road trip

Last night we had a huge dinner, and I mean huge, each our own ample entree with ridiculously varied sides. Enough food to feed an entire Vietnamese village for a week, or maybe that's a bit of hyperbole, I'm trying to make a point.

I waited to the second to last moment to pack. The night before instead of the morning of departure. I mean, why procrastinate until the last moment that only puts undue pressure on oneself. I was forced to confront the fact that none of my size 30 waist pants hanging in the closest fit for the time being. And neither do any of the pants on the shelf in a pile above them marked 31, nor do any of the pants in the pile next to them parked 32. They're all too tight. And that leaves only a scant 8 pair or so of pants marked 33 in a pile next to those. And that makes deciding a lot easier because there is so little to choose from. Today I am wearing size 33 waist pants, and that happened only once before. None of the dress pants fit. So then, too bad for me. I cannot get dressed up. Boo hoo. Just for that, I'm not going to wear a tie.

Can you believe this? I'm supposed to be skinny.

I don't care. Everyone else is still fatter than me. Everyone.

But now I'm on a diet. No more overeating. All this food is ridiculous. And it feels horrible moving around inside me.

They had breakfast at their hotel, I skipped. They stopped for lunch early ordering pizza at a chain pizza place. I had a deplorable little side salad. That right there can remove your appetite. Horrible tomatoes. Simply disgusting. Olives that come from a tin. The iceberg lettuce not fresh. The cucumber was fine. The prepared dressing is repulsive.

Am I getting particular or what? Are fresh salad vegetables too much to ask? Cannot a simple house vinaigrette be produced without being totally gross?

No. It is not possible. If you want those things then you have to assemble them yourself. And that's a plain simple fact. Even if you ask for oil and vinegar you'll be served a third rate insipid vegetable oil and a second rate vinegar. So just forget about having a salad good as you do for yourself. And no complaining allowed.

We stopped for pee breaks frequently. Somehow these truck stop places on the road are impressively well kept. And at every single point of contact the trucker types and regular people are outstandingly considerate and personable. They race ahead to open doors, they engage when addressed, they smile, they're gracious. It all makes me behave better myself. The boys go nuts. They're all over the stores at once. They literally fly thought the places setting their grubby little boy mitts on everything within reach. They have a knack for locating the noisiest toy and have it make noise continuously.  I see Alona becoming a bit frustrated by not being able to control the boys' excitement without becoming cross. The boys are tearing up the place. They simply cannot be contained.

James is tired and asks for 10 minutes to sleep. We cannot stay in there that long or nothing will be left in the place. We're willing to give him long as he likes. I say, "Let's go outside and explore." Alona and the kids are up for that.

It's a truck stop. It's vast. "Let's find something to climb on."

"Noooooooo. It's dangerous. Everything around is too dangerous for them to climb on."

"Look over there. There's a park and a lake. Let's check it out. Finally we'll get to see one of these  lakes up close. "

The walk there and back will be ten minutes. Anything more will be gravy for James resting in the van. I'll try to wear these boys out. They're literally bouncing like two basketballs.

"Look. That tree's branches are low enough to climb."

Surprisingly Alona is okay with the boys climbing a tree. She's being delightfully agreeable to suggestions.

For monkeys that climb on everything at hand, table tops, backs of chairs, sunken bollards, shale outcroppings, benches, they're not adept tree climbers. Barry and I scrambled up much taller trees much trickier than this one and much faster with greater agility and monkey ability. It took awhile to coax them up the tree. But once they did climb it, then it was up and down the tree, climbing up then dropping down, then climbing back up, and the bits that were so hard to figure out and difficult to do physically at first came naturally in very quick time. James showed up with the van well away from the truck stop before we decided to return, then the boys had to show their daddy the new climbing skill they just learned. And James was into the whole thing too. He was delighted to see his boys mastering the tree and he encouraged them to negotiate the branch obstructions and climb higher. They trust him.

The fires in California caused the schools to close. The teachers assigned work to be done at home. They're thorough. They are demanding on the parents. The teacher behave as if the parents are their employees and not the other way around. It pissed off both James and Alona just being spoken to disrespectfully as servants. Alona described them as Nazis. The boys don't like homework because it has the word "work" in it. And that's all. If it were called homeplay, or homeart, or homegoofingaorund, they'd be all for it. Because the puzzle-like tasks are actually fun. They get to show off what they know. And they both did very well and both wanted to do their own by themselves. They did not want help or interference. The second grader reads surprisingly well and the five year old is learning to write. They both completed the full week of homework within half an hour in the van. 

We stopped for dinner. They have a full meal with sides and dessert. I have a side salad with sad vegetables, the exact same ones as the previous place with the exact same shredded cheese and the exact same crackers, and the grossest vinaigrette that I've ever seen that looked precisely like oil drained from a diesel truck for an oil change and didn't taste much better. 

I'm on a diet over here.

I've got some thirty pair of pants that don't fit and my body is shaped wrongly. Although, every single person encountered along the way is still fatter than I am. Thin people don't exist in Nebraska nor in western Idaho. Apparently.

Right at the end, at the border as so often happens, James was stopped by police for going 70 MPH in a 55 MPH zone. Disgusted with himself for this unhappy setback he was still gracious to the cop. Oddly, the van rented in Denver has California plates. The cop took James (correctly) for a California driver. But we're actually out of Denver this trip. The cop took James' information, went back to his cruiser, then returning and  following a few more questions the cop gave directions to our hotel, basically straight ahead for two miles. Without giving James a ticket. So James went from depressed and disappointed to delighted and cheered with his mind blown in the span of two seconds. He still cannot get over being stopped with a valid infraction but not being ticketed. That does not happen in California.

But we did not check in the hotel. 

Our family was working late with decorations for the reception. The reception will be in a barn.

A barn!

And it's a very cool barn. With a cement floor. The space is perfect for a reception. But I must say, it's the oddest thing that I've seen. Every bit of it makeshift. They are not professionals. They never did this before. They're winging it the whole way. It's all rustic. Nothing is elegant. There are no haystacks nor any feeding bins but every element is ad hoc. The centerpieces for each table are automobile and tractor engine pistons. Given they don't know what they're doing, they still pulled it off. The various branches of family combine beautifully. I am the oddest one out. I must acknowledge, they are all beautiful people to be around. They all have a down to earth charm and grace. 

Presently I am in a large modern hotel room with two queen size beds. James and his family are in a similar room one floor below. 

I just now decided that I need to buy new pillows for home.