This past weekend I made a trip down to Corpus Christi with my mother and three of my kids. My niece was getting baptized and we wanted to be there for that occasion. So we piled into Mom's car and took off.
Two hours from home we hit the worst traffic jam I have ever seen. Going five miles an hour, sometimes stopping for ten minutes or more at a time was sheer agony. The highway was cut down to two lanes and there was no end in sight. So we amused ourselves by making stupid jokes and eventually, I read everyone a story about a man who was afraid of heights. The story ended with the man clinging precariously to a ladder while his friends left him there. We were irritated after that. Everyone in the car had to pee, except for the baby, who was wearing a diaper. We passed a charter bus from Mexico and I considered getting out of the car and knocking on the door to ask for the baño. At one point we passed a port-a-john on the side of the road that was left there by some workers. A lady and her daughter actually stopped to use it. (Ick.) Another woman got out of her car and retrieved something from her trunk. Later we saw her dumping the contents of a bottle onto the road. This wouldn't have been questionable except that it had a pStyle attached to it. A pStyle allows women to pee on the go. Do I need to say more? No, I do not.
We were finally able to exit and found a Family Dollar, which had a line to the bathroom. The people waiting there had all been stuck on the freeway, and informed us that three 18-wheelers had been involved in an accident. The woman next to me had a tattoo that said, "Rest In Peace, A.J. Warren." I wondered if we were related. There are a lot of Warrens in my line. I spared a brief thought for the demise of A.J. Warren and thought about asking the woman who A.J. Warren was, but then decided it might be rude and anyway, at that point the bathroom opened up and I forgot everything else.
On the way out we bumped into a cop escorting a shackled female prisoner into the store. They probably had to pee too.
Outside a news station was doing a story on the accident and the kids asked Are we There yet? We laughed. And laughed.
Finally, at about ten pm, we arrived in Corpus Christi and checked into our hotel. The kids had never stayed in a hotel before and thought it was the coolest thing ever and announced that they wanted to live there. I just wanted to go to sleep. I went into the bathroom and thought, I will do some yoga poses to loosen up and get rid of some of the stress from that very long car trip. I came to the conclusion that if you are staying at a hotel, then there is just enough room to do a warrior pose in the bathroom. I did not do a sun salutation because I was too grumpy. I decided to take the warrior pose into a downward dog and then I realized, I just touched the bathroom floor with my hands!!!!!! Gross! At that point yoga was over and I scrubbed my hands until they had the texture of sandpaper.
The next day was better. It was better because we got to see our family, and we went to the beach. How I love the beach! I love palm trees! I love sitting in the water and feeling the waves smash into me! And the kids had a great time. Of course, there was that moment of truth. That moment of truth when you're wearing a bathing suit and you have to walk out there, with your porcelain skin and extra pounds and you hope like hell that you don't blind somebody with the glaring whiteness of your flesh. But then I thought, I only have a couple of hours at the beach, and I love this swimming suit. And I will stay Glaringly White if I don't walk out there and get some help with Vitamin D. So I did. Nobody cared. I was so offended. I mean, the paparazzi should have been there. What is this world coming to??
The only mishap at the beach was that my two year old threw a seashell on the ground that I thought was cool, so we took it back to the house and found out that something was alive inside it. I felt bad. Lucky for me, my sister-in-law had a critter keeper and my nieces were thrilled with their new "pet", which would be relinquished to the sea the following day.
I have nothing else to add except that I love Corpus Christi. It's a great town, and they have amazing bead stores with things you can't find anywhere else. (Water buffalo teeth, anyone?) We headed out of town on Sunday and I just want to say that a) I was not allowed to listen to Ozzy Osbourne on the way home, and this hurt my heart and b)My sister-in-law Heather makes the best cake balls in the entire universe, and this should be recorded in all the history books so that all children may know this. The End.
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