93

1997

Venum brought a friend by to meet me when he got off work. The man had red hair with a bushy rat tail and he had wild eyes to match. It didn't take long for me to realize what an idiot this guy was. His name was Michael and he was married with two children at the time. He stood there in the doorway of our duplex with Venum as he was introduced. After he had broken the ice with me, he started to talk about things that were probably lies but whos to really know anyway. He said that he had drank a whole bottle of bleach and survived. Obviously, because he was standing in my doorway. Then when I started to talk of missing it when I painted, he started to say things about painting that I knew to be lies. The things he said about paint brushes and the various mediums that you use to paint with...they were all rubbish. I had spent much of my life painting and had a pretty good familiarity with the hobby or the art. I just sat there and listened because I didn't want to start a stink and cause Venum to get mad at me for being rude to a friend of his. Michael said that next time he came to visit he would bring his wife, Melissa. Oh....I just couldn't wait. *rolls eyes*


1997

Summer

We visited many homes in the general north mississippi area. We tried to keep the homes within an hour of Venum's job at Masterbuilt. We agreed that it was quite okay to move as far as Olive Branch or even Memphis....if it was a nice enough home. Our real estate agent, Mary, she drove us all over the area and basically gave us all the information that we needed. We weren't haveing much luck really. I remember how funny it was that every time a car would drive by Mary, she would run off the road. We started to take our own car because Mary was scaring us with her faulty driving. We would laugh every time Mary would run off the road.

As it fastly approached June, Venum and I decided to take a trip to Detroit to visit his family..well, mostly it was his idea but he said I could go along. We decided to leave Damian at home with my aunt. We kept looking for a home hoping we would find something before we left for Detroit.
Right before the time came to leave, we found a home. It wasn't that close to Memphis like Venum would have wanted but it was a home...not a rental property. The house was located on Highway 30 in New Albany. It was a little white wood framed house and it looked okay from the outside. The home was for sale by owner and so we made an appointment to talk to them. The process of getting our home took a very long time. We had started talking to real estate agents and looking for homes since we moved into Burleson's rental and it was about time that we had some relief.

We talked and talked about the house that we had found and finally decided that this was where we were going to live. We met the with lawyers in Memphis and completed the paperwork closing the deal on the house. We agreed to certain terms that, honestly, we didn't quite understand. My aunt was there with us in case we questioned anything or did not understand. Of course, we just sat there and  went along with everything. We were quite young and ignorant and so we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into.

After the closing of the house, we went back to our apartment and started to pack things and get ready for the move. We would move everything into the house and then we would go to Detroit to see Venum's family.


1997

June

Venum and I took several energy pills so that we could move all our stuff within a couple days. We rented a Uhaul and started the process of packing. We had to go through everything in the house make sure that we weren't going to take any roaches with us on the move. One of the smaller snakes that we had bought, his name was Ziggy, had gone missing a couple weeks earlier and we still hadn't found him. Well, we found him stuck in the top of the closet where he had died. Apparently, he had somehow choked himself trying to pull free from the top of the closet shelf. We buried him in the backyard and then kept packing. It took about two and half days to get everything moved into the new house. During the move, Firecracker's glass on his cage cracked and broke on one side but we were in such a hurry to go to Detroit that we pushed another box up against his cage and left him like that until our return. Yes, it was irresponsible and crazy but we weren't the brightest young adults you would want to meet and so we decided to leave him and assume he would stay put until we got back...and he did.

Venum told me that he was going to drink and drive on the trip up. He said he was going to keep only a certain amount of beer in the trunk and that was all he would be drinking. He told me that there was no need for me to argue with him because he was going to do what he pleased. He said that we would be taking a bag of weed as well to smoke on the way to Detroit. I didn't like what he had decided but I was afraid of Venum and so I went along with it all. We packed what we needed and we left for Detroit Michigan. It was to be around a 10 hour trip by car.