Looks Like We Made It

I don't have too many rules that I live by.  I feel like there are exceptions to every rule, so I'm usually not so hard-and-fast on life rules.  But I do have a new life rule:

Do not attempt to drive from Pennsylvania to Illinois in one day with a four-year-old and a husband who is genetically incapable of getting up before 10:00 a.m.  

Remember that one, okay people? 

So, yeah, we got off to a bit of a later start than anticipated, which should come as a surprise to, you know, nobody.  I think we got on the road around noon, though to be fair that was Eastern Time, and so it was only 11:00 a.m. back in Chicago, practically the crack of dawn! 

Our first challenge was to convince the GPS that we didn't want to take the winding road of death that it sent us on during the trip out.  I gotta say, she was a bit of a tenacious little bugger on this one, always asking us to when possible, make a legal U-turn so we could get back on U.S. Route 30.  At a certain point we were convinced that she was out to kill us because we so often ignore her directions. 

(SIDE NOTE: I had a psychology professor in college who studied people's tendency to humanize electronic devices.  #1 humanized device: the alarm clock.  But that was before evil "Maggie" Magellan GPS was invented.) 

So, there were a lot of wrong turns just getting out of town, but because of a wrong turn the best thing happened: I saw some Amish people at an intersection in a horse and buggy!  I finally got to see a damn buggy!

Let me speed this travelogue up, because I've already written several paragraphs and we haven't even gotten out of town yet.  (You might say this post is going at the pace of a horse and buggy.) 

So, we made it to the turnpike, and the first part of the drive was beautiful and positive.  The sun was shining, the Pennsylvania mountains were green, and the sky was filled with puffy white clouds.  The day was mine!  I drove the 3.5 hours to Ohio, plus a little more, for a total of 4 hours 15 minutes.  When we stopped at a rest stop I asked Bill to start driving. 

Somewhere in the course of Bill's driving we ended up stopping for dinner at a Taco Bell in Wauseon, Ohio.  It was already 8:00 p.m. local time, and we had 3.5 hours left to drive home.  After dinner I resumed driving, but by then a little spit rain had kicked up, and with the combination of my bug-splattered windshield and my ailing windshield wipers, I concluded that I could not see out of the window.  Bill decided to stop at a Wal-Mart to buy new wiper blades.  (Note: It seemed like the kind of town where Wal-Mart is the center of all activity.) 

So we sat in the parking lot of a Wal-Mart in a podunk town and I tried to have a talk with Nathan about how it's not polite to be annoying when people are already tired and frazzled and attempting to drive.  (I think most of you probably already correctly assumed that I might as well have had a talk with one of the many cows on the side of the road, for all the good this conversation did.) 

Bill got the blades, then tried to put them on and realized they were the wrong ones, so he returned them, then got new ones and put those on.  And we were good to go around 9:00 p.m.

I owed about 45 more minutes on my driving portion, but by then it was dark.  Now, here's the thing: since Nathan was born, I apparently became 100 years old, because I no longer like driving at night.  I mean, it's not a big deal in local, well-lit areas.  But I'm terrified of the pitch-dark Interstate where I just imagine driving off the side of the road into what appears to be a deep, dark abyss (though as Bill pointed out was really just a gentle grassy slope).  I drove a scary, white-knuckled 30 minutes to the Indiana border, and then gave up. 

We still had 3 hours left to go.

Bill and Nathan played a rousing game of "guess which superhero I'm describing," during which I learned that my husband knows the exact comic book issue number that each superhero made his/her first appearance.  Sexy, I tell you, sexy. 

I wanted to quit so many times and stay in a hotel.  The drive just seemed about two hours longer than you could reasonably do in one day, at least with a little kid in the backseat.  But my night owl husband persevered, and we pulled into our garage at 12:30 a.m. Central Standard Time. 

And although our car now looks like we're homeless people, we made it home in one piece, which honestly is more than my overly-paranoid self expected at some points.  And I didn't get any speeding tickets, unlike the drive out here when we moved in 2004.  I got a speeding ticket in the state of Iowa, much to the utter amusement of everybody I knew because I generally had the reputation of driving like an old grandma.  I mention this because I was recalling yesterday that during that incident the police radar had clocked me at 78 mph, which is a speed I cannot imagine driving now in my advanced age (and my poor car's advanced age).  Yesterday I was afraid to take it up to 70 on some of these roads where that was the speed limit.  Maybe it's because I have a kid in the backseat now, or because my car is now 10+ years old and I'm afraid to send it hurling through Indiana at midnight going 70 miles per hour. 

But we're back now, and the sun is shining, and I'm buzzing with excitement over the upcoming warmer days, as well as several other fun opportunities that have presented themselves recently. 

I hope everyone has a great weekend!  Happy Mother's Day!