Filed under: travel
Don’t lie, you wish you were eating at my house tonight. Bacon wrapped pork chops, collard greens and herb cheese rolls, with ice cream from Coldstone for dessert. Oh yes. This makes up for last night when I put off dinner until it was 2 hours late, and then let Tom make instant rice and ’spicy chicken’.
I’ve spent the last two days making packing lists, schlepping laundry to my inlaws (what a time for the washer to fail, huh?), making my case for a hotel room vs camping (the sheer amount of luggage needed to get our gear to MT via train is reason enough), and reminding Ella every 3 minutes that “No, tomorrow is train day, today is just Thursday.” We leave tomorrow at 1am, so that gives me about 24 hours from right now to get 3296526 things accomplished, most of which are piddly things like find the AAA card and make sure it’s in my wallet, go to Blockbuster and rent 45 Dora videos for the borrowed DVD player (Hey, I am against them for day to day driving, but we are talking about 13 hours on the way home. Please don’t hate on me for trying to save my sanity) and figuring out what kind of snacks my toddler and picky husband will eat on the train. Tom suggested “Pudding!” while Ella said “Applesauce.. wait… pudding!” I’m thinking carrot sticks and string cheese. I’m such a killjoy.
Hey mom, is it train time yet? Is it is it?
Note to self: when taking a long walk with the girls, remember to bring a sling along even if Alice has liked the stroller in the past. Otherwise, you will be walking 2 miles home with a screaming baby, with nowhere to stop and nurse her. Oh, and when Ella starts whining in the stroller DO NOT let her out. Whatever you do, remember that the fight to get her back in will be worse than the whining.
Also: you are insane for planning to take the girls on a trip, alone, in a few weeks. INSANE.
The current plan is to take the train over, spend a few days with friends, and then meet up with my sister and her boys for the train ride home. It sounds simple enough, but I have been stressing about the logistics for weeks. How do I get two carseats, a stroller, a suitcase, a backpack AND two tiny girls on a train at 2am? Will they sleep? Will they wander off when I pass out from exhaustion? Will I seem like “that mom” if I get Ella a backpack leash? What if the rental car company forgets to pick us up at the station? What if I forget to pack something important - like pants? Why can’t Tom get the time off? What am I doing spending money when I make exactly $0 every month? Is all of this worth it? (It is.)
Then yesterday Tom’s grandparents called and (so generously) offered us one of the vehicles they are not using (they recently consolidated their winter and summer homes, ending up with 4 cars and only one driver). The only catch is that we would need to come pick up the van in Montana this weekend. It will actually cost less if we take the train over and then drive back, so I guess I can call this the trial run of taking kids on the train. Luckily Tom will be with us for this jaunt, and if it proves to be too much, I have time to change the plans. Three 10 hour train rides in less than two weeks, with an extra 8 hour drive thrown in for good measure? FUN.
But holy crud, we won’t be dependent on the bus anymore with Car 2.0, which will be amazing. I forgot today was a revised holiday bus schedule, and missed our bus today to get to music class (even after calling Melinda at the buttcrack of dawn today and maybe waking her up to ask if we had class. Sorry!) This happens to us a lot actually - even when I know when the bus is coming by, getting all of us on the bus (dressed, fed, not screaming, and not playing in the road) is a challenge that makes my heart pound and my eye twitch. I feel so defensive about being a two car family actually - it feels wasteful, since we live in town, on a bus line, with walking distance of a shopping hub, blocks away from our best friends, and I don’t have to commute daily. But… it’s a gift. And did you catch that it is a VAN? That means when we are going to the pool or park and want to take friends along, we can all take one car. Or, you know, when we have 2076326 more kids, we can fit two more in carseats. And.. and… and.. it’s a gift. And I’m lazy.
The girls will also get to spend some time with their great-grandparents, which is important to me. Ella has seen these grandparents twice, but they have yet to meet Alice. We’ll only end up seeing them for a day or so, since we need to get Tom back to work, but it will be good to see them. It makes me want to run away to Oklahoma so my grandma can spend time with them, but heck, I could barely walk to the store without losing my damned mind with this kids - Oklahoma is a bit further.
I think the universe is in agreement that we should pack up and do a bit of RV-living: not only did my friend Jodie and her family do just that last year and sent me the link to their blog, but this article also came up in my Google reader this morning: RVing with kids. But where would we go? Tom has never been east of the Rockies, (sans a jaunt into Michigan for a family reunion) so we could just explore the US. Part of me wants to see things I have never seen, and head south into Mexico and South America. I only know 1-10 in Spanish though, so that may be tricky. Maybe Australia then. Perhaps if we WWOOFed around we would not get bored as quickly, and it would give us some direction. Do they accept families on WWOOF farms? How about mission trips (of the nonministry variety) ? Families in the Peace Corps? Am I insane?
Tom is game for the planning part of this entire deal, but I think it would be a lot harder to convince him to get in the RV when it is all said and done. He has lived in the same area his entire life. His parents live a mile away from us. He had never had to share a room before I moved in (though now he shares it with all of us). Nothing in his experience makes him want to put everything he owns in a 5X5 storage unit and live in a tent for the summer, while some of my best memories stem from just this. I crave adventure, and would like to get some of it under our belts before the girls are old enough to feel as ‘homeless’ as I did growing up. Not in the sense that I would ever be without a roof and walls (well, until later, when I lived in my car, and said tent, but that was my own doing) but just that when people ask me where I am ‘from’ I don’t really know what to say. I want my girls to know where ‘home’ is. I just also want them to know enough about the world they live in to appreciate the wide range of experiences. Perhaps it is more prudent to plan to be a ’summers on the road’ family, but a girl can dream about selling everything she owns and going on an adventure, right?
