Why, yes, it is.

Guess I oughtta not take this “Slow Food” thing so seriously.

It’s apparently too much for my children to handle.

We’ve been gone for a few days, traveling with my husband again. Last time we went on a “business trip”, it was to Yucky-In-Tucky. At least, that’s what O2, our resident Geographer, calls it. This time, it was a three-day trip to Detroit, Michigan, with a brief stop in Canada.

As we neared Detroit, I noticed that the locals think themselves to be rather smart.

It’s constantly in your face.

Well, let’s just see how smart they REALLY are around here.

Hm. This is promising.

Well, then. Let the border-crossing commence.

From Detroit, it’s just a stone’s throw (plus an excruciating border-crossing-customs-interrogation, but that’s not important here) to Windsor, Canada. You can get there via the Ambassador Bridge

or a tunnel, which we always seem to miss going TO Canada. I know it must be here somewhere, because we came BACK that way.

I like the bridge, however.

The view from the bridge is really breathtaking.

Once we crossed the bridge, it was time for customs. I didn’t take any pictures of customs. It seemed like a bad idea. If I were a customs agent, and some weird girl was sitting in traffic snapping photos of my booth and the security gates and the general customs-scene, I would probably ask to search her car. I might not even want her in my country. Using my great powers of Empathy (much like Deanna Troi, only with saggier boobs), I felt it much wiser to cap the camera lens until we were safely ensconsed in our dear northern neighbor’s borders. Once there, however, the snapping re-commenced.

I love Canada. They celebrate the great things of life here. For example, they have entire stores devoted just to beer.

Sorry about that pole in the way, but we were going really fast. Like, at least 100. That’s what they do in Canada. But it’s okay, because gas is really cheap here.

Ha. Gotcha. That’s PER LITRE. For those poor, ignorant few among us who are still on the barley-corn system, let me rephrase that:

1 Gallon = 3.783 litres
3.783 litres x $1.208 / litre = $4.57 / Gallon

Ouch.

Well, anyway, whatever. It’s not my gas, right? Besides, we can still drive really fast here.

My children were also very impressed with Canada.

That border-crossing must have worn them out.

We did see the ubiquitous Tim Hortons, which DH and I have sneaking suspicions about.

In our dating days, DH and I went to Toronto every December. It seemed like, each visit, there were more and more Tim Hortons. They were on every corner. And then we started seeing them in Buffalo. So we have decided that they are attempting to take over the world, and they only way to stop them is to boycott them and visit Coffee Time instead. Sadly, Coffee Time makes an unfortunate cup of coffee. So we drank hot chocolate there instead. But at least we were doing our best to encourage competition. Go, capitalism!! Meanwhile, Beware of Tim Hortons.

We had a lovely couple of hours in Windsor. There’s not much to tell about that part. We ate lunch, the kids napped, I knitted, and then we drove at breakneck speed

back to the USA. This time, we found the tunnel.

I even managed to catch a lucky snap in the tunnel.

Sorry about cutting off most of “Canada”, but that’s how things are when you’re travelling at breakneck speed.

Again, I avoided the urge to snap pictures at the border. US customs-persons are even less jovial than Canadian customs-persons, and I figured they’d probably have no qualms about sending me back over the bridge to float in citizenship-limbo for such an infraction. I also had to suppress an urge to stand at attention and salute upon my return home, it was that serious. Fortunately, we were allowed to re-enter our own country. Good thing, because they make you pay the $4 toll BEFORE you go thru the tunnel, and I would have been pretty pissed off about having to pay and then not getting to come in.

Back in Michigan, it was just a short jaunt to the northwest side of Detroit and our hotel. We found a comfortable place to stay.

The next day, while hubby was at his meeting, I took the kids to the Detroit Zoo. No camera here, either, but that had less to do with an irrational fear of hungry hippos snapping it out of my hands and more to do with the fact that hubby needed it to take pictures of the project he was working on. So, boo. I can’t show you the gorgeous peacocks that were meandering around, or the looks on my kids’ faces after they woke up from stroller-naps to a giant rhinocerous staring at them, or the lovely fountain with two bears hugging. Nope. Can’t. Just take my word for it: we had a nice time there.

