Disclaimer: This is one of those cathartic posts that my friends think will be good for me. So it’s long. Really long.
Yep. I have proof. God hates me. How do I know this? Because of a little thing innocently referred to as the “family vacation” or, worse yet, the family “road trip”. This is an experience I have recently endured.
Over the course of this debacle which I am about to chronicle for you, I found myself often making a face that I could best be described as an expression one would make if simultaneously feeling dumfounded, extremely irritated and attempting to keep from swearing profusely. If you think about it for a minute, I’m sure you can picture “the face”. I made that face a lot on this trip and in the hours leading up to it. To shorten what is likely to be an already lengthy diatribe, I’ll just refer to it as “The Face” from now on.
My brother-in-law and new sister-in-law were hosting a reception in Portland, OR (we live in SW Idaho) for close family and friends, because they had eloped several months ago, and I guess they decided they wanted to go ahead and spend the money they had saved by not having a wedding. I love them both, I really do. I’d love to see them, but when I was informed we’d be driving up with our four children in a travel caravan with my husband’s family, I had a mild panic attack. You see, my husband’s family, God bless them, seem to generate some kind of anti-time field. Anyone that gets close enough to them becomes trapped in their anti-time, and the normal passage of time is severely altered. It should be noted, that their anti-time never speeds up normal time. It only slows it to a slow crawl. Dragging your limp body by one arm kind of crawling. And we were going to be caravaning with them. With four kids. Did I mention one of the kids has autism, and one is only 5 and has a bladder the size of a thimble and one is a very opinionated and moody teenage girl? Sigh.
Day 0
And so it begins. After all attempts at pleading to be left behind had failed, I steeled myself to the fact that the best I could do was to prepare myself and my little tribe as best I could and soldier on. We were short on time, and needed to get our van serviced and two new tires installed before we left. This task was assigned to the husband. To further complicate things, on the way home from dropping the kids at school on this day, our Suburban died by the side of the road. (God probably thought this was funny.) I called a neighbor to pick me up and drive me to the shop to retrieve our van, which, mercifully, was ready and waiting. The husband was supposed to arrange a tow truck for our Suburban on his way to put tires on the van. A couple of important facts – the tow truck is available 24 hours a day, while the tire place was only open until 8:00. At 8:30, I called him to see when he’d be home, and he informed me he’d had a lot of trouble getting the truck towed, and we’d have to put tires on the van in the morning. (The Face makes its first appearance for the weekend.) So much for our early start in the morning. I’ve yet to hear a good explanation for why the truck towing came before the van tires, but I digress.
Day 1
I didn’t pack until after I’d showered in the morning. That was slightly passive aggressive on my part, I admit. By the time we were all ready and in the van and on our way to the tire place, it was already as late as we had originally planned to leave. We were supposed to meet my in-laws at the tire place, and we’d all leave together. We got there, got the tires on, and headed out in our little caravan an hour and half later than we had originally scheduled. Perfect. My sister-in-law asked how I was doing, and I told her I was just trying to avoid divorce at that point. She probably thought I was kidding.
And off we went!
All went surprisingly well and on schedule at first, except for the fact that our 7 year old (the one with autism) kept begging to go to Wal-Mart. And by that I mean, he screamed “I want to go to Waaaaaaal-Maaaaaaart!!!” incessantly the entire time we were in the car. We stopped in Baker City for lunch and headed out in our little caravan with no issues, beyond the fact that we were forced to listen to “I want to go to Waaaaaaal-Maaaaaaart!!!” again as soon as the car door closed. I was beginning to feel somewhat hopeful. But somewhere around The Dalles, the anti-time kicked in, and reality came crashing down on us. The plan, as I understood it, was to pull in, gas up, and continue on to view Multnomah Falls and have dinner. It seems each carload of people had a different interpretation of “the plan”. We had been at the falls for an hour before any of the other family showed up. Then they all had to tour the falls. Then we had to wait for the restaurant to clear a table for all 14 of us. I made The Face a LOT that night. We ended up delayed at Multnomah for at least 2 ½ hours. We didn’t get into the Tigard/Portland area until about 10:30 PM. When we got to our room, it had two beds. For a family of six. The Face. (Pretty sure God was laughing at me again right then.) We got a couple of extra pillows and blankets from the hotel and put the older two kids asleep on the floor, and the husband promised to never make a decision for the family again. Good enough. We went to sleep. Some of us were even in beds.
Day 2
I awakened with renewed hope that today would go well. Okay, not really. I like to try to sound positive sometimes though. So, the plan for Day 2 had been to go to the ocean and possibly the aquarium in Newport. Turns out the van that part of our caravan had rented had issues with the breaks and had to be exchanged at the rental place. I believe this was actually another side effect of the anti-time phenomenon. It’s insidious, I tell you.
