There really is a 24-hour Subway in Lamar

12:12 PM 6/8/10

I got up this morning and had to drink coffee. Whatever is causing the fatigue and hypersomnia hasn't gone away. It might be something I have no control over, like pesticides being sprayed nearby - I'm getting more sure that it's not my fault, whatever it is. I hate having to drink so much coffee when I sincerely want to quit, and I DID quit it for a few months, and got used to living without it. I was doing okay.

I have to do something that I dread today: I have to dig through all my stuff, piles of papers, and look for paycheck stubs and other things to prove my income, so that I can be eligible to live in this apartment. This is a subsidized apartment and you have to make less than a certain amount of money. That's why I really needed to get up early this morning and make sure I was awake.

But I'm postponing this as long as I can. I might even accidentally not do it today. I might find the papers but not get to the office in time before she leaves. I will get it done, but it might be dragged out for a few more days. I accidentally didn't open the letter in the mail that had me scheduled to see her on May 27th, and I opened it like three days after I was supposed to go there. So I called her and said I'd see her today. She's going to be at the office, regardless of whether I go see her or not, so I don't feel too guilty if I semi-accidentally don't get to see her today. The first time, not opening the letter, it really was an accident, but this time, it's more like feeling dopey and ADHD and restless and uncomfortable. My brain feels tired and groggy and not able to think, and I just don't feel like I can force myself to dig through the papers really quickly and efficiently, when my brain feels almost drunk. Something is wrong with my head today.

So instead, I drank the coffee and then 'they' encouraged me to go out wandering in my car. Driving my car and exploring is one thing that I really love to do. I've gotten a local map recently - I used to have a few maps but they've been put away somewhere and I can't find them, so I got a new one.

Driving my car is like playing a video game.  I love video games where you explore a new landscape.  I would be less interested in a game where you stayed in one place and fought with another character, like the wrestling games and martial arts games, that kind of thing.  Instead, I want to explore and see things I've never seen before.  There's always some area that I can't reach because it's blocked by an obstacle, or I'm not powerful enough to get there yet.  I have to achieve some new skill, or break through the obstacle to reach the next part of the map, the part that's been tempting me since the beginning of the game.  I can only see a little bit of it, enough to know that it's going to be fascinating.  Driving my car is like that.

You might think that 'being spontaneous' means driving out at random without looking at a map. It might seem like the map prevents you from being spontaneous and having an adventure. It might seem like a map restricts you and ruins the fun of exploring.

But to me, the opposite is true. If I go out at random, I tend to stick to the known, familiar roads. I automatically drive down the easiest, largest roads, and avoid anything that looks too small, difficult, and unfamiliar. When I see those tiny roads going off to the side, I think that they probably don't go anywhere interesting or worthwhile - it's probably just a dead end, or it goes to someone's house or something, so it's not worth trying.

But If I have a map, then I can look at an area, and pick someplace to try to reach. I'll do anything to get there to that place. That means I have to find some road, any road, that will take me there, no matter how small and unfamiliar that road might be. So I learn a lot more about the obscure little roads that I don't normally use.

Sometime a few weeks ago, I was driving somewhere, and I SWEAR, I found a gas station with a Subway that was open all night. When you are stuck eating fast food, and all you have to choose from is Sheetz and McDonald's in the middle of the night, then it's really nice to find someplace else where you can get variety, something different. I like to eat Subway once in a while for a change, so I was really happy about this.

But I went looking for it several times and couldn't find it again. I knew that it was within a few miles of where I live. It was a medium distance away, not extremely far, but not close either. I thought that it was either towards Snowshoe or Lamar.

I tried looking for it in both those places and didn't find it. I was sure it was in Lamar. But when I went there, I saw a Subway, and it wasn't open 24 hours. I knew that I had seen this at one of the Travel Centers, those groups of gas stations and restaurants for truck drivers. There was a Subway there, but it was all by itself, a little separate restaurant. The 24-hour one was part of a gas station - it wasn't separate.

I tried looking for it again in several different places, and felt like I was going crazy. I KNEW I had been there, but I couldn't find it.