Yesterday was rainy. It was VERY rainy. In fact, it was so rainy that many of my driving-around shots didn’t come out well. Like this picture of something-or-other:

Oh- now I remember. That’s one of the Ford plants. This is Motor City, after all. All the auto-makers have a Presence here. (And most everyone drives a car that’s less than five years old, but that’s another story.)

They have everything for motors here in Motor City.

They also have the famous Michigan Left.

I am very proud to say that I am Mistress of the Michigan Left. As in, I did it at least seven times and never had anyone honk at me.

They also have this great place, just a few blocks from our hotel.

I’m so disappointed that this picture’s a little blurry, because I really think “Ham Center” is a great name for a restaurant.

NOT.

This, however, has GOT to be my favorite picture from this whole entire trip:

I pulled into a parking lot a block away and used the zoom to take this picture from behind another sign. It seemed very appropriate.

Anyway, our trip was over all too soon. Time to go home. One more thing to do before we leave, however:

I like Detroit.

I love porn food porn. I love yarn porn, too. I also love how yarnies and foodies call it pr*n instead of p*rn. Somehow, that little nonchalant center-switcharoo is so cute.

(Those pansies.)

Lovely Sarah Bean has tagged me with a meme, some “Food Porn” thingie or other. Since I have nothing better to do than shuffle through papers that belonged to my parents, I’ll oblige.

Let’s see. Here is food porn question number one:

1. What food do you consider the best “date” food? In other words, what meal or food item do you think is sexiest to eat in the company of someone you would like to look sexy around?

I think the best answer to this question is not what’s best, but what one should avoid. Par exemple, one should avoid things like cooked spinach, which will invariably lodge themselves in one’s frontmost teeth and give one a grotesque smile akin to something from a Milla Jovovich movie**. Similarly, one should also avoid overly messy things, like buffalo wings or barbecued spareribs, unless the object of the meal is simply to create an excuse to get one’s clothing so dirty that one has no alternative but to remove said clothing. However, a simple glass of water perched precariously at the edge of a table can accomplish this handily, too, with considerably less permanent damage to one’s wardrobe.

** I obviously like this metaphor. I’ve used it twice already in a week, and that’s just on this blog.

2. What well-known person would you like to share a meal with—with or without clothing. (saying whether or not clothes are involved is optional).

Milla Jovovich. Unless, of course, she has recently eaten cooked spinach, in which case I might just be too grossed out to enjoy my dinner.

Actually, I am not particularly interested in Milla Jovovich at all, but I do like her films and think she’s a particularly attractive woman. It’s her name that gets me. I love the way all those consonants rub together.

I think I would like to have a meal with my husband. We never get to do that anymore. We have kids, so we eat in shifts. One eats while the other referrees or cajoles or otherwise occupies the offspring. The eater crams in sustenance as quickly as possible so they can switch off with the other. It would be nice to have an actual meal, with actual silverware, with actual chewing involved, with my beloved.

3. What does your perfect breakfast-in-bed look like? (Food AND the details, please. Candles? Music? Flowers? Hot tub? Dancing girls?

Sorry to be a lump in the gravy, but I think breakfast (or any food) in bed is icky.

4. What do you consider the best application of whipped cream to be?

I never whip my cream. It goes into coffee, unwhipped, and with a spoonful of sugar.

5. Oh-God-No, Biff, the yacht is sinking! You are sent to the galley to retrieve the food. What luxury food items do you snatch first? The champagne? The caviar? Smoked Salmon? Truffles? Chocolate? Or something else?

Okay, if the yacht is sinking, and Biff thinks I’m heading down to the galley to retrieve anything, he’s sadly, sadly mistaken. Biff can do his own damn food fetching. I’ll be fetching the life raft and a couple of flares. And I’m not waiting for Biff, if he’s stupid enough to go fetch caviar or whatnot when the boat is sinking.

Anyone else wants to take up the meme, please feel free. Meanwhile, it’s time for some REAL food porn.

My dad died of cancer in January of 2003. He found out he was sick in September the previous year. DH and I got married on New Year’s Eve, and my dad hung on until one week after we returned from our honeymoon. I like to think he fought cancer long enough to see his daughter get married. In retrospect, seeing me get married is probably what killed him, since it was so unlikely to ever happen.

