RE: Trailer Trash 60, 60 pt 3

Cinnabun_1982: ya ik

Cinnabun_1982: i get it

Cinnabun_1982: STILL THO

born2bjedi: I dont know that it wuold be all that great anywys

born2bjedi: Were having other people over

Cinnabun_1982: rofl

Cinnabun_1982: ya prolly not but

Cinnabun_1982: still

Cinnabun_1982: :p

Cinnabun_1982: just want to see u

born2bjedi: I can ask?

Cinnabun_1982: YES 

Cinnabun_1982: ASK

Cinnabun_1982: ASK ASK ASK

Cinnabun_1982: plz

Cinnabun_1982: lol

Cinnabun_1982: i mean if u want to

Cinnabun_1982: x.x

born2bjedi: Ok lol. One 2nd

Cinnabun_1982: <3 <3 <3

    Matthew leaned the dining room chair back on its rear two legs until he was tilting far enough to see the whole way across to the living room. Mrs. Williams had been bustling around somewhere on that side of the house earlier, but he didn’t see her now. Their family computer was set up within an enormous wooden corner desk in the living room, and the blocky monitor displayed the eBay page his mother had been fretting over all evening, with the smart grey rectangle frame of a Yahoo! Messenger chat window open in front of it. Knowing his mom would ask, he moved the cursor up and preemptively clicked on the big refresh symbol Internet Explorer featured in its row of top icons.

     AUTHENTIC PORCELAIN 1890 IRONSTONE BOWL AND PITCHER ANTIQUE WASH STAND EXCELLENT CONDITION disappeared from the page heading, and the browser window went blank for several long seconds. Matthew stared intently instead at the bar at the very bottom, where an hourglass was now depicted. Text flickered through the status bar, from connecting to host to 468 kb of… and a number of other gibberish faster than he could read. Within just five seconds, the same eBay page was beginning to appear again, beginning with the website logo and search bar, then the side links, and finally the individual auction listing popped back into view. The jpeg images of the antique took another five seconds to generate, pixels loading in from the top row by row and steadily appearing back into place—with 32 megabytes of memory, their brand new Dell was a veritable powerhouse, nothing at all like their rickety old IBM computer.

    Verifying that there were no new bids yet, Matthew dropped the chair back forward onto all four legs and then rose from the seat and stretched. He was in just boxers and a t-shirt, so he knew his mother was going to pester him about getting changed for dinner. After all, they were having company over tonight—Sandra was coming over with Hannah and Tabitha. Sandra bringing over Hannah for an evening was nothing new, but Matthew feared he would be expected to entertain Tabitha tonight, which would be awkward and annoying. He would much rather install Hannah in front of some cartoons to keep her occupied and then keep chatting over Yahoo! Messenger with Casey.

    Casey wants to come over instead, just… I dunno, Matthew lumbered forward across the living room in search of his mother. It’s one thing when we can just internet chat at each other, PRIVATELY—and another thing entirely when she’s here in person and mom’s bugging us with QUESTIONS and meddling. I swear she does it on purpose. And she’s TWICE as bad, THREE TIMES as bad with that when Sandra’s over.

    “Mom?” Matthew called.

    “Don’t yell in the house,” Mrs. Williams yelled back. “What is it?”

    “I wasn’t yelling!” Matthew hollered. “There’s no new bi—”

    “Is there any new bids?” Mrs. Williams interrupted. “On that pretty porcelain set? How much time is left?”

    “Uhh—” Matthew padded back across the room to double-check. “Like, sixteen minutes.”

    “What?” Mrs. Williams yelled.

    “Sixteen minu—”

    “Don’t yell in the house!” Mrs. Williams called. “Is there any new bids?”

    “No,” Matthew said.

    “Are you getting ready?” Mrs. Williams demanded. “Sandra and the girls are going to be here, soon. Have you picked up your room? What are you wearing for dinner?”

    “I—” Matthew paused. “Actually, uh. Is it cool if Casey comes over, too? For dinner.”

    “Casey as in your girlfriend?” Mrs. Williams asked. “Tonight?”

    “Yeah.”

    “Of course that’s okay—that’s wonderful,” Mrs. Williams bustled out of the master bedroom. “Oh, shoot. Will we have enough pasta? I wasn’t sure if—Matthew Monty Williams, why aren’t you dressed?! They’ll be here in half an hour!”

    “Mom,” Matthew slowly exhaled. “I can get dressed in half an hour. Half an hour is—”

    “Your girlfriend’s coming over, and look at you—when was the last time you brushed your hair? Did you shower after school? Do you have your thing set up in your room for Hannah and Tabitha? Your video game whatever it is? Will there be room back there for everyone if Casey’s coming, too? Do you want to set all that up out in the living room? Go get dressed!”

