I love vacations. I really do. The idea of getting away for a couple of days and not having to do laundry, make dinner or go to the grocery store is heaven. I feel much more relaxed because there is nowhere to rush to and no one to please. You don’t like this option for dinner; well well let’s just walk next door. You are bored; there are 400 channels on the TV. You want to shop, there are more shops then I know what to do with. The best part of all of this is that I do not have to do any actual entertaining and
However getting to my vacation leaves me an impatient pain in the butt. If we are driving, I want to leave at the crack of dawn and avoid making any pit stops. It take way too much time to find and exit, get out of the car, get snacks, go to the bathroom, get back into the car and get back on the highway. And the GPS system seems to mock me. What do you mean we are now not arriving until 430pm? When we left this lying machine with British voice told me 3pm. Where did an hour and a half go?
Oh that’s right.
-The 10 am slurpee break that added an extra 20 minutes because it took the cashier 10 minutes to ring up the customer in front of us.
- The lunch taken promptly at noon when every other person in America is taking lunch. The line for the only McDonalds right of the highway was ridiculous. I cannot believe that as nasty as those bathrooms are, people are waiting 15 for the privilege of using one. I unsuccessfully tried to campaign for everyone to hold it for another hour but I was facing mutiny. They wanted a bathroom and a double cheeseburger now.
- And then there was the 230 pm stop for ice cream and leg stretching. I tried to resist the urge to point out that had we not been stopping every hour, we would be approaching our destination in thirty minutes. However my group was excited that we would get there before dark. Before dark?? It doesn’t get dark until 8 pm!!!!! You are excited it took this long??? No one else seemed to feel my sense of urgency and they didn’t think the world was going to end if we didn’t arrive by the time the GPS wanted us to.
We finally got back on the highway and the GPS get adding minutes to the arrival time. Every time I looked up that machine taunted me. Go Faster. Go faster. If I kept this up it would be hello speeding ticket and hello driving school. I eased off the accelerator and turned the GPS away from me so I couldn’t see the glowing red numbers. I tried to lose myself in the cheesy road trip music but restlessness was setting in fast. Finally we approach our destination and I speed it up in anticipation of being done with this drive.
I do understand that this view of a vacation takes all the joy out of it. But I just absolutely cannot stand the process of getting there. Once there, I am easy to please, but it has been suggested that I should be given a valium or two and then stuffed in the back before any long journey to spare my fellow travelers. Clint thinks the easiest solution would be to just tie me to the roof. The sad part is after an hour sitting in the car listening to myself sing – even I am ready to be strapped to the roof.
So say a prayer for my fellow airplane passengers that this trip to Minnesota is without incident. I am not sure an entire plane full of passengers wants to hear my renditions of the playlists on my IPOD. But you never know….someone might have a liking to hear me belt out an authentic rendition of Cher’s “If I could turn back time…”
