Monday, March 20th 2023

I wake up, my wife seemingly already in the kitchen, judging by the sounds of dishes clashing around downstairs and echoing into our master room. My eight year old Daughter, Alexis went up to Charlotte with my mom, her grandma for a few weeks. My wife’s parents are out of town in Orlando down in Florida for the time being. Her schooling is all done online on her school iPad anyways so she won’t get behind or anything. Plus since spring break was last week for her anyways it’s not like she was going to get behind on her work anyways. She’s been gone for a few days since Saturday. So it’s just been me and Nicole these few days getting everything ready for our trip out to Big Bear in California, since we’ve been planning it for about a month now.  I lean over a little to touch the screen of my iPhone 12, it’s 8:07 in the morning. Our flight isn’t until 4pm.

I get up out of bed, feeling the chilliness of the room, walk a little bit and I see myself in the long mirror my wife has set up not too far from the closet. I almost don’t recognize myself for a second, realizing I’m not once the twenty something hotshot lawyer I once was. I’ve gained a bit of weight over the years in my stomach than most places on my body, especially in my thirties. Atlanta does have some good food spots, I will admit.  I imagine the Jet’s Pizza that me and Nicole had yesterday didn’t help, either. I’m pale (although due to the cold) and somewhat more hairier than I was back then as well too. My eyesight has been declining a little over these past few years as well. I wear glasses but I don’t wear them as much as I should, I don’t really “need them need them” but it does help when I’m driving at night or trying to read something really far away. I walk into the bathroom and freshen myself up, brush my teeth and everything. I walk back into the master bedroom and put on a white t-shirt, and just walk around with my plaid boxers on, out of the bedroom.

“You must not know ‘bout me you must not know ‘bout me” Nicole sings the lyric of a Beyoncé song as she opens up the cabinet, bringing out a box of Bisquick, as I walk down the steps and into the kitchen. She’s in her bra, her golden brown skin glistening in the morning sun, those toned tanned legs catching my eye, and those thick thighs and her nice ass with some , her natural frizzy brown hair, I love the stretchmarks on her thighs and a little bit on her lower tummy as well I notice too. 

We met in Baltimore about fourteen years ago exactly, March of 2009. We met at a coffee shop, Dunkin Donuts to be exact. Something I kinda got hooked on when visiting my ex-girlfriend I was waiting in the drive thru line picking up some Munchkins and a macchiato for breakfast before heading into the law firm and I pulled out into the street afterwards and I noticed some cute looking frizzy haired black chick in a parka hoodie with a broke down dark green 1995 Chevy Lumina in a nearby Royal Farms parking lot, seemingly having some car trouble. I pulled over and I had some jumper cables in the trunk of the ruby red 2008 M3 BMW convertible that I was leasing at that time that I had only had for a few weeks, a pretty hefty sized monthly payment from a local BMW dealership. Seeing this car as a new stage in my life, the 1996 Altima that I was driving to School in L.A. I also drove a year after graduation before moving back up to Baltimore and selling it on Craigslist to a elderly Asian gentleman who was in the market for a new car since his car had gotten stolen a few weeks prior. Police not being much help he said.  I now look back I wish I would've spent my money on something less flashy and really new to drive and not act like I was hot shit and pretty much rushed through Law school because he thought he was “so smart” since I just started making huge amounts of money for what I think of myself now as a then twenty three year old kid. 

I remember pulling into the parking lot, my MGMT CD on full blast that I had gotten from a local Best Buy the same day I bought the car, although my convertible top was up since this was pretty early March and spring didn’t really hit Baltimore quite yet.

I pulled up next to her car, my car’s heat was on full blast. And I remember from what she told me a few months later, she thought I was just some “rich white boy” trying to give her shit her at first, judging by my new at the time BMW convertible and the way I was dressed, my combed gel slicked hair and my suit and dress pants. I ask her if she needed help, and she looked at me pretty hesitant at first, since after all, I am some stranger off the street at this point and she didn’t respond. I tell her that I’ve got some jumper cables in my trunk given to me from the dealership, and she says it’s something else. Something about the transmission, and she’s already got a tow truck on the way, mumbling something about the minutes left on her phone. I offer if she wants a few of the Glazed Munchkins out of the fifteen count I have, and that it’s pretty chilly outside and if she doesn’t mind sitting in my car to wait for the Tow Truck, I’ve got heated seats and hot air on full blast and everything. 

