After swearing we would leave no later than noon, we finally got out of the house at 3pm. Yikes. It was at that point we should’ve realized the travel Gods were not smiling down on us. Even after having all the children use the restroom before we left, not fifteen minutes down the road did my six-year-old say those dreaded words. “Mom? Dad? I need to go to the bathroom.”
And eighteen-billion more times during our almost-ten-hour drive of doom. I kid you not, we would go and ten minutes later, we were pulling over with Pee Pee McGee doing the wee-wee dance. It isn’t like we were force-feeding this kid Gatorade or anything. But again, more signs that it was going to be a bumpy ride.
But oh, it only gets worse.
I decided to be smart, and “well-prepared,” after having been caught unprepared a few times during previous trips. This time, I thought to stock my “drug/vitamin bag” filled with other things that would be quite useful if needed, such as allergy medicine (for unexpected ant bites), anti-itch cream, band-aids, tylenol, and pink-eye drops. I figured, we’ll be staying in enough hotels, the potential for pink-eye was probable.
Ha, little did I know.
In handling the drops, I inadvertantly gave pink-eye to myself, because my dumbass self forgot to sanitize the bottle after the last time it was used, and wash my hands after handling it to pack it up. There I was, four hours into the drive, and my eye is beginning to redden and form crust in the corner. On top of the bathroom party we were already experiencing, mom suddenly became a cyclops. Proof once again that maybe, perhaps, this was going to be a bumpy ride.
But oh! It. Does. Not. Stop. There.
Around 9:30pm rolls around, and I realize, because were weren’t anywhere near FL yet, that I should probably call the hotel and let them know we were running (way) behind. No answer. NO ANSWER!? At a hotel!? This had me a little more than nervous. Were they not there anymore? We aren’t staying in a major hotel, just some smaller mom-and-pop kind that’s been there for decades. What if we were too late? What if no one was available to check in? Would we have a room?
After six-or-so calls over and over, I called the agency that booked the hotel for me to begin with – Bookit.com. A lady named Brittany seemed to want to help, assured me that she would do what she could, and placed me on hold.
For twenty freaking minutes.
After my dumb ass spent those twenty long minutes waiting for The Lady Who Went On Break, I got the bright idea to borrow my husband’s phone to try to call the hotel again. Still nothing. I then called Bookit.com, again, looking like the biggest fool with my phone in my right ear and his phone in my left. On hold. Again. I pressed a few buttons for a few different departments to finally get through to an agent who offered to call me back instead of keep me on hold for an ungodly amount of time. Ten minutes she took, that was all. Our room was unlocked, keys inside, and ready for us.
Thank goodness, things seemed to be looking up, or so I thought.
We finally got there at around 2AM and were forced to wake everyone up to bring them seven flights up to our hotel room in the elevator. Some how, it infused my children with a crazy crack-like spazziness that caused them to ping off the walls and screech to crazy levels, all while we struggled to manhandle luggage carts and bags and ourselves into this room, only to find the inflatable bed we needed wouldn’t inflate, either.
And so, I slept on the floor with my two youngest, propped up with our extra pillows and deflated inflatable bed, with my bright pink eye in a room where, even when we turned off the air conditioner, it kept going on every ten minutes. And I kept waking up every hour on the hour to put drops in my eyes, determined to cure it as fast as we could.
And I awoke with a massive head ache, sore back, and a new day of more things to go wrong. Sigh.
Stick around for Day 2 of #roadtrip2010 – When Mom Buries Her Head in the Sand.
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