I’m daydreaming about it today, while simultaneously making plans to lay down roots, literally. I’ve never had an actual garden before, but I think we are going to try it out this spring. With some help, I found this site tailored directly to gardening in our area, and now I am searching through the library catalog looking for a few books recommended to me. For being one generation off the farm, you would think I would at least know a hoe from a spade, but I am really pretty clueless about how to start. I can keep kids alive, I should be able to grow a tomato, right? We’ll see.
God I love Fall. I love light sweaters and layers and socks and turning on the furnace and pumpkin spice everything. I almost bought a pumpkin at Safeway yesterday, but stopped myself because I know I have no time to carve it right now, but man, just the idea of pumpkin seeds gets me all atwitter. I love wearing brown and green and weaving leaves into my messy hippie hair. I love that the ground goes crunch, and that I can see my breath in the morning, but that by noon I can dare wear sandals and a t-shirt. I know there are places where it is summer year round, and winter year round, but where oh where is it Fall year round?
The play, and the entire birth fair*, was overwhelming, in every sense of the word. We had an overwhelming turnout (nearly twice what we were expecting, prompting a mad dash to steal chairs from neighboring rooms and ending up with people sitting in the aisles and standing all around the edges); I was overwhelmed by the support from every direction - friends, my little family, 200+ strangers all thanking me for putting my heart into something that feels so solitary sometimes. It renews my passion, and comforts me to know that even in my small, fairly conservative area, there are people of every walk of life, age, and gender that believes that this IS important - mothers are important. I was also overwhelmed physically, which is something I need to stop doing. I don’t know why I am so stubborn about accepting my limits, but now that the hard push is over (we have one smaller showing next week, without the fair/publicity) I am looking forward to being fat and lazy until December. Because we all know that I will be still and not take on a thousand more projects right? Ha.
(*Link is to the article in the local paper that sometimes lets you read for free, and sometimes is a jerk and asks for a subscription #. If you search from their homepage (birth play) you can usually read. )
Sarah, over at Deliberately Random Thoughts, linked to the new Iron and White cd that is free for listening over at Myspace right now. Ella and I are rocking out, as much as you can to slide guitars and soft spoken men named Sam. Which is to say: hard.
Cricket definitely dropped, or changed position, and my belly is suddenly a completely different shape, and my body is not very happy about it. My hips burn, I had a few days of mean contractions, and now I am just not sure where my center of gravity is. Oh parenthood - just when you think you have any of it figured out, they remind you that you are not in control.
I wish I had the motivation to use our free-flight-rights right now, since in about a month it will be too late for me to fly anywhere, but the idea of traveling with Ella, while pregnant, makes me so tired. Plus, we are really trying to live off of just when we are bringing in (rather than cashing out stocks since we have weaseled those down at an alarming rate, and would like to save a least some to pay for all this damn schooling we still plan) and renting a car, paying for food, etc, is just not in the budget. Hopefully Tom keeps this job until next summer, because by then baby will be old enough to put down for 10 minutes, and Ella (hopefully) be a bit easier to communicate with. And damn do I want to go see things outside of Spokane.
Enough randomness. I need to clean up this house and get things together to go to Knit Club in a while. And change a diaper, since Ella is yelling “Yuck! Yuck! Ewwwwwwww!” which can only mean one thing. Motherhood - so glamorous.
For months, this pregnancy was something I could just add to my to-do list. In fact, my list looked something like this:
- Graduate
- Get married
- Take care of toddler
- Clean my house
- Be crafty
- Direct a play
- Grow a human in my abdomen.
A few months (and a few anxiety attacks) later, and my list looks more like this:
- Try to train toddler to make me a sandwich
- Groan and breath heavy every time I sit down or stand up
- Eat something
- Complain that my guts feel squished (ya think?!)
- Wonder why I don’t remember it being like this last time.
For the most part, I love being pregnant. I love sharing my body with my child, I love the warm smiles from strangers, I love feeling powerful and creative in a way that is not possible otherwise. But you would never know this if you live with me. I’m afraid I am a bit of a whiner (hahahahaha. A bit. Whew, that’s a lie) and poor Tom and Ella are ready to ship me off to a sunny beach (where I would complain about the sannnndddd in my cracks that I can’t reaaaaccchhhhh) just to be rid of me. Tom takes it in stride and reminds me that two pregnancies in two years isn’t easy on the back, or hips, or skin (WTF skin, get glowing already) and Ella just scoffs and demands I get her a damn popsicle.
One of the perks of Tom’s new job is that I can fly off to a sandy beach, and I am weighing the perks (Sand! beach! Yay!) against the negatives (Would have to go alone with Ella, since Tom works all the time. No margaritas. There is no such thing as a sexy maternity bathing suit. I’m lazy. Sand in cracks, people!) Instead, I am considering flying to Arizona to see my dad and sister, because I have this insane habit of visiting deserts in August. It would have to be a 2 or 3 day trip though, two of which are spent flying with a toddler, and then driving to BFE Arizona, so we will see if this actually pans out.
But in the mean time? Can you hand me that glass of water? I know I am closer, but you see, I am pregnant, and lazy, and oh, oh, I think I may be having a contraction, I really should drink more water. Ahh, thank you. Now, if you are not busy…
Ps - ALSO! I keep forgetting to thank Mamabub for sending us some barely in need of repair fuzzibunz! Yay internet friends! I’ve been meaning to shout out a big THANK YOU! for a week or so, but um… am lazy. I think we’ve established that.
