Two Lists

Things that were difficult to handle today:

1) Eleven hour car ride back to Ohio from Wisconsin; usually takes around seven hours, eight on a bad day.

2) The DVD player refusing to function the final five hours of the trip.

3) The flooded, and hence, closed, freeway from Illinois to Indiana which caused us to be stuck in a massive traffic jam; moving 2.5 miles in 2.5 hours.

4) The less than considerate drivers that kept driving up the shoulder of the road, zooming past the stopped cars, and then trying to merge back in; making a difficult situation much more so.

Things I found myself extremely grateful for today:


1) The DVD player worked the first six hours of the trip -- Dora, thank you for your two-year-old-mind-numbing magic. I love you despite the fact that I cannot get the "We did it!" song out of my head.

2) Harper cried for a mere 3 minutes of the entire ordeal.

3) She slept for 2.5 hours and did it after the DVD stopped working.

4) She requested a bathroom trip, during which we all emptied our bladders, approximately fifteen minutes before we became stuck on the freeway of no return. Her timing was perfect. Had we not made that stop. . . I shudder to think of it.

5) There was no peeing in the car.

6) There was no throwing up in the car.

7) There was nothing even remotely resembling a tantrum in the car.

8) When the DVD stopped working, and Harper stopped napping, I was miraculously free of motion sickness while reading to her in the backseat (I'm generally only a front seat reader).

9) Ann drove an extra 140 miles or so to meet us where we finally got off the freeway of no return. (We were doing a meet and switch, so my mom didn't have to drive all the way to Ohio and back.) She was supposed to drive a little less than 1/2 way and ended up coming probably 2/3 of the way. When "the way" is a total of 425 miles, that's a significant difference.

10) I was not alone with Harper in the traffic mess.

11) We were not stuck in traffic while fleeing a natural disaster (although, incidentally, if it ever becomes urgent for large masses of people to flee east from Chicago, we're all in big trouble.).

12) We had a nearly full tank of gas when we got stuck in the 2.5 hour traffic nightmare.

13) Everyone arrived home safely in the end and Matt and Rebound were here to greet us.

All's well that ends well.