Hey now, hey now, don't dream it's over

You know what? Dumb idea. V and I got extremely bored just scrolling around Google maps and reading off the list of cities we'd probably have to stop in. A generous estimate has the total trip time at four months, and at least two of those months would involve going around the edge of Maine or dodging back and forth with the Mexican border (which, surprise, has no road alongside the US edge for much of it ... wonder why) or "exploring" a non-existent North Dakota. The trip starts out awesome for the first month, with practically a new great city to see every day (except for a dull patch in North Carolina, but it's probably pretty!). Then, some time after Boston, America gives up on border towns, and it's a long drought to Cleveland and Detroit, then an even longer drought to Seattle. 

As nerdy dreams go, I still think I could do it, particularly if I had the writing assignment to focus my attention. And obviously, the nature of an adventure like this is opening yourself up to the unknowns, allowing wild things to happen in unexpected places. But I would definitely lose V somewhere in Michigan's mitten, and I like her more than I like stunt journalism. 

What I liked the most about the trip was its inflexible rules that would yank us into underexplored territories. Maybe someday, with a different angle, we'll pull a similar but smaller stunt along a coast somewhere. Or maybe we'll just incorporate a "hug the border" rule into some of our more leisurely road trips. Or maybe we'll just drop everything and drive on a scattershot bouncer across the country, never looking more than one day ahead. We'd just get out an old pencil-and-compass, open the calipers to a day's drive, draw a new circle each morning, and drop a finger on where we'd go next. Eventually, we'd see everything, but not too much of it at once.

We could also do the exact same thing, but in England. Or New Zealand. Or Italy.

At any rate, if you were rolling your eyes at the unlikeliness of yesterday's proposal, you can rub them and see straight again. We're dumb, but we're not stupid, or something like that.

*

I have been stone cold paralyzed by laundry this week. It has needed doing for at least seven days, and my reserve supplies of undergarmentry doth run low. For whatever reason, I can't seem to motivate in the evenings, the main obstacle being the roll of quarters necessary to feed the laundry beasts in our complex. 

It's always the small passport that prevents me from accomplishing things. I am atrocious at sending mail because I'm always lacking stamps, and then I'm lacking access to a mailbox, and then I'm flummoxed by postal weights, and then I don't pack something right, and then I'm that guy at the post office asking endless inane questions and needing way too much hand holding from the patient person behind the counter. And even after all that, 15% of my packages are returned for one reason or another.

These things that most people consider to be "simple" parts of "life" have always tripped me up. I can devour and analyze and write essays on the complete works of Vladimir Nabokov, but I can't understand a two-page health insurance statement. I can write fairly decent limericks on command at a bar for almost any random prompt, but I'm absolutely frozen when it comes time to write a birthday card greeting. I build websites for a living, but I suck at setting up my e-mail. I write for a living, but I suck at sending e-mail. My mom used to call this my "absent-minded" professor side, but as it becomes more and more apparent in my adulthood that I am not, after all, destined for fame-by-genius — and, as I come to admit that my inabilities in this area have nothing to do with preoccupation, just regular old lazy indifference — perhaps it is time to amend that personality trait to "alcoholic teaching assistant" and throw in the towel. If I have a reputation for being unreliable, it's because I can't muster up the strength to get a roll of quarters. 

Oh, first-world problems.