Thankful For Thanksgiving

I recently reminded friend Ruth that being in New Zealand over the holidays has its benefits, i.e. not having to spend Thanksgiving with one's family.

Actually, Thanksgiving itself was perfectly wonderful--tasty food, happy family--and not MY family, but Guy's, so all the better (Kidding!). I am here to complain about the trip to the event, not the event itself.

Guy and I had the kids for Thanksgiving this year, so naturally we went to stay with his mother over Thanksgiving, as both his parents, his siblings, and his grandparents all live within reasonable driving distance of each other. Just not within reasonable driving distance of us. It is a mighty long drive from Jersey City to Massachusetts, especially in torrential downpour.

Within twenty minutes of being in the car with Boy and Girl in the back, I turned to Guy and said "I don't want to make this drive with them again any time soon." And at that point, the sentiment was based on very little--they were listening to music and being generally peaceful. However, I am a prophet, and I prophesized bad things, and before the hour ended, Girl vomited.

Luckily, we were somewhat prepared, and had a ziploc bag at the ready. But still. I had a ziploc bag of vomit at my feet until the next reststop.

Apart from some general crankiness toward the end of the drive, that was the big excitement on the trip up to Massachusetts.

But the next time Girl got in the car...we were unprepared. After all, it was only a short trip to go shopping.

It was a volcanic eruption--not fountaining, like the videos show in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park--but a bubbling of liquid that travelled everywhere--across Girl's shirt, jacket, pants, car seat, seat belt--even down into the seat belt buckle thing. It was impressive. And smelly.

Poor Girl was very calm about the whole thing--when I insisted she take her shirt off in the Burger King bathroom so I could rinse it out and make it somewhat wearable until we got her a new one, she struggled honorably with her modesty (the bathroom was empty, but there was no lock on the door) and surrendered the shirt.

We did discover the source of the nausea--Girl can't look at anything while in the car. By this I mean that she can't read, color, draw, or look at pictures. Which is pretty much all she likes to do while in the car.

Imagine her boredom on the drive back to New Jersey. We played My Sharona a lot, and hoped they didn't listen to the lyrics.