Every gas station in Georgia is like a mini-casino.

I was ready to go the minute I woke up. For two reasons: I was ready for a road trip, first of all; also, I’m rather moody, and I am completely helpless about it.  One second I’m the life of the party, and the next, I want a small closet with no windows and a fur coat to roll around in, and a really filthy martini in an oversized glass without the garnish unless they stuff the olives with blue cheese.

I guess I get it from my mother’s side.

We were coming to Atlanta for a wedding.  Well, actually I was coming to Atlanta; I wasn’t attending the wedding, which was, at the last minute, occurring three hours north of Atlanta, in the tiny western corner of North Carolina, and three more hours was simply not on my list of Things I’d Like to Add To My Day On the Road.  I had elected to stay at the hotel, alone, despite the fact that the room is on the 5th floor and I don’t do heights well, not even 5th floor heights.

We’d decided the day before, during our “dialogue,” that we weren’t going to let time dictate this adventure, short as it was; no, we were going to simply let things unfold, play with several decks of cards, maybe even throw a hand of Skip Bo in there, you know, whatever – fill in with your favorite cliche, the point still holds.

And, immediately, we were denied this. 

We overslept, first of all, which I’m still having trouble wrapping my mind around as we had never set a definite departure time, but somehow, you can always manage to oversleep.  You know it, your mind knows it, your body knows, your uncle who’s already called fifteen times to find out “where on the road you are” knows it.

And, as is our way, the first item of business was correcting an oversight: Max.

He’d been completely overlooked; he had to be boarded which is about as close to his favorite thing on God’s green earth as having your tongue ironed, with a whole can of Faultless Starch sprayed on it first. Of course, you just don’t know the definition of chaos until you take an anxious White German Shepherd to a vet’s office, which was eerily like a normal doctor’s office with the exception of the magazine selection, and then you try and convince him to make nice with the other dogs as well as the thousand plus smells of previous dogs and other wildlife who had also been boarded, smells that permeate suspiciously unknown in that secret olfactory dog world (though believe me, there’s plenty your own nose can pick up)…suffice it to say, Max doesn’t do this well.  He doesn’t like change.  How Mississippian of him.

Sugar, the cat, on the other hand, couldn’t care less if you lived or breathed so long as she had food and you gave up and let her drink from the dog bowl, instead of her own.  I guess it’s her way of being mean. (She has more than one way, though – it’s especially fun when she eats his food, which he lets her do, because she’s allergic to it and her bottom lip swells out, pink and tender.  It even muffles her ability to meow, and so I laugh at her because she knows better, but I also help her as I’m not entirely heartless where animals are concerned).

The secretary at the vet’s, God bless her, was less than enthused with absolutely everyone who brought in an animal. I couldn’t imagine why she stayed at such a job if it made her miserable, and passive-aggressive. Then I remembered the enconomy and so naturally I had to create a long backstory about how her husband had left her for a younger man (I mean, let’s make it interesting, ok), and she was devastated and had only been a housewife all these years, and a good mother, to her three children, all of whom hated her because she was selfishly unstylish and too strict about church, and again, passive-aggressive. She drove a mint-green Geo Prism, a gift to herself after her husband left, and when she re-entered the workforce (one she’d never actually entered), it took her begging a friend to speak on her behalf to the veterinarian, which worked because the said friend was having an affair with the veterinarian, and so to keep the peace, and his marriage, he gave her the job. And she took a not-too-small delight in expanding her passive-agressiveness as a way of “getting back” at the cheating veterinarian, projecting her own anger about her husband’s infidelity onto each of his clients.

I mean, come on, a mint-green Geo Prism? 

She announced, more than once, to each person who came in that the wait was going to be long because some people had made appointments at the last minute (i.e., we did) and as they weren’t regularly scheduled, whatever that meant exactly, it had added to the backlog; also, all the vets were in a dental lab until noon, so only the vet techs were available to handle boarders.

