Hamlette's Soliloquy

If I wrote a novel about this trip, it would seem so preposterously aggravation-ridden that it would have to be a comedy.

We didn't get everything loaded and hit the road until like 2:30 Tuesday afternoon. By then, it was snowing, so MamaRuth generously offered that she and Banana would clean our apartment so we could get on the roadahead of the storm. But we had to drop the piano off at Banana's home first, and by the time it was unloaded, the roads were pretty awful. We ate supper at her place, then got a hotel and watched Amazing Grace on pay-per-view. I'll try to blog about it some time -- for now I'll just say Ioan Gruffudd is getting even better looking, if that's possible!

It's a good thing we stopped when we did, because we saw 2 semis and several cars still in the ditch when we set out yesterday morning, and lots of tracks where others had already been rescued. We ran into the storm again in IL/IN and that slowed us down for a while. But we survived it. We have to stop about every 2 hours to fill up the truck/clean someone's wiper blades/go to the bathroom/get food, so we don't make the greatest time. Plus, the truck can't go above 70.

By supper time last night, Dano was ultra-cranky (he cried for almost 45 min straight -- he loathes his car seat), Daddy and Cowboy were pretty tired, and we were going to have supper with the Chameleon and her Gonna-Be Preacher Man yet, so Dad started calling hotels to see if we could get rooms for the night. All the ones he called were full, so we decided to pull off at a La Quinta we spotted because Dad had liked the one we stayed in the night before.

And that's when we encountered the latest glitch for this mission: Dad nicked a car in the parking lot with the step that sticks out from the passenger side of the truck cab. All it did was make a scratch on the car's wheel well, but it turned out the car was a rental. Thankfully, the guy turned out to be super nice (he's from the Bronx -- guess the good guys didn't all leave with Bobby Darin and Vic Morrow). He said if it had been his own car, he would've said forget about it, but since it was a rental we had to report it, of course. Calling the rental company and the insurance companies dragged on and on, and the cops took forever to show up to make their report, so Daddy finally told us to go ahead and go to supper without him. That was really sad because we were going to this restaurant he and Mom loved when they were in the Seminary, and now he had to miss out :-( We had a nice time with the Chameleon and her Gonna-Be Preacher Man and got to see their apartment afterwards because it's really close by, and we got a piece of German chocolate cake to go for Dad at the restaurant, so he didn't miss everything, at least.

This morning, Dano woke up at 5am again, so at 6, I came down here to the lobby because that's when the continental breakfast starts. So I'm checking email and sipping coffee mixed with hot chocolate and nursing Dano and waiting for it to be time to wake Cowboy and Daddy up. They have to go see a State Farm insurance agent this morning, so that will be another delay. The big question now is: will we get Daddy to the airport in time for his flight tomorrow night? It doesn't matter that we most likely won't get the truck unloaded while he's here, because Johnnycake and Dimples are coming up on Saturday, so they can help with that.

Never move in winter.