I was almost exactly as old as Alexis is now the first and only time my parents attempted a family road trip. I don't remember all of the details, but I do remember that it all started with a middle-of-the-night wake up call, a flurry of packing, and piling into the back of an old blue Mercury in the midst of snow and cold and dark.
We only made it a few miles from our trailer in Minot, North Dakota before the trouble started. The air was already tense because of the reason for the emergency trip--my paternal grandfather had passed away and we were headed to Ohio for his funeral--when the car started to sputter.
I learned a lot of new words that night. A lot.
As the car sputtered and then eventually stalled, there was a lot of cussing and gnashing of teeth and yelling. It's the yelling that I remember most, in part because at the time I didn't understand why it mattered if water and ice had made their way into the fuel line. I quickly found out that it meant we weren't going anywhere. Hours later we were back at home with no way to go anywhere.
Which is all to say, it ain't a road trip if there isn't yelling. You know I'm right.
After letting the fuzz-faced birthday girl and her happy companion play in the snow for a while, we decided it was time to pile back into the car and attempt to make our way from Indianapolis to Pittsburgh again. The snow had stopped falling and, by all accounts, roads were returning to normal all along our route.
(Which, you guys? How did we survive before Twitter? Weather radars are fun and all of that, but being able to ask people who live in cities along a route how the roads are looking? AMAZING.)
We made fairly decent time as we crossed Indiana, right up until we didn't. A semi managed to do a 180 before jack-knifing itself maybe twenty cars in front of us. It was a feat that fortunately seemed to leave everyone intact, but delayed. By a lot.
A few choice words were muttered as we sat parked on the Interstate for an hour. The choice words were laced with gratitude because we knew we were fortunate that no one (including us) was hurt, but still. Choice words. Muttered.
The choice words grew a little louder when we reached western Ohio and discovered that apparently a plow driver or two had called off sick. There were mile-long stretches that were perfectly fine, but they were mixed with mile-long stretches that hadn't been touched by a plow or salt truck or even a little plastic shovel kids use in sandboxes. It was like Hey! Mile Marker 6 Guy showed up! But, hey! Mile Marker 7 Guy didn't! The roads are OK! No, they're not! Yes, they are! No, they aren't!
Driving 20 mph on the Interstate is so much fun.
But then the roads magically cleared and stayed clear for the remainder of Ohio. We started to make almost normal time, just as long as you ignored that we were already two hours past our usual drive time.
And then it started.
The whining.
The moaning.
The groaning.
The complaining.
Here's the thing. *I* may enjoy the occasional date with a giant pile of chocolate and sugar and junk, but Alexis doesn't. The kid really doesn't eat much processed food. However, when we go to Indianapolis, that's pretty much all there is. She consumed an amazing quantity of butter and preservative-filled breads and piles of sugar and junk, junk, and more junk over the span of three days. When she does that, she pays.
Oh, she pays. And so do we.
"My belly hurts!" she whined over and over and OVER AND OVER AND OMG JUST SHUT UP, CHILD. WE HEARD YOU THE FIRST FOUR THOUSAND TIMES. We gave her a Tums and tried to distract her, but she became focused on the every little glimmer of discomfort.
We know how it ends when the kid becomes convinced she needs to throw up, by the way. Alexis' superpower is that she can make herself puke *just like that.* Once she has made the decision .... THAR SHE BLOWS!
Amidst all-around yelling from Alexis that she was going to puke and the husband yelling at her that she wasn't, I tried my best to curl up into a ball and teleport myself elsewhere. I knew what was going to happen and there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it.
The time was 11:21 when my brand freakin' new Nissan Rogue became the scene of a puke-filled crime.
The time was 11:22 when I invoked the "I don't do puke" rule and buried my face in my phone. He who went to college for zoology took WAY more biology classes in college than I did, so I have declared the contents of a stomach to be his realm. My Spanish translation degree will come in handy when Spanish words come spewing out of the kid's face. He has to use his degree somehow, right? Right.
Once the giant pile of processed food had been sprayed all over my car, the kid was totally fine. There was more yelling, but it was of the OMG THIS IS SO GROSS kind.
It ain't a road trip if there isn't yelling. You know it's true.
