Because there is a God (who invented portable DVD players) and there is a Rachel (who invented Signing Time), we made it safe, sound, and (sort of) sane to Indianapolis. But not without me turning into Super Grump. And it's all my husband's fault.
I firmly believe that if I have to suffer through a six-hour drive that involves over 60 pounds of dogs endlessly fighting for sole possession of my lap, somebody is buying me ice cream. If those dogs manage to stomp and jump on me so many times that I start to feel like Mike Tyson's girlfriend, then somebody is buying me a Chocolate French Silk Pie Blizzard. Nothing else will do. Of course there are only four Dairy Queens along the way. One gets disqualified for being too close to our house in Pittsburgh. Another gets disqualified for being too close to Indianapolis. A third is disqualified just because I say so. But my dear, dear husband LOVES to remind me about the third disqualification. Today he did it so many times that I fear I may never sleep again.
The Dairy Queen in question is located right along the Interstate and is right smack in the middle of a gas station/really big convenience store called Stuckey's. It's just a little bit past the halfway mark of our voyage, so you would think it would be the perfect place to stop. I personally have been there exactly once and will NEVER, EVER set foot in there again. I can't even think about the place without throwing up in my mouth a little bit.
It's been years since we were there, but I remember it like it was yesterday. We were making the magical voyage from Pittsburgh to Indy. I had demanded an ice cream stop and a restroom break, and my husband demanded that I combine stops. It seemed like a reasonable enough requirement given that he knew of a Dairy Queen within a gas station. It was pretty safe to assume that there would be a restroom there. One stop shopping is never a bad thing. However, he failed to mention was that it was over 45 minutes from the scene of the discussion. As you can well imagine, by the time we pulled into the parking lot, it was an emergency-type situation. I ran as fast as I could for the facilities. What I saw stopped me in my tracks. It was bad.
I won't go into details since I know many of you are planning to gorge yourselves on Thanksgiving yumminess soon and I don't want to ruin your appetites. Let's just say that the fact that the tile was cracked and many of the stalls were missing their doors was most definitely the least of the problems. Gross. Gross. Gross. But it was a desperate situation, so I had to make do. Thank goodness I had a bottle of antibacterial hand stuff in my purse because no amount of hand washing could ever make that yuckiness go away. Just thinking about it makes me want to go take a bath in bleach.
I probably don't even need to say it, but I didn't eat my Blizzard that day. I don't think I ate anything that day. And my husband fully realized just how traumatized I was. On our return trip, he jokingly said, "Hey, want to stop at Stuckey's?" He thought he was hysterical. I did not. Apparently, glaring at your husband can be misunderstood as some form of encouragement. Now he mentions it every single time we do the drive. I never thinks it's funny, but he thinks he's a regular Don Rickles.
Today he started in with the Stuckey's jokes a mere 30 minutes into the drive. And repeated the same lame joke at least 500 more times. So now I'm left with the images of gross emblazoned in my head. I'm pretty sure I won't be sleeping tonight for fear of having a Stuckey's nightmare. I'll probably spend my every waking moment trying to think of fair revenge. Either that, or trying to replace the Stuckey's image with this one:
