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HOW TO GET TO THE PROVIDENCE PLACE MALL: THE ROAD TRIP FOR PEOPLE WHO HAVE A LOT OF TIME ON THEIR HANDS

One of the things I pride myself on is the ability to drive virtually anywhere without getting lost. At one point, I drove from Niagara Falls to Boston completely through backroads (the weather was bad). Unfortunately, my directional ability seems to dissipate the minute another person is in my automobile. I'm not sure why, but if at least one other being of human descent is in my vehicle, my intercerebral compass goes haywire. This is why my friend Joe and I have a story entitled "How to get out of Big Lots' parking lot in less than 40 minutes".

Yesterday, my friend Kathy and I decided to go down to Providence, Rhode Island for dinner and a comedy show. Now, there are some things you should know about Kathy. In general, Kathy has to leave her house approximately 5 hours prior to a normal person's leave time, because she has an unusually high number of panicky phone calls explaining how she was trying to get to Bunker Hill Monument but took a wrong turn and is now parked in a pig pen in Old MacDonald's Farm. So, knowing full well of my decreased lack of directional ability when the passenger seat is filled, this trip seemed doomed from the get go.

We were suppose to meet a friend who lived in Providence at 4:00 at the Cheesecake Factory which is in the Providence Place Mall. We got to the exit at 3:55. Approximately 3:56, Kathy points out that we just passed the exit to the Providence Place Mall. This normally would not have occurred, except that God decided to play "bad cop/good cop" and shone the sun directly into my retinas. The exit was 22C. No need to worry, we'll take 22B and just go in the right direction.

We didn't quite realize that 22B was likely a World Records Contender for being the longest exit in the world. As much as I can tell, it deposited us somewhere slightly northeast of Orlando. As I was foolish to think that 22B and 22C were roughly the same street in separate directions, I kindly asked a semi-conscious Neanderthal at a gas station how to get to the mall. Judging by the expression on his face, he apparently thought I was asking directions to the Providence Mountains, as god knows the Mojave Desert is a popular shopping community. Even though I had doubts that he knew where he was going, I figured "Well, he's a local." and followed his directions. Dumb move, number 2.

It's about 4:15 and we've already had 4 "European Vacation: Big Ben Parliament" moments with a porn theater playing Saturday Night Beaver. By this time, I've endangered Kathy's life at least 4 times by either driving the wrong way down one way streets, or entering random dark alleys which were surely thriving watering holes for the corn cob rapist community. After a series of getting on and off the thruway, we finally found the ever elusive mall. I had a fleeting mental image of Bigfoot shopping there.

Where I come from, parking garages to a 24 acre structure similar to a large shopping center are not all that difficult to locate. Apparently, the architects to Providence Place did not consult the SO, YOU WANT TO BUILD A TEMPLE TO AMERICAN CAPITALISM? guide, and decided to build the parking garage inside a random rip of time. I know this because as I circled the mall to find the parking garage, we ended up back in Northeast Orlando with the Neanderthal in the gas station. I was now convinced the mall was laughing at us.

Roughly about 4:40, now a full 40 minutes late to meeting our friend, we were finally parked in the parking garage and walking to Cheesecake Factory. Here's a helpful tip. Even though a door is marked EXIT, it does not mean that, that is the way to get out of the parking garage. We know this after setting off about 5 fire door alarms. Apparently, the real exit doors were marked MALL. I'm in favor of the city of Providence to use the word MALL instead of EXIT on all signs in the city. First of all, it's the only place worth going to in Providence, and it would make the mall much easier to find.

My friend was not there by the time we got there. Perhaps he thought we stood him up. Currently, we are under the assumption he is still suspended in space waiting for the next portal to teleport him back to the parking garage.

posted by Jenn @ 2:19 PM  

Two days ago, I woke up with a small bump underneath my tongue. Passing it off as a case of the Can't-remember-who-I-snogged-on-New-Years-Eve Herpes, I woke up, offered the condo building kids who were incessantly ringing my jingle bell wreath a look at my SHRUNKEN HEADS OF ILL MANNERED CHILDREN collection, and went about my day.

By the middle of the day, my bump doubled in proportions. For a fleeting moment, I wondered if I was growing an extra head. After all, I did grow up a third arms-length away from Love Canal. Then my optimism kicked in as I remembered that your body builds new bones every couple years or so. Perhaps, this morning my body had my skull construction scheduled. I made a mental note to pick up a black book in the event my body made a mistake and I woke up with Cindy Crawford's head.

By the time I was leaving work, my growth was emitting an odor similar to what would be found by a veterinarian proctologist who's client's diet plans include the contents of Taco Bell's dumpsters. I determined that this was out of the realm of normalcy, so I went to my neighborhood dentist.

Apparently, I had an abscess. After a heavy infusion of high potency antibiotics that are used for bacterial, fungal, and velicoraptor infestations, he could have told me that the bubble under my tongue was a miniature snowglobe of the city of Whoville. As he apparently felt these did not expand the right side of my brain enough, he sent me home on an even higher dose of medication which were a derivitive of amoxicillin apparently known as I-Can't-Believe-It's-not-Shrooms!

The drive home was interesting, especially as for the first half hour I thought I was on the Yellow Brick Road. The gas station attendant looked at me strangely when I explained to him that the flying monkeys assured me that this was the most direct way out of Oz. I assumed that he was in the first third of the movie, so he hasn't gotten to the flying monkeys yet.

As of right now, I'm at least 50% sure that I am back on the correct plane of being, and the gnomes and pixie dust fairies haven't come by in a couple hours. However, it may be a couple days before I recuperate, so be patient with me folks. However, feel free to email me with any wishes, and I'll be sure to ask the genie that periodically comes out of my toilet bowl.

posted by Jenn @ 8:20 PM  

I just want to clear up some things regarding therapy. Specifically, how little YOU need therapy. I have spent an excessive amount of my employment history working in close quarters with the criminally insane. These aren't the people at the bus station whom upon asking them the time, drop their pants and recite the Gettysburg Address in Creole. Everyone knows that those people are street performers hired by the bus companies to amuse its patrons in exchage for a discount "handicap" fare and a gallon of gin per day. The people I'm talking about are those who are in jail for bludgeoning their mother-in-law to death with heavily sedated ferret, and then come to our hospital and mark "vegetarian" on their hospital menus. And since the middle class population in this country has deemed that their repressed memories of playing show-me-your--pee-hole-and-I'll-show-you-mine with Billybob on the play ground is much more important than the mental prowess of the raping and pillaging members of the population, I have an excess of patients who can't seem to understand why we don't serve donkey turds as an entree every so often.

So listen to me carefully, folks. Unless you were at some point anally raped with a lacrosse stick by a one eyed hemophiliac midget named Fleegal or frequently rip people's hearts out of their chest and claim it's a "nervous twitch", you do not need therapy. Life is hard. That doesn't mean that everytime someone flips you the bird, you should hussle off to your friendly neighborhood legal drug dealer for Zoloft enema. And if you still believe you need therapy, I urge you to come by my work. If after being stabbed in the eye with a beef log by a man in a platypus costume who think's he's Dean Martin doesn't change your mind, then maybe you should consider a bed for the night.

posted by Jenn @ 4:30 AM