My firm didn’t mind me being late to work, especially if it’s a good cause like this. She seems to trust me and I lean over and open the door for her, I smell her perfume as soon as we enter, and I notice the song “Electric Feel” by MGMT starts up in the track listing after ”The Youth”, and looking back at it it’s almost like the song was signaling something about her towards me. We talk a bit, her saying thanks for this offer and I tell her it was no problem. She works as an entry level marketing analyst for a local agency and she’s about 5 months younger than me, she went to college at Kennesaw State University in Atlanta where she’s from. Moving up here for a job opportunity provided to her after college. We share the Munchkins and talk a bit more and eat, seemingly really hitting it off at first. I asked if she’s seeing anyone and it went silent for a bit, and then she smiled and she knew what I was thinking and we exchanged numbers, and it all started there.  We’ve been married for ten years this year in July.

“I see someone’s in a good mood this morning, you making pancakes?” I say, caressing her a little bit around her upper tummy, feeling the warmth on it compared to my kinda cold hand. I smell the olive oil she put on in her hair, arousing me a little. 

“I mean, yeah. I’ll cook if you do the dishes afterwards, a nice lil’ breakfast before we head out to Cali. Pancakes, scrambled eggs, maybe some bacon if you want” She says, moving a little out of my caress and going towards our Refrigerator, reaching towards the silver long handle for the cooling, it’s a little dirty and sticky from our daughter’s grubby hands always touching it to grab a Capri Sun or a Go-Gurt. 

“Come on babe, no one says Cali. You'll obviously make yourself look like a tourist if you say that out there” I say, as Nicole opens up the refrigerator and pulls out a gallon of Kroger brand whole milk and a carton of eggs, the styrofoam packaging of the Eggs squeaking as she moves it. I walk over to the cabinets and bring out the electric griddle we have and it’s plug in.

“Spending four years out there back well over a decade ago doesn’t make you a native either” Nicole says, as she sets the ingredients down, and reaches up to a top cabinet, and I check out her ass as she does this, those panties she bought from Victoria’s Secret last month really do show her features off, nice and round, a little firm looking as well too, she’s a bit of a gym girl. 

As soon as she stops reaching back down, I notice she gives me this look, a little flirty, and a little bit that says, “typical man, tisk tisk tisk”.

“Hey, white guys like ass too y’know” I say, with a bit of a smile and she cackles a little at this

“Yeah, about ten years into our marriage I’m definitely well aware of this” she says, as she puts down the mixing bowl and slides open the drawer for the whisk.

“I mean, I’m the only white guy you’ve ever dated, unless you wanna count that high school fling with that Slim Shady wannabe you were dating” I say, as I start to hook up the electric griddle to the plug in outlet near the stove.

“Oh my God you still remember that? I told you that years ago” She says surprised and also giggling a bit, as she adds in and mixes the ingredients. 

“Yeah, I do” I say, as I set the heat to preheat on the griddle.

It goes quiet between us for a bit, as we focus more on cooking than anything else.I think about my dad a little bit while doing this, remember back when I was a kid back in Baltimore and a little bit during my teen years in Charlotte he’d sometimes cook breakfast if he was off that weekend or during a school break like Christmas or Summer something like that. Pancakes, French Toast, Eggs,Sausage Links, the whole shabang really. He was a bit of a cook if he wasn’t super busy with cases and spending time at the firm, more of a cook than mom I’d say. Dad passed away in April of 2021 due to COVID-19 complications, something about his chest after being in the hospital sick with it for about 5 months. It still hurts me to think about it since I’m still grieving his death in a way, losing a parent is something I feel like no-one is really prepared for until the day it happens. I still have my mom, she had COVID catching it from my dad as well but she recovered much quicker and was nowhere near as severe as how dad got it. I start to tear up a bit but I distract myself by thinking about my daughter, and how I’m trying to be a better and more involved parent to her as my parents weren’t as much to me growing up to some extent. 

