So. We had to get up at 4 o'clock IN THE FUCKING MORNING because of stupid Alabama and stupid central time and mornings are stupid anyway and mornings with no shower are even stupider but my grandparents shower was disfunctional and had way too many medical type contraptions and stuff and it skeered me and besides, who REALLY wants to take a shower at 4 o'clock IN THE FUCKING MORNING anyway.
So it was in this supremely cranky mood that Dad, Greg and I hit the road for the long days journey into...I mean, back to Maryland.
So again, vignettes. Because I don't remember the exact order of everything for two reasons, 1) because it was over a week ago now and yes, that is no one's fault but my own because I suck like that and 2) because I woke up at 4 o'clock IN THE FUCKING MORNING.
I know we went to McDonald's for breakfast. Nothing all that exciting there. Except Dad decided to try one of them thurr Sausage McGriddle things. Which I think are divine (well....divine is of course a relative term. By fast food standards, they're pretty darned good, but....well, let's just say if someone were to serve me breakfast in bed and provide me with McGriddles and hashbrowns, bad things would happen to that person. Hey, I'm just saying...) Anyway, Dad did not like them, Sam he am. Is? Sam he is? Sam he were? Sam he be? I think I need a nap.
So breakfast is consumed and we're back on the road and I'm sleeping in the backseat and when I wake up, miraculously, somehow, it's lunchtime. Yayness. So we're trying to decide where to eat and Dad wants something better than fast food, but not as upscale as...say, Outback. So Greg pulls out his laptop because he's got some sort of mapping program on there which shows locations for all sorts of highway eateries and stuff but it's sunny so, glare. So he pulls his coat over his head and ducks under it so he can see the screen.
And Dad, who is driving (well, this should be obvious since I was sleeping and Greg was laptopping) doesn't understand WHY Greg is hiding under his coat and he starts goofing off with him and weers over to the shoulder where there are TRUCKS! PARKED! ON THE SHOULDER! And dad is BARRELING towards them!!!
EEEEEE!!!!!!!
So he swerves back into his lane and Greg says, "DAD!! You nearly hit two trucks!"
And Dad looks back and says, "Oh, it wasn't so bad, it was just one truck."
So we decide on Shoney's and we get off the highway and as we're looking for Shoney's we pass a sign that says, "Crocket's Bar and Grille" and Dad says, "Hey, that sounds good!" and I say, "Now what about that in particular sounds good, Daddy? Was it the Crocket or the Bar or the Grille?" because, really, Dad, it's just like the McGriddle, how can you know whether it's any good without at least a little bit more information?
So then Greg picks up on it and we pass a place called, no joke, "Acme Tire and Snack Shop" and Greg's all, "Oh! That sounds good!" and from then on, we would sporadically call something out with the declaration, "Oh, that sounds good." Poor Dad. He deserves better.
So we finally end up at Shoney's (Ooh! That sounds good!) and as we all pile out of the car Greg says to me, "Dad's a passenger from here on out."
Yeah
The scary thing about his driving, as most of y'all know? He's a professional driver. Which he kept trying to remind us of everytime we criticized his driving.
So we're at Shoneys. Dad orders fried shrimp. Somehow, as the plate is placed in front of him, two shrimp end up on the floor. He blames this on me. I have NO IDEA why as I was nowhere near his plate when this happened. But still, it's my fault. So he peers under the table at his poor little shrimp down there amongst all the undertable goo. And I say, "Dad? Don't even think about it." But sure enough, he plucks them up off the floor and says, "Oh, I can wipe these off" and he does and he EATS them. ::shudders:: Did we not discuss that the five second rule has been scientifically debunked?
And then somehow, we start talking about People's Sexiest Man Alive thing. And Dad goes on about his theory (and I kind of stopped paying attention for reasons which shall quickly become clear so I can't actually explain this theory) and he's talking about Matthew McConaughey and Brad Pitt and Tom "Why yes, I AM a psycho" Cruise and how one year one is sexier than another but then next year someone else is sexy or maybe someone is less sexy or one has gone up in sexiness and the other has gone down in sexiness and so on and so on and finally I say, "DADDY!!! WOULD YOU STOP SAYING SEXY!!!!" Because it was creeping me out.
