Double Face's Adventures in My Hometown!!!

[setsuntamew]

aka, I went home for the holiday and, since Liz had just gotten me Madara and Kohaku nuis, I decided to bring the boys along! It was quite the trip because we were also traveling with two of our cats, soooo why not document the highlights?

Part of the trip - besides visiting my family for Thanksgiving + my mom's 70th birthday - was to bring Genevieve to Josh and Emmy. We tried really hard with her, especially since she's so sweet, but she does not get along with other cats. The shelter we got her from lied/misrepresented her, I guess????? But she wasn't jiving with our household, no matter how much we tried. And now that Josh and Emmy have their own house and can have pets, they offered to take her in. So!!! She had to travel with us, and I didn't want to leave Lumos behind...so she came too XD


locked and loaded in the car, right before getting on the road!!!
Anyway!!! This is about to be a bit of a long post: I originally made it on tumblr and it was very image heavy, and this is....even more so, because I found more pictures from the trip XD I HAD A LOT OF FUN AND TOOK MANY PICTURES AND NOT A LOT OF TIME ONLINE BECAUSE TIME WITH FRIENDS IS IMPORTANT!!!!!!! ♥

which is to say, I'm putting the rest of this entry behind a cut so I don't just destroy everyone's reading pages~


breakfast of champions: Sheetz!
We stopped in Frederick for breakfast, and somehow ended up at a Sheetz I'd never been to before??? WILD. I've made the Baltimore<->Pittsburgh trip countless times, so you'd think I'd been to all the quick food stops by now. But apparently not!

I managed to fuck up ordering because I went for the deal, so my breakfast sandwich didn't have egg on it :c Thankfully I solved this with the most classic of Sheetz methods: putting deep fried mac n cheese on a sandwich~

(it was really good)


Lumos was a really good sport of riding along in the car...for the first couple hours. Eventually she realized that we were not going home and were instead trapped in hell for eternity, and refused to come out of her carrier until we got to Pittsburgh. But she was really cute before that!!!


ALSO THEY CHANGED THE FUCKING WELCOME TO PENNSYLVANIA SIGN???????????????? The old one wasn't even that old; why did we need a new one??? tbh this one looks way more dated than the old one :T


Various stops at PA Turnpike rest stops, featuring Double Face!!! Sometimes you gotta get snacks and take a piss break, okay XD
AND THEN WE FINALLY MADE IT TO PITTSBURGH!!!! Since we were very kindly being hosted by our dear friends in their new home, we headed there first! Josh and Emmy bought a house earlier this year and this was my first time getting to see it, and it was just really lovely to be together ;w;

Lumos was happy to get out of the carrier but was not happy that it was a completely new place. Genevieve on the other hand was clearly overstimulated but ended up taking it significantly better than expected. I think all the catnip and positive attention helped, but in general introducing her to her new home went really well.

Thanksgiving dinner with my family went surprisingly well, probably because it was just my parents, Carson, a family friend, me, Liz, and Pat. Most of the rest of the family was in California with my cousins, so we were saved from too much drama.

However, I was incredibly insulted to find that no one made pie????? We brought a delicious apple tart, expecting there to be pumpkin pie. If I had known there wasn't gonna be pie, I would have made my own!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Luckily for me, Emmy made pumpkin pie, so I got to enjoy some once we got back to the house for the night~


Woke up to Lumos staring down at me from a dresser, which is typical Lumos behavior. So, getting a good sleep helped her chill out I guess? Also, she got very excited for food XD


Unfortunately, Josh had to work the next day, so he couldn't be part of our Cards Against Humanity game...but the boys could be!!


Lumos also wanted to play, so we dealt her in and put in random cards so she could "play" with us...and she actually ended up winning a few rounds. How is the cat funnier than the rest of us????
After a very rousing game of Cards Against Humanity - Liz and I tied as the winners!!! - we were like....okay I guess we should eat?? But we'd already had Thanksgiving leftovers for lunch, so clearly the only solution was to go to a Pittsburgh classic: Eat 'n' Park.

Sometimes you just want a really good shredded pot roast sandwich that's been smothered in gravy, and nostalgia wins out!!! It was just as good as I remembered, so I left feeling very satisfied.


I had to take the boys along to Eat 'n' Park! And then when we got back, we came in through the basement and I was very jealous of their Squirrel Hill tunnel sign >:O
And then.......we went to sleep? I dunno, the whole trip was a blur in the best kind of way, because we got to spend so much time with friends. I feel like more happened, but honestly, I was just so happy to get to chill with Josh and Emmy that I can't think of any specifics.

OH WAIT I DID MANAGE TO PULL RINNE FOR THE JP EVENT ON FRIDAY!!! THAT ALSO HAPPENED THAT DAY XD

lookit this fuckin jackass~
ANYWAY. On Saturday I had nebulous family plans for my mom's 70th birthday, but no one could tell me what was happening...so I made my own plans XD I wanted to get good pizza while in town, since it's something that's harder to come by in Baltimore, and there was a place conveniently located around the corner~


It was a proper pizza place, with basically no seating and randomly attached to a deli...and ice cream place??? Overall, exactly what I was hoping for.


