Directionally Challenged

My husband and I celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary this week.  It does feels like quite an accomplishment that we are still together after so many years.  It's not that we aren't compatible or don't get along, in fact, we make a pretty good team.  We complement each other's idiosyncrasies quite well.

"Misty Way" photo courtesy of Hornpipe

One of us likes to spend money, the other is a saver.  One of us has what some people would classify as a fiery temper (ahem, I think that may be a bit of an exaggeration on their part), the other stays calm, cool, and collected.

He doesn't like cake icing and I do, so he gives me all of his.   He doesn't like chocolate either, and gives me all of that as well.  That last act alone qualifies him for sainthood.  

I like to shop around for the best price on things we need.  He likes for me to shop around for the best bargain.  Once I find the bargain, he goes and purchases said item.  It's like having Amazon Prime living in my own house.

Even with all of the many wonderful ways we work together, there is still one area we struggle with:  navigation.  My husband seems to have been born without an internal compass, and he can't follow a mechanical one either.

When I tell him to head east, he'll head west, or south, or any direction except east.  If I tell him to take the 3rd street on the right, he'll turn at the 5th street on the left.

Even when he uses the map feature on his phone, he gets north/south/east/west all mixed up.  He argues with the turn-by-turn navigation on our GPS as it calls out which way to go or what lane to be in.

If he goes the wrong way from what the GPS is coordinated for, he'll yell at the GPS to hush up.  The GPS will then give elaborate directions on where to make a U-turn to get back on the correct path.

My husband has no appreciation for this feature and tells it to recalculate because he doesn't make U-turns.  After a couple of miles, you can almost hear the GPS sigh in frustration as it says "recalculating..........".

Just recently I was heading south on a highway and my husband was giving me directions.  He was absolutely sure we were headed north.  Thankfully I was born with an internal compass and knew that we were headed south.

Had I not of known where we were going, we might have driven all the way to the Texas-Mexico border.  Should that have happened, I would almost bet money he would have asked why Mexico was where Canada is supposed to be.

Even with this strange quirk, he has always been able to find his way home every single day.  After 25 years together, I guess there are worse quirks to have........

Written by Christie Bielss

What A Gas

Our much anticipated summer vacation had finally arrived.  The kids woke up on the first gentle nudge and excitedly sped through their morning routines in an effort to get out the door early.  As I was trying to put the last toiletry items in mine and my children's luggage, my husband was cutting his hair .......... while his suitcase sat on the bed just as empty as it had been the night before.  Typical.  He always packs at the last minute and always ends up forgetting something.  Heck, one year he forgot to pack any pants.  Yep, takes the phrase "going Commando" to a whole new level.

We ended up leaving an hour and half later than I had planned, but it was vacation and we were driving, so our schedule was flexible.  As we were leaving town, we went through the McDonald's drive-thru for breakfast.  My husband ordered his favorite:  sausage biscuits, while the rest of us ate syrup-less hotcakes.  That's right.  We had pancakes without syrup because I don't want sticky gunk all over my car.

My family happily gnoshed on their breakfast while I put the pedal to the metal and tried to make up for lost time due to my husband's primping.  We were about an hour down the road when our senses were assaulted by the smell of a skunk.  We didn't see it, but we sure could smell it.  We rolled the windows down and quickly aired out the car.  I felt sorry for whoever hit that skunk because their car probably had to be fumigated to get rid of that stench.

We continued blazing a trail down the highway barreling towards Amarillo, TX for our lunch break/refueling destination.  When we arrived in Amarillo, we stopped at a truck stop that also had several fast food restaurant choices inside.  The family chose Burger King and while I'd have rather eaten the tail end out of that skunk we'd smelled than something from Burger King, I sucked it up and ordered something that resembled chicken.  My family chose to go with cheeseburgers, fries, and a free ice cream cone.

Little did I know when they chose their lunch at that truck stop, we would be fueling more than the car's gas tank.  We hit the road and cheered when we crossed the Texas/New Mexico state line.  It wasn't long after that border crossing when we started encountering some strange aromas.  There was the older pickup truck in front of us that was emitting an odd smell, an open field where, from the rotten egg smell, someone must've hit a natural gas line while drilling.  We were also certain we drove past either a cattle auction yard or dairy farm due to the overwhelming smell of fresh manure.

This trip was definitely having a very negative effect on my olfactory senses.  We stopped at a rest stop in New Mexico to check out an extinct volcano and stretch our legs for a few minutes before braving the mountain passes through Raton, NM and Trinidad, CO.  I used the break to breathe in some fresh mountain air and settle my senses down a bit.

As we headed down the highway I was again assaulted by odors, but this time it became quite apparent what the source was............ and he was sitting right beside me.  I asked him ever so sweetly and discreetly "Ummm honey?  Did you do that?".  He busted out laughing so hard he was crying and managed to squeak out the words:  skunk, truck smell, cow manure, and natural gas. 