Our food is ready, Pancakes golden brown as you would see at IHOP or Denny’s or whatever, Bacon and scrambled eggs. We get our plates and get our food and utensils out, and start to eat at the table in the little dining room near the kitchen.

The pancakes are a little runny and raw in the middle, Nicole and I both notice this and smile when we make eye contact as soon as we both take our first bite into our pancakes, us both having about four decent sized ones. 

“Well thank goodness for Aunt Jemima” I say, reaching towards the syrup bottle to the side of Nicole, which she picks up and places in my hand as I reach out for it.

“You mean (Nicole swallows the chewed up bite of pancake she had in her mouth) Pearl Milling Company” she says, with a bit of a cheeky smile.

“Yeah but, it takes a little bit to get used to renaming something that had the same name for like, decades. Besides you know what I meant” I say, taking the syrup bottle and adding onto some of the syrup we’ve already poured onto my pancakes.

It’s quiet again as we eat, nothing really else going on besides the sound of our chewing and swallowing and the clinking of utensils against the plates. 

“The reason why I’m going on this two week trip is to really find out what I wanna do with my life, I’ve been talking about a change of careers since Thanksgiving of last year when we went up to Charlotte to visit my mom and thinking about how the years have gone and how my dad was a total workaholic throughout my life. I really only became a lawyer since it was kinda always the thing to do with how dad would say, I’ve been groomed into it. Now that, y’know, forty isn’t too far away now and I'm turning 37 in May. Heh, that kinda rhymed. But on a serious note I do feel like I wanna see what else is out there, I’m thinking about going into teaching maybe. High School, maybe Middle School I don’t really know yet. I think I’d be a good teacher. Hell I might even go back to school and become a professor, but I’m just throwing stuff at the wall right now. But this Lawyer thing isn’t really for me anymore, I feel. I’m burnt the fuck out on it.” I say, as soon as I finish up my last bite of egg. My plate being syrupy and covered in egg and little soggy bites of pancake crumbs.

“Yeah I get what you mean. I understand, whatever you wanna do babe, I’m all for it. Whatever you feel like the right path is for you” Nicole says, as she gets up to grab something out of the fridge.

She grabs one of our daughter’s Fruit Punch Capri-Suns out of the refrigerator, and drinks it for herself. I was about to say something about it, but I figure what the hell and asked her to give me one too, and she tosses it to me, landing on my syrupy plate, covering the backside of it with syrup. I just get up and grab a paper towel off the counter on the paper towel holder, to wipe off the syrup off of the container. Both of us grown adults drinking Capri-Suns to wash down our breakfasts, but whatever. The Capri-Sun not tasting as sweet anyways due to the syrup we just had on our pancakes.

After breakfast Nicole goes back up stairs to lie down a bit, saying she feels a bit sleepy and wants to take a morning nap to let her food digest. I don’t really say anything about that. I get started loading the dishwasher, putting our last Cascade pod in. Reminding me that we should probably get more when we get back from our trip. 

I remember I left my phone up the stairs, and I think about going to get it. But I remember nah, I don’t feel like going back up stairs.

I walk into the living room, our big gray couch and a few loveseats scattered about. The flat screen 4k TV showing my reflection, another reminder that I don’t look exactly how I think I look, noticing my nipples poking a little bit through my white t-shirt. I look into our backyard through the window near the TV stand, the sun shining bright despite being really chilly outside. The trees you can see in the background past my backyard, the East Cobb suburb we’ve lived in ever since we bought the house out here in 2015 while my wife was pregnant. Atlanta in general outside of the city is pretty forest-like. Reminding me of Charlotte in that way with all the tall trees and shrubbery.  Finally moving out of our apartment we had together for a few years in downtown Atlanta that felt like it was costing an arm and a leg a month for not that much space it felt, I honestly didn’t care much for urban living. I’ve had a few tastes of it when I used to visit my Ex-girlfriend back in college when she went to college in New York. I wonder whatever happened to Molly, anyways. It’s almost like she dropped off the face of the earth sometime in the fall of 2009 if I had to pinpoint it, nearly fourteen years ago. Even Jon saying something about she became uncontactable and her phone number always went to, “this number has disconnected” when he first tried calling her earlier the next year. Jon eventually went to her parents at some point, and they weren’t much help. Saying something about how it’s none of our business, not really giving us an answer.

