Last night I dreamed that Fef was visiting me, but I had to hide her from my parents. I remember enjoying talking with her, but I don't remember anything we talked about. The house was one that I've never seen before, and it turned out that my parents put cameras in every hallway that I couldn't see because they were so small. She wound up getting caught and then dream morphed into another one that I don't remember.

Visiting Family

We visited some family members today. It was an hour and a half drive to get there, and they had just purchased the house and we had never seen it before so we had a bit of trouble finding it. Google Maps took us down a parallel road, then when we finally found the right one ourselves, their driveway was a five-foot wide unpaved path next to a treeline that went behind two other houses. You couldn't actually see it from the street. Also, it turned out to be in a very poor area with basically nothing of interest nearby.

Inside, the house was very sparse. There was very little in the way of furniture or decorations and it just felt empty overall, in spite of everyone standing around in it. There was basically one big, L-shaped room with the kitchen on one end and the family room on the other. The open plan was something that I'd never really experienced before and was kind of off-putting. Apparently it's what a lot of people are doing these days. Also, the staircase was way too close to the doorway and I later found out that my cousins had designed the floor plan themselves. It really showed.

Before we got into the house, my mom banned me from using my phone or my ds, so as I predicted to her when she told me this, I wound up just sitting there not doing much for hours. Some of my family members tried to talk to me at first, but they didn't know what to talk about and just wound up asking me about my job, then getting disinterested immediately afterwards. I hate when people do this. Why don't they ask about anything else? Maybe I don't want to talk about my job! Ask about my hobbies, or what movies I've seen recently, or anything interesting at all!

There wound up being six little children there, and one teenager. I guess all my relatives are deciding at the same time to start making babies, and of course they're already complaining about their inability to travel, and money is obviously very tight. Callie, their dog and Phoebe's sister and Tori's daughter, didn't look that good. They keep shaving her coat to keep down the hair in the house, so she's not nice to touch. They obviously don't bathe her, even though they say they do. That poor dog was going out of her mind with happiness to have people in the house paying attention to her, so they obviously don't give her enough attention normally. And to top it all off, she was very frail, like a gust of wind could blow her over. She's clearly not getting enough food. Poor thing. My mom keeps offering to take her in. We'll see if that ever goes anywhere.

We showed up an hour late, wound up waiting on more family for over an hour, and when we finally got to eat, there wasn't a whole lot of food. Mostly it was just some bbq chicken nuggets. My mom of course talked their ears off and we didn't leave until after the family members that had arrived late had already left. Just like that my entire day was basically gone. In the end though, I am way more grateful for what I've got at home. I've been given this reminder before, basically whenever I went to Dave's house, but I guess I needed it again.

Home

After we had gotten home and eaten dinner, my dad suggested to me that we continue trying to watch some of the zombie shows. It has been a while and I've been feeling a bit guilty about that for a while, plus I do want to watch them, so I agreed even though it would eat into what was left of my free time for the weekend.

Because I got approved to work remotely on the Wednesday before carnival at CMU, I added one night to my reservation, for the Tuesday before. That way I can get in late, get a good night's sleep, then work in my hotel room for the day. That way I'll be able to experience that night with my friends rather than being dead tired from lack of sleep and having to drive up that morning. Plus, it will give me one more night with Fef! And that's gonna be great! I'm so looking forward to it.