    “I was gonna—”

    “Why don’t you disconnect all that and bring it out here in the living room,” Mrs. Williams decided. “That way some of you can play your game, and then maybe Hannah or Tabitha can play on the computer. Does the computer have games for kids?”

    “Hannah loves Ski Free,” Matthew shrugged. “I guess Tabitha might like the Encyclopedia Britannica CD thing? I don’t really know what she’s into. Casey—”

    “Well, hurry and get all that set up!” Mrs. Williams rushed past him to check on the pot that was simmering in the kitchen. “And—keep an eye on our auction, too! You said sixteen minutes left?”

    “We don’t really have to watch it,” Matthew explained, returning to the desk and leaning over it to chicken-peck at the keyboard again. “Our maximum bid’s already set up.”

    “Don’t have to watch it, hah!” Mrs. Williams barked. “I’m getting that porcelain set. If we have to pay more than what we put in, then so be it. I’m getting that porcelain set. There’s already a place for it in the parlor!”

     born2bjedi: She says its cool

    Cinnabun_1982: rly???

    Cinnabun_1982: X.X

    Cinnabun_1982: omg b there in a bit

    Cinnabun_1982: ily

    Cinnabun_1982: <3

    Cinnabun_1982: <3

    born2bjedi: ily 2

    born2bjedi: Oh and

    born2bjedi: Just 2 warn u

    born2bjedi: Hanna and her mom will be here

    born2bjedi: And tabitha i think

    Cinnabun_1982: rofl

    Cinnabun_1982: kewl

    Cinnabun_1982: bringing an art club shrt then

    Cinnabun_1982: she can where art club stuff instead of stpuid cheerleader stuff @ school then

    Cinnabun_1982: ok b there in 15

    Cinnabun_1982: ilu Matthew

    Cinnabun_1982: <3 <3 <3

  * * *

    “Move move move, c’mon we’ve gotta skedaddle!” Mrs. Macintire laughed. “Hannah—shoes. Coat.”

    “Then—” Hannah held up an arm as Tabitha helped guide it into a jacket sleeve. “Then can we get McDonald’s? On the way. You said—”

    “No we’re not getting McDonald’s, Karen’s cooking tonight!” Mrs. Macintire cried out in exasperation. “You know very well she’ll whip up whatever you—”

    “But you said she was making bad pasta!” Hannah tried to gesticulate her frustration, but Tabitha had captured her other hand and was fitting it into her jacket. “So—”

    “Alfredo isn’t bad pasta, it’s just different,” Mrs. Macintire argued. “I think if you tried it, you’d probably like—”

    “I did try it, Mom!” Hannah protested. “I did before. I’ve tried bad pasta before. Alfredo. I didn’t like it!”

    “It’s not bad pasta!” Mrs. Macintire insisted. “It’s alfredo! Even if you don’t like it, please don’t insult Karen’s cooking and call it ‘bad pasta!’”

    “Sheesh!” Hannah muttered, sharing a glance with Tabitha. “Sheesh.”

    “Sheesh!” Tabitha teased.

    “It’s bad pasta,” Hannah confided in a whisper. “Bleh! It tastes really gross. It’s like, it’s like. It’s like sour milk spaghetti.”

    Tabitha smiled, but couldn’t help but cringe at the little girl’s description. Today, Officer Macintire was back at the station, and Mrs. Macintire had made plans for them to instead have dinner with Mrs. Williams and Matthew. Going over for a get-together at another family’s house was a bit of an unfamiliar concept to Tabitha, and this felt doubly strange after they had just had Mrs. Moore over here for that impromptu cookout. Different households meeting up for dinner and to socialize seemed like one of those suburban sitcom things and Tabitha had never put much thought into them.

    I guess growing up in such an insular home really REALLY brought out the introvert in me over time, Tabitha mused. It’s not as though we were really ever equipped to entertain guests, though. And I suppose my parents didn’t really have… well, FRIENDS.

    The only time people had been invited over in Tabitha’s memory was the night of the shooting—where Alicia and her mother both stayed over—and then the time everyone came over for trick-or-treating on Halloween. Likewise, the only instance where the Moores really went somewhere for dinner was Thanksgiving or Christmas at Grandma Laurie’s, so in Tabitha’s head those kind of social visits adhered pretty strictly to holidays or big events.

    But, no—I guess what’s ACTUALLY normal is just families meeting up or having get togethers whenever they can, Tabitha thought. I don’t know why the idea of it surprises me so much. It’s like when I suddenly realized I have friends and we can just… GO TO THE MALL TOGETHER. That’s a thing we can do. We can just watch a movie, or go driving around and hang out, or mess around with Bobby at the McDonald’s drive thru whenever we want.

    “Do you need help tying your shoes?” Tabitha offered, passing a little white sneaker over to Hannah.

    “No, I can do it,” Hannah said. “Do you need help tying yours?”

