Saturday, February 19, 2011

Another Road Trip From Hell

Before I begin to describe the last two days of my life, let me answer a question posed by my Minions about It's Cake:  How much did the cake end up costing?  How can you put a price on your child's happiness?

Soooo.....
As you may know my sister's ex and some of her children live in Cedar City Utah.  Yes, they are Utards (they call themselves that don't get all enraged).  Every so often she is required by the courts to get her youngest who lives with us up to be there for a visitation.  This is an 800+ mile road trip kiddos.  I am not going to get into details let's just suffice to say that this one was starting out at noon on Friday and was not going to include an overnight stay. 
We left here at noon.  Becca went right to sleep.  Yay.  UNBELIEVABLY she woke up an hour later and never stopped talking the whole rest of the time.  And she was mean. She is suffering from Emily's Disease... if you know my mother you understand.  It is a constant, inability to stop talking.  And now coversating mind you.. just blabbing on and on and on.... UNBELIEVABLY she does not always find me as entertaining as everyone else does (I know, right?) But she would stop if we put on Justin Bieber music.  Ya'll I know know every Justin Bieber song by heart.  Sure he looks all sweet and cuddly but what 12 year old should be talking about love and being together forever etc???  It is ridiculous.  Sure he has great hair but.... And my sister wonder about things like: How do you get your Teen Idol teenager to take out the trash? or what is all this about his father who abandoned him as a baby gliding on into his life now and how ticked off is his mom?
Anyhoww......
Since I knew there was little chance I would survive this trip adhereing to my diet I decided to take a diet break.  Fun but not smart.  Hadn't had sugar or fast food in 5 weeks.  Nothing I ate sat well in my stomach.  Tasted AWESOME but made me sick. SO WORTH IT!!!!  Also got carsick.  Not as much fun.  Hello McDonald's Iced Coffee.... Hello Taco Bell... Hello chocolate covered expresso beans.... Hello more coffee... Hello zinger.  Oh yeah, it was a binge all right. (hanging head in shame).  We got to Cedar at 7:30 after fighting several bouts of traffic.  We were so tired.  We slowed the car down, threw Becca and her stuff out and headed out of town.  Not really--- but close enough. 
It is quiet.  There is no Bieber.   Ahhhh.... so we drive and drive and drive.....
Since I am FaceBooking as I go I get lots of ideas from various helpful friends on how to help with my upset stomach.  These include:  Thai Food, Haggis, oysters in rancid mayonaise, liver, McRibs, David Cassidy & Bobby Sherman, Sushi and goat testicles.  My sister brought a supply 'healthful' snacks including  Goats Milk Caramel Pops.  Seriously. 
We see signs saying No Buzzed Driving and we wonder--- what about Zzzzzzd driving?  We talk and talk about ex husbands and ex boyfriends and about this car we saw that had DIVORCE PARTY-- VEGAS HERE WE COME and had something that looked like a dead body wrapped in a tarp on it.
We are out in the middle of nothing and norwhere when I look over and realize that we are on Empty.  And The HEY IDIOT YOU HAVE BEEN ON EMPTY FOR A LONG TIME' light is on.  We do not know how long this has been happening but start giggling about how TERRIFIC it would be to run out of gas.  It is about 11:30 and we have been driving for about 12 hours straight.  We are praying for gas.  We wonder if God is shaking His head and wondering if it was really a good idea to put us in the same family.  Suddenly we see a truck stop.  We get gas.  By the way I forgot to mention that when we got gas on the way up my sister could not find the gas tank (I told her next time you steal a car look for the gas tank (we had borrowed mom and dads car for the better mileage) and when she realized she had parked the wrong side she tried to stretch the hose over the car hood.  Even though she was entertaining the other customers I made her go inside for snacks so I could fill up. Anyhow... back to the truck stop.  We are heading to the restroom when we hear an announcement over the loudspeaker  "BUS!" and we wonder what that means until AN ENTIRE BUS FULL OF TEENAGE GIRLS DECENDS ON THE TRUCK STOP!!  