Here's how we did it. Yes, it's insane.

My older sister flew from Dallas to Houston Thursday night, me and Richard picked her up at the airport Thursday night at 9pm. Friday morning (I took the day off work) she and I drove to San Antonio to get my mom from my dad. (Originally Richard was going to accompany me on this trip, but he had a last minute job he couldn't postpone.)

Then Richard realized I'd be driving 1000 miles with just me and my mom, and asked me if we could postpone the trip. So I called my sister (Tuesday of last week) to discuss, and that's when she came up with the idea of flying to Houston and driving Friday with me.

Friday
So we get up at 4:30 and left at 5:30 in the morning to SA. it took us 3 1/2 hours to drive 225 miles. We called my dad several times throughout the morning to make sure he could meet us on time for the "trade off" at Starbucks. Even with all the pre-work on our part, it still took us a fucking HOUR to meet up with him, get my mom in the car, etc. I hate him. He met up with us and immediately said 3 negative comments about my appearance (Your hair - you look like a hippie. Your skirt - did you buy that with holes in it? Your eyes, take your sunglasses off, look at me - have you been doing anything you shouldn't be doing?) It was really difficult. Finally an hour after all that bullshit, we broke free and took mom away! Yay!

So then we drove to Denton, 350 miles in 5 hours or so. It was a really nice drive, hanging with mom and my sister, listening to music.

We got to Denton about 3:30, ate a nice dinner at this noodle place.

It's so nice to see my mom without my dad being present. He's so domineering and self-centered 100% of the time, nobody can get in any comments or attention when he's present. Asshole. My mom is sweet and happy all the time, even with her dementia. She doesn't talk about Jesus all the time now, like she did before her dementia, while I was growing up at home. She was a fanatical Christian. She got all the Judy Blume books banned from my school when I was in 4th grade. She doesn't do that kind of stuff anymore. It's much more enjoyable.

Slept really good last night, even though I was freezing and didn't have Richard to snuggle up to. I slept 10 hours! Nice.

Lisa made us breakfast. We took a nice walk around UNT (college I attended 1991-1993). Ate lunch at Taco Cabana, nothing too fancy or strenuous. Now mom's taking a nap, me, my sister, and her live-in boyfriend are shooting the shit in the living room. It's nice.

Thinking about what time I should leave with mom tomorrow morning to take her back to SA. I'm not really looking forward to meeting up with the dad. I will mentally allot an hour for the trade-off, so if it takes a long time for him to arrive, it won't piss me off too much. Main thing I have to remember is to not react to him.

Ok, gotta go socialize now.

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