the habit of being

We woke up this morning in a colony of rollie-pollies. They were all over everything; it was creepily amusing. We slept in a densely wooded area next to a Big K-Mart (where we got water, bread, Pringles).

We�re finally out of the rain and cold of Oklahoma City, where we got much free Wendy�s food and took a shower in a truck stop and slept out in the storm wrapped only in our tarp. J fell asleep and got quite soaked; I stayed dry and didn�t sleep a wink. This was the tail end of a storm that flooded a town near Austin, among other damage. The next day it rained as well, and we were as cold as we�d ever been, standing out in the chill and the drizzle and wind trying to hail a ride to San Antonio, huddling in the less-wet of our two blankets. Near frozen, we resorted to calling the bus station, only to find out that it would be $75.

The day before, a young woman named Kristie had stopped in the road and offered us a place to sleep for the night in case we were unable to find a ride. We never took her up on it, due to my reluctance to use the telephone and J�s subsequent annoyance, which led to two horrible moods and the night out in the rain, which ended at 5 AM when we took refuge in a truckstop restaurant called the Iron Skillet. The warmth was well worth the price of the greasy food.

I called Kristie the next night, exhausted despite the numerous �complimentary� cups of French vanilla cappuchino and completely unwilling, after the bone-chilling sign-holding experience earlier that day, to sleep outdoors in the downpour. It was either Kristie or spending all our money on a hotel room, so I worked up the nerve to call, and she was glad to make good on her offer from the day before.

K showed up at the Pilot truckstop on the intersection of MLK and Reno, with her prim mother and meticulousl groomed miniature schnauzer in tow. Along with Kristie�s stories of Africa and China and the Peace Corps, we received warm taco stew and couches from the mother and a full demonstration of Bridgette (the dog)�s tricks. Kristie had just returned from a four-month stay in China, and mended my poor ripped jeans with a purple patch of Chinese silk while I enjoyed her mother�s shower massager and shaved my legs for the first time in a month. She gave us multigrain bars and industrial-strength trash bags for waterproofing and much appreciated books, including War and Peace.

I checked me email, to find a 14k treatise from my mother, only a couple days old. She apparently thinks J is holding me hostage, based on some experiences with my father. My grandmother is doing well at all. She doesn�t want to lose us both at once. Everything is incredibly incredible, and I fear for her sanity. She is trying her hardest not to be angry with me. I don�t think there is anything I can do for her, short of returning home. She begs me to call, but I can�t. I wonder if I shouldn�t email her to tell her how far off her assessment of my situation with J is, but I fear the truth would only scare her more. She can think him sick and manipulative much easier than she can think the same of me. It�s all impossible.

J and I talked about it in Dallas, where we waited for Aaron, the talkative trucker who drove us from Norman, where we were dropped off by Kristie, to take us the rest of the way to DeSoto, where we now sit in a McDonald�s, covered in bug bites.