Jam

Yesterday I drove to the big city to have dinner with my boyfriend and his mom, who's here for the holidays. I left at 2:15, leaving myself time to stop for a pumpkin spice latte, to get gas, and to drop off my friend's birthday and Christmas gifts at her house. Traffic was pretty heavy getting into the city, but it was no big deal. I stopped at Starbucks near his house to get him some Sumatra and was totally suckered into impulse-buying the new Sarah McLachlan holiday CD. I arrived at his house, watched them finish a game of Scrabble, and then we visited for a while and headed to dinner. I had a salad and the flounder special with cous cous, and it was very tasty.

I left shortly after dinner because I knew I had a seven-mile run today and wanted to get home early and get good rest. I looked at my watch when pulling away from his house, and it was 8:11. It was smooth sailing until I hit an exit about 20 miles from home, when traffic stopped. Crap. It was shortly after 9:00. I figured it would move slowly and then I would get off at the next exit four miles ahead and take an alternate route home.

It took me two and a half hours to go four miles to the next exit.

Those hours were spent in sort of a fugue state of denial, misery, and hilarity all wrapped up together.

I told myself I was lucky not to be in the Denver airport, to have heat, to have my phone, to have plenty of gas in my car, to have good music. I fell soundly in love with the new Sarah McLachlan CD in those hours.

I called Shelley, and we engaged in a rousing singalong medley of several of our favorite camp songs from childhood. We noted that there were so many instances of the word "Hey!" in such songs that we couldn't count them.

I called my boyfriend, who read to me aloud from a novel he's reading, No Place, Louisiana, the title of which could not have been more fitting as I stared into the darkness.

I played traffic jam-themed Text Twist with the SATURN letters on the car in front of me. Sat. Rut. Nuts.

I talked to my sister, who strategized with me in exasperation on better ways the state police could have redirected traffic.

I watched the person in front of me chain smoke and drop butt after butt onto the center line.

I harmonized with every song on the CD three or four times and fantasized that I was one of Sarah McLachlan's backup singers and wished I had a loudspeaker to pipe the music over the cars and into the air to make everyone feel better.

Once the 2.5-hour four mile trek had passed and I finally turned off of I-10, I took a back way home. I got kind of scared because it was close to midnight, it was foggy, my car was having serious temperature control issues and my glasses and the windshields and windows were fogging up, and I was on a dark road with no street lights.

Then suddenly I emerged into the land of many bright lights, those of a large correctional facility and the tall glowing orange arms of numerous chemical plants.

I panicked and called my sister. "Where am I? It's suddenly all bright and weird and I'm surrounded by chemical plants and prisons! I am scared."

She assured me that I wasn't hallucinating and that all was well.

I calmed down and finally made it home at three minutes after midnight, calculating that I could have driven to Pensacola in the time that it took me to drive 70 miles.

I woke up this morning and headed to the gym, where I somehow ran seven miles. I don't even know how, I honestly don't. It was very hard. Tonight I'm exchanging gifts with Shelley and Maryelizabeth, which should be fun. I went to see Rocky Balboa this afternoon with my sister and little brother because we've seen all the rest of the movies so many times (except for V, because nobody watches that one more than once), so why not? I thought it was mostly boring until the fight at the end. The fight is always the best part.