I haven’t brought up the fact that the day after Thanksgiving I woke up with a delightful urinary tract infection. I realize this may be crossing the line of too much information, however, it is relevant to the story. If it weren’t, I can assure y’all that I would never just share random information about my bladder. Because EWWW.
Anyway, Caroline did indeed spend the night of The Holiday of the Turkey with Mimi and Bops. I cannot tell y’all how excited I was to sleep in late on Friday morning and, really, if you have kids you know exactly how excited I was. However, I made two crucial errors that cost me my valuable morning of sleeping in.
1. I forgot to put the bark collar on our dog Scout. If Scout doesn’t have his bark collar on at night then he feels the need to bark at very ominous, scary things such as a leaf falling from a tree. I was rudely awakened about 4 a.m. by Scout barking wildly to let us know that somewhere a blade of grass just blew in the wind.
2. I ate too much chocolate and various spicy foods and decided to not drink any water all day long. After all, drinking water might cause me to not eat as much and that’s just un-American.
Thus, I awoke at 6 a.m. and recognized the beginnings of a urinary tract infection.
And oh, they are delightful.
Also, I don’t know that I’ve ever mentioned this because, again, TOO MUCH INFORMATION, but on a normal day I go to the bathroom about 87 times. And that’s not counting the three consecutive times I go right before bed every night. I’m a compulsive potty-er.
Anyway, our plan for Friday was to head to our friend AJ’s ranch and hang out with her family. We were so excited about it and I decided that we needed to forge ahead with our plans in spite of my compromised bladder. So in between trips to the bathroom, I got us packed. We loaded the cars and headed south on I-35.
And I say loaded the cars because we took two cars. P was going to another friend’s ranch on Saturday but Caroline and I were going to come home, therefore we needed two cars. I gave Caroline the choice of who she wanted to ride with and her only concern was who was going to be in front. She chose P because he would be the leader and in her mind, the clear winner.
And she may have looked me right in the eye and growled, “Daddy and I are going to BEAT YOU.”
I hope I’m not raising Tonya Harding.
I knew I needed to go to the bathroom before we had even reached downtown San Antonio but I tried desperately to keep my mind on other things. Finally, I called P and told him I’d need to stop. We pulled over at a gas station and Caroline decided she also needed to go.
After waiting in line for 10 or 48 minutes, it was finally our turn. Only Caroline didn’t need to go after all. She just likes to check out various gas station restrooms and report on their smell.
Which isn’t at all odd.
We got back on the road for about 3 minutes when, all of a sudden, P pulled over on the shoulder. He looked under his truck and I could read his lips as he said what appeared to be DANG and SHOOT or maybe it was something else. And I haven’t mentioned that behind his truck he was hauling a trailer with his Polaris 4-wheel vehicle on the back.
We didn’t look at all like the Clampetts coming to town.
Or perhaps like a scene from Grapes of Wrath.
He motioned for me to come get Caroline out of the truck in case oncoming cars didn’t see a huge, white Ford F350 with a 15 foot trailer attached with various hazard lights blinking like a huge beacon. So there we stood on the side of I-35, in the freezing cold, not looking at all like white trash.
And I had to go to the bathroom.
No, I didn’t go on the side of the road.
But I thought about it.
It seems that P’s muffler had started to fall off which was causing his truck to sound like he was about to start drag racing. And this wasn’t just some factory muffler, it’s some SUPER muffler with SUPER MUFFLER qualities that make your truck ten times better than an average truck. At least that’s what the salesman told us. P wanted to salvage the muffler.
And there we stood on the side of the road. In the freezing wind. Needing to potty.
Meanwhile, P was under the truck trying to use baling wire to reattach his overpriced muffler. It will always be a treasured memory for me.
Finally all of us, including the muffler, got back on the road so we could reach the next exit and pull off because two guesses! I needed to go to the bathroom.
We repeated the earlier bathroom scenario and once again, Caroline didn’t go.
Then, about 10 minutes later, rinse and repeat.
We head out again and drive for a lengthy 20 more minutes before P pulls over at another gas station. I didn’t know why we were stopping, but was worried we were about to lose the family inheritance, otherwise known as the muffler.
He pulled Caroline out of the truck.
She needed to go potty.
Because the other three stops had been insufficient.
All said and done it took us three and a half hours to make a one hour drive to the ranch.
And y’all will be glad to know the muffler is still with us. It was touch and go for awhile but I think it’s going to be okay.
And, hopefully, so will my bladder.