Of course, that didn't stop me from stopping on the way out of the restaurant and gazing aghast at a little gumball type machine dispensing "Frosted Balls". Which I then had to point out to Dad and Greg asking, "C'mon, who would really WANT frosted balls?" And then I think about it and say, "Hmmm. Nevermind," because frosted COULD mean icy and cold or it could mean frosting as in chocolate buttercream. And oooooh......frosting.
::vicki pauses to think dirty thoughts::
Right. So from this point, I take over the driving. And as we get closer and closer to the area where we saw the HUGEST MOST GIGANTIC WAL-MART IN ALL OF EVER we start craning out necks, looking for it. Alas, we didn't see it but Dad says, "Hey, look for the Denny's where we had lunch on Saturday!" so when we see it he starts shrieking, like a little old lady, "Oh look! There's our Denny's! Kids look, it's the Denny's we stopped at! LOOK AT OUR DENNY'S"
Thankfully, he fell asleep soon after that and I was able to regain control of the radio. Because we had been listening to the Phil Collins/Celine Dion all the time radio station and I couldn't take much more of it.
Sadly, eventually, he woke up. Shortly thereafter, I see a sign. "Hey! We must be getting close to home. We're entering Fauquier County!" (And I say that's close-ish to home because, in the mornings, when Greg and I were kids, and we'd listen to the snow closing annoucements on the radio, Fauquier County was one of the counties I remember hearing mentioned. So if they included it on our radio station, it had to be close-ish to home, right? Well, that's my theory and I'm sticking to it)
Anyway, so I say, "Fauquier County" and Daddy says, "Watch your language" and then we end up having a conversation about how us kids have such potty mouths and when he was at the "now defunct Halstead school" to which Greg and I both replied with "Watch your language."
Poor Dad. Again.
And now, it's getting time for dinner. Dad has been campaigning for something a bit faster than the restaurant meals we'd been having. He decides he wants Dunkin Donuts.
DUNKIN DONUTS??? For dinner???
Greg and I are both, "No way." Greg because he's cutting back on sugar and me because I just don't LIKE Dunkin Donuts. I'm definitely a Krispy Kreme girl (Mmmmm.....donuts)
But Dad keeps up with his lobbying and I say, "Don't make me call Mom" and Greg chimes in with "Mooooooommmm!! Dad's trying to give us DONUTS for dinner!" And Dad says, "Well, they have more than just donuts now. You know, they have meat vegetables."
(Yes, the comma was deliberately excluded from the above)
"Meat vegetables!", Greg says. "Well, that sounds tasty! Sign me up for some of them meat vegetables"
Which of course leads to a discussion of George Carlin's "Meat Cake" skit. We lurve Carlin, yo.
[Must pause this recollection for a brief word from Greg. Because, see, I haven't had anything to read lately. Which, if you know me, you know this is driving me NUTS. (which stands for "networking under the stars" - but that's another entry.) But the other day, I discovered Greg had left in the bathroom an omnibus edition of the first four books in the Hithchiker's trilogy. So I started rereading it. Always being very careful to return the book to the bathroom when I was done because I know that's the only place Greg ever does any reading. Except this morning, I forgot and took it to work with me. Leading to a phone call just now from Greg, where he sputters, "What did you do with my book!?!?" Um...er. "I only read for five minutes a day and I've been wandering around the house for the past half hour with my pants down around my ankles looking for that book!" Yeah, thanks kid, didn't need that visual. But I traded him, told him he could read my copy of Cell and I would certainly be finished with his book before he finished with mine. So all's well that ends well and Greg can poop freely again]
So Dad finally convinces us to give the meat vegetables a chance but we pull off the highway and discover it's not really a Dunkin Donuts, it's just a case of donuts inside of a gas station. So we say no way, nuh-uh, and we keep going. We finally end up at some very very scary 7-11 in the middle of BFE, Virginia which is only marginallly better than Dunkin Donuts but at least we were able to get hot dogs which I guess is better than meat vegetables.
So that's about the extent of it. We arrived home without further incident, although we did stop at the liquor store down the street from my parents house. We ALL needed something by that point. Some of us, a little more something than others.
