Day One

Okay, so I left off with the picking up the car rental, right? Riveting stuff, I'm sure. I can't believe you're back, really. I think, in my head, no one is there and it becomes obvious in the tone of the entry. My voice gets brittle and harsh, like the one inside my head.

Completely unrelated to the trip – Nora is starting sleeping training today. She's crying and fighting no matter what we do, so I'm going to do the only thing I can do for my sanity and break her little spirit. Kidding. Sort of.

I'm going to gloss over that actual packing of the car; just picture two people herding a baby, who is now toddling, a dog and a hissing cat while hoping that they haven't forgotten anything they can't live without. (I had. Remember Adam didn't have shoes the whole trip? Yeah, I'm going to keep bringing it up because he did. Every day. Good times.)

The actual trip there was interesting. We started out around eight because we had to drive to Adam's office to drop the house key off with Mike, his step-dad, so that he could watch the house and water my plants, but didn't actually leave our local area until nearly ten because we kept stopping. Seriously, we fiddled with gas, then with food, then taking the dog for a walk. It was one stupid thing after another, but I was determined to be happy and didn't complain. I think Adam wrote the date down somewhere as a First.

So, we've set out on this 14 hour car trip already three hours behind my schedule, two hours behind Adam's, and we discover that we have the only baby on the planet that doesn't find car rides soothing. Nora's sitting in the backseat yelling her head off. I've got a lap full of shaking, miserable dog and then the kitten started mewing.

Ugh.

And that was sort of the tone for the first leg of the journey. It should've taken us about 7 hours to get to Little Rock, but it took ten and not for fun reasons. Lots of stopping and walking animals, babies, each other in skeevy roadside parks. Which, really, was kind of entertaining.

Around 5 Adam declares himself done for the day and we spot a hotel. Now, have I mentioned that Adam can't follow signs and drive? At this point he's also stopped listening to me, so it's no surprise that the hotel we wanted we couldn't actually get to and we settled for this other one (because we could find it). We check in and unload necessary things. The kitten and the dog stretch and eat and Nora just goes to town checking stuff out. So cute.

Except.

I may have mentioned somewhere that I clean a lot and I jokingly call it my “OCD,” but I never thought much more than it is a nervous habit that fills the empty hours in my day. I took one look at this hotel room and FREAKED out.

I started using baby wipes like they were sent from The Cleaning Gods and tried to keep Nora from touching anything.

It was useless, of course, but I tried.

We ate dinner, settled in and caught some sleep. I'm pretty sure I ate a bug.

Stay tuned for Day Two wherein I talk about urgency, the smell of Memphis and how signing papers without looking would bit me in the ass!