It was terrifying.  They had so much energy!!!!   We grabbed our snacks (this is where I got the Zingers)(and the reeses)(and the diet pepsi) and headed out.  We had decided that there was no way we were going to make it home so we decided to get a room at Whisky Petes at Stateline.  So at that point we figured we had 1.5 hours to go.  So we see the sign for the freeway... decide to go SOUTH and start down the road.... it seems to be a very long onramp.  A really loooong onramp.  CAN THIS REALLY BE THE ONRAMP?  We are veering away from the freeway.  This is starting to seem like it may possibly be a mistake. We wonder... how long will it take for someone to find us in the middle of the desert?   How long can we make the zingers, potatoe chips, reese cups, charlston chews, butter toffee peanuts, oreo snacksters and diet pepsi last?  When we run out what part of my sister should I eat first or should one of us cut off an appendage and eat that together first and how will we decide who?  I am the oldest so shouldnt I get to decide?  I think so too!
We decide to do something feminine and admit we made a mistake and turn around. I know that some of you men do not understand this but just go with it for now, okay?
We backtrack and figure out that the REAL on ramp is about 20 feet beyond the road we had taken.  So we get going again having only wasted 20-30 minutes but having learned a lot about our survival skills.
Finally the glow of Las Vegas..... then the rain hits..... we see a bright light in the distance and I speculate that this looks like a brontasaurus.  Turns out it is a million people driving to vegas from the other direction.  We seem to be the only people driving away from vegas on friday night of a holiday weekend.  FINALLY we reach Stateline and park the car carefully observing where we parked.  (by the way a very good friend recently gave me a very good tip on how to park when you have lost your mind and lose your car:  Always park straight out from the door even when you have to park further out.) We go inside where they are apparently observing the Walmart rule:  When you have 25 people in line and multiple registers never open more than two registers at a time.  We are punch drunk with exhaustion and planning on sleeping until the hotel throws us out and then shopping at the outlet store.  If you listen carefully you can hear God laughing at our plans........ We go to bed.  Well, first we hunt down non-existant ice and eat a bunch of junk and drink warm diet pepsi-- then we go to bed  By the way--- no Guy Fieri on the TV.  What is with that????   We are awakened at 1:30 which is about 20 minutes after falling asleep by the phone.  It is my son who tells me that my daughter is having trouble breathing and they are heading to the urgent care.  She has new insurance with her dad.  I do not have the info.  Dumb.  I ask if I should come home wondering if I can even do that. He says to wait for a call.  They call back at 2:30--- still waiting.  They call at 3:00 she has a bad upper respitory and is very sick.  Still cannot decide about leaving. I am delirious with exhaustion. At 3:30 they call they are home.  She got a breathing treatment and is going to sleep.  I decide she will be okay.  After all she is the age I was when I was married right?  I go to sleep-- she calls at 6:00 crying.  Please come home.  We grab clothes and hit the road. We can't find the car of course.  We wonder how embarrassing it will be to call your parents and tell them the car is gone.  There is snow on the ground.  We also find out that there was 5" of snow in Cedar City at that point-- so glad we had gone when we did.  We are zombies.  We somehow pull into town at 11:30 and Thank God He got us home.  I get Lauren gatorade and make some eggs and hit my bed.
Not the best road trip--- sadly I am sure there will be another one before too long.
By the way..... my niece comes home Monday.  That is right we do all this for a 3 day weekend.  Crazy right?  Divorce will kill you

2 comments:

JC said...

Why doesn't the ex at least do one part of the trip ?

I know with all you told us .. that's what I ask ? Just seems fair ...

critterlover said...

What a nightmare. I'm glad Lauren is ok. At least you can make it funny. You gotta laugh, right? I mean, what's the alternative?