Travel notes: redacted

Warning: the following content may contain elements that are not suitable for some audiences. Accordingly, reader discretion is advised. In other words: it may border on being inappropriate (but we got a good laugh over it at the time).

*****

Rachel has been in charge of communication in the white car (the white car that is still so new and foreign to us that we never recognize it as our own, even when it's sitting in our own driveway (seriously—I'm always like, "Who's here? Oh. Us.")) since Grandpa is driving and she has nothing but time. Her response time is a little bit slow, however, and at times it's been frustrating because sometimes I'll need to communicate a last-minute change in plans for our caravan and she won't respond.

Today I resorted to using the "find my phone" app to ping her phone because I knew it would override any sort of "do not disturb" barricades. She didn't notice my texts, my phone call, or when I tried to facetime her, but she did finally pick up the phone when it started pinging.

I think she's since (as in "since I exasperatedly told her to pick up the phone!") changed the settings on her phone (to the "most annoying sound I could find," she told me). We'll see if that helps.

Anyway, yesterday I sent her the following text (because we had sleeping babies and didn't want to wake them but had promised everyone a pit stop): "We are skipping Grand Junction (unless your car says otherwise), aiming for Rifle. About 100 miles. That okay with you?"

I got no response. So I sent another message.

Still no response, so I sent the following message, which I thought was funny:

"Speak now or forever hold your pee(s)."

She didn't even respond to that—or to my next four messages—but I did see that my messages had at least been read so I wrote, "You can at least laugh at my joke!" So she did a little "haha" reaction to my message. "Thank you!" I said.

Because people laugh when things are funny!

*****

On the way to my mom's house—perhaps for our farewell dinner on Thursday?—Zoë said something in the car (that I honestly didn't pay very much attention to; our poor children have had rather distracted parents lately) and then she said, "Isn't that funny, Mom?"

"Huh...oh...yeah," I said. "So funny."

"Then laugh!" Zoë urged. "People laugh when things are funny, Mom!"

I tried to force a laugh but it was honestly harder than perhaps it should have been (our poor children's distracted parents have also been rather stressed out lately as well), so I tried to explain to her that just because something is humorous doesn't mean people have to laugh (similar to how things can be sad—very sad—but that doesn't necessarily mean someone is going to cry over it), but she had already moved on and completely ignored what I said.

But Andrew and I have been reminding each other that people laugh when things are funny ever since.

*****

We've stopped for the night in Concordia. We checked in to the hotel (or is it a motel) and then took the kids across the street for some late night pizza. While we waited for our food we discussed our future travel plans. We've been making better time than we thought we'd be making, so we're a little ahead of schedule. Should we take things slow and split the rest of the drive into two short days? Or should we push through the rest of the drive in one day?

The men believe we can do it in one day. I was on board with that when I believed it was only a ten hour drive, but it's really an eleven hour drive plus stopping, so I don't know if we'll make it, but it was decided that we'd aim to arrive in Atlanta tomorrow.

Then Grandpa called out—across the table and above the hubbub of five hungry children clamoring for their (late) dinner, "So we'll get gas in the morning then?"

"Ummm...yes..." Andrew said, looking slightly aghast, then he whispered to me, "What did he say?"

"We'll get gas in the morning..."

"OH! That is not what I heard!"

"What did you hear?"

"I heard, 'We'll kick...' You know. Something that rhymes with gas."

"Oh!"

It's really only funny because that would be an incredibly uncharacteristic thing for Grandpa (or any of us) to say. But because we like to flirt with inappropriateness we spent the rest of the evening talking about how we "get gas."

I actually don't think we'll ever be able to think about "getting gas" without also getting the giggles.

*****

So far the children have been wonderfully behaved on this trip. There has been very little fighting. Hardly anyone has asked when we'll get there. We've even forgotten Benjamin was with us a few times (he was watching Lord of the Rings in the back seat and we did not hear a peep from him for about three hours).

In short we could say that this trip has been a great way to get some gas.