Craw Digger: The MO to the MI and back in less than 48

I took a trip this weekend. It was a much needed moment away from my own life and problems for a minute. My sister went to Law School in Michigan at Thomas Cooley in Lansing. She and her wife bought a house a year into their stay there because it was smarter than renting for 3 years. Now, 3 years later, the economy of Michigan is the worst of most states in America. Their foreclosure rate is almost as bad as unemployment. Needless to say my sister's house is not selling and value is dropping. She and her wife decided a few weeks ago to take the house off the market through the winter and rent it out to a neighbors' elderly mother. It works out perfectly for them as they just signed a lease on an apartment here in the Lou because the house was not selling. I agreed to go up with her to get the rest of their furniture and wrap up loose ends. It was really an attempt at avoiding my own life and it worked famously!

So Friday afternoon I meet my sister at her place after work. It is 6pm by the time we are both there and changed for the trip. We took a trailer with us to load up what was left in the house so we had to hitch that up and get gas before we got on the road. It was 6:30 before we hit the highway Michigan bound. The trip is just over 500 miles and should take anywhere from 7.5 to 9 hours depending on traffic. We were smooth sailing for the first 5-6 hours. We had both gotten up Friday morning early for work so about midnight we began to get a bit sleepy. We managed to talk and entertain each other until around 2am. We had years of distance during her college years so there was a lot to talk about. She heard the story of my working on a paddle boat for the very first time and made me realize how blog-worthy my life was even before my blog. I will have to go back and do a post for you on that for sure. So around 2am we decided we needed to stop for gas, bathrooms and caffeine and we pulled into Fort Wayne, Indiana for a stop. I have passed through this glorious town before but I must have been sleeping because what I saw this time was just amazing. First of all, there was not one gas station within 2 miles of the exit that was open at 2am. There were, however, miles and miles of car dealerships. After the car dealerships there was what I will refer to is stripper row. It was just strip club after strip club and they were PACKED. We saw at least 10-15 of them and that was just on the main road. We followed stripper row thinking there had to be gas somewhere for the drunk and weary booby watchers. Alas, we found a place after 20 minutes of driving. I opted to wait with my sister while she pumped gas instead of going in by myself as I had been doing. Good thing I did wait too. We got to see a real life drug deal right before our eyes. When we went in to use the bathroom it was in the condition that you would imagine for a town like this. We did our best to muddle through and got the hell out. Not before getting coffee and getting heckled by HOOSIERS for taking more than 20 seconds to pee. Sorry, Indiana...I had to clean the damn seat off first! Back on the road around 2:45-3am. The coffee saved our lives. We finally arrived at our destination at just after 4am local time which is an hour ahead of STL. It was 8.5 hours which is not horrible but we were exhausted. We did have a bed to sleep in that night so we went straight to it and crashed.

Saturday morning we got up around 8. We made a run to Starbucks and then to pick up some misc. household items needed for packing the rest of their stuff up. We spent the day loading heavy wooden furniture into the trailer. My sister is about my size. Neither of us had any business carrying the stuff that we did. Despite that fact, I am very proud of the work that we did. The neighbor stopped over and literally made my day with her antics. Her name here will be The 420. It's like the 411 but in her case she is the 420 on Michigan. Never fear. She will have her very own post soon. So we broke our backs, bruised our bodies and still couldn't get it all done alone. Around 4pm Saturday my sister's local friends showed up to lend a helping hand. In their defense, she told them 4pm or they would have been there sooner. I was about spent at that point so I let them take over big projects like cleaning the kitchen and touch-up painting and I stuck to clean-up and such. By 5pm we had opened our first bottle of wine and by 6 we were pretty well done. We decided to dine with Nathan and Nikki who are great friends of my sister and her wife's. More wine with dinner and some extremely rich Italian food. I was ready for bed almost as soon as we got home. We read a few passages from Tucker Max's book I hope they serve beer in hell. It is hilarious and you should check it out if you haven't read it already. That was most entertaining but everyone was tired so Nathan and Nikki went home and my sister and I set out to determine where we would sleep.

The plan originally (her's, not mine) was to leave enough room in the trailer to load up the mattress right before we left on Sunday. Have you ever loaded a trailer? I have moved a few times in my life and THIS WILL NOT WORK. I got her to concede to this and load the mattress up earlier in the day however now we were left with a just a sheet and comforter to sleep with. We laid the sheet on the carpet as our base and both wrapped up in the comforter on a floor that was harder than the ground. It.was.miserable. To top it all off my break-up nasty, crohn's infected tummy did not agree with the very rich Italian food so I was up most of the night. I will spare you the details but let's just say that I needed a bucket next to the toilet. Mmmmk?

Sunday we woke up at 7am local time (that's 6am in the Lou). We had forgotten about a few key pieces like the washer and dryer needed moved to the garage and general clean-up. We also realized in the daylight that the paint had been touched up with the wrong color so we had to do a quick redo on that. Nathan and Nikki came back to help with the big stuff and say goodbye. It was 10am before we got into the car. By the time we stopped for gas and food it was 10:40am in the MI. We hightailed it home in less than 8 hours with a full trailer attached. We did solve most of the world's problems and belt out a few classic hits (when did our music show up on "classic hits" stations?)along the way. We got back around 6pm and my lovely sister-in-law had dinner ready for us. My mom and her husband were there to help us unload as well. I finally got home around 9pm last night. I was so excited for my bed that I skipped checking on my boyfriend Tivo and went straight to bed! So much happened on this weekend getaway that I am breaking it down into a few blogs. Plus, the weekend made me think of all of the crazy antics I have pulled in the past 30 years that are not documented here. I think I might think of a way to add a post each week about something that happened years ago. I have some really good material and I almost forgot it already so I better get it down before my alcohol and meds start to mix:-)

Oh, and I got quite a few suggestions on who should be lesbian licks for man candy Monday!

The capital building in downtown Lansing.

The side of Cooley Law building. The quote at the bottom says: "Law students must not forget they are fitting themselves to be ministries of justice" Thomas M. Cooley