    “Hmm,” Tabitha pursed her lip. “I think I can probably manage.”

    Like everything else, tying her own shoes while most of her fingers were immobilized in a cast wasn’t impossible, just it was annoying. Over time Tabitha had grown used to these difficulties and challenges, and the only time she found herself truly impaired was when trying to do dishes. Managing to finagle the dishes clean without getting her cast wet was so impractical that it just really wasn’t worth the additional effort.

    “Do you want to bring your Gameboy?” Tabitha asked. “So that you can Pokemon battle against Matthew?”

    “Oooh—yes, yes!” Hannah jumped up and down. “I havta show him how cool mine are! You have to bring yours, too!”

    “If you want me to,” Tabitha agreed with a small smile.

    Hannah’s roster of pocket monsters was still somewhat in flux as the seven year old kept coming up with new ideas—right now, only three of them were high level. The starter Pikachu Hannah used from the beginning named Zeus, and then the ‘husband and wife’ Gengar and Clefable, which Hannah had named Prin Philip and Briar Rose. It had been determined early on that all of Hannah’s team would be named after characters from Disney animated films, which was a process that often involved hours of debate on which name fit which monster. 

    In link battles against Tabitha, their wins and losses were roughly the same… although this was because for those fights Tabitha shelved her max level ‘serious team’ and instead fielded her ‘silly team’ whose levels were in the mid-forties. For that team of Pokemon, Tabitha disregarded stats and movesets and competitive advantage and just picked the monsters she thought were neat; Seaking, Venemoth, Persian, Parasect, Porygon, and Farfetch’d. To her surprise and dismay, even though most of these were mid or bottom-tier, they often obliterated Hannah’s team—unless Tabitha went out of her way to choose poor type matchups, or use less effective moves.

    If I use my serious team… well, I’m not sure I could even lose on purpose if I tried, Tabitha thought with a wry smile. Those ones really don’t have any extraneous moves in their arsenal, and their stats are disgustingly high.

    “Chop chop chop, c’mon let’s go!” Mrs. Macintire appeared in the kitchen, still angrily brushing out her hair. “We’re gonna be late!”

    “Um, would it be alright if we—?” Tabitha held up her Gameboy to ask for permission to bring them.

    “Sure, sure—just, Hannah, you can’t be playing that while we’re at the table eating dinner,” Mrs. Macintire warned. “It’s for before or after, not during dinner. That would be rude.”

    “O-kaaay,” Hannah groaned in exaggerated dismay. “I guess that’s fine. Can Momma Williams make me macaroni and cheese?”

    “We’ll see, Hannah-ta-pana,” Mrs. Macintire rolled her eyes as she tossed the brush to the counter with a clatter and grabbed her purse. “I am not allowing ketchup on mac and cheese, though—it’s unconscionable. Unconscionable! Okay, are we all ready? Let’s go!”

( Previous, 60 pt 2 | RE: Trailer Trash | Next, 60 pt 4 )

/// Sorry for the long delay, have a bunch of fragmentary sections I'm slowly pulling together. Excited for Tabitha to discover the early internet (in her past life she started out in the mid-2000s with Windows XP and a more... robust internet culture) and also for some battle scenes!

/// Lost a lot of writing time recently between dentist visits and several church functions. I don't have a vehicle right now, and two different families from the church I joined have been helping me get to and from the dentist (the one woman who booked me with her dentist people is a bonafide real-life Karen Williams) and it would feel rude if I bailed on their church get togethers they invited me to after taking their assistance with everything there.

/// So far I've had one visit with a dentist to hollow out the back molar in prep for root canal, then he sent me to an endodontist specialist an hour's drive away so she could do the actual root canal. Then I've been back to that first dentist for post-root canal prep of some kind where they did more grinding or something terrible and set up or installed things(?) for the actual permanent cap they'll put in, which they'll install on the 29th. Temporary cap is in now. Can already tell it makes a pretty big difference in my bite, like my back teeth fit together more correctly than they have in the past year since that one back filling from the old dentist blew out. Some of the new tech they have is crazy advanced, too. The one dental technician had some sort of computer imaging wand she poked and prodded around my teeth that instantly built up a digital model of my teeth. All my dental stuff before was either with the cheapo fraud guy who was local in town here or were a full decade ago, so this new stuff seems downright futuristic to me.

/// The actual procedures haven't been THAT bad compared to work I had done in the past, not terribly painful and no major mishaps. It's a lot more stressful (and expensive) than before, but these people are legit and can guarantee me good dental work, so. It will be worth it in the long run. Just, time consuming, stressful putting on my mild-mannered polite charming-but-not-too-charming face on for hours of prying conversation with a gigaKaren, and then also feeling like I've gotten punched in the face, robbed, and having to figure out how to eat food without using my mouth multiple times this month.