Finally, we've left our old county and indeed our old state. We ate lunch at a wonderful (in taste and kindness to children) store in Cumberland, which is a lovely valley in Western Maryland, called Queen City Creamery. Later on, we drove on on Interstate 79, which I've never heard of before. Tonight, we are staying in Charleston, West Virginia, another lovely valley in the East Coast mountains. The kids were very glad that all four of us are present. My daughter, the 8 year old, is so pleased that she hasn't insisted on watching any movies on the portable DVD player we bought for the trip. I have a rule that she has to write 8 sentences in a journal about our trip (actually, she can write any sentences she wants, but all the sentences she's come up so far are about the trip) before we turn on the DVD player. So far she has preferred to just keep drawing or reading comic books to writing her journal. We did a journal a few years ago when we visited Austin, TX, and she wrote the funniest, most interesting journal that I can't wait for her to break through and write again, but it might not happen. On my side, I have lots more days of boredom in the car. On her side, she has apparently inherited my immense stubbornness. I just asked my beloved life partner if I have an immense stubbornness, and she gave an eloquent roll of the eyes and attributed to me an "intractable obstinacy." I have some idea of what she is talking about, but I label that thing in me something like "a passion for defending that which needs defending." Of such divergent perspectives around a shared known reality are long term relationships built.
Our son got a nap today, and both of the kids managed to tolerate our "Local restaurants rather than McDonalds" philosophy for this trip. I'm vegetarian, and our previous rule of "No McDonalds except for road trips" was rapidly morphed by my skilled negotiating offspring into "Only McDonalds on road trips"; it is not possible to maintain a healthy human body on the vegetarian food available at McDonalds; our last road trip we had some really fun experiences with local diners, and it turned out that our kids don't like the food at McDonalds, they just want the toys. So I now am one of the pathetic wretches that buys coffee and fries and "Two Toddler Toys", paying out $10 for what cost McD's $2. But today, our messed up schedules meant we never had time to go to McDs.
But today it was beautiful. We are on roads we've never traveled on, and seeing mountains that are a bit steeper than the Maryland mountains we've camped on. The kids have started asking if we are in California yet, not quite realizing the horror that the existence of a list of 12 states has in store for us.
Again, I must beg pardon for being so incoherent. If I get 10 hours of sleep tonight, I'll finally have caught up from missing the entire night last week. Hopefully the soreness of the 200 some boxes and the dozen or so cuts from the tape gun will also disappear as I return to normality, this new normality of our family with out a fixed abode, with only one another to make all this newness something fun rather than threatening.
We have been listening to "The Witches" by the brilliant Roald Dahl; a scary but fun story about a boy who stops the witches but is turned into a mouse. I haven't yet had to/gotten to read any of the books I brought for the purpose.
The Prius is very small: we had to use 3 carts to bring our luggage up toniight, and each person has so much stuff at their feet that we can't move our feet around. This day was only the first serious day of driving. I can't imagine that the car will feel more spacious in a week. We are going along with the car GPS rather than Google maps: the moment to moment whining outweighs any optimal routing algorithms.
Good night,
--Chris
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