That was tacky to say.

Anyway, I have, of course, been thinking a lot about my dad lately. Going through all my mom’s stuff has meant digging through all sorts of papers and things that had to do with him. It’s almost a physical burden, because the emotions are still so strong. I’m not talking about the loss emotions, necessarily. It’s more like, we’ve had time to grieve, and we’re all past the anger-denial-acceptance crap. Now it’s time to honestly contemplate his life without the blurry vision of grief and loss. And, man, was he a jerk sometimes.

I found his wallet in my mom’s files. I know she went through it when she closed his estate, and I know she kept it because she felt like she should. I mean, a person’s wallet? How could you chuck that? I think she still has her dad’s wallet somewhere.

I’m not keeping it. It’s not something I want hanging around my neck. (Figuratively speaking, of course.) This house-clearing function at my mom’s is supposed to lift off the burdens of a ton of extra junk, and keeping my dad’s wallet is like keeping your appendix once you’ve had it removed. It’s interesting to look at, but then, for chrissakes, put it in the biohazard bin. What are you keeping it for?

There are some fascinating things in here, however. Here’s an Ohio fishing license from 2002. That would have been the last season he went fishing. He really liked to fish. I remember spending endless afternoons at Lake Berlin, down by the spillway or near the quiet side of the lake, while he fished for walleye. I caught my first fish with him when I was about 8. It was a rainbow trout, and I was very happy to catch it but didn’t mind throwing it back. It was small, and needed to hang out with the other fish for a while. I understood completely.

Here’s his ham radio license. My dad was really into ham radio when he was younger, and then picked it up again in earnest when he retired. He was KC8PHZ, and had his General license. This one would be good until 2010 if he was still around.

Lots of insurance identification cards. They’re all for the same car. I’m like him- I keep the old ones, and just stick the new one on top when the policy renews. This makes me want to go dig them all out and throw them away so my kids never find them.

Oooh- a safe combination. I have no idea what this is for, but I’m going to keep it in case I find a treasure map in some of his stuff later on.

My sister would be mortified- here is a picture of her, probably age 8ish, wearing her Brownie uniform. Now I’m going to dig through my stuff and find any pictures of myself wearing Brownie uniforms and burn them alongside my expired insurance cards.

A Golden Buckeye card, issued by the Ohio Department of Aging. I don’t know if I could carry one of these, except that they do get you some wicked good discounts. My mom used hers this morning and got free coffee plus a 5% discount on her breakfast at Friendly’s.

Another insurance card. Oh, good- at least this is for a different vehicle. It’s one they sold years and years ago, but, hey.

An AARP card. I guess I am really glad that my dad lived to be old enough to get one of these.

Here’s a grocery store card. I can’t believe there’s one of these in his wallet. My dad often went to the grocery store, but always with my mom. It’s just funny to see it in here for some reason.

Here’s his library card. I never saw my dad use this. We went to the library often when we were kids. In fact, my parents regularly took us to the Main library downtown. Back in the day, that was a cool place to go- before they remodeled it and vacuumed the shelves and stuff. The building is one of those neat turn-of-the-last-century things with stonework and carvings and whatnot. When I was young, it had cavernous stacks on several floors, and some of them weren’t even completely lit. You would be wandering through the fiction section and find yourself peering into some odd Lewis Carrollian shelves that were a half-floor lower, against walls a completely different shade than the last room’s, and under buzzing fluorescents that seemed to be saying something intelligible but you were pretty sure that it was you they were talking to. I loved going to that library. I felt like I was really in a book. But we always went out to the car with my dad while mom checked out the books, so I never saw him use his card.

Here’s a membership card to the local art museum. My dad loved museums. One of his favorite daytrips was to take us all up to Cleveland to visit the Natural History museum, or the art museum. Unfortunately, my strongest memory of museuming with my father is when I had one of my first periods, ever, and the cramps were so horrible that I could hardly stand up. And so, when we came into a room, I would find a place to sit down so I could still look at things but not be in so much pain. After a few benched exhibits, my dad grabbed me by the arm and made me stand up, telling me not to be such a baby and quit crying about something-that-was nothing. I should have kicked him in the nuts, but I was like twelve. Fortunately, I still like museums.

