And she dances on the sand

Good god. Holy hell. I need to switch to something not religiously flavored. But aside from that- so I'm staying with my aunt, though she's leaving for a week tomorrow, and my grandmother is here at the moment. She also leaves tomorrow. Which is good, because otherwise I might stomp on her. Or rip her face off. I'm very prone to hyperbole these days, by the way.
So Jill and her dad drove me in to New York today (Saturday. This is written over a couple days time). I went into Brooklyn to pick up a groundplan from Matt, turned right around and came back. More about all this later. My silly decision was telling my aunt that getting me a ticket for a play tonight would be a good idea. We ate takeout chinese (which was really good. I was surprised, I don't like peanut sauce type things, but there were really good peanut noodles. Also- spicy broccoli and glass noodles and tofu and brown rice. Anyway) and my grandmother took a million and eight year to finish eating and get ready. We had a really good cab driver who got us to the theatre in plenty of time, despite not leaving until 7 20 from the upper west side. We were seeing (oh, get ready for it) '25 Questions For A Jewish Mother'. Yeah. I got to see this with 2 Jewish mothers. It was good. I haven't yet gotten to ask my aunt what she thought of it, being both a jewish mother and daughter. It's a one woman show done by Judy Gold. I liked it, but I'm not that big on solo shows. She's very funny, and very good with timing. She talked a lot about the holocaust, which makes sense as she was interviewing Jewish mothers, and so some of them had been through it, and most of them had parents who had, but it was interesting in how it pulled it back from being purely a comedy bit. It made me very aware of how un-Jewish I am, though. I mean, I know the stereotypes, I even have some direct contact with it, but it's not a life I have lived at all.
Side note- the play was in St. Lukes, which apparently does a fair amount of theatre, Late-Night Catechism was there for a while, and a few other things (so, you know, she got to make a Jew for Jesus joke) and Jennifer T1pt0n did the lighting. I first heard of her in 2001, when my mom showed me an article about her winning the Dorothy and Lillian Gish prize. She kind of became a hero for me, which intensified when I found out that rosco named a gel after her, and that she taught at Y'all. For the first two years of college, all I wanted was to go there, because of her. But- I have never actually seen her lighting. The space was kind of an awkward one in terms of hanging positions, but there were some front light issues that bothered me. Not that I could have done better, just from her reputation, I hadn't expected there to be any. Oh well. I don't want to go to her school anymore anyway. Ignoring the fact that I couldn't get in, I don't want to fall trap to the Y'all Way of Lighting, and I am so sick of school. I can't quite believe that I never have to go back. It makes me almost giddy.
Anyway- after the show, my grandmother asks if we want to go get something to drink. Sure, my aunt and I say. I knew this was a bad idea, I had gotten up at 8 30 that morning, after staying up till 3 am, which had been proceeded by driving across 5 states in hellish rain and traffic. I was tired. But I still said 'sure, why not'. We went over to Juniors, this kind of diner place with apparently famous cheesecake. I don't really like cheesecake, but I wasn't planning on eating anything. We get seated, and my grandmother examines the menu. At first, she gets distracted by the kids menu, delighting over 'oh look, kid's can get mac and cheese' -what? anyway. So then she looks at the desert menu. And I was in hell. It was literally a half hour of reading every single thing out loud, asking the poor waiter's opinion, making him describe everything 4 times, getting one thing, not liking it, and taking another 15 minutes to settle on a second. I really wish I could remember exact quotes, because in retelling, it doesn't sound that bad. Ohh but it was. She kept asking me questions, like did chocolate mousse catch me eye, or what did, then? And I told her several times that a) No, I don't really like chocolate stuff, b) I don't like cheesecake in the first place, so leave me out of it, and c) I'm not really going to eat it, so why ask my opinion? It's her taste, not mine? I really don't understand this point. Why ask some one else what they like when you're the one ordering it? I mean, I can understand asking the waiter about what they recommend, but if they say something like 'the strawberry one, with macaroons on the back' and macaroons make you cringe, why are you then going to ask everyone else at the table what their opinion is? You already know that you don't like it, and you are the one who is going to eat it! Anyway. Finally finally blessed finally we leave and get a cab. And she proceeds to chatter almost the whole time about Klez Camp and the Lincoln Center, and where Julliard used to be, when she went there on and on. A constant stream of chatter and I was dying. I was so tired, and had been suppressing grumpiness in the name of politeness for a few hours and I just wanted quiet and sleep. So of course when we get home, everyone sits around in the living room and drinks tea and chats for a while, while I sit in the corner and start writing this. Finally at midnight (the show hadn't been that long, so we got home about 11) my aunt, who had been casting my pitying looks, finally kicked everyone out so that I could fall asleep in the couch. It took about 10 minutes for my grandmother to get the idea and actually leave.

Flashback Time!
So we left the Bay Area around 1, with Jill driving. She kept that up till after we hit I-5, until we stopped in Westley, CA for gas. At which point I took over. Oh boy. So I'm driving a v6 Chevy Silverado loaded to the gills with stuff. And it's a manual. I have learned how to drive stick in the past, but I was still something close to terrified, especially with the warnings Jill was giving me about following distance, and the weight I was carrying. I went fine. Once you get out of first, shifting up is really easy, and I am good at driving, so the whole braking time this was a lot easier than I expected. I hit a bit of trouble north of LA when it was dark, and we ran into some hills that required me to downshift into 4th, and then back up. I only ground the gears twice, though, and we lived. I did have a tendency to move both hand the same, so in shifting with my right, I would jerk the wheel with my left a bit. This terrified poor Jill, but I grew out of it pretty fast. I pulled off in Pasadena to pee, and she took over driving from there till Palm Springs, where we got gas. �Side note- we had a 30 gallon tank, so we didn't have to stop that much. But it was pretty expensive when we did. I was paying for gas, as per our agreement, and every time we got somewhere between 19 and 24 gallons, and I paid anywhere between 42 and 56 dollars. I think (and I would know this if I weren't too lazy to get up and look at my receipts) I spent a total of 650 dollars on gas. Which averages to like 7 stops for gas, and considering we went over 7000 miles, this is pretty good. But still. Holy hell. Also- 3 guesses as to where gas was cheapest. That's right, Texas wins with 2.15 a gallon. End of side note- So then I drove from Palm Springs, CA, starting at 8 45 at night, to El Paso, TX, where we arrived at 6 am. 9 hours and 15 minutes of straight driving, covering approximately 700 miles. I stopped for gas once, in Arizona. I was kind of disappointed, I had really wanted to see Arizona and New Mexico, but I also totally got a kick out of barreling through two states in a night. I was averaging 75 miles an hour through Arizona, but got slowed down a little in New Mexico. They kept having safety corridors where the traffic fines were doubled, and while I was perfectly fine with risking a speeding ticket (and ohh, I was. Everywhere I could go 85-90, I did. The speed limit was either 70 or 75 when we weren't in a city. Cities slowed us down too.) I was not willing to risk getting a doubled traffic fine.
I got to watch the sun rise in New Mexico, though, which was pretty stunning. It's been a while since I've seen the sun rise anyway, and there I had some mesas, and red deserts and pretty clouds. Jill slept though it. Just after sunrise, we crossed the Rio Grande, which was pretty cool, but less impressive than I had imagined.
I think I'm going to stop here, as this entry is approaching 2000 words, and I should get up and start my day or something. I got the luxury of sleeping till nearly noon. It was pretty fantastic.