Look at me and my exclamation points, acting like I’m awake. I’m not, quite. When I got off the phone with UPack yesterday and was informed that the ReLo Cubes (relocation, but I dig how sci-fi it sounds) containing truly everything we own can’t be delivered to our wonderful wonderful house until Tuesday, Ian and I decided that we didn’t want to pay for 5 days in Milledgeville hotels eating nothing but Milledgeville food, so instead we did what any reasonable two people would do and drove to Savannah, en route to Orlando. Why not?
Savannah is lovely: laid-back, filled with majestic trees and dripping Spanish moss that puts me in mind of New Orleans, and last night we had an extraordinary meal of some of the best fresh-seafood-based dishes I have ever eaten. Shrimp so fresh I truly cannot even, caught from the next town over, seasoned from God, with collard greens and fried okra and untold bliss. Everyone is very sweet, and I might as well be open about how much I love telling people that we came from California. Nothing grabs a small-town or mid-size-city’s Southerner’s heart that fast: not only is it so far away, but it’s also California. I have enough cachet now to almost feel cool.
The Super 8 in Brunswick, GA from where I’m currently offering these chronicles is a billion times more comfortable and, dare I say it, more luxurious, than the Comfort Inn in Milledgeville. We have learned, throughout our travels, that a shitty 3 star hotel will surround you with failure and fill your spacious room with hellish lighting, while a 2-star affair where everyone cares is quite comfortable. I don’t need much, it turns out, in my room besides a bed and a desk. Our lodgings have run the gamut across America despite staying in the same tier throughout. Ask me anything, anything at all, about Choice Hotels anywhere in the US, our grand and dubious nation.
Ian did warn me that Super 8 coffee was likely to be worse than the upscale-instant that’s been starting my mornings on the road, and he was right: I am currently drinking hot robust what-is-this, bitter is not the right word. But, as my father taught me when, hectic mornings before he drove me to school, he had to put his ahead-of-his-time coffee standards aside and settle for Dunkin’ Donuts, we must drink what is available when faced with the harrowing alternative of no coffee at all.
Come Tuesday, we’ll have our French press back, and our hand-grinder, and our bags of beans, and each and every one of our utensils and appliances and pots and pans and ah, is there any bounty, really, like the riches that return to you after a long time away, having already been yours for years but with such a dramatic gap in the real evidence that they belong to you.
I miss my house. I mean our house, I mean the house, 3 bedrooms of straight-up Country Glory when I didn’t even think I was into that kind of thing. I am, who knew, but I’ve never seen it done right. Our house is done right! I love it so much that when I saw grease drops on the side of the fridge I was like “I need to get this toweled off as soon as I can, it’s driving me crazy.”
I’ve never felt this connected to a house before, not in all my years. Which isn’t to say we plan to stay in Milledgeville long after the 3 years of my program is up, but a gauntlet’s been thrown here. I’ve never been paid to write books! I’ve never met anyone who only knows me because several trusted people vetted the notion that I could write books! Up til now I had to charm them first, but I don’t have to do that anymore. I’ve got a solid 3rd draft of a memoir whose existence might not please everyone on principle but whose caliber I can stand up for. I’ve never done that! Up until now I’ve written books primarily because I wanted to please someone — possibly specific readers among you!
Not this time, however. I actually feel with my own mind/heart/body that this book I’ve just drafted 3 times matters, and I don’t care who disagrees with me, which doesn’t mean it’s not a little bit terrifying to step up with it, because, oh, I don’t know, what if I am wrong? But we can all be wrong about everything. While I draft my Early Reader List I’m also entertaining the notion of some kind of horror-thing for young readers inspired by all this Southern Gothic hauntedness around me, something to do with ghosts. We’ll see.
I appear to be all over the place this morning, so let’s marvel at this old-school Taco Bell sign:
Now that is American history.
Finished my cup of pseudo-coffee, but I’m still waking up. I should close this and get dressed, so that we can go find some real coffee, then of course, continue to Orlando, where we’ll leap into a whirlwind of who knows. We’re not doing Disney, but we’ll be doing Florida Life, possibly including lunch at a vegan restaurant provocatively called Leguminati. Yesterday, we drove behind a truck that was carrying half an actual house on its bed, and Ian observed, “Hon, the house is speeding.”
That’s kinda life in a nutshell ‘round these parts.