Driving - aka Another Rant

I’m not a nice person when I’m driving. I’ve mentioned this before, in detail.

But this weekend, poor, sweet Naomi got to experience two days in a row of more than three hours in a car with me.

I’m pretty sure she thinks I’m evil personified at this point.

I’d be fine with driving anywhere and everywhere if other cars and people would just get out of my way.

And let me be fair here and say that US 24 between Wabash, Indiana and where it turns to join with US 35 is a nice, desolate highway. It was so nice to be able to just drive and pretend we were in the midst of a zombie apocalypse, just the four of us, looking for a place to hunker down and fight off the living dead.

But the closer we got to West Lafayette, the more the living inserted themselves into my lovely zombie fantasy.

We got to the rec center where the dance marathon was being held. Alyssa didn’t like the first parking spot I found and so I drove around to find another. A bus was parked, with its flashers on, along the roundabout in front of the rec center. There were no people getting on or off the bus. There was no one to be seen around the bus, living dead or alive. I waited, perhaps not so patiently, for a few minutes (it may have been seconds, who’s counting?) and then whipped around that stupid bus (it was a FREAKING BUS!) to make my way out of the roundabout and into the adjacent parking lot.

We drove forever, with me muttering that I hoped we didn’t have to walk a damn mile to get back to the rec center.

We finally found a parking spot, it was only a half mile from the rec center (I am, obviously, exaggerating, it was probably only a quarter of a mile) and I bitched and limped and moaned the entire walk to the center. We all had to pee and we’d been in the car for about five days at that point. It was time to be done driving.

We hung out at the rec center for a few hours. I only had to walk the three miles to the car once to get some medicine for Olivia, who was achy and perhaps a bit feverish from the drive. She bounced back pretty fast and had a lovely time getting presents and being doted upon.

We left the rec center around 8:30 or so and headed to the hotel.

Now, I’ve been to West Lafayette about ten times in the past ten or so years. But it’s only once a year and I only ever make it to the campus by sheer luck and tenacity. We stayed in the Union Club hotel. Alyssa (or maybe it was Naomi) put the address to the Union Club into their phone and used the GPS to guide me. It was only a mile or so away. But as everyone knows, college campuses have an insane amount of one-way streets. Why? Who the hell knows, because engineers are stupid, that’s why.

The GPS was stupid too. It wanted me to go the opposite direction of the way I needed to go, so I ignored it and went the way I knew I needed to go. The GPS dealt and recalculated. I can be smarter than a computer sometimes. Just saying.

We’d only gone about two blocks when someone fool in a car ahead of me wanted to parallel park. Growl.

I whipped around them too. They may have honked at me. I don’t know. I didn’t hear it. Either A or N mentioned hearing honking but at that point, I didn’t especially care about a parallel parking fool’s honking horn. I just wanted to get to the stupid hotel. At that point, Naomi remarked that she could tell I’d driven in the city before. She might have been commenting that I need to chill the hell out but she was too polite to actually say it in those exact words.

The GPS sent me around the block once and tried to do it twice but I was, once again, smarter than the computer. I found the parking garage across the street from the hotel and then proceeded to go up and down the damn aisles looking for a spot that wasn’t reserved for campus vehicles or tiny cars (who is driving these tiny cars and why are there so many parking spaces reserved for them? I mean, I have NEVER seen a tiny car parked in those tiny car parking spaces…just saying (okay, just bitching but whatever!)

Once we were parked in the ridiculously narrow spaces in which no other cars had managed to pull into correctly, we all wiggled out of the car with our doors barely opened because we’re so very conscientious of other people’s property and we didn’t want to ding the doors of the cars parked next to us even though they kind of deserved it with the way wonky way they parked. Sigh. Whew. So much annoyance for one chubby mumsy.

Then we had to get all the crap out of the back of the car. I always overpack. Why? I should know better and yet…I don’t. I pulled a wheeled suitcase that had my and Olivia’s clothes. I carried a cooler with Liv’s antibiotic in it and the shoulder bag that had our bathroom gear (HBA items, if you will.) Alyssa carried the heavy-ass snack bag along with her own backpack of clothes and HBA items. Olivia wore a backpack with her entertainment items and carried the gift bag she’d received at the dance marathon.

Naomi carried her bag and her coat and I don’t even remember what all she carried because it was all so very insane what all we were all carrying. And it was flipping cold. And it was dark and I was tired and we were all hungry and yes, I was still very annoyed with the entire world. Come on zombie apocalypse!

Alyssa tried to get Olivia to carry the blanket that we always have in the car. Olivia was not having it. She insisted she was carrying quite enough, thank you very much. She does have tiny hands, you know.

Alyssa relented and carried the stupid blanket herself. We trudged across the street (after waiting for traffic because as you know, there is ALWAYS traffic) and made our way into the hotel.

We were on the third floor. We had to wind our way through the halls of the hotel just to find the elevator, which was quite possibly the tiniest elevator ever invented. My big ol’ butt barely fit inside that thing once the other three and all our luggage was inside.

We finally, FINALLY made it to our room. Yay!!!! We dumped our stuff, Alyssa and Naomi started scanning their phones for a pizza place that would deliver to our location. Olivia took off her boots and socks and claimed her bed, climbing in and snuggling up under the blanket she’d refused to carry from the car.

I apologized to all and headed to the bathroom to…um, you know, it’s not necessary to share EVERYTHING. You know? Right.

After the pizza was delivered and eaten, Olivia settled in and was asleep before 10, which is good because yeah, she’s still sick. What the hell were we even doing there? I should have stayed home with this poor sick child and let her relax at home instead of dragging her halfway across Indiana and back in the span of twenty-four hours.

Mother of the freaking year here.

The next morning, all of twelve hours after schlepping all of our crap from the car to the hotel, we got to do it all over again. We headed back to the dance marathon to see the closing ceremony and the reveal of the amount raised for Riley Hospital for Children. It was neat and fun and totally worth it.

We hit the road after 10am because the McD’s was insanely busy and we had to go in because O wanted pancakes. Which is fine. It’s FINE! I wasn’t going to let that child try to eat pancakes in my car. I didn’t want to be wiping syrup off the sunroom for a month. The sausage burritos were totally worth the wait.

Once we were finally back on US 25N aka Hoosier Heartland Highway, I was able to settle back into my zombie apocalypse fantasy and enjoy the drive home.

We’d been in the car for maybe two hours when Olivia sighed and said, “I feel like I’ve been in this car for twenty four hours.”

Oh, kid do I feel you.

We’ve been home for several days and my hips still hurt from sitting in that car for so many hours over the last couple of weeks.

On the bright side, I don’t have to drive forever to see Julie again this coming weekend. Only too bad for her and her family, they DO have to drive all those miles to come all the way up here. And interstate 69 is not the most excellent road for pretending to be outrunning a hoard of zombies.