The epic bad road trip

I guess if a road trip starts off with your car engine crapping out on you in the middle of Nowhere, Texas, and ends with a shot in the ass cheek of your choosing, there's not a lot of need to fill in the details of what went wrong in between. And, truth be told, those were the two big craptacular bookends to a trip that -- had I known now what I didn't know as we excitedly piled into the car last Friday morning -- I would have run kicking and screaming from.

Jerry thinks this whole trip might have been a good thing. It's good to get out of our comfort zone, he says. And indeed, this is one of the things that makes me love him: his incessantly optimistic, Pollyanna-esque attitude toward life. Most of the time these days, I can keep pace with him on this stuff. Even Saturday morning, as we rolled out of our Amarillo hotel in our rental car (courtesy of the nice folks at Putnam Toyota in Altus, OK), with a mere four-hour drive between us and Santa Fe, I thought: "Yes, he's right. This is good. Shakes us up. Gets us back to the basics." But at that point, I'd had a mere three nights of bad sleep. By the time we got home, that had doubled. And, let's face it, when you don't get more than three hours of consecutive sleep for six nights, there's this slight tendency to not only not be very sunshiny in your attitude toward life, but in fact to want to curl up into a small fetal ball and cry and pout and pummel a soft object.

Which is pretty much how I felt on our descent into Dallas late Tuesday night. We'd been in the car for more than 12 hours due to a HUGE snowfall in Santa Fe the previous night. We barely made it out of the New Mexico driveway, and our neighbor, though he did not know us, shook his head in disbelief that we were even attempting to leave with two small kids in the car. We didn't have much choice. Not only were we not booked into that place another night, but my psyche was bound and determined that we would all sleep -- sleep real sleep -- in our own glorious beds that night, come hell or high water. Or, in our case, jack-knifed trucks, icy roads, idiot drivers in PT Cruisers, and god-foresaken pain-to-beat-all-pain ear aches.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Suffice to say the trip took a little longer than expected, and we were probably lucky to make it at all. We were on I-25 North for a bit when I-25 South was shut down completely. The boys were wonderful on the drive, and a baby-changing station near the New Mexico-Texas state line that didn't make me fear for Hunter's immune system had me thinking that maybe our luck had changed. Yes, it took something so simple as a place to change the baby that didn't look as if it might harbor Black Death germs to make things look a bit better.

Boy, was I wrong.

I had been sick since the previous week (and, truth be told, this probably accounted for more than its fair share of my bad attitude about this voyage). It's one of those cruds that's very hard to shake. Just when the head cold was starting to clear up, a sore throat would set in. Etc. About two hours outside of Dallas, I'd noticed my ears were starting to clog. I thought maybe it was the altitude and weather changes we'd experienced that day. But a little clogging quickly led to pain and, by the time we pulled up to our front lawn, I was white knuckling the dash, rocking in my seat. I had a breakdown outside of Dallas and Jerry just rubbed my head while I silently sobbed, partly from the pain but, honestly, more from the just horrible experience this trip had become, and that one additional bit of nastiness had been heaped upon my head. I was feeling epicly sorry for myself.

So we pulled up, I ran inside, peed, grabbed my keys and jumped in the car to the hospital. There was no way I was going to endure a seventh night of no sleep. I just couldn't. Well, that and the pain wasn't tolerable. I like to think I'm a pretty tough chick, but that pain was more than I could take.

So luckily, I only had about an hour wait in the ER. The doctor quickly saw me, looked in my right ear and summed it up: "Yep, that's pretty bad." He talked about numbing drops, a shot of antibiotics and pain relievers. I nodded, and nodded and nodded, thinking silently: "Yes, oh dear god in heaven YES! Drugs! Now!! Stat!!"

And then he asked if he could talk to me about something non-medical condition related. So, for five minutes -- five minutes of me thinking "What in the hell is going on here?" and physically restraining myself from jumping on this medical professional's head and dragging him to the meds station -- he talked to me about some group of critical thinkers he was forming, to talk about such things as global warming, climate change, etc. etc. I guess he thought I might be interested, although I have ZERO idea what could have given him the impression I could be an intelligent critical thinker. I hadn't slept in a week, my hair was greasy and I was covered in the general crustiness that goes along with being a mother of two small boys. I'm surprised he thought I had a home other than a cardboard box, much less gave some credence to my brain. Anyway, eventually I muttered something about how I'd pass him name and number along to my much-smarter husband, and then some very nice lady came in with a shot of antibiotics and numbing drops. The only thing she wanted to talk to me about was which side of my ass I wanted the shot in.

I chose my right side, and afterward I wondered how I came to that decision.

Now, before I go giving the impression that this trip was without its merits, let me say this: We had a wonderful time with our friends Jeff (who turned 40 while in Santa Fe) and Ginger and their son, Micah. Our friends Julie and Jim rolled in from Denver and it is ALWAYS good to see them. And we got to know Jeff's brother's family, and not only are they awesome, but Glenn and Emily's twin daughters, Cecily and Corrina (and I'm sure I'm spelling those wrong) are my babysitters of choice if we ever move back to Colorado. Those girls are the kind of girls that, if I had daughters, I would want them to be. I also had, courtesy of my amazing husband, a chance to visit the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, and that is always a soul-healer for me. I adore her. She makes sense to me. And I love her art.

So ... there you have it. Not much else to add. Our car is still in Altus, OK. We have no idea what we're going to do about that. We'll probably have to go down there to pick it up. Another road trip. Oh, joy.

I have some great photos from this trip, despite the details. I will post those separately, so as not to taint the general feeling of fun they represent (you'll note I'm not in any of them). Those and Christmas Eve and Christmas photos to come over the weekend.

Merry Xmas to all. Love, k.