Road Rash

"Let's go!"

We didn’t even make it out of the driveway before they started bitching at each other.

“Move your seat up, dumb ass, my knees are up around my ears!”

“No.  Deal with it, butthole.”

“You selfish tool! Just you wait ‘til you’re back here, I am going to shove this right up…”

And so on. 

Until they ran out of angry glares and filthy insulting compound words (although I was impressed with their creativity) and fell into that deep comatose drool-on-the-pillow sleep provoked by the hum and hush of the air-conditioned car hurtling up the Florida Turnpike heading north.  With that serene snore-punctuated peace, I successfully launched our annual summer mountain retreat to western North Carolina.

 

Bella, my Pomeranian best friend, chose to doze in my lap as we drove.  She drooled as well rendering me a little damp and sweaty, but feeling loved.  Ah well.

 

The closer I got to my mountains, the bigger the grin on my face.  Those eleven hours of discomfort cooped up in the car with two self-absorbed teenagers and a Pomeranian was well worth it. 

Even though I threw up a couple of times.  Car sick. 

My seventeen year old son and fifteen year old daughter were being wrenched away from their friends and Xbox and sleepovers and mall assaults and paintball and the beach and budding sweaty freak out romance to see the Grandparents, PapaJohn and MamaLo. 

So they weren’t too psyched up for the trip to begin with.  

But the allure of being spoiled rotten by the grands, along with water skiing, white water kayaking, hiking and climbing mountains, bonfires, fresh veggies and s’mores somehow changed their minds.  The smorgasbord was irresistible and they faux-reluctantly condescended to pack the car and leave one hundred degree temperatures in Central Florida behind. 

For a while there it seemed like Bella and I were the only two really excited to take the trip. 

And for a short stint at the beginning, I was about to turn the teens out onto the side of the road with a few bucks and a well-wish for a successful hitchhike back home.

But they woke up refreshed and we were treated to a reading of chapters of Twilight by the Girl making the miles fly by on vampiric wings of teen age angst.  In fact, the Boy requested that the Girl read on in her dramatic interpretation of the story, multiple times, sealing a sweet sibling camaraderie that released us all.   Bella influenced the mood by flashing us all, in turn, her signature “super happy lovey face;” she is blissful to be with her people.

We marked the time by identifying familiar milestones:  Seven, count ‘em, 13 foot Gator attractions, the big cool split-in-half Ron Jon sign where the Turnpike turns into I-75, Cordele where Aunt Polly talked a man into not shooting her, and cows in pastures (moo!).

“Strippers!  Need we say more!”   By far the winning billboard this trip.

 We saw the giant peanut, and the giant peach.  We saw the Phantom fireworks place in South Carolina and marked it for the return trip home so we could explode stuff in the back yard on Independence Day.

 He got his license about a week ago so I let my son take the wheel on about Macon.   He only scared the shit out of me once.  He even took the dreaded Falls road up into the mountains gracefully, driving Ursula the PT Cruiser gently, steeply uphill without revving her hot into overdrive through rain and mist.  

And without pissing off any locals.   They hate us pokey flatlanders.

 The road bloomed with steamy tendrils of moisture as the summer rain landed on the pre-heated pavement, and the setting sun burst through the trees in flickering pops of honey yellow as we drove through to the top. 

We're here now.  Time is malleable.  The mountains breathe a smoky hello. 

 Bella on the hosta path.

^{photos: by us}

^{and courtesy of roadsideamerica.com  (peanut, peach)} 

Swine Before Pearls

I like entertaining the odd conspiracy theory now and again.  It is fun to debate the peculiar circumstances surrounding the JFK assassination, UFO sightings, and the existence of Sasquatch. My current curiosity revolves around this:  How in the hell did a Mexican pig get infected with a chicken virus, mix it up with a few other human flu viral strains, add a mutation or three designed to evade vaccine, and then deliver it to a human child at ground zero? 

I want to know who french-kissed that pig.

Or is it some kind of subtle grass roots mad-scientist style warfare introduced by those homicidal fanatic hater peckerheads who don't like us very much and want to weaken us where it counts?  The best and brightest generation, the kids we are depending upon to inherit this United States