Aside from those hours of agony where I honestly thought it might be nice of God to send an unfinished bridge our way, the trip wasn't too bad. For one, I got to experience the rush of adrenaline one can only get from waiting in a crowded airport terminal for hours of public drunkenness!

Now, in all fairness, I personally am not a big traveler (having no money), and maybe I'm merely uneducated in the ways of the airplane... but I have got to say before it kills me that this was the most ghetto thing I have ever done in my life. Maybe it's because I'm not used to airports. Maybe it's because my dad thought it would be fun to book us a cheap flight on an airplane roughly the size of a school bus. Maybe it's because the terminal we waited in -- which was not actually attached to the airport; we had to drive through miles of parking lot in a shuttle before we reached it -- was literally an otherwise empty room with two hundred plastic chairs and a bar in the corner.

The plane itself wasn't terrible, though after waiting in the terminal I was really suspecting this was something similar to a cargo plane, where we would be sharing our seats with livestock. My dad looked comfortingly AHEM relieved to see that it was a real jet, too... and he is a frequent flyer. It was a little on the minuscule side, though, and I am not lying to you when I say it seated about as many as a bus, maybe less, depending on the model.

Then God (and I hope there isn't really a god, because he is bound to be pissed at me) decided to torment me a little, just for fun, by having two gorgeous college guys (brothers, I later found out) step onto our plane... and having one of them assigned the seat directly behind me... right next to my mother. Who, by a VERY HUMOROUS stroke of irony, had offered earlier to trade me her seat so that I could have a window. But no, I had to do the polite thing, and ended up listening the whole ride to my mom ask this kid about his hot private Christian college and the ratio of men to women there. I will tell you this : it is a good ratio from the men's point of view.

There was, in God's defense, one amazing moment where we actually got to speak human words to each other; he asked me, because of something my mother had said earlier, "Do you like Linkin Park?" So I said, "They're okay." Then he said, "Do you like Nickelback?" And I said -- get this -- "They're okay." Then... and this is the best part... I said, "I like harder bands like Limp Bizkit and System of a Down." To which he responded, (are you ready for this?) "Yeah... Limp Bizkit's pretty cool." The end.

THIS is why I should NEVER be allowed to talk to the opposite gender.

So aside from the beautiful night sky yadda yadda and the thrill of having my ears pop every time we changed altitudes yadda yadda and the comfort level of wearing actual pants instead of just my underwear yadda yadda yadda I was very happy to land on the ground in Greenville, SOUTH Carolina. (I swear, it's the truth this time.)

Psychotic grandma was going to pick us up. She'd had a long talk about it with my dad.

"I really don't want you to have to drive all the way down to the airport."

"Oh, come on, there aren't going to be any taxis."

"There have to be cabs, mom, and I don't want you driving down here."

"I'm picking you up, Scott."

So she sent my aunt Jo Ellen to pick us up.

We had a good time in the car, talking mostly about the cute college guy my mother had been sitting next to, and insulting him a lot, too. My dad still thinks that he's a redneck, solely because he was wearing a baseball cap on the plane. First, he was wearing it backwards, second, he looked good in it, and thirdly, because I know my dad occasionally reads this, HE'S NOT A FREAKING REDNECK. My mom was arguing in his defense, because she thinks the two of us should get together (and she is not wrong). So when my dad asked what he was majoring in, she refused to tell him for a long time. "Come on, Deb, just tell me."

"No, you'll laugh."

"Just tell me."

"No."

"Tell me!"

"....nursing."

And everyone in the car burst into manic laughter. We sounded like a bunch of escaped mental patients, which (honestly) is mainly what the Camp family is comprised of. We all need to be locked back up.

Got to psychotic grandma's, laughed at her because she hadn't changed out of her pajamas all day though inside I was applauding her, checked out the new house which was decorated by a gay couple and is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen, and sat around for hours telling stories of underage drinking and my hospital partner-in-crime and idol Jamie the plastic plant extinguisher.

