Miles and miles of Texas

What a cluster fuck.

So I get up at dark-thirty Wednesday morning to catch the 6:20am bus to Eagle Pass (EP). From Austin, it goes to San Antonio (SA), there is a 15 minute layover, then I get on a different bus from SA to EP. Hub drives me to the Austin bus station, and they tell me that the bus is late, and won't make it in time for the connection to EP. The next bus wouldn't arrive in EP until 7pm, and Dad wanted to leave EP by noon. So I ask hub to drive me to SA, which he reluctantly agrees to.

Between rush hour and not knowing our way around SA, we made it to the bus station with about 15 minutes to spare. I get on the bus and put my headphones on, listening to my mp3 player the whole way. One of the lines from a song as we pull out of the station was 'you'll catch a Greyhound bus to home', which was the first in a list of weirdly coincidental random music lyrics, the rest of which I can't remember now but suffice it to say, it was all very cool.

So I get to EP about 15 minutes late, and there is no one there. I start trying to call to find out what's going on, but about 10 minutes later Dad pulls up. He is pissed off at a number of things, including his doctor, pharmacy, and insurance company fucking around with him as he's trying to get his medical records and heart medications as he's leaving town. So he looks like he's about to kill someone as he runs by his doctor's office (for the second time that day). I decide to wait in the car and try to calm down rather than hang out with him in his obviously horrible temper. He is a very scary guy when he's angry, at least to me.

He comes out with his medical records after about 20 minutes- they wanted to run a last EKG on him. He drops me off at their mostly empty house and tells me to help Elaine get the cats in the car, while he goes to the pharmacy to get his meds. Elaine has 3 adult cats loose, because 'they don't like the cat carriers.' So after a lot of clawing and hissing, we get them into the car, just as Dad drives up. Then the car won't start, and as we jump it I wonder if Dad's going to have a heart attack right there. It starts after a few minutes and we head out. It's close to 2pm.

The cats, though they have the entire back of the SUV made up with pillows and mattress pads and all, decide they want to hang out with us. One usually was at Elaine's feet, one on the arm rest between us or in her lap, and the other in the well at my feet, leaning on the brake pedal. Elaine tried to grab her out, but she just latched onto my leg and clawed the shit out of it until I yelled at her to let the cat go, I would just kick her out of the way if I needed to brake.

Sheeeit. We made it to SW by about 6pm. I'll continue this later.

(no subject)

Dad has 2 dogs, a brother and sister. Both black Labrador retrievers named Duke and Duchess (roll eyes). Duke is so totally out of control, it's amazing... he jumps on people and knocks them down, he bites people if they try to feed him something by hand, and he barks incessantly. Not just bored barking, but loud, booming, constant frantic-sounding barking. They've sent him to doggie 'boot camp' but it didn't help much. I'd totally blame Dad, but Duchess is not like that at all so I think it's at least partially due to temperament. The sucky think is, Dad seems to hate this dog. He totally lost his temper with Duke several times, and usually proceeded to hit him repeatedly with his baseball cap, turning red-faced and cursing angrily. Elaine said she has seen him hit the dog with his hand repeatedly as well- hit him hard. I spent most of the time I was with them trying to talk them into getting rid of Duke; certainly there is some family that would be happy to have a purebred Lab and would spend the time to mellow him out or whatever, but Dad seems to think that the dogs provide home security, and stubbornly refuses.

We stopped outside of Sonoma to walk the dogs. After extricating myself from the cat car, I got out in time to help walk Duchess. Dad was shoving Duke back in, who was barking non-stop and Dad was once again going ballistic. I ignored it, walked Duchess (she dragged me is more like it; those people have no right owning such big dogs that they didn't bother to train at all). Anyway, seeing Dad so angry used to terrify me; but when we got back on the road, I was just irritated. He's such an AA freak; whatever happened to the Serenity Prayer? Why on Earth is he getting so pissed off out of all proportion to what's going on? Minor setbacks, leaving a little late (not that we had to be there by any specific time, as long as we were there by 8am the next morning), etc... I was just frustrated. My dear husband is the same way sometimes (armchair Freudians, have a field day), and I just want to yell "get over it! If you can't do anything about it, or it's minor (doesn't cost substantial money, time, serenity), then just let it go already! (or at least get angry in proportion to what's wrong)" But I seldom do, because my assessment of whether it's worth getting upset over is not going to be the same as someone elses'.

But I digress; the point was that I overcame a major personal hurdle with Dad- he's lost a lot of his capacity to frighten me.

The happy ending is this- when they took the dogs to be boarded with the vet while the move-in occurred, Duke growled at the vet. This started a discussion about his behavior, and they are going to put him on Prozac in hopes of mellowing him out. I don't think this is the best solution, and I'd suggest the same for Dad if I didn't already know that he's on Wellbutrin, but it's an improvement at least.