There are two little pieces of paper here with his handwriting on them. This one is a gate code for a storage area they rented for a while. He was putting some of his tools and things in there so the house would be cleared out before he died. This other one is a phone number written on the back of a business card. The card is from someone who makes hammered dulcimer music. I wonder if Judith Minogue is still doing that.

Here’s a hardware store receipt. I’m surprised there aren’t more receipts in here. My dad was always tucking receipts in to places. I found a bunch of them in his overcoat, which had been sitting in my husband’s closet until last fall when we decided to give it to my brother. Maybe that’s why there aren’t any in his wallet- they were all in the overcoat.

An admission ticket to the 2002 county fair. My dad was a huge fan of the fair. He served on its board for several years and we always went. I worked there several years in a row, helping to put up the exhibits in the education building. The fair always meant the end of summer. It was a really bittersweet time. The last day is always on Labor Day, and school started up the day after. I remember the weather always seemed to switch over from summer to fall right on Labor Day. The night would suddenly be cold, and we’d get to wear our new school jeans for the first time. It was exciting to get to wear new clothes, but the price was really high.

Everything else in here is ordinary. A warehouse club card, a drivers’ license. A VISA card. A department store card. Awesome- here’s his National Rifle Association card. I love that about my parents. My mom also belongs to the NRA. In fact, she joined before he did.

That’s it. It’s all empty. Now it’s just a plain old, used, wallet.

And it’s going in the trash.

The girls have spent a lot of time at my mom’s this week.  While they’ve been there, they found a bunch of marbles someone dumped into a planter box mom has near the street.

We played with the marbles for a day or two, and then they sort of got “lost”…. ahem.

Okay, fine, I’ll say it- I THREW THEM AWAY.  Happy now?

Somehow, one followed us home.  S4(today) found it in our driveway.

“LOOK, MAMA!!” she shouted as loud as a four-year-old possibly can (which is very, very loud.  You would be surprised how loud.)

“It’s one of NANA’s MARBLES!”  (again with the shouting.)

“MAMA!!! NANA’S LOSING HER MARBLES!!!”

Oh, child.  If you only knew how true that was….

It’s spring. I know this because my daughter looks forward to her birthday, which is “in the spring”. Instead of asking, “is TODAY my birthday??!”, she asks, “is it SPRINGTIME yet??” And seeing as today is her fourth birthday, it must definitely be spring.

It is spring because I have flowers blooming. This year is extra-exciting because my tulips bloomed. They did not bloom for three years because I either planted them upside-down (very possible) or because the deer decided the shoots would make a nice nocturnal nosh (also quite possible). But in any case, they are blooming. And they are lovely.

I also have Grecian Windflowers blooming. I love these dainty little things.

They are even cute when they’re getting ready for bed each evening.

Of course, we also have clumps of daffodils everywhere.

Just never you mind those weeds. I know about them, alright? Here. Look at more flowers instead.

Need more? Okay, here are some pansies, which I bought for S4’s party this afternoon.

The kids are going to paint flowerpots and then plant a flower in their painted pots. It’s a garden party. Because, of course, it’s spring.

Speaking of parties, and birthdays, that means that there shall be Cake.

And how could you not be happy when there is Cake involved? Cake, flowers, spring… all at one time….

It sure makes up for a week of slogging down Memory Alley.

I haven’t been writing much lately because my mom’s in town, and we’ve spent the last week cleaning out her house. She’s decided, after trying to be a “snowbird” for three years, to just give it up and move down to Florida full time. Her original plan was to keep her house up north (as retired Florida-transplants like to say) and come up here for the summers, but last year she was only here for three weeks in September. It’s obvious that she’s been sucked in to that tropical-paradise-resort-lifestyle completely. Yes, she might have a daughter and two grandchildren here in Ohio, but there’s sun and warm and water-volleyball down in FlorEEda. We all have our priorities.

Florida Sky Ohio Sky

guess it makes sense, when you look at it THAT way.