We got there too late on Thursday to have time for visitors, and she went to a school football game on Friday, but on Saturday came over the infamous Courtney Blue, one of my cousins about whom I'm sure most of you know how I feel. If I've never mentioned her to you because it was too painful, let me give you a quick explanation : She is a prep. I am a dropout. She wears a padded bra to conceal her lack of chest. I wear long sleeves to conceal my excess of scar tissue. She puts glittery purple shadow on her eyes. I frame mine with two layers of black eyeliner. She spends her time with her five boyfriends. I spend my time writing morbid poetry about how to more efficiently wipe the male population off the face of the planet. We are day and night, night and day, only actually I'm more a little black room with artificial lighting because I don't really like going outside.

So come Saturday. We never ended up going to see the waterfalls, because aunt Joey let slip a horrible and repulsive secret : her four-year-old daughter had never been to Chuck-E-Cheese's. OH, THE HEARTBREAK! Well, naturally my parents had to take her, though Jo Ellen threatened to shoot them... repeatedly. This actually worked out well for me because it allowed me to sleep in longer. But when I woke up, Courtney was there, and my heart froze up.

You know that thing that sometimes happens with girls where they occasionally get a little bit competitive? That. Well here was this girl that the whole family adores because she's a pretty little social butterfly who loves her family (gag me) all fixed up and chatty, while I was hiding out in my room without any makeup and dressed in a Tinkerbell nightshirt and a pair sweatpants that have been worn so many times there are holes in the knees (and probably a gaping hole in the ass I haven't noticed yet).

After a few minutes of horror and pacing, my sister dropped in to ask if I wanted to go to the mall with her and Courtney. I stared at her. She took a look at my outfit. She left. As soon -- as soon -- as I heard the front door close and the car rev up, I was out of that door and in the bathroom straightening every inch of hair that had resisted my efforts to tame it, smearing on as much makeup as I could while still looking reasonably human, and pulling on some tight clothes to show off my REAL boobs. Of course, then I had about two hours to sit around by myself and wait for everyone to come home. There was only one logical thing to do.

Cook okonomiyaki in a kitchen I have never used before!

I have actually gotten quite good now, enough so that people don't have to pretend to enjoy eating it anymore, and since I've made it about a thousand times I've got the recipe memorized and can improvise with ingredients. I rummaged through cabinets and drawers, used excessively large butcher's knives to cut carrots simply because my family has thrown out all of our knives, spilled flour all over the stove and spent half an hour cleaning it up, and contemplating opening a Sam Adams for laughs, though I decided against it because quite frankly I would like to live to see sixteen.

When Jo Ellen came back with Michelle and Courtney in tow, I was happily cooking away with my okonomiyaki frying, my noodles boiling, and my sauce all pretty and set up on the table. My aunt and grandma were fairly impressed, mainly because my parents have been telling them that I’m an incompetent nutcase for the past few months. "Is she cooking that Chinese thing?"

"It's Japanese, she told me earlier."

"Oh... well, it looks good. Courtney never cooks." This was about the point where I stopped paying attention to what was happening to my food and just listened in to what they were saying with a very scary smile on my face.

"I know how to use the microwave!" Oh, those days long ago when I used to say that.

"I'm proud, sweetheart." Then she turned to psychotic grandma who I was loving very much at the moment. "I mean, I was making scrambled eggs for John on --"

"I can make scrambled eggs!" she protested. My aunt raised an eyebrow.

"Oh yeah? How do you make them then?"

"You crack the eggs, and then you.... [scrambling motion] No, wait! You crack them in a bowl and stir them...."

"And what do you do with the skillet?"

Little pause while I completely forget to flip the okonomiyaki but don't burn it too badly. "You... make it... hot...?"

SCORE FOR CHRISTINE! I ate that goddamned delicious okonomiyaki with pride.

I'm so glad to be back home, and to live in a world in which I am actually good at something. And also a world in which the car I will be driving and crashing soon still technically belongs to my grandmother who will have to pay the damage fees. Hit and run, dollbaby.

(p.s... is anyone else having a problem with blogger making everything ten times the size it should be? if you are and know how to fix it, help me out, because I'm an incompetent nutcase)