At the risk of sounding like a deranged traffic reporter in blogger clothing, I have one more story to relate. Yesterday we took our new & improved route to camps - the last day - starting at 8am again. We were ridiculously early to Paige's program (8:30, no other children were there yet), which meant we would arrive before the appointed 8:45 at Mason's class so I lingered a bit. To the point of uncomfortable body language and avoidance of eye contact from the instructors. "Okay, so, that's great I-5 was such a good drive. Oh, there's Pascale! Have a good day..."...Lady who won't leave the classroom and keeps talking about how long it takes to get here every morning...
Fast forward (ha!) to the ride home. I know that Friday afternoons are considered Driving Hell on the freeways, but I've got this new & improved outlook on life so I let the kids play at the Children's Museum for awhile before getting on the road. We left west Portland right at 4:00. Cars were moving, in a ponderous bovine way. No worries - we sang, had snacks, and read. We listened to terrifically inappropriate stories on the radio (my children are now familiar with what Playboy magazine is all about, and are saddened to know that they will not find a stash in our house - right, husband?).
We made it all the way to the east side of the city, just about to get on the second-t0-last highway to our house, and it had only taken an hour! (That's good). Suddenly, Mason was at critical point needing a bathroom. I briefly considered pulling to the side of the road, but we were right at an exit that I knew led directly to a strip mall right off the freeway. Seemed like a very simple, more civil method. What I did not know is that there was no onramp back to the freeway from this area. None. What idiot designed this? my not-so-new & improved-attitude shrieked. I actually had to consult my decade-old Thomas Guide and hope it had all the new roads on the maps. I was excited to see that a nearby major street led straight up to an onramp I recognized. Good news! Got on it no problem, felt smug at my decidedly tricky maneuver, and 30 minutes (yet less than 3 miles) later I was still in line to actually get onto the freeway. Yeah. But only once did I let out my beast voice to announce FROM NOW ON EVERYONE WILL GO TO THE BATHROOM BEFORE LEAVING ANYWHERE ANYTIME. Which sounds a little crazy, but it's better than crashing repeatedly into the innocent drivers around me.
Today, I do laundry.