The garage sale at my mom’s was a reasonable success. We sold a lot of junk and made a little bit of money. Some people came back the next day to pick up things that they had left and ended up leaving with even more stuff. We got dinner and ice cream with our loot afterwards. It’s all good.

The dumpster out in front of her house is full. It’s full of old files from when mom had her business, back in the booming real-estate days of the late ’90s. It’s full of old school papers, certificates, tax returns for people who no longer pay income tax, wedding announcements, real estate contracts, lease agreements, receipts, and death notices. It’s full of newspaper clippings about my dad’s career, and full of pictures of distant family members long-since dead. There are programs from all sorts of plays, brochures for places that no longer exist, and flyers for sales from before I was born. There are manuals to appliances that have long-since quit working. There were about 2000 hours of video recorded from PBS every Saturday morning for several years in there, but some guy climbed in and fished all the tape out, proudly announcing that this would “keep him busy for a while”. (I’m glad. I hate to see things thrown out when they could otherwise be used.) (I did keep one VHS tape, which I unscrewed and took the actual tape out to crochet with. I think this will be interesting “yarn”. But don’t tell my husband, or that guy who salvaged the tapes. I think it was an episode of The Frugal Gourmet Cooks American, but I can’t be certain..)

The dumpster contains, in short, several lifetimes. As I threw piles of files and paper in, I could feel my mom’s old life - the life where she was married to my dad, and working, and raising kids, and being a girl scout leader, and baking cakes in the microwave, and wearing high heels and suit jackets - but also my old life- where I was a child hating my life and my parents and school and wishing I would die or perhaps just wake up one day somewhere else (which did happen)- both of these lives, along with all trace of my dad’s life and along with all trace of my childhood, where my kid brother and kid sister were part of my life- all of it…

… turning into trash.

So many bad memories went into that dumpster. Throwing things away meant you had to look at them first, and that you had to remember the bad along with the good (and there was plenty of good, too- don’t misunderstand). But it meant you had to remember how horrible you felt because you had funny teeth and wore glasses when none of the other kids did. It meant you had to remember feeling so awkward around the other middle school girls, because they had the “right” clothes and the “right” hair and wore makeup and listened to tapes, and you had none of those things. And even though you didn’t really care about those things then, and even though you completely understand how stupid it all was and how it is totally unimportant in the overall scheme of things now, that doesn’t change the fact that you once felt so low you got physically ill at the thought of going to school, or that you spent hours alone, crying, or that you often wished you could be put into suspended animation until you were an adult and could move away from it all.

Throwing your lifetime away is hard. It’s hard to watch all those memories dredge themselves up. But it’s also hard to watch them flung into a dirty steel dumpster. It’s painful to see that your whole family history is just a pile of papers and a few trinkets about to be carted off by a rusty, noisy truck and turned into pulp.

It’s hard to watch other people pick over things that mean something to you, because those things have your memories behind them.

It’s hard to watch your mother fling away things she once held dear, because she has moved on (even though you, obviously, have not).

It’s hard to lose the last tangible traces of your father, even though you sometimes hated him something awful (and sometimes still do).

It’s hard to see your mother letting go, knowing that she is really and truly about to be moved away instead of pretending to both of yourselves that she’s still here, even if it’s only for three weeks in September.

It’s very hard to write a cathartic blog post when your kids keep pounding on the door and asking for things, like lunch.

So after all the flinging and selling and cleaning was done, my mom and I sat down to play cards. We played a game of Hand and Foot, which she taught us during our visit down to Florida last February. It was so nice to sit and play cards with my mum. It was so nice to drink tea with her while the kids wrecked the house played on the floor next to us. I loved just relaxing and spending time together. Best of all?

I beat her.

Edited To Add Photographic Evidence Illustrations

This is not really a liveblogging event. I mean, I don’t have a laptop or a wireless connection, and I’ve been on my feet and running since 7 this morning. So you’re getting a delayed feed. But I know you want all the details of our garage sale, held at my mom’s house, as soon as possible. And I certainly aim to please.

