we made it safely to Mississippi (well, some of us)…that’s the good news. the bad news is that in the past 29 years I must have been a real asshole because karma came a knockin’ and that bitch broke down my front door.
where shall we start in the 22 hour journey? the sum could only be described as a hybrid between the Oregon trail and National Lampoons Move to Mississippi vacation. I can fully assure you Oregon Trail on those green/black computer screens was a million times more fun though. in fact, MANY many many many times during the trip I was waiting for Ashton Kutcher to pop out from behind some kudzu and say that we were punked, but that would have been too easy. since the whole 3 day journey is an absolute shit show, I’ll just start at the top…
this isn’t mine and C’s first rodeo. we’ve done the Colorado Springs to El Paso drive twice now. Both times couldn’t have been A-N-Y easier. We even stopped this last time at a natural farm and let the kids feed Billy Goats halfway through. I guess we got cocky. whhhhaaaatttt a bad move.
about 1.5 hours into our drive from EP to San Antonio, we decided to stop and fill up our tank and get some lunch. my dad’s only advice to me was to make sure I never had any less than half a tank when driving across the vast wasteland that is west Texas. while I was paying and pumping, w was whimpering. he has never really liked car rides, so we didn’t think anything of it. after we got our food and I was about 15 seconds onto the freeway entrance ramp, w went all Regan MacNeil up in there. approximately 900 retches and 2 cubic tons of puke later, we were pulled over in one of those little triangles of land between the access road and the ramp and very uninterested in the $28 of McDonald’s we’d just purchased. we *really* should have taken that as an omen for the rest of the trip. C got master mcpukey clean up and I got the carseat. thanks to isaac newton and that super fun thing called gravity, i had quite a job on my hands. I literally used an entire container of wipes and filled up an entire McDonald’s bag with w’s caramel colored stomach contents.
25 minutes and one change of mix-matched pajamas (with no bottoms) later, we were back in Dante’s parking garage circling from the 5th, to 6th, to 7th circles of Hell. anyone who has ever driven across West Texas can attest to this. can I get an Amen?
9 hours after we started our 7 hour journey, we arrived in San Antonio to some super excellent news that our expert travel arrangements had landed us at the only La Quinta in the milky way proper that didn’t take pets. because we are hella organized, we made prior reservations (the night before) through hotels.com. they have an iron-clad return policy that is only thwarted by act of congress and some vicious sailor slang slinging by one very hot and very pissed off momma. I was not the purveyor of the sailor slang on this momentous occasion, but all I know is hotels.com’s absolutely no exceptions policy was excepted and we had reservations at a new pet-friendly hotel (which we incidentally were now parked outside of).
the unpacking of the truck was far harder than it had to be. I don’t know which part I liked better, being covered in cat piss by 2 very PISSED OFF (literally) cats or mother nature deciding to change the color pattern on my skivvies and pants. (she always was a heck of an interior designer). once we were in the room w/ all our belongings, I had to do clean-up crew on mother nature’s redecoration and jack busted in. he looked up at me with huge crocodile tears welling in his eyes and said “mommy’s ddddyyyyiiinnnggg”. I explained to him that I was, in fact, not dying in one of my least favorite conversations with my children ever.
and in our infinite wisdom we decided to wait until we got to San Antonio to feed the kids dinner. geeeenius. by the time we got to the room and settled, it was 9pm and there was no way in fresh Hell I was rolling out to any restaurant in the vicinity. lucky for us, la Quinta had room service. classy, yes?
I guess I should have been tipped off when the chick on the phone asked for my hotel’s phone number and repeated back “you are at the la Quinta on such and such road” I ordered the very fastest stuff on the menu: 2 salads and ham and cheese sandwiches. aside from the fact that the order cost MORE than our room did for the night, everything seemed in order until I heard “thankyouforyourorder. yourfoodwillbedeliveredinonehour” porque?!? feeding 3 toddlers ham and cheese sandwiches at 10pm was my future? no thanks. no thank you not one little bit.
C threatened my life if we didn’t get food mas pronto, so she called back room service and asked them a hearty wtf? it ended in us canceling that order and reordering from a local italian place. C promised them that the tip would decrease with every passing moment but that the sooner they got the food to us the more elated they would be with the tip. it was there dominos style in 30 minutes or less.
once everyone ate, we FINALLY got the kids to sleep. laying in bed I started having a panic attack about leaving my rings and j’s ipod in the truck. I only had to park in in BFE’s cousin REALLY BFE earlier in the evening so that was super fun heading back out. I saddled up and marched onward, out and back, when the bologna bandit incident happened.
3 hours later after I was done giving my sworn statements, DNA samples, and belly button lint to the cops,I finally started dozing. little did I know, I was sleeping in the same room with the cat from the meow mix commercials and brother was plain hangry (hungry+angry= hangry). he meowed and meowed and meowed non-stop until around 3 am when I in desperation gave him some pizza. ciao.
at 315, I went to sleep for the rest of the night. that’s where day 2 begins…
in other news: everyone is asleep and I couldn’t find Chapstick. I had to use lipstick, so Im pretty sure I’ll be looking like Tara Reid in the morning.
drewonpaper.com 