We didn’t leave Tigard until early afternoon. Our little caravan headed off for the long trek to the ocean. We opted to go to the aquarium first. My five year old loved it. My 7 year old spent the entire time trying to drag us back to the car and take him home. “I want to go hooooooome-uh!” That replaced the Wal-Mart chant for a while. Overall, the aquarium was a good experience – most of us really enjoyed it. After that, we headed to the ocean. I’ve been in a few oceanside cities over the years but never actually set foot in the ocean. It really is beautiful. High point of the trip, for me. Our 7 year old even broke down and had a good time. Yay! After about a half an hour at the beach, the rest of our caravan informed us they had to leave. The caravan that we had followed there and who knew the way back to our hotel. We were assured it was easy to find our way back. We believed them. We were so naïve. Given this assurance, we decided to stay longer, watch the sun set on the ocean and have dinner.
We did pretty well up until the highway split, and we weren’t sure which way to go. We didn’t have a map, and we couldn’t get any of our caravan on the phone. When I finally got through to someone, the reception was so bad that I was screaming into the phone (as if that was going to help them get a clear signal, but I wasn’t thinking rationally at this point) and hearing only broken sentences in return. We decided to go right and hope that was a a good direction. It was very late at night, and the 7 year old would stir from sleep every 5 minutes or so to plead with us to “Gooooo hooooooome-uh!”. I really felt bad for the little boys. Called my brother-in-law to get directions into town when we got closer and was informed to look for the McDonald’s and turn right. We turned right after every McDonald’s we came to for the next hour and a half. When we finally got to the right one, it didn’t put us on the street he said it would. Turns out my brother-in-law is one of those people who knows how to get somewhere but doesn’t have any idea what any of the street names are called. We finally drove in circles until we found the hotel, only to find out the key card for our room wasn’t working. The Face. (God laughs again.) Everyone collapsed onto a bed or the floor and tried to forget about much of Day 2.
Day 3
I had hoped we’d get an earlier start today since the van issue had been resolved, but it was false hope. Anti-time… We had to scratch plans to go to the museum and just barely fit in lunch and a quick trip to the Lego store in the mall before we had to head back to the hotel and get ready for the reception that night. Our family was sitting in the hotel room ready to go, so I called the rest of the group and told them to just let us know when they were ready to leave. They informed me they were already in the van and waiting for us. The Face. So we gathered up our stuff and sprinted to our van so we could follow them to the dinner. When we got to the dinner, I realized I had left in such a hurry that I’d forgotten to put on my heels and was wearing my flip flops. Mind you, this was a rather formal affair. The Face. (God was laughing again. I could feel it). The 7 year old had a major meltdown and had to be escorted from the building. I spent much of my time trying to hide my feet and keep the 5 year old from breaking things. The dinner was held in a gorgeous old Victorian mansion overlooking the water. The 7 year old eventually calmed down enough to come back inside, and ate almost an entire loaf of bread, and nothing else, for dinner. The husband delivered a very good toast to his brother, and the evening ended well. And then we headed back to the hotel. Without the rest of the caravan that we followed to get there. Yes, we are stupid. But we had gotten really good directions from my brother-in-law this time! Yes, we are VERY stupid.
The directions went bad from the moment we got off the freeway. That man really needs to learn street names. Or we really need to buy a map. That would probably be a good plan for next time. He eventually had compassion on us and came and found us and led us back to the hotel. I was torn between feeling guilty that he had to leave from saying his good-byes to his guests to help us and fearing we’d run out of gas lost in a totally foreign city with four unhappy children in tow. I sided with fear and let go of the guilt. We got back very late again and collapsed into our respective sleeping spots.
Day 4
Hooooooome-uh! It was time to return to the desert, and I was SO happy. I found out the sun does come out in Portland, but apparently only long enough to lure you outside so it can rain on you again. And we weren’t caravaning because most of the group was staying an extra day, so we could go at our own pace, without the interference of anti-time. WooHOO! I had great plans to only make two quick stops for fuel and fast food on the way home. My plans were thwarted by the 5 year old with the thimble-sized bladder. That child actually asked to go to the bathroom five minutes after leaving a stop on two different occasions. It’s a really good thing he’s cute. The 7 year old asked where we were going, and when we said “home”, he said, “All right” and thus ended the Wal-Mart and go home chants. That was much appreciated by the rest of us.
We learned something about our children on this trip. If they become bored enough, they seem to actually find punishment a form of entertainment and preferable to doing nothing. This isn’t fun for the parents. The trip home went well and, best of all, went quickly. I swear I could almost hear angels singing when I finally saw my house again.
I know. I’m probably a big baby. Oh, well. It’s my blog, and I can whine if I want to. And this was the condensed, Reader’s Digest version.
I should qualify that entry by letting you know that I dearly love my in-laws. They are some of the nicest, most helpful people I’ve ever known and have always been very good to me. If the husband and I ever split up, I plan to petition the court for custody of his family.