I sit down on the edge of the loveseat, and chill for a minute or two in the still and calm silence of the house, our kid away with her Grandma, it’s about 9:45am I’d guess judging by the clock in the kitchen saying 9:37 a few minutes ago when I passed by it a little earlier. Only the sound of some slight wind ruffling outside and the branches on trees swaying, with chirping from birds as well. The only sound is my stomach growling a little, processing the food I just ate.

I look directly at our TV screen, not much there under it besides a Roku box. We cut the cord a few years ago in 2019. I haven’t really been a big TV watcher anyways, not since I feel before marriage and before I really got into my career, big case after big case and all the time committed to it. Nicole is more of a TV gal, always binge watching something in her free time whenever she’s not dedicating time to a project at the ad agency she works at . She’s been re-watching The Wire lately with HBO Max, another one of those shows that’s actually pretty good once you understand the tone they’re going for, but I was blindsided by The Sopranos around the time The Wire was on TV, despite both shows airing on the same network. Sometimes I’ll watch TV with her if I’m in the mood for it or if I’ve got the time. Whenever I do have freetime, I usually nap if I’m that tired from work. Or read, something I’ve been trying to get more in the habit of. Something I started doing during the Covid-19 lockdowns a few years ago. I’ve started with self help books, like Tony Robbins and Mark Manson. The type of stuff I’d remember my day would read in his spare time if he was at home and relaxing, something I noticed more in my teen years and early twenties. He was big into books. I’ve also read a few of Jack Cooper’s books, that shrunken guy that was really popular in the late 2000s and early 2010s. He’s a pretty popular self help guru as well with his books, although his fame has definitely died down over the years. Being called a “One Inch Tony Robbins” by many people thinking of him as some type of gimmick.  Someone I met in college a few years before his “incident” he likes to call in interviews and in his books. My wife thinks some of these self help guys are scams and con men, but I just do it for the advice and nothing else.

I sit for a bit and then I decide it’s time to go upstairs and check out what’s going on today in the world, via my iPhone. I go upstairs and retrieve my phone, quietly walking to my room to retrieve my phone, passing a sleeping Nicole, she snores a little. I head back downstairs and into the living room, I sit back on the couch, and open my phone, using facial recognition. It’s about 9:57 now. I open Instagram, and then I close it. Realizing that I don’t exactly feel like going on it today. 

For about an hour I just lounge, just sitting and enjoying the silence. Just zoning out. And I feel like hopping on the internet, and then I get up and go back upstairs to retrieve my Macbook and see what’s going on in the lovely world of the internet. I have a Reddit account that I’ll occasionally hop on and use that I’ve had for about nine years now, mostly for musical discussions and following subreddits of bands I enjoy or trying to keep up with the current indie-Alt-rock scene. Music is a hobby that I’ve never grown out of throughout the years, I’ve always kept up with the current alternative rock music scene. I’m also discovering more bands as well and getting more into the ones I always knew about since being in the scene but their music never really captured me until recently, like Teenage Fanclub and Guided by Voices.  More on the Power Pop side, though. 

