The Road to Hell

Okay, I'm typing this with no corrective lenses. At the hotel tonight after I took out my dry, twitching contacts, I reached for the comfortable, relaxing oasis of my glasses, opened the case, and screamed with the fury of a trapped bear when I saw that it was empty. I assume my glasses are folded neatly on the bathroom counter at home, 400 miles away. And yeah, this pretty much sums up the day we've had.

Bryce had a short Thanksgiving play scheduled for the first 15 minutes of the school day, so we went to the performance and left town from there. The high point of the play was when all the kids took turns naming something they're thankful for (Bryce's was "the world"), and one of Bryce's friends, after his classmates named things like, "my mom" or "my teacher," stood up confidently and clearly said, "I am thankful for the big bang that made everything we can study." (YES!! That pretty much trumps all the other measley attempts at gratitude: If it weren't for the big bang, you wouldn't HAVE a mom, SUCKAS!!) The low point was when Quinn objected to an older class having the audacity to use the part of the library over which HE was ruling to have their weekly story time. And so he grabbed the nearest stuffed animal and THREW IT AT THE CLASS, HITTING A LITTLE GIRL IN THE FACE. Their shocked, nervous laughter misled the little hooligan into thinking he'd found a niche for himself, and so when the librarian reached for him to return to his pathetically crappy mother (me), he grabbed a bigger stuffed animal AND THREW IT INTO THE LIBRARIAN'S FACE. I'm not exaggerating. It hit hard enough that it bounced back.

I don't know, people. I think this means we suck worse than we thought we did. It can't NOT be our fault, I don't think. We were going to fill out Quinn's application so he could attend school with Bryce next year, but I think that's pretty much out of the question at this point.

I've blocked out the majority of the seven hours on the road, and it would be boring to recount in detail anyway: blah blah, we almost tore out all our hair, blah blah, our ears were bleeding, blah blah, road construction is the devil, blah blah.


When we got to our hotel tonight, we decided to let the kids get their energy out.

After that, we went out to dinner and, intelligent people that we are, chose a place on a busy city street, and didn't physically attach the kids to us, which meant that as soon as Quinn saw an escape route, he took it. ACROSS THE BUSY STREET. Laughing maniacally, I guess sharing a joke with death, who he was staring in the face. I chased him, shrieking, which caused him to pause and turn around IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD. Nobody was even grazed by a car, so yay for me and my great parenting skills.

Tomorrow we drive to my dad's for Thanksgiving. What hair-graying experiences await us? I don't know, I'll have to ask Quinn, and his hilarious buddy, death.