Highway Of Hell

Once we left Laume's house we went to my brother-in-law, Sam's house. It was fun to hang out and see old friends. They were all excited to see Joli. We went to Sam's softball game and our favorite hang out, Logan's Roadhouse!

Then we woke up at 4:00 a.m. and started driving home. This is where my nightmare begins. We got some snacks and some Starbucks and hit the road. Three and a half hours later we stopped in Modesto to get me some more Starbucks and for Joli to drink her Mama Starbucks. We got some gas and continued on our way. We drove awhile longer and discovered that the middle of California is completely boring. I have never been to Bakersfield, but let me just say for the record, that it sucks! The only place I could find to stop was run down and very creepy, truck stop. Joli ate and then we moved on.

Unfortunately, at this point Joli had been sleeping most of the day and was pretty pissed that we were back in the car, but now we were really out in the middle of nowhere so I wasn't about to stop. I gave her a bottle of water with my arm bent over the back of her car seat while I played a very loud children's CD called "Circle Round and Sing". Eventually she went back to sleep. Now we were getting out to the desert in every sense of the word. I saw what at first I thought was a mirage, and then a place where airplanes went to die, and finally I figured out it was where they were built. This was very odd since I had driven over 50 miles to get to that point and had to go another 30 miles to get to anything else.

We finally got to some town on the eastern border of L.A. and after searching for awhile, found a mall to stop at. Joli was thrilled to be able to get out of her car seat for more than ten minutes. We played in the grass in front of the mall and then went in and looked at the fountains. We walked the entire length of the mall, and tried to stay out of the stores in order to not spend any money. Finally after and hour and a half we got back into the car. This of course was not long enough for the queen and she started screaming after we got through the rest of the desert and into the wonderful Los Angeles traffic. She screamed for at least twenty minutes while I searched for something, anything, that looked like it would be a good place to stop. I finally found an outlet mall just over 60 miles from our house.

As I went to get my red, weeping child out of her cage, I noticed a gigantic ant crawling across her hand. Great, now not only have I tortured her with child restraints all day, but I've let her get attacked by enormous insects. I now label myself the worst mom of the year. Luckily, there were no bites; and I had pounded the ant with my foot over and over, while using several swear words mixed into my lecture about threatening my child, (I won't repeat them). Now being an outlet mall that was away from the city, one would think that they would have some place to eat. Nope only ice cream. I then put my spawn back into the torture chamber and drove five more miles to an Applebee's.

At this point I should say that when we left this morning, we did not take a shower or get dressed. So walking into an Applebee's, in my pajama's, with a five-month-old, at 8:00 on a Friday night; would probably explain the looks I was given. But we hung out anyway. We needed it more than the embarrassment was worth. I ordered a sandwich and Joli ate my mashed potatoes. An hour later, we were back on the road.

The rest of the trip was uneventful. Joli slept, I drove. Finally at 10:00, eighteen hours after we got up, we arrived at our house. It was exciting enough that I almost didn't care that the party two doors down had caused a mass amount of cars, that thankfully did not pour into my driveway; and was shaking the windows that my cats were staring out of with extremely wide eyes. Once they saw me get out of the car, however, they forgot all about the noise that was threatening to crumble the floor beneath them. I unloaded the car while Joli tried to match the amount of noise on the street and we went inside to our wonderful home. We didn't go to sleep for three more hours, but we were out of the car, and off our highway of hell!