Here

7:16 a.m.

Hi!

We're here!

We got here Thursday night. So far I got the crazies and decided we had to rip up all the carpet in the basement because we found mold and I am NOT dealing with that, and then scraped all the carpet residue and unpacked a lot and our in-laws have been here since Friday morning staying in our living room and everything has been crazy and stressful and not very private and I've taken a lot of Xanax.

The dog and I just went for our first walk/run around the neighborhood, and hey, you know what? Iowa is humid! And hot! And hilly! I'm going to get back in shape in no time. A BUFF GAZELLE. The dog is happy because they also have squirrels here and birds and he saw his first big butterfly (oh, Wyoming, you are so dry and cool and bug free). I'd never be compelled to run here without a mopey, sulky, extremely athletic dog to guilt me into it.

We still have a lot of unpacking/arranging to do, and some time I am going to paint a few rooms, although maybe not soon, but maybe soon. We've had some unpleasant surprises, with the new house, and some pleasant ones too.

The drive here was fairly uneventful, although somewhere in Nebraska the AC stopped working in the moving truck, so J was hot and sweaty and uncomfortable. Also, somewhere in Nebraska the unthinkable happened in the car I was driving, Petmobile 2007. (Two cats, a huge dog, a fish.) Coltrane, the dark princess cat, had been an angel the entire drive. Purring, batting sleepily at me through the carrier, snoozing on her back blissfully, etc. Jelly Roll, however, shrieked like a banshee ON FIRE the entire drive. On fire! That's even worse than a normal banshee! Mostly I laughed, though, because of the dramatics and the way he was shoving his face through his mesh window and it was all Alien-esque. I laughed until things went horribly wrong.

Somewhere in a construction zone, when I was surrounded by semis and unable to slow down from 75 (IN A CONSTRUCTION ZONE, COME ON) Jelly Roll finally learned to monkey the zipper open on his cat carrier and escaped. And proceeded to climb to the back seat with the dog and UNROLL THE BACK WINDOW.

AND THEN PRECARIOUSLY HANG HALF OUT OF IT AND THEN THE DOG DID TOO. WHILE WE WERE GOING OVER 70 MPH ON THE INTERSTATE.

I reacted calmly, of course, by screaming "GET DOWN OH GET DOWN GET DOWN" and also sobbing maniacally. And swerving a lot as I tried to prevent the cat and dog from leaping to their certain deaths on the asphalt below.

Finally they crawled back in and I pulled off at the next exit, which was apparently a gravel road in the middle of a corn field, all horror movie style, and I got out in a cornfield to get out my spare cat carrier (I'm insane), nearly lost Jelly Roll in the corn field, swore a lot, cried some more, then got back on the interstate.

Of course I was thirsty after the corn field incident, so I grabbed my Coke. Then it exploded all over the steering wheel and my lap and I was all sticky, and I decided a good way to deal with this would be to pour some bottled water on my hands (I'm certainly a bad driver) and then dumped half a bottle of water in my lap and some on the steering wheel.

In short, I'm blaming Nebraska for everything bad that happened the entire summer.

So! We're here! And I think the in-laws are leaving today and then we can, you know, stop feeling crazy and settle in and etc. etc. etc.

Etc.

More! Later!

I love you all shit tons,
black sheeped