I’m on my laptop for about an hour, just scrolling through Reddit and reading posts, I go to Youtube for a bit as well. I still use the same account that I made way back in 2006 when I was in my college Dorm in UCLA, when the site started to pop off. It’s changed so much since then, but the internet as a whole has over time. I only have one video, which is pretty much a pretty blurry quality 2 minute video from 2007 that I took on my flip phone from that I uploaded that very same year when I went to a Silversun Pickups concert, it only has about 12k views on it. Not very many comments, besides a few more recent comments saying that they were at that concert. I’m subscribed to a few accounts, mostly music wise. Like Todd in The Shadows or The Punk Rock MBA, and a few others like Funny or Die and Cracked that I’ve been subscribed to for awhile and The Whitest Kids You Know clips on the comedy side. A show I used to catch when I was in college and me and my roommates would crack up at. Not being reminded of it until the death of Trevor Moore a few years ago. My Wife enjoys more of the food side of things like Daym Drops or those fast food comparisons between countries that Insider does. Sometimes I’ll watch First We Feast or Binging with Babish, if I’m in the mood. I do most of my Youtube watching on my TV in the bedroom, than on my computer.  I pretty much spend the next few hours watching Youtube, generally just catching up with other channels I haven’t watched in a bit like Dead Meat and The Nostalgia Critic. Although the last one I feel like isn’t as funny and entertaining as it used to be, maybe I'm just getting older. Also doing that and going back and forth between Reddit, I think about using Instagram on my laptop, but I realize it’s probably time for me to take a break from social media anyways.

Eventually the time comes, and it’s about 11:00 am that I need to get ready for our flight. I shut down the laptop and bring it with me upstairs, I go and wake Nicole up and we start to get ready. We mostly got everything packed up last night, so all we really need to do is dress ourselves.

This takes about 30 minutes in total, I’m more worried about the traffic to the airport than missing our flight. Atlanta traffic can get pretty brutal anyways.

We go down stairs, I’m dressed in a light blue v-neck long sleeve shirt and some jeans with just a regular pair of gray Nikes on. My wife wearing a green Adidas tracksuit jacket and some black dress pants and some red New Balances. I open the garage door, a gust of cold wind coming into it as I open it. I wonder, should we take my 2020 Tesla Model 3, or my Nicole’s 2018 Toyota Rav4. I figure the RAV4, since I wanna really conserve the miles on my Tesla.  Nicole doesn’t really mind driving me driving her car. I bought the Tesla during the height of the pandemic a few years ago, realizing that these Electric cars are probably going to be the future for real this time and these Teslas do look kinda appealing. Getting rid of the 2014 Lexus GS that I had bought before this one, selling it via Facebook Marketplace to some construction worker that wanted to give his wife a present for their 25th anniversary. 

I tell her that I wanna take her car and she has no issue with it, we load our bags in the backseat and we start the SUV off, and pull out.

“Y’know, have you ever been west of the Mississippi, I know you said you’ve never been out to California?” I ask Nicole, as I drive through the neighborhood and onto the mainstreet .The heat is on a little bit, but not on full blast. 

“I went to Las Vegas when I was like, twelve over summer vacation. I pretty much just watched TV in the hotel room most of the time, I couldn’t really do anything with my parents since they were always in the casinos, the workers didn’t allow me on the floor. I didn’t really get to see a lot of the sites, just passing through the Vegas strip. Pretty boring vacation for me” She says, with a little bit of a sigh.

“Oh okay then. Y’know I never got a chance to go to Vegas when I was going to UCLA. Most of my traveling was to San Diego if I did go out of town and my ex was was visiting. I went to Orange County a few times but that’s not really going out of town though, Anaheim and Fullerton and Irvine and Huntington Beach. I mostly went out to Orange County for it’s beaches than anything else. I saw a lot of Southern California and the New Jersey/New York Metro area when I was dating her, my college years in the mid to late two thousands. I almost had a chance to go up to San Francisco my Sophomore year of college, one of my roommate’s friends, Tommy. He was this “Doctor House” wannabe since he was really into that show at that time. It was pretty big then, he was in Medical school. Dude was an absolute asshole to deal with and I made a point to always just leave and go do something out to avoid dealing with him. He backed out of the trip at the last minute due to some family emergency involving his grandma or some shit back in Indiana or whatever, had to fly back home for it. I got offered his place by my Dorm roommate for his flight ticket and hotel and everything, but I said no due to the fact I didn’t feel like doing this all last minute” I say, as we go more towards Marietta going through lights and passing by shops and gas stations and fast food places and strip malls, in order to get onto 285 and make to Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.

 I feel like no matter where you go, suburbs seem to look the same. Just change out the regional stores and fast food places and gas station chains. Something I remember realizing during my trips in Long Island and North Jersey, comparing it to Los Angeles and San Diego. 

