On The Road With Kelly

Twenty miles of road separated our place and our destination, today. Even though it wasn't that long of a drive we still managed to see several things that were odd or formidable throughout. The following events I describe really took place -as hard as it may be to believe.

The first sight/challenge we encountered on our journey was a long and twisted gauntlet of orange barrels and cones. Somehow we struggled our way through on a narrow, twisted, crumbling, one lane stretch of road. The road normally has two lanes but the other side going in the opposite direction was being blocked by the heavy machinery and the road crew.

The embankments on either side of this road leads to life threatening drop offs. Before you can kiss your ass goodbye, you're a fuckin' goner, man. The road crew would halt us at different parts of the road so the others in the opposite direction could come through on the same side of the shitty road. Not only did we have to dodge barrels, cones, people and potentially lethal drop offs, there was also the huge backhoe loader.

If you can't picture what I'm talking about, look at the picture of it in the upper left hand corner of this post. That's a backhoe loader. Do you see this fucking monstrosity? See the big elephantine claw-scoop thing in the back of this monster? What's this heavy metal monster doing on something that is, presently, little more than a sidewalk? That big claw-scoop thing was swinging towards us at one point and we thought simultaneously that (A) We have nowhere to go on this hellish road to avoid this gargantuan metal beast and (B) We're going to die before we can get to the shopping mall to spend way too money on stuff that we will likely put up on a yard sale next year.

After we struggle through that mess, we finally reach the interstate highway. Ah, a sigh of relief. Finally making headway. Progress, even. But lo and behold, what is this up ahead? Why it is an ambulance. Nearby the ambulance is a slew of cop cars, medical emergency personnel, mangled vehicles and people yelling at each other. This chaos was directly in between a fork in the highway. The closer we got to this accident, the more unsure we were that we were even going to make it to where we needed to turn off. Luckily, we are able make it around this annoying festival of disarray. I have no idea if anyone was killed or not. I was too busy jammin' and gyrating in my seat to my latest Rob Zombie CD to notice such trivialities. Bleed all you want, fuckers! I'm listening to my tunes!

Just as I'm finding relief from getting through that irritating bundle of wrecks and human misery, we travel another mile to see a flaming, smoking car sitting on the right side of a long metal bridge that sits over the river. And we have no choice but to go on this bridge to make it to the money pit known as the shopping mall. I say to my wife, "Gee, I hope that car doesn't explode just as we go past. That would suck mightily." She gives me that look that I take to mean that she is shitting herself (possibly literally) with anticipation.

Lucky again, we also get past the bomb on wheels -without being blown up. After we pass the fiery vehicle, my wife asks, "Hey, do you think we should call 911 for that car behind us?"

I reply, "No way. I'm busy reading the nasty little comic book that came with my new CD. Ha ha... Look at the cartoon werewolves fucking these virgins in the ass! What fun!"

She shakes her head and laughs. After 21 years, she gets me. Good thing, too.

Only a couple miles to our goal, we see a huge bloody pile of animal carcass on the side of the road, teaming with fresh maggots and busy buzzing flies. We ask each other what animal it could have been. Its so fucked up, discombobulated and mushy in some parts (it was headless, too) that we couldn't make out what the hell it was before it became a hairy, bloody, putrid mass of freakishness.

We both said, almost simultaneously, "I'm hungry."

After dropping money off at the travel agency for our upcoming cruise, we decide to throw a bunch of cash at a better-than-decent restaurant. Finally comfortable and salivating at the menu items, a family with a herd of children are soon seated right the fuck next to us. The whole place has maybe five customers in it (due to the odd time of day we came) and they seat two adults and a small army of kids next to good ol' quiet us. Why? I figure they do that in order to make it easier on the server. Put every asshole in a single row of tables. Fuck the customer if they want to eat in peace and not have a fucker on a cell phone yappity yapping away beside them. Hell, I don't know why they always do that. You tell me!

Of course, the children commence screeching, crying and poking each other's eyes out with forks. Normally, this would be funny -the ruptured eyeballs and all -but they were creating too much noise with their persistent wailing for me too handle. I get easily stressed out nowadays, with all the ugly shit that's happened in the past five years. It makes the diabetes worse, too. I start to shake and lose focus.

Rather than say something to the server like, "Could you move us away from the screeching monkeys beside us?", I ask my wife if she wanted to help me move our glasses and silverware, glasses and napkins to the empty table next to us before the waiter comes back and takes our order.

She does and we move our stuff to the next table.

In the past, I wouldn't have done something like that because I wouldn't want to seem rude to the family of screechers beside us -but now, thankfully, I plain just don't give a fuck anymore. Hell, after talking to two complete strangers (my therapist and psychiatrist) these last 2 years, crying and telling them absolutely everything I was feeling and some heavy secrets that even my wife doesn't know about, I can pretty much do or say anything without much guilt. Plus, this medication I'm on now causes me to be a bit on the aggressive side. Happy, aggressive, energetic and impulsive.

A beautiful combination for me. But not for others. Oh, well. Tee hee.

I cheated on my diet, today and had the full rack of hickory smoked ribs with garlic roasted mashed potatoes. Mmmm. It was yummy. It definitely didn't look like that dismembered caked-with-blood thing we saw on the side of the road, earlier. Speaking of things that are creamy, I also enjoyed a piece of white chocolate banana cream pie.

In the end, it turned out to be a better day than I expected given the way it began. I wonder if that car blew up? Ha ha.