It was at this point, that for the first time in my life, I found a need to read Cat Fancy, a magazine for the lonely and sexually frustrated if ever there was one. Max evenutally just had to be taken outside, so great was his angst and energy, specifically at the Brittany Spaniel, named Gus, who I think just really wanted a new pal. I bet if dogs were sent off to war, they’d return with greater compassion for each other. What dogs need, I think, is a good, long war story, a survival of the trenches sort of story.  That would really make them bond, I think. But, unfortunately, we’re Democrats now, so we may never know.

After waiting what felt like a day, we finally managed to hand Max over, much to his chagrin and whining, and get on the road.  The weather held. The ride wasn’t painful. And then we needed gas.

Every gas station in Georgia is like a mini-casino.

I’m not even a little bit kidding. I knew the lottery was offered in this heathen state but I wasn’t aware of how the gas stations were designed, per se.  I didn’t like the layout. My biggest reason for this is because when I go to the bathroom, I actually prefer, to the point of enjoying, my privacy there.

The men’s restroom at this particular Quik Jak, or whatever it was called, had a very unique design: first, there were no doors, just a large white bricked entranceway, with a sink smack-dab in the middle (if you didn’t wash your hands on your way out, Cigarette Sally and her fourth husband and everyone else in this less than green part of creation would know). That’s never a problem for me, as I am bit obessive about hand-washing especially with the you know what circling the globe. (It amuses me that they’ve changed the name H1N1 to save the pigs, as if we could forget the fact that we’ve called it swine flu 24-7 for a solid blame month. Amanda says it’s not for the pigs, but the people, and something about Egypt and the slaughter of the 300,000. She’s like a Mother Theresa/Arianna Huffington hybrid, that one).

I always find the bathroom first, when in gas stations, because I’m not there to talk to the people. But at this gas station, “talk to people” was all I wanted to do. In the back, there were ten or eleven long tables set up, and they were packed with people. I thought it was an extension of the restaurant, but no:  they were bingo tables, and they had squatters. I hadn’t fully understood it until I turned the corner at the end of the chips/chocolate/quick-fix tire foams/jewelry aisle and found myself in front of one of the three tv screens whose sole purpose in this world was to broadcase HDTV Bingo. Words were exchanged, I realized my costly mistake and then turned around and there was the open entrance to the bathroom. Twelve seconds tops; almost a record for urinal discovery…plus, the excitement of disrupting a Bingo game…and not a priest in sight of the lot of them, either.

Both her age and her Bingo.

On my way out, I quickly scooted past the Bingo-ers and found myself in the middle of this treacherous Gamble-Land, beside an elderly couple, and tall, bright orange and yellow booths.  Each of the aged couple had canes and a slight lean, a lean that I think was attached literally to a quarter slot game of some indeterminable skill: it involved dropping quarters into the machine, cursing, convincing themselves to do it “one more time,” and then stuttering on their loose legs out the front door.

Obviously, with such bells-and-whistles stimulation, I could hardly ignore the temptation. I bought several scratch-off cards and like a squirrel, twittered back to the car to find a lucky nickel. (Also, I just joined the actual Twitter online phenomenon, but I was using the above form of “twitter” as an actual verb).

I won $15. 

Gambling saved the morning, deep breaths were taken, the thrill of scratching anything off with a nickel was soundly recognized and appreciated and we took off to master the last 35 miles left to the city of Atlanta.

And, believe it or not, after several missed exits, our humors were restored completely and kept in check. We found the hotel and in our rooms, a deep sunken whirlpool tub plus an additional glassed-in shower, and a doorbell. (And of course, in the closets bathrobes for each guest). I was ecstatic. I’m wearing it right now. I love a bathrobe.

All that and my big win of $15…

…which is, ironically I discovered, the exact price of a martini here.

If I were looking at someone right now, I’d make my conspiracy eyes. As it is, I guess I’ll just go sink down into the tub and read some more.

Sigh.