Oh, and I had to stop the boys from gambling their life savings away, I guess~ Nothing says home like random shitty pseudo-gambling in a family restaurant ✌


And then of course: THE MALL!!!! I had to swing by the Monroeville Mall- and no, not because of the zombies or anything. It’s my childhood mall and I wanted to see how it was doing. Some of my favorite stores are still there, some are gone, but it’s still the same mall I grew up going to!!!
My family still hadn't come up with concrete plans for my mom's birthday, so we went back to Josh and Emmy's house to chill for a bit longer. Like, I wasn't mad about spending time with friends...just frustrated about plans not being made because we were planning to leave Saturday night- and it's a 4 hour drive home!

Whatever. All things considered, my family's been worse in the past :T

I was inspired by Emmy's love of it to pick Animal Crossing up again for the first time in like....2 or 3 years??? So you know I had to jump into the custom designs section and try to find something enstars~


and I immediately made myself look like Kohaku~ I'm probably gonna make some of my own later :D
Once we finally went over to my parents' house, it went pretty well! My mom just wanted a low-key birthday - which I can understand - and the big celebration was pumpkin pie, because my dad ended up making one. It was very good, even if we didn't get to have it on Thanksgiving itself XD

I did get the very sad news that family friend had died over the summer, and while I'm kinda really frustrated that no one told me until now, I'm glad to know. She'd been struggling with pancreatic cancer and didn't have much in the way of family left, so my mom had been doing the brunt of taking care of her and her end of life care. She'd been in my mom's life since before I was born, so she was kinda like another aunt to me ;w;

On a more positive note, she was an accomplished artist and left a bunch of stuff to my mom, and I got to pick a piece to take home with me. WHICH WAS VERY HARD because all three of these Christmas wizards are fucking incredible.


Seriously!!!! Picking just one of these was nearly impossible, but I ended up going with the pink and purple one on the right. If I could have taken all three of them, I absolutely would have, btw. They're so good!
After that, it was time for goodbyes, a quick stop at a gas station to fill up, and back to Josh and Emmy's to grab our stuff. Lumos was not pleased to be getting back in the carrier and car, but thankfully she's patient enough that it wasn't a big fight.

Going "home" is always complicated. Baltimore is home now, the one I chose for myself and have built a life in, but my heart will always be drawn to Pittsburgh. I grew up there, yeah, but I also grew up there. I got my first apartment there and Liz & I got together there. We lived in Pittsburgh together for just under three years, but it's easy for us to forget that it was such a relatively short period of time.

And this weekend flew. The weather was miserable enough that we stayed in most of Friday, and also none of us wanted to deal with Black Friday shoppers anyway. I wish we'd had time to go downtown to see the holiday lights, but it was fuckin cold and none of us packed warm enough clothes (because we're stupid and also used to how mild Baltimore is).

I dunno. It's hard. I wish I could be in two places at once sometimes...my parents are getting older and as difficult as my relationship has been with my mom over the years, I still don't think I'm ready to lose either of them. The last cat they got while I was still living there is looking his age, since he's been really sick the past couple years, and that's kinda like...damn, it doesn't feel like we got him all that long ago, but I guess we did!!!


AKERU WAS SO SMALL!!!! he's dwarfed by Hanna, who wasn't tiny but she wasn't THAT big either...and now she's gone and he's old and scrungly, so it's so wild to look back at this from when we'd only had him for a few months
groans

this is why I hate going home; I hate getting all weirdly emotional :T

SO WE GOT ON THE ROAD AND LISTENED TO MUSICALS AND IT WAS FUN


There was snow at one of the rest stops on the PA turnpike, so that was awesome!!! We actually made minimal stops on the way back to Baltimore, because it was laaaaaate.


and then the UNDEAD/Crazy:B cover song scout box started!!!! I had enough dia set aside for one 10 scout and hot damn did it deliver! Two (!!) 5* and Kohaku, so I am set~
And that's my whole trip!!!!!!!!!!! Kudos to anyone who goes through the whole thing~ I had a lot of fun taking pics along the way, despite the fact that I've done this road trip so many times...so I guess nuis are the way to succeed? ;D

Comments

[dragonofeternal]

YAAAAAAAAAAAAY GIANT ENTRY FROM WIFE~! I had fun helping with/watching all your nui photography. Double Face does Pittsburgh!!!!

I feel you on the weird sense of missing Pittsburgh and Pittsburgh being home.... I'm not even FROM there but there's something about it that just feels... right, in a way. It was actually cold! The roads were shit!! It felt so good to be back!!! I know I only lived there for so long but it just JIVED with what I like out of a place. I wouldn't want to give up all the friends we have here in Bmore (or the better pay orz) but like.

Yeah. I get how you feel. :T