“Do you wish you would of went?” Nicole says, starting to mess with the radio a bit, turning it off mute. Playing “Killing me Softly with His Song” by The Fugees on 102.9, the big Old School R&B station in Atlanta. She usually listens to the radio if she’s going to work, on an off day she’ll use her Spotify via bluetooth for her car, at least that's what she tells me. I rarely ever listen to radio, I’ve been using Spotify since 2014 and not much else since.

“Eh, it will always be there, I imagine.I might plan a trip out there next summer for the family if it’s calling me that much.  Northern California is pretty much more on the forest side it seems with the huge ass trees and forestry, something I’ve seen pretty much all my life, living in Baltimore and Charlotte. And living down here in Georgia too. Southern California with the beaches and palm trees, and that lack of humidity. Man I miss those days, it’ll be the first time in nearly fifteen years that I’ll be back out there again” I say, as I stop at a stop light.

It’s quiet between us for a few minutes, as I navigate the city streets to make it onto the ramp for the highway. Living in L.A. really helped with my big city driving experience, really learning how to drive aggressively there and how to deal with large amounts of traffic since I didn’t have a car in Charlotte, borrowing my brother’s whenever I needed to. And even then I mostly stayed in our little suburb, never driving out into the city proper. 

I let her play her music, not really fidgeting with the radio. The station now playing, “Too Close” by Next. Reminding me of that one Vine meme about ten years ago, back when that was a thing. Vine and the Harlem Shake and Gangnam Style, crazy to think all these crazes were about ten years ago. That’s probably around the last time I really started paying attention to these types of crazes and trends. I’ll poke around a little bit with the Tik-Toks you see uploaded on Instagram, but that’s about it. My wife is a bigger fan of that stuff than I am and keeps up with it more. She thinks my music taste is, “pretty white” but lovingly poking fun at it. She does like a few rock bands like Rage Against the Machine and The Smashing Pumpkins, the last band I introduced her too, although she knew a few of their big radio hits like 1979 and Bullet with Butterfly Wings. RATM was mostly through an ex-boyfriend of hers in college, he being more into that stuff, playing in a System of a Down cover band. The type of stuff that I remember my younger brother was listening to in his teen years. 

We eventually make it to the airport through the traffic and all the guys in newer looking 5.0 Mustangs and Dodge Challengers and Chargers blasting their trap rap through their bass boosted speakers racing down 285 switching from lane to lane trying to avoid traffic, treating it like they’re playing real life Need for Speed. I swear Atlanta has a street racing problem, especially these days.  And it’s pretty hectic as it always is at these huge airports, especially at Atlanta’s. 

We do the parking stuff and get our bags out and go through TSA and all that bullshit, and then we head into the airport, and we deal with the headache of waiting for our flight, and it’s a pretty boring few hours until the flight. I make conversation with a twenty something year old guy from England in a “Ash” t-shirt, a band I forgot existed, seeing the shirt reminding me of Alex and all those British bands that he would share with me over AIM all those years ago that weren’t as popular in the states, Ash being one of the bands Alex introduced me to. I haven’t talked to Alex at all this year yet, but we still keep contact via Instagram. My wife was seemingly talking to an airport worker about something while doing this.

Eventually four o’clock rolls around and after a 30 minute delay we eventually board our flight.I haven’t flown since pre–pandemic, and that was on a family vacation with our daughter to New York in the summer of 2019. My wife has only flown a few times in her life. Only twice, before she met me. Going to Las Vegas as a kid and to Philadelphia on a high school trip with her school. Her parents didn’t really take vacations much, she was comfortably middle class growing up but her parents weren’t much seeing anything outside of Florida and Georgia, let alone much of Atlanta anyways. She always made the drive from Atlanta to Baltimore when coming back home when she was living up there before she met me and that’s when we started flying regularly, I’d pay for her tickets. Ironically making Charlotte her half way point, usually stopping there for the night and continuing the next day all the way down to Atlanta.  She’s got a bit of a fear of flying still but she says she’s better than she used to be, due to heights and the like.

