Deciding to take advantage of a long weekend, we made plans to take a little trip to visit family. We began our day by renewing the expired registration on my vehicle. We left it at the mechanic for an inspection while we got a donut at a nearby grocery store. During our little shopping trip, the chatty butterfly introduced herself to every single person we saw—the cashiers, the baker, other customers, the custodian, etc. “Hi! What’s your name? I’m Tinkerbell.” No joke either, she introduced herself as Tinkerbell to every person she saw. They of course can’t help but to smile and more often than not, give her candy. Smart kid.
After donuts and finishing registration, we returned home to finish packing. First, the girls sat on my bed and insisted on helping me pack by handing me one item at a time. Then little ladybug decided it would be much more efficient to just get in the suitcase, which she did and smiled with pleasure at her own brilliance, until her sister tried to close and zip up the suitcase. Tears ensued. Finally, they both decided to let me pack and went off in search of their own fuzzy, pink suitcase with wheels that they stuffed with toys (couldn’t forget those).
More packing, a few more errands and finally, we picked up Grammy and we were off! Just us four girls, we would fly down the freeway with the sun shining, the girls sleeping, music playing and would arrive just after dinnertime. It was a great plan, for the first seven minutes and which point, the great and mysterious phenomenon of the freeway struck—traffic. It is truly a wonder I don’t understand. The first 30 miles took us just under and hour and a half (which happened to be as long as the girls’ nap). Then we hit a brief stretch of 65 mph bliss before we again hit the sea of red brake lights.
We were in the far left lane of four lanes and moving the slowest. For some unknown reason, the far right lane was moving the fastest, which is opposite of norm. I can resign myself to traffic during peak time, especially when the right lane is congested with people getting on and off but this really made no sense. And as I usually do in such situations, I became obsessed with studied the cars around me and searching for them as we travel down the road, trying to determine which lane really is the fastest. But inevitably, as soon as you change lanes, it becomes the slowest so generally I prefer to just sit in annoyance at the people who insist on trying to weave, further bogging down traffic. Then I began counting the number of people who are on their cell phones but became so irritated at how frequent that actually was and quit. As if traffic wasn’t enough of a mess, at least a third of the state is torn up with construction at any given time (this might even be law). So we went from four lanes, to three, to two, to three and on. So even if you do finally get in a groove, it gets congested again when we have to do that really scary, awful thing—merging. (*gasp!*) Really people, it’s like a zipper. Take your turn and move on with life. Instead people drive up the side trying to rudely squeeze in at the very last minute or worse, dashing in front of a giant semi assuming that the gap he left was for them, instead of safety reasons.
But finally we are moving and making our way down the road. But by now, the girls are bored. But never fear, we are well stocked with books, toys, snacks and as a last resort, a dvd player. As a kid (begin far-off-reminiscing-voice) we made the eight hour drive to see my grandparents usually three times a year. There was no portable dvd player or built in playstation. We passed the time sleeping, reading, fighting, singing and playing obnoxious games. I’ve actually sang “99 bottles of pop on the wall” all the way through. Twice. The best was playing bingo on the little travel board games with the sliding red doors. So many children today have never played the license plate game (truly a tragedy) and would be shocked if someone hit them over sighting a car. Instead, the dvd player turns on and a couple of movies later, we arrive. It makes the drive easier. And its more entertaining for me as the driver because I like peering into other people’s car to see if I can tell at a quick glance what movie they are watching. (and yes, we finally did give in, we ran out of toys and turned on a movie for the final leg of the drive).
The best part of the drive is the halfway break which for us, if at all possible, needs to be a McDonalds. McDonalds is wonderful for the following reasons:
1. Playplace (burn off some of that energy)
2. Mc Donalds monopoly (and the perpetual “what would you do with a million dollars?”)
3. Miniature ice cream cones (perfect size to count as a dessert without a complete sugar high)
And back into the car we go.
We finally arrive, minutes after everyone has gone to bed and my children pile out of the car and run through the house like crazy people. They giggle, play, give those great big I-missed-you hugs and finally start settling down for bed. A few minutes after midnight, the house is quiet and everyone has finally been put to bed but here’s our little secret. If we are at our own house, my girls are the perfect bedtime babies. But if we are anywhere but home, we simply don’t sleep. They each played quietly in their bed for half an hour before I fell asleep (and I assume they did too). Around 3, the ladybug crawled into my bed. Around 4, the butterfly joined us. Around 7, we gave up and played quietly until they could no longer be contained. By 8, we officially declared it morning and they began again squealing, running around, giggling and playing like the beautiful, happy little monsters they are.
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