So today I went wandering around again, and I ended up in Lamar. I saw some Amish people along the way, and that's one thing I want to put on my map - I want to put colored areas on regions of the map where you can find the Amish, and I also want to put important places on the map, like stores where you can buy certain things - I was thinking of places where you can buy local meats or local milk, that kind of thing. (Or a Subway that's open all night.)

I went to the Lamar McDonald's. Finding bathrooms was a big part of this trip. I had two cups of coffee, and so, I spent a lot of time urgently looking for bathrooms and not paying attention to the scenery. So I used the bathroom at McD in Lamar, and then I went out walking around the dog walk area, because there was a sign saying 'dog walk' and I wanted to explore it.

There were raspberries starting to grow. If I still lived at the duckpond, I would have seen baby ducks and baby geese in the spring, and then I would have seen raspberries growing, and I would have known exactly when they were ready to pick. But I don't have that here. I don't have a walking path, and I've been so exhausted that I don't go out to any nearby parks, and I don't go to Fisherman's Paradise very often - that's a nice place to go walking on the paths. I love that area, it's full of fresh air from the creek water. The neighbors say that I could walk on the path that goes around somebody's house next door to these apartments, but I haven't been motivated to go there yet. (It feels 'not worthwhile.')

I miss State College, in a way. I moved to Bellefonte to be close to Peter, whenever my landlord said that he didn't want me to live at the duckpond house anymore, at the moldy apartment where I was sleeping in my car in the middle of winter because the air was so toxic that it nearly killed me. I loved walking by the pond, and I liked the nearby parks - Spring Creek was nearby, and Millbrook Marsh, and also Tudek Park on the other side of town. Spring Creek and Millbrook were my favorites. And if I lived there now, I'd be neighbors with my favorite guy from work, because his famiiy moved into that area last year. (I guess that wouldn't matter much, if he wasn't willing to see me outside of work. But I might run into him accidentally.)

So, I do miss being in State College, and I've been refusing to 'bond' with Bellefonte. 'This is NOT my home,' I'm thinking. It's a temporary feeling, a kind of denial, like sooner or later I'll go back to State College.

Actually, I felt that way when I came to State College from West Virginia, too, and I stil feel that, in general, this area is not my real home. But I felt like that when my family moved from Greensburg, PA, down to Scott Depot WV. Where is my real home, then? Greensburg? Is it Philadelphia where I was born? Is it Haddonfield, NJ, where I was a baby and toddler, before we moved to Greensburg? I could keep going back, to Wales across the ocean (I love Celtic music), or Germany (they say that 'women with mustaches' is a German thing, but it's also a Celtic/Welsh thing), or to the tribe that my one drop of Native American blood came from, but that was here on this continent. I could go back to Africa, with the apes, and I have wanted to talk about the apes (I'm still drinking cream in my coffee, and the cream has some hormone in it that messes with my sexuality, and talking about apes means talking about bonobo society and how it relates to human society, and if you talk about bonobos, you talk about sex), but if I get on that subject, it will take too long, and I'm pretending that I'm going to sort through those papers and go to the office sometime today.

So, I saw the raspberries at Lamar McDonald's dog walk path today. They're not ripe yet. I will try to remember that they exist, and go looking for them in the next few weeks as they ripen.

I finished the dog path, and saw in front of me another Subway. Wait a minute, I'm thinking. There's a Subway behind me, less than half a mile away. The Red Herring Subway. There are two Subways within half a mile of each other, at the same Traveler's Center in Lamar. One of them is at the 'TA' place, and the other one is at the 'Pilot' travel center gas station. I kept seeing the wrong one. How can there be two Subways within half a mile of each other? No wonder. I kept seeing the wrong one and thinking it was the only one. You could actually look out the window of one Subway and see the sign for the other one if you could get a clear view without any stuff in the way.

So, I was delighted to finally find the real, 24-hour Subway and prove that it really exists and it wasn't my imagination. It was in Lamar, in a travel center, just like I remembered.

All I want to do is write. I don't want to go looking for those papers. I don't know how I'm going to do this today. It will be painful. I hate digging for paperwork.