Ramblings from the Road

The good news is that I have survived the past 10 days...the bad news is BARELY.

This past weekend, I decided that since GI Joe was gone the kids and I would take a field trip to the ice cream capital of the world to visit my friend Cheri on her parent's cattle farm. You may remember Cheri from here http://hillbillyhilarity.blogspot.com/2009/01/sold.html. Cheri moved back home from these parts awhile back and has been missing me a ton (who could blame her right?), ok and maybe her other friends too. But that's beside the point. I decided a road trip for the kids and I to visit her would be a welcomed distraction.

WHAT WAS I THINKING?

*Within the first hour of our trip the following occurred:

-I took a wrong turn after dropping Akala off at the vet to be boarded that took me approximately 30 minutes out of the way. Nice.

-Begged and pleaded w/ my children to put in a movie to silence the constant fighting and bickering taking place. Then had to break up the fight that ensued when they could only find 2 sets of headphones. Cried tears of self pity.

-Blade & Dakota both started in with the "Potty Dance" AFTER we had just gone through approximately 17 towns. Of course there were no other towns in sight for miles and miles so I did what any responsible mother would do. Scolded my children for being so irresponsible for not telling me sooner that they had to go AND pulled over on the side of the road to let them do their business. Strangely enough, by this time Blade had stopped the potty dance which concerned me greatly. As Dakota was relieving herself, Blade held up a National Guard water bottle that he had resourcefully turned into a catheter bag. YUCK!!! I screamed, vomited in my mouth a little, and demanded that he dispose of the entire bottle immediately. Meaning for him to get out and toss it in the grass, but NOOOOOOO what did he do? He hurled the full bottle of you know what from the 3rd row seat out the open door where Dakota was standing. I'm sure you can imagine how this all went down. It wasn't pretty folks. The water bottle wasn't completely closed so there was a lovely "sprinkling" all over the seat and the open door and just a little on Dakota.

-After cleaning up that unfortunate mess we proceeded in our journey, until about 15 minutes later Dakota and Blade told me that Ryder had wet his pants. Excuse me WHAT? I asked Ryder if he had and he didn't answer so I assumed that meant he had. Let me just say this was not one of my finer Mom moments, I yelled a little, pulled over the car, told Ryder to get out, went to the back of the car to get clean clothes out of the suitcase, grumbling the entire time, and finally got around to where Ryder was standing. Only to see him standing there in DRY PANTS. Seriously.

-Asked myself repeatedly, "Why did I think I wanted kids?" and "Is it too late to give them back?" Judge me if you want to I'm just keepin' it real here.

-Turned up my New Kids CD so loud that my kids were asking me to turn it down. I told them it was a necessity in transporting me to my happy place and it was in their best interest to just deal with it.

We finally made it to Schnepf Family Farms where Cheri greeted me w/ a not so virgin mojito. Oh sorry wishful thinking. :) I wish I could say that once we arrived it was smooth sailing from there. Not so much, but it was an adventure. Here are a few highlights:

*Their real cattle farm made our hobby farm smell like the Yankee Candle store.

*Got an education in cattle farming, when I kept calling the cattle "cows". Turns out there are no cows at Schnepf Farms. They deal strictly w/ steers and heifers who have been fixed. No calves for me to steal and take home there. Tried not to dwell on the fact that all the beautiful cattle I was looking at were going to end up on a someone's plate.

They are probably thinking how much their mother resembles one of those steer when she's angry.

*Can you believe that even though I was surrounded by cattle I couldn't pet a single one of them? It seemed an injustice.

*You know what else was an injustice? The fact that our plans for Friday in the "ice cream capital of the world" all revolved around outdoor activities such as a picnic at the ice cream park followed by a trip to the Blue Bunny ice cream parlor, and it RAINED. Not just rained but POURED. Needless to say that put a big ol' damper on our plans. Don't worry we suffered and went to the ice cream parlor in spite of the rain and it was delicious.

*You may or may not know this but there is just not a lot for kids to do indoors in northwest Iowa. So Cheri and I improvised and decided to take the clan to a movie. But not before we stopped at Target and purchased a $2.50 beach bag in which we smuggled in our picnic lunch. That's right we had a total ghetto picnic in the movie theater, it was delightful. Cheri and I were very coy and sly about it but the kids totally blew our cover by loudly saying things like, "DAKOTA, DO YOU WANT PUPPY CHOW OR CHEETOS?" or "PASS ME A HAM SANDWICH." It's okay we escaped jail time but had to live w/ the kids repeatedly telling us we were breaking the law. Wouldn't be the first time kids, wouldn't be the first.

*Ate at a muy fantastico Mexican restaurant in small town Iowa. One side was a bar and the other was the restaurant. They made you wait in the bar area until your table was ready. This was a first for my children. They enjoyed a few games of pool, ate some popcorn, and lectured me at length about being in a bar. But the food, the food, was totally worth the moral implications of hanging w/ my children in a bar. Before you call to schedule me on Jerry Springer let me defend myself, the Mexican restaurant is a FAMILY restaurant and there were other kids there. So there.

*Speaking of the kids, the aliens REINVADED. I'll spare you all the gory details but I think it suffice to say that a weekend w/ them acted as a 99.96% effective method of birth control for Cheri. Poor Cheri. Poor me too as it's too late for birth control. That's how I got in this mess to begin with. I went from spittin' mad at the kids to wanting to just sob because they were frustrating me so. Ahhh the joys of motherhood.

Don't let them fool you. They make look cute but they are deadly!

*Woke up to sunny skies and 75 on the morning we were to depart from Schnepf Family Farms. Seriously God, could you not have cut us a break? Watched Cheri breathe a huge sigh of relief when we pulled out of the driveway. Just kidding she's way too classy to do that, at least in front of me. We did have fun just hanging out and catching up, although I think we would both agree, our next get together will be sans kids.

*The good news was that I had leverage all day on Saturday as we got to see GI Joe for a few hours on Saturday night. Oh it felt sooooo good to say, "you'd better straighten up, I'd hate to have to tell Daddy how bad you were today," and it actually worked. Why can't I have just an ounce of that Daddy magic?

More on the rest of our weekend later. I will say that the aliens did leave and the rest of the weekend was extremely enjoyable. But here's a quote from Blade & Ryder speaking to their Papa last night: "We can't wait for Daddy to come home. Mommy is working us to DEATH and is kinda mean."

Oh yeah boys, it's been a total cakewalk for me.

*Disclaimer: I do actually love my children just in case you were wondering.