I was planning to make it to Indy today but I’ve been sidelined by a misfiring engine. Entropy can kiss my ass. I didn’t think to take a picture of the engine, so I set the image for this post as a movie poster my brother made of Mutiny the Adventure Cat, who is currently sitting next to me in her carrier in the waiting room of a Mr. Tire. Apparently there’s a movie of the same title coming out this week, thus he made the poster. Anyway, we made it to Waynesville before this issue hit. We haven’t left North Carolina since March, and I’m getting the sense that the van doesn’t want to let us.
Given the choice, I don’t think we’d be making a cross-country journey this time of year; at least, not when it’s this hot. This has been one of the lessons of the first year of van life: if at all possible, try not to be roughing it on the roadside when it’s very hot or cold. It’s why I’ve been busy trying to get ahead of winter and find a place to be stationary during the worst of it. Under normal circumstances I might have stayed on the farm until September, but normal circumstances are not something I’ve been lucky with.
Whether the issue gets resolved today or not, roughing it on the roadside is what I’m doing. Indy was the goal because the forecast promised slightly less hot nighttime temperatures than anywhere else along my route west that I could reasonably get to. If I am stuck in Waynesville, then at least the mountain climate means I’ll have better nighttime conditions than I would have gotten in Indy. In fact, they could actually be *comfortable*. So I’m not all that worried.
What else can write about from my phone in an auto shop waiting room?
I had a wild nightmare a few nights back. I have nightmares constantly. This has always been the case, since my early childhood. Mostly they don’t bother me; occasionally they do, if they dig into something vulnerable in my mind; other times, I wake up and immediately jot down a story outline. This one was the last kind.
It was a serial killer scenario, which is pretty unusual for my dreams. I told Jesse about it and they were instantly inspired to get everyone together to watch Fresh. This was pretty close to the mark in terms of the vibe, not so much because of the cannibalism (of which my dream had none) as because of 1) multiple concurrent victims being held prisoner for long periods, and 2) burgeoning friendly, or even romantic relationships between the killer and his victims. I wasn’t taken in by his overtures, but the other women he abducted at the same time were. Just before I woke up, I was beginning to worry that they’d try to stop me from getting away and turning him in, and that I might even have to kill them in order to escape.
The outline has a lot more in the way of details. I’m not the kind of writer who holds their precious ideas all that close (I have far, far too many) but I am hedging my bets that I can turn this into something, and there’s too much on my plate for me to get to it very soon. In this particular case I’m gonna play close to the chest for now. Sorry. But if you see me writing a serial killer thing down the road, know that this dream is to blame.
The update from the mechanic is that I will, indeed, be stuck here until Monday, so it’s time to find a place for me to post up. We’ll see what we’ll see. In the meantime, I’ll get to know Waynesville.