18th Birthday
Spent the day before in the Vancouver airport for 10 hours waiting for a 12 minute flight across the strait to come home. There was a delay because the lower bloody mainland can't handle two inches of snow. Flew into Nanaimo (which is two hours up island from my uni, and where my parents live)was pleasantly surprised to go out for dinner with two of my three brothers (one whom I hadn't seen for ages). After dinner, we're on the way back to the house and my brother goes, "So mom, you gonna tell her?"

After ages of me demanding to be told whatever it is they're keeping from me, my mom regales this tale of a lodger in our house. Since us four kids moved out and away, the basement's been empty at the ol' homestead, so my parents rent it out. One of their regular boarders buggered off to Winnipeg for the month of December, but couldn't afford to pay the rent while he was gone. So my step-dad agreed to let his friend say there while the other guy was gone, as his friend Mark had just moved to town and was looking for a place to stay. He seemed like a normal kinda guy. The last time my parents saw him was the middle of December, around the 20th. Then just after the 1st of January, my step-dad went downstairs to look for something, and smelled something weird. THE GUY HAD DIED TWO WEEKS PREVIOUS.So there were cops and crime scene guys swarming the house, the professional cleaners were in and such. This all happened two days before I got home.

Totally gave me the jibblies, I still can't go downstairs in the middle of the night. But that wasn't all that was bad. The next morning, I get up early to catch a bus back down to uni. Didn't manage to make it on the too-full express bus (which takes 2 hours tops), so I had to take the other one which meanders all the fuck around the island and pushes the travel time nearly to 4 hours. Three hours go by, we're nearly home. But wait. There's a huge accident. We got stuck in traffic for an additional 3 hours. My trip pushed 7 hours total. Whatever, I've been through worse, I can handle it. So I get off at the bus depot downtown, and as I'm waiting to cross the street, my transit bus up to uni passes. No big deal, I can catch the next one. I check the schedule, says I've got 20 minutes to wait. I can do that. 20 minutes pass, 30, 40, AN HOUR AND A HALF pass. Still no bus.

The problem? It had snowed like six inches. See, I'm originally from northern BC, where it snows like... six feet in a good blizzard and the schools don't close until it hits -40 celcius. But my uni is in the much balmier lower mainland, where -5 celcius and six inches of snow, is a Big Fucking Deal. Finally my bus came and I lugged all my shit onboard. As I was finding a seat, my cell phone started to ring. I didn't find it in time to pick up, and for some reason, this was the last straw. I huddled in the back crying and checking my voicemail. It was my bestest friend leaving me a happy birthday message.

I got up to campus and dumped my shit in my room, planning on making my next class (it was the first day of classes), but said 'screw it' and crawled into bed.

My day was made a bit better when my roommate's boyfriend took me out for dinner and a movie, and unlike the previous year's birthday, no one in my family died. (My grandma died on my 17th birthday, when I was as sick as a dog with the flu).

Sorry about the length. Naw, not really.
(chaoticmatter, Sun 11 Dec 2005, 22:12, Reply)