The flight itself is pretty boring and anti-climatic, I notice a decent amount of Germans on our plane. Since Atlanta has a huge German population due to all the big German companies like Mercedes Benz and Porsche and Voltswagen, all these German car companies that've been setting up shop these last few years. Hearing all this German on the plane reminds me of when I went to Europe the summer after my high school graduation, and holy shit. It’s been almost nineteen years since all the events of that trip went down, it’s technically older than I was when I went through all that shit. Getting shrunk and everything, something I’ve pretty much kept a secret among all my friends and family and even my wife doesn’t know that I went through the same thing Jack Cooper did, only the people who knew about the situation during the time did.

As we take off it feels kinda weird going up into the air, seeing the city below us get smaller and smaller and having a birds eye view of Atlanta as well, all the traffic on 285 and I-75 seemingly like filled up with cars and semis and pickups in all the spaghetti junctions . My wife sitting a seat over, the middle seat between us is empty, we’re in Economy class on Delta. But I made sure we’ll be flying business class on the flight back, a promise I made with my wife, since I tried to minimize costs somewhere during this trip.

As we start to get into cruising altitude I start to check out the infotainment system, I check out the news channel. Which is focusing more on that Trump Indictment stuff since he’s been out of office, after the political world had changed much since the 2016 election I’m kinda burnt out of politics in general, I know I probably should care more about it but after having it pretty much shoved in my face for about four years straight whenever I turned on CNN or ABC or NBC Nightly News or whatever .Compared to how it was in the past I honestly find more bliss in ignorance. My wife focuses on it more and is more vocal about it than I am, but I’m honestly completely tired of hearing about Trump or Biden or whoever the news wants to focus on at the moment. 

I check out the movie side of things, and I figure that this flight is a good chance to catch up on movies that I’ve wanted to see.I notice that Jack Cooper biography movie, “One Inch” is available to watch, something that came about about ten years ago that was a huge part of his craze. Reminding me of everything I went through in England and Germany all those years ago when I was eighteen.I wonder if they have “The Whale” on here, which they seemingly didn’t. A movie I do wanna go and check out at some point with all the Oscar Buzz around it with Brendan Fraser’s comeback, I settle for No Country For Old Men. A movie I think I saw on HBO a good while ago when I was living briefly in Charlotte on HBO when I had first moved back there after college. 

The flight goes by quicker than expected, and I notice Nicole seems more relaxed than usual on this flight, she’s also seemingly watching something on her Screen. Once the movie ends I pretty much just nod off, I notice that we’re flying over Oklahoma, as the pilot says over the intercom, the skyline of Oklahoma City seemingly in the distance with the interstate below us. And then I start to nod off again.  I went there in 2000 on a road trip, not much to really do or see that I can really remember, besides the memorial for the bombing a few years prior. 

I wake up, with the jolt of the plane landing at LAX. I hear the pilot over the intercom saying that the local time is 5:12pm. Time changes can be kinda weird, huh. I look out my window, and onto the tarmac and the background, the Los Angeles skyline although changed a bit here and there and the mountains in the background, something that I haven’t seen in year fills me with a longing feeling for my college years. I remember flying into Los Angeles when I first came out here with my parents and my younger brother Nate, helping me get settled into my dorm and everything way back in the fall of 2004. 

My dad took me to the used car dealership not too far from the airport to go look at a car, a 1996 Nissan Altima that I made a lot of memories in while being away for college here. I went to Los Angeles one time as a kid in the summer of 2000 before I moved out here for college, July of 2000  to be exact. Not too long after we moved to North Carolina, Dad rented a brand new Tahoe for a few weeks and took us across America, starting in Charlotte and going all the way to the west coast. Seeing Memphis and Nashville and Albuquerque and Flagstaff and Amarillo along the way.  His own “National Lampoon’s Vacation” he called it jokingly during the trip. Although that time was different since I was on my own and actually living in the city and was an adult. Although looking back I don’t think I was as mature as I think I was, as an 18 year old. 

