Day 7: Sunday, July 4, 2010
I’m able to write this from Pearl, Mississippi, where Timothy and I are bivouacked for the night.
The past two days have been nice and easy. Yesterday we attended church at Scofield Memorial in Dallas, Texas, with our dear friends Uncle Dick and Aunt Meg. Timothy enjoyed the toddler room so I could finally be a grown-up for awhile! In church we prayed for the parents of my college roommate and dear friend Heather. I’d forgotten they are supported by Scofield!
After church we had a yummy Sunday dinner courtesy of Aunt Meg, and everyone spent the rest of the afternoon resting. (For me that meant chatting on Skype to my dad and sister, and booking this hotel room. For everyone else it meant napping. For some reason, I’ve found that if I nap, I always am nauseated when I get up, so I try not to let myself sleep during the day.)
After naps, we went swimming! It was deliciously warm and humid outside, so the warm pool felt perfect. Timothy loved getting wet and even learned to kick his feet a bit while in the blow-up ring. Someday I’ll try teaching him to swim, but for now it’s just getting his face wet that we’ll work on!
We played with toy cars all evening and then went on a wild goose chase with Uncle Dick and Aunt Meg for fireworks. We got to see a few but missed the big shows. Oh well! It’s more than we saw last year. :) Timothy and I finally got to bed sometime after 10:30PM.
Day 8: Monday, July 5, 2010
I took the car to an open Pep Boys this morning at 8 AM for an oil change and just to ask about the water leak. The guy I talked to assured me that a somewhat large puddle is normal if you’ve been running the air conditioning a long time in humid weather. Well, now I know! I guess I’d lived in California drought too long!
Once the oil was changed, I drove back to get Timothy (whom I’d left asleep at “home”) and our luggage. We packed up, I wolfed down some cereal, and we got underway. I figured we’d refuel and eat lunch somewhere near Shreveport, Louisiana, and it was a quiet drive there. I noticed two guys on motorcycles without helmets (my friend Ruth would cynically refer to them as “organ donors”) and realized the Southern states must have relatively lax helmet laws. Timothy is of course fascinated by motorcycles at his age. I just hope I can train him that they are evil and dangerous!
We had a nice lunch at Exit 33 on the eastbound I-20 in Louisiana. I recommend the stop if you happen to be going that way. The Pilot gas station is nice and has great prices (today a full 20 cents a gallon cheaper than the Love’s just a few miles down the freeway). Their mini mart has friendly cashiers and lots of food, including fruit. The bathrooms are clean, and there is even a diaper changing station! Plus there is an Arby’s. When I was pregnant with Timothy I craved Arby’s curly fries but couldn’t get any, so I enjoyed them today. :) I hope Baby AJ liked them, too. Timothy wouldn’t even try them. He had a hot dog instead. He sure does love hot dogs. The cashier at Arby’s took a fancy to Timothy and I think told all her other cashier friends to come see this white chick with the biracial baby. Timothy didn’t pay any attention to the ladies trying to love on him, though. He was busy watching the lights of one of those electric-claw-toy game things like in Toy Story.
Once we crossed the Mississippi River, I knew for sure it would rain soon. And boy did it ever. All of a sudden, without any showers of warning, the heavens dumped buckets on us. I slowed down from 70 mph to 60 but kept having to slow down; it was that heavy. I finally was down to about 40 mph and following another car in the right lane at a very safe following distance – just close enough so that I could see its taillights. I turned on my emergency blinkers, and the car in front of me turned on its emergency blinkers. There we were, quite a pair, for the next 5 or 10 miles (who knows in that rain how far we went?), crawling along and blinking. I felt oddly fond of this car that was being so careful in contrast to the [in my opinion foolish] drivers who flew past us with such low visibility. I may not be the world’s greatest driver (to which my sweet husband can attest), but I consider myself definitely on the safe and conservative end. I don’t speed (except in the city, and then only to keep up with traffic, never in the fast lanes). I like driving with my lights on. I look over my shoulders probably more than actually necessary. And I’ve never been in an accident or had a traffic ticket in eight years of driving. How many people can say that? (Okay, I did go off the road once in Zeeland, Michigan, when I hit black ice on a bridge overpass, and it is only by God’s grace that there were no other cars around for me to hit as I spun several times before going down into the median and getting stuck in snowdrifts. But there was no damage done, a good Samaritan helped push me out, and I will always, always be careful on that particular bridge in the winter from now on!)
Anyway, we did weather the worst of the downpour (praying the whole time, while Timothy slept blissfully in the backseat, reminding me of “Jesus, Take the Wheel”). and it was only another half hour of light rain before we arrived at our hotel around 5 PM. Again, if you happen to be traveling this route, I’ll recommend the Jameson Inn in Pearl, Mississippi (just east of Jackson on the I-20). It’s not cheap, but we got our room on Priceline for better than we’d have paid at the nearby Motel 6, plus we get free Internet and breakfast, and it’s a much nicer place in general. We’re happy here! We had a nice dinner at Waffle House (my first time at the chain), and I welcomed myself to the South with a sweet tea. Mmmm! No offense, but Yankees just don’t know how to make iced tea!
And now it’s time for bed. Tomorrow will be a slow day, since we only have another six hours to Columbus, Georgia, if all goes well. We can sleep in and take our time. I accidentally left my swimsuit in Dallas, but actually, it was a size 16 and quite a bit too big for me anyway, so I’ll probably bite the bullet and get another one when we reach Columbus. The question is, should I buy my first ever two-piece (albeit a very, very modest one) so that I can fit into it when more pregnant, assuming I do get bigger – since I didn’t get big at all with Timothy – OR get a regular swimsuit and risk not fitting into it in a couple months? I wouldn’t care at all normally, but there is a chance we will live in a house with a swimming pool in the backyard in San Antonio, in which case I know I would spend much more time in the water than if we were in an apartment with a more public pool… Ah, such a quandary! And just think: there are people starving to death all over the world, yet here I am blogging about buying a swimsuit. For shame!
I’m obviously tired and need to join Timothy in the king-size bed. There were so many pillows I put two on Timothy’s side edge so he wouldn’t roll off (which he did in Arizona), and another one between us so he doesn’t crowd me off the bed (which he kept almost doing in Texas), and we still each have a pillow to sleep on. Perfect! And we have our own thermostat, so I’ve set it at a comfortable 78 (instead of the freezing 65 it was at when we arrived). The portable DVD player is charging, and Mommy is sleepy. Good night, world!
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