Over The River And Through The Woods...

We could've saved a ton on beds. 

Early Saturday morning, the four of us took off for my folks' house in Massachusetts, a roughly seventeen hour drive. (Because a 2k pricetag to voluntarily drag my kids through holiday week airports didn't quite compute.) My brain, spine, and eyeballs have yet to fully recover (from things like stopping three times in the first two hours)...so for now, here's a few key highlights of the journey. 

-Adding to our Thanks A Lot, Ohio, list: We were pulled over for doing a bit more than sixty in a sixty zone. Which P.J. erroneously believed was a seventy zone. (But it was even a slight bit more than seventy.) Double unfortunately, we were seven hours into the drive and the girls had just fallen asleep. P.J., fearing that his wife would divorce him over the potential for their crabapple children to awaken, whispered to the state trooper and asked if he could step out of the vehicle because of his sleeping kids. The trooper wasn’t impressed. Told him to stay in the car. Seemed disproportionately annoyed. And handed out a whopper of a ticket.

-Checked into a Red Roof Inn in Erie, PA. P.J. and I took one bed, Nora [happily] took another “stretch out” bed, and a pack n’ play for Susannah was shoved between the two. Which would’ve worked out fine, if not for the fact that Nora WAS SO EXCITED until about midnight (roughly two hours after her father began the Dead To The World snore) and Zu was curiously peeking over the side of her crib like a concerned meerkat every half an hour throughout the evening and morning. Let’s just say that, if this were The Little House On The Prairie, Livin’ In A One Room House era, we would’ve lasted precisely one night.

-Entering into New York state and immediately seeing picturesque trees and shadowy hills, all encrusted with fairylike frost. P.J. and I excitedly pointed out the new landscape to the girls…who were wildly unimpressed. Nora purported to see “nothing.” Susannah grunted unhappily and filled her diaper.

-Shortly thereafter, I was humongously unprepared to see a deer pass us in the righthand lane. Quite dead. Strapped to a bicycle rack, posed in a questionable Superman position. I informed Peej that I needed a bit of warning for that type of peripheral ambush, but he didn’t share my dismay. “That deer is flying like Superman! He is having a great time!”

-We stopped at a recently renovated McDonalds in Owego, NY. The reopening of this establishment had been written about in the Pennysaver, and apparently caused the whole town to come out and wait in hourlong lines. Also, every single person interviewed was over-the-top enthused about reclaiming their Mickey D’s, a fact that brought me to Ugly Tears with its genuine Americana pride.

More later. But for now, more coffee. More [amazing] food. More forced naptimes for kids who aren't exactly sure in which time zone they currently reside. 

But no more car for a little bit.