First of all, if you ever plan to hold a garage sale, you must account for two things. One is that people will be rude, thoughtless, and generally ignorant. They will not read your ad in the paper, which explicitly states that your sale runs FRIDAY AND SATURDAY FROM 9-5. They will, instead, come up with THEIR OWN schedule for YOUR garage sale, which means that you will have persons coming on THURSDAY AT 7PM, or on FRIDAY AT 7 AM. I got to my mom’s house this morning at 8:15, and there was already a horde of cars in the driveway. I couldn’t even pull in to unload my things, which were to be part of the sale. Had these people been considerate, thoughtful and using their brains, they would have waited until the appointed time, and they would have had a whole slew of additional lovely things to pick through and cluck over. Their loss.

Second of all, you must account for people being rude, thoughtless and generally ignorant. I know that I already said this, but it’s doubly true, so it counts twice. People will hold up your items, right in front of you, and make nasty comments about them. “This is UGLY!” (No shit! Why do you think it’s for sale for twenty five cents?!??!) “Who would ever buy this??!” (ME- fifteen years ago!) Etcetera. You must be thick skinned to hold a garage sale.

Here’s a quick rundown of our sale thus far, not entirely live-blogged but fairly accurate, since I took notes on a legal pad (only 5 cents- cheap!). I’ll post more when I get another chance to sit (tomorrow, I bet).

7AM- Woke to fresh coffee, since I was smart enough to set the timer on the pot last night.

7:15- Shower. Dressed. Got cereal for S-almost-4.

7:30- Loaded crap into van to take up to mom’s house

7:45- Printed out signs for my crap, washed off apple for O2.

7:54- Called mom to make sure she was awake (she was NOT)

7:59- Got girls dressed and into van

8:14- Pulled into mom’s house, amid a throng of rabid garage sale goers- not unlike a scene from a Milla Jovovich movie

8:34- Finished pulling crap out of van

8:44- Made first sale of the day: five pieces of girls’ clothing ($1) and a fistful of newborn socks (50 cents).

9:00- Sale “officially” starts- we have already made about $85

9:12- Initial throng tapers off. I make sure kids were not accidentally sold off (they weren’t). We had made about $200 by this time.

from 9:13 - 2:05, we had a slow but steady stream of customers. In this amount of time, we made approximately $10.

The moral of the story is that you should probably hold your garage sale from 9:00 to 9:15, but open a half-hour early to get that initial rush. The rest of the day is hardly worthwhile in comparison.

I’m going back for the last 2 hours now, and we’ll do it all over again tomorrow. More updates with pictures, soon, as long as mom hasn’t sold my camera.

UPDATE:

3:47 PM We have had two customers since my last post. The first man left in a huff because I would not sell him a $150 dog kennel (which we have marked at $30.00) for $15. He made some smartass comment about me “not wanting to deal” as he flung his huge, beer-bellied ass into his rusted-out 1963 Chevy van and lurched away into the sunset.

The other man is here right now, going through drawers in my mother’s laundry on the off chance that he finds a piece of dryer sheetage that might be valuable. Oh, wait. Now he’s scavenging metal out of her dumpster.

These people are vultures, I tell you.

I did sell a big item for $75, so perhaps it was worth sitting around for the rest of the afternoon in my mom’s garage, after all.

UPDATE TWO:

3:59 PM Oh, look. Here comes another one of those I’ll-drive-by-slowly-and-browse-from-the-street sleazebags. I am fighting an irrepressible urge to push the button on the garage door opener, so that lazy-ass will have to come waddle up my driveway and actually look at the junk we’ve got for sale. Really. I put a lot of time into dragging this crap out of the dusty crevices of my mom’s house. At least come and LOOK at it. PRETEND you might be even a little bit interested, for goodness’ sake.

4:02 PM It’s only 4PM? WTF? Isn’t there Daylight Savings Time this week or something? Can we just skip this last hour?

I am so done with this garage sale.

4:17 PM I’m bored. Bored bored bored. Time to resort to making clever displays, like this Hallowe’en vignette: “Super Hairy Scary Spider, and Icky Sticky Ant, each just 50 cents.”

4:23 PM Another customer. This person bought a ruler for a nickel and three jars of polyurethane for 50 cents each. Oh, and I threw in a staple remover on account of this being his lucky day.

4:54 PM I came across another box of junk in mom’s basement. At least there will be more fodder for tomorrow’s customers.

