It's Not A Road Trip Until Someone Is Hysterically Crying For Hours Pt.1

Now, I’m not sure what a road trip looks like for you but the last road trip I took a week ago it ended up with me hysterically crying in a hotel lobby and you know what? A road trip ain’t a road trip until someone is left hysterically crying, is all I’m saying.

The Pilot and I made the mutual choice that once again, for Thanksgiving, we were going to make the trip to my parents cabin and force my mother to make us a turkey dinner and while she was at it, she might as well do all the laundry that I had stored up that I was supposed to do but she’s my mom so it’s sort of her obligation to do all my laundry. And make me delicious finger foods. But because we are ambitious and suckers for pain, we decided that “Hey, why not have Thanksgiving at Womb Mates’ because she just crapped out a baby and she’s willing to cook the turkey for us!” and despite the fact it would have doubled the length of the time on the road for an already long road trip, we all high-fived over the idea. And by “we” I totally include the dog in that high-five moment but his was more of a “frantic face slaps” then a high-five.

The day of our trip started off great enough. I had taken an extra day off of work because I wanted to have a lot of time to properly pack and prepare for our voyage and by “prepare” I mean sleep in, lounge around in my sleeping clothes and realize that “Holy fuck, I’ve only got four hours left before we go so I better clean the kitchen, and do laundry, and pack.” And I was left scrambling around to get everything done.

Now, if The Pilot was to tell you about how I got us ready for our trip he would give some rant about how I didn’t really pack but just threw everything into a suitcase and closed the zipper but what he doesn’t realize is that when I was packing our clothes I started out packing it nicely and folding the clothes but then I got tired and bored and wanted to do something else so the rest of the clothes I may or may not have just dumped into the suitcase and closed it. Now, it’s not my fault that all the clothes that got folded before I got bored were mine and it was in no way intentional that the clothes that got thrown in once I got bored were his. So it totally wasn’t my fault that my mother may or may not have made fun of The Pilot when he wore his first wrinkled shirt. Or that my dad may or may not have given him a look as if saying “Hey, you lazy ass bum, don’t you know how to fold clothes? Asshole.”

With the packing done, fantastically might I add, we were ready to go but The Pilot didn’t get home on time because he may or may not have forget to leave his corvette keys with his corvette so a friend could put it into storage for him while we were gone so it may or may not have added an extra half hour to his trip home and put us that much farther behind schedule. I may or may not have yelled at him because he broke my schedule that I had so carefully crafted a week before.  I may or may not have kicked a baby kitten angel with cancer afterwards out of frustration.

When The Pilot got home I threw everything at him, I grabbed the dog, and we locked up and drove off into the sun set singing show tunes. Or, got stuck for an extra hour and a half in the drive thru of a popular fast food chain because when it comes to “fast food” in my town it’s more like “Asshole, we going to make you wait soooo long because we can food”. By the time we got out of that line-up I was frothing at the mouth and The Pilot was frantically searching for his emergency stash of holy water. Or gun. Never sure with him.

And then we drove off merrily into the sun set singing show tunes while cartoon birds flit around and feed us golden grapes.

Or, got stuck in fog that was so thick I refused to watch the movies on my Ipad because I had to diligently watch The Pilot to make sure he didn’t kill us in the fog by driving off the road or hitting a skunk or getting hit by other vehicles. It’s extremely stressful, you know, being the protector of our family’s safety by criticizing everything your partner does. They just don’t appreciate your safety conscious attitude and long suffering martyrdom.

And then we drove off into the sun set singing show tunes and having little cartoon woodland creatures braid our hair and adorn it with flowers.

Kidding!

After hours of driving we pulled into our destination for the night and because of all of the delays and the fog and that stupid Asshole Food place, instead of getting in at 11:00pm we ended up reaching our hotel at 3:30am because that schedule I so carefully crafted the week before? Yeah, it totally fucked us in the ass and didn’t even take us out to dinner first.

This hotel I had booked was booked for one reason and that one reason is my dog. You know, the asshole one who spent the whole trip thus far throwing an Emo tantrum in the backseat because “OMG WHY ARE YOU TRAPPING ME IN THIS MOVING HELL? YOU TOLD ME WE WERE GOING TO THE DOG PARK! I HATE YOU! YOU AREN’T EVEN MY REAL PARENTS! I WISH YOU NEVER ADOPTED ME!”? Yeah, we couldn’t leave him in the vehicle so I had to find us a hotel that allowed pets and had a free room that could have pets. I was assured our dog was welcome. So welcome in fact that they were going to charge me an extra twenty dollars for him!

So after checking in and confirming that our room is still there and waiting for us we go outside to grab our things and bring the dog in and the lady at the counter? Yeah, when she saw the dog so was all “SURPRISE! U CAN HAZ NO HOTEL ROOM CUZ WE SCREWED UP UR BOOKING! LOLZ!” and both The Pilot and I shit our pants. I was beyond tired so it took me a few minutes to process what had just happened and when I realized that we had lost our room and had no place to sleep at that moment I did the only thing I could think of. I started hysterically crying much to the dismay and horror of the hotel lady and The Pilot.

And I continued to cry.

And cry.

And cry.

I cried until The Pilot directed us back into the vehicle and started to search the other hotels in town while frantically trying to make me stop crying.

I cried when The Pilot went to all the hotels in town to find out that SURPRISE! This town that normally has hundreds of hotel rooms open all the time is suddenly fully booked because there’s some type of Lumber Mill shut down and thousands of workers have flooded the city.

I cried when The Pilot broke the news to me that we’d have to find a parking lot and sleep in the vehicle because there was no other option.

I cried when The Pilot found a 24hr grocery store and attempted to purchase us blankets and pillows and the old man working the nightshift kept trying to sell him fucking lawn chairs instead of blankets. Fucking lawn chairs.

I did stop crying when we both tried to go to sleep but I did start crying again when our fucking dog decided that “Holy shit, this is the coolest thing in the world, CAMP OUT IN THE VEHICLE!” and figured it was a good time to start jumping everywhere. For two hours.

I figured by that time we were either going to freeze to death in the vehicle or be stabbed by a homeless person.

It could have gone either way, really.