We get off the plane with our carry ons and into LAX, and it’s pretty much a repeat of what we saw in Atlanta, all the busy people rushing from here to there and the lines. It takes about an hour to get through it all and get set up with a rental car, taking a shuttle to the Hertz lot. LAX has changed a bit, more technology in it and everything. A few more new shops here or there and with some renovations going on. I notice it's a little bit warmer than in Atlanta in LA, but that makes sense obviously. We go to Hertz and get our car. I usually get a Lexus or something like more on the luxury side whenever I’m out of town and I’m renting a car since I can afford. But I figure this go around it’s best to save money somewhere as well too and get a Toyota Corolla. Not like we need a SUV anyways for offroading or something, us pretty much staying at the resort. 

I pull out of the Hertz Parking lot in our rental car, with my infotainment screen set on Google Maps via my phone, showing me directions to our Holiday Inn in West LA, I had a hard time convincing Nicole to stay here just for one night, but she eventually came around since again, it’s just for one night. 

“What do you think so far babe?” I say, as I drive down South Sepulveda Boulevard to head onto the 405 , heading towards West LA, not too far from Santa Monica.

“Seems busy. Palm Trees are cool, a little bit of smog in the air. I mean I haven’t seen much yet, feels much warmer this time of year it seems compared to Atlanta” She says, her arms folded in a relaxed way on her chest.

“Yeah, I spent four years out here. More expensive and more homeless encampments everybody says when I talk to coworkers who’ve been out here recently, although L.A. has always kinda been more on the expensive side compared to the rest of the county” I say.

It’s pretty much quiet between us the entire drive to the hotel, besides the noise of the pop station that the last person before us put on playing “About Damn Time” by Lizzo before going to “Heat Waves” by Glass Animals judging by the name on the infotainment screen, the songs playing at a low volume. I remember L.A. was my first time encountering a ramp meter while driving when I came out here in 2004, a stop light near a highway entry. Something I bring up to Nicole when I get onto the 405, a Atlanta native since those are pretty much all over Atlanta. She finds it somewhat amusing. I noticed she’s not too impressed or awed about what she’s seeing, since she grew up in a big city like Atlanta so all this hustle and bustle and like 8 lanes of traffic and helicopters flying overhead is just another day to her. I mean Baltimore and D.C. are big cities too but not a world class big city like L.A and Atlanta like my wife’s from., so I had a bit more shock and awe whenever I came out here. 

We make it to the hotel, going inside the parking garage and getting our parking set up there.

We check in, having a room on the third floor, and it’s your basic hotel room. Modern looking flat screen TV with cable and streaming options, generic looking hotel beds with a chair near it and a desk.Obviously higher tier than a Best Western or a Super 8, but not exactly the Ritz Carlton or a Four Seasons. 

She calls my mom to talk to our daughter and we check in with her, I talk to my daughter a bit they’re doing Arts and Crafts and watching movies and the like.

The rest of this evening is pretty quiet and we just watch TV and my wife goes out and gets some In N Out Burger, something she’s been curious about trying, there being one up the road not too far from UCLA, where I went to school at. I frequented that specific In N Out probably at least twice a week when I lived on Campus. Something I was looking forward to the most coming back here. I was kinda hungry about the time she went out, I didn’t really eat on the plane. Two double doubles with grilled onions and fries light well animal style and a large vanilla shake I get, my wife being a little surprised by how much I order, but I gotta make up for lost time since I last had in not too long after graduation in 2008.  Everything tastes as great as I remember it being back then, although I get reminded why I never ordered the fries when I lived out here. Not really my cup of tea to say the least.  My wife also enjoys her meal, which is pretty much the same as mine, but just with one double double and no caramelized onions. She likes it too and says she wouldn’t mind eating it again tomorrow if she can, if there’s any near Big Bear. 

I shower and go to sleep early tonight since I’m pretty full from my meal, I hit the hay around 9pm. I usually don’t go asleep until 11:00pm, usually during a day I’m off from work, but I’m tired a little bit tired during this travel day, and besides, I gotta get up early and drive two hours out to Big Bear Lake for our resort. My wife not heading out to bed until an hour later. 

It kinda feels good to be back on the West Coast, but I get the feeling that things will be pretty different during this visit.