5:05 PM Time to drag in the few pieces we’ve set outside and blow this popsicle stand! WooohoOO! Our sale is officially CLOSED UNTIL TOMORROW!

6:35 PM Two cars pull in the drive.

Are you f’ing kidding me??

Do you not see the ad in the paper, which reads UNTIL 5PM?

Do you not see my sign in the yard, which reads UNTIL 5PM?

Do you not see that our garage door is closed, and that I am blissfully seated in a reclining chair, drinking a malted brewed beverage?

(Actually, I did that already, and now I’m blogging. But time is sort of fluid in Garage Sale Land, as you can well see.)

Maybe they’re just queueing up for tomorrow morning.

We are home after a two-day road trip to Lexington, KY. I left here on Wednesday with my husband and a large box of homemade chocolate chip cookies. I returned last night with neither.

Hubby had a meeting in Lexington yesterday, so we went along. This was only partly so that we could spend time together as a family. The rest of the story is that I just felt like spending two days in the car with my children, feeding them junk food from chain restaurants and listening to them screaming in the back seat. I also felt like dropping my husband off at the Lexington airport so that he could go to another meeting elsewhere while the girls and I drove [and drove and drove and drove] back home by ourselves.

Our trip was actually very nice. The girls like to go on “business trips”. We pack food, books and games, and we have fun in the car. I like to drive, so when I am whining about driving and driving and driving, I’m actually saying, “I want you to think it was horrible but, truthfully, I was in my glory.”

Unfortunately, it was after I dropped DH off at the Lexington Airport that I realized two terrible things. One was that I had not taken a single picture thus far. This, fortunately, was quickly remedied.

At this point, I also realized that I had only enjoyed one small, tasteless, unfortunate cup of hotel coffee thus far. No worries, I told myself. We would be on the highway soon, and this being the age of chain foods as well as the modern GPS, I would certainly be able to find a reasonable cup of joe forthwith.

Oh, those best-laid plans.

First of all, we had to get everyone settled down and happy, else Mama would be very distracted while trying to drive.

Chocolate chip cookies solve a multitude of problems, I have learned.

By the time we learned this valuable lesson, however, we had passed most of the civilized region on our route, and were deeply ensconsed in Rural America.

There is no coffee in Rural America.

We passed the ubiquitous farm,

the ubiquitous electrical tower,

and the ubiquitous construction.

Coffee, unfortunately, is not ubiquitous here. Not in the least.

I contemplated calling someone for assistance,

but realized there were other people who probably needed slightly more help than me.

But then, I also realized that my handy GPS unit can search out business names, and give you directions to said businesses from wherever you happen to be. Oh, glory! Oh joy! What luck!!

Nuvi, Nuvi, on my window,
Get me out of coffee limbo.
Where’s the fairest coffee shop?
Is it near? Around the block?

Alas, my Nuvi did not come through. As I had feared, there was No Good Coffee to be had along our route.

I realize these pictures are blurry. Forgive me. I am driving, and suffering from a severe lack of caffeine.

(My hand is firmly on the wheel, however.)

Perhaps there was some good coffee not along our route, but within a tolerable detour.

Nuvi, Nuvi, on the dash,
Help me find some coffee, fast.
Where’s the nearest place you see?
Find some decent joe for me!

SIXTY FIVE MILES??? The nearest coffee is SIXTY FIVE MILES away? You have GOT to be kidding me.

To take my mind off of this horrible revelation, I started photographing the other coffee-less people suffering on the road along with me.

But this made me think, most selfishly, that the other folks probably had secured their brewed beverages prior to entering this godforsaken No Coffee Zone. Or else they had planned ahead, and made themselves self-caffeinated. Like, this camper probably had a French press or even a drip-pot, and that they were most likely sipping their very own brewed coffee even as I was snapping photos:

Those jerks.

Maybe we had somehow gotten closer to a coffee oasis. I checked again.

FIFTY miles. That’s only marginally better than 65. What a crock. So I just concentrated on the road ahead, and on getting home.

Finally, after an interminably loooong time, we arrived at home. Decaffeinated.

Next time, I’ll be bringing a Thermos.