Apparently I hadn't smelled any of those things, I had been smelling his emissions.  As he was cackling like a hyena and I was grumbling about how courtesy dictates at least rolling down a window, we were both hit with the motherload of stench.

"Oh good heavens!" I yelled.  I looked over at my husband ready to tie him to the roof of the car when I noticed that he was clawing at the window trying to get it to roll down faster so he could stick his head out and get a breath of fresh air.  As I put my hand over my nose and mouth in an effort to breathe in air less odiferous, I hear a very quiet and polite "pardon me" and then another voice said "excuse me".  Great.  Now 3 people were battling each other with chemical warfare and I was stuck in the car with them.

Yep.  My great idea of hitting some fast food joints so we could make better time on the road had just backfired........... literally.  I was trapped in the car for another 4 hours with 3 people who were emitting toxic fumes.  Between my eyes watering and nose burning, I was pretty sure I'd been hit with the equivalent of a nuclear bomb or sarin nerve gas. 

By the time we made it to our hotel in Colorado Springs to spend the night, their three tummies had finally calmed down.  Burger King and McDonald's sausage biscuits were permanently banned from their diets for the remainder of the trip.  There was one upside to the whole situation.  Apparently when you have a green haze surrounding your vehicle, it does seem to deter tailgaters or anyone from trying to pass your vehicle on the road.

by: Christie Bielss

Kids and Cars - Oh My!

Yesterday seemed to be the day for kid trouble. From them waking up cranky, to coming home from school picking at their siblings, to driving their parents insane with the:
"He's touching me!"
"She started it!"
"I did NOT!"
"DID!"
"NOT!"
"DID TOOOOO!"
"DID NOOOOOTTTTTT!"
Oy!!! 

The last time my kids drove me this close to the brink of having the men in little white coats take me away was right after our daughter was born and we drove to a family get-together several hours away. Being only a few weeks old, we were concerned with how well our infant would handle being strapped into a car seat for that length of time.  

Things were going along so well on the drive to the family function, our worries were for naught. To our great delight, the baby slept the entire way. If we hadn't been so sleep deprived, I think our parent spidey-sense signals might've alerted us to the fact that the baby wasn't sleeping innocently, she was taking a power-nap so she'd have super-human powers later to take over the world and suck all of our brain cells. 

Unaware of our pending doom, we relaxed and spent several hours enjoying being in the presence of family before it was time to load up the kids and head home. After lots of running and playing, we expected our 2 year old to be exhausted and sleep the whole way home. Our new baby had handled everyone holding her and had stayed awake for most of the visit, so we were confident she would as well. Our spidey-sense was lulled into complacency and we didn't know what was about to be launched our way. 

We didn't even make it 1 minute down the road when we heard the baby "Puh-tooey" her pacifier halfway across the minivan..... and that's when the drive from the most nether regions of the earth's core began.  She started crying and got louder by the second. We pulled over and fed her, and she fell asleep but as soon as the buckle snapped on her seatbelt, she awoke and started wailing again.  We decided to use the age-old wisdom of letting her cry it out.  I bet whoever invented that had a great pair of ear plugs - which we did NOT have in the car.  Mike asked "How long can a newborn cry when there's the constant motion of the car to soothe her and baby Beethoven playing as mood music?". 

We found out.  About 45 minutes later and with her wailing ever louder, Mike turned around in the front passenger seat, found the baby's pacifier and plopped it back in her mouth. He gave a victorious grunt and just as he was turning to sit back down, you could hear "PUH-TOOEY"....she'd spit the thing out again. With a grumble he turned around again, found the pacifier and plopped it back in her mouth. He no sooner took his hand away when she spit it out again and started wailing.  And then the 2 year old starts chiming in "Dada, make it stop!" 

As the battle of baby and pacifier vs. 40 year old grown man waged, the 2 year old saying ever louder "Make it stop!" and with as much willpower as I could to try to stop it, I couldn't contain a small fit of laughter that bubbled to the surface.  A dirty look and a cranky grumble to "drive faster" luckily were all I got in return.  Mike finally gave up trying to sit in his seat, or to even let go of the pacifier.  For the next 1.5 hours he had his knees in the front seat with his back hunched over like the Hunchback of Notre Dame and with one hand was holding the pacifier in the baby's mouth, and using his other to brace himself so his head would quit bouncing off the car's ceiling.  With fits of grumbling erupting every so often and the constant battle of man vs. pacifier, I could not contain my laughter.  I started giggling which erupted into a full-fledged laughter when Mike shot me a look.  That really got me going. 

By the time we got home I had obviously lost all brain matter from listening to the battle that was waged and was laughing so hard I had tears running down my face.  If the men in little white coats had seen me, they'd have surely taken me away.  When we arrived home and I took the baby out of the carseat, she immediately stopped crying and fell into that long-awaited exhausted slumber we'd all prayed for on the drive.  It took Mike a good 20 minutes before he was able to unkink his back and get the circulation to return to his legs so he could exit the car.  And with a "next time I'M doing the driving!" he collapsed in his recliner.  We didn't do much travelling after that trip.....

by: Christie Bielss