure that it could start up since it'd been a while since she last drove it, certainly before the snow and cold weather came through. It started up perfectly fine. We let it run for a bit. Tomorrow when we're downstate again Serena's gonna take it for a drive and get gas in it since it's at 3/4 of a tank and that's not gonna be enough to get to Elmira (it takes roughly 1/2 a tank of gas one way because it's all interstate highway driving through construction areas). This way Dale won't have to stop along the way to fuel up.

Tomorrow we're also going to pack things up in Serena's car since it'll just be one person... We can put things in the front passenger seat, as much as we can, in addition to the backseat and trunk. Which is good. Means on Tuesday or Wednesday we can haul twice as much, and that's always a nice thing to have.

With that done, we got ourselves back into the Focus and drove back home.

This is where I pass things over to Karu.

Before anyone asks YES THE GARBAGE WAS TAKEN OUT.

The ride back wasn't all the eventful tbh like. It got dark really quick because of the time of year but outside of that there wasn't really much of anything. Just a lot of people who don't know what a fucking turn signal is or they would do it when changing to the right lane but not when changing to the left for whatever reason? Like can your turn signal lever only go up and not down?? Like??? And the ambulance camping out in the left lane and the guy going 10mph below the speed limit and us not being able to pass EITHER OF THEM until we were practically tailgating the ambulance going the fucking speed limit in the LEFT LANE and then they were like OHHHH I NEED TO MOVE OVER SO THEY CAN PASS ME like you would absolutely be tailgated in NJ yessir.

We unpacked the car. We made dinner. Sat on our phones browsing FB or Reddit because there's not much to do when you don't have internet access and have to use your mobile data instead until we decided it was time for bed...of course before we could go to bed we had to make up the bed because THE BEDDING ARRIVED all of our packages arrived and everything was fine. We could put our sheets on the bed and have our duvets and be comfy cosy!

Aleks had an issue getting the inserts into the covers but he figured it out.

You wanna know who else figured things out? Bitty! She figured out how stairs work and eventually followed us up and poked her head into the bathroom like "hiiii I here" and explored the second floor she was so intimidated by the first time we brought her here lol

She wandered around the bedroom and "helped" set the bed up before watching everyone go to sleep...whilst she slept on the floor in front of the bed instead of, you know, on the bed. Like she usually does. But everything is so new and unfamiliar to her, especially when it comes to scent, that she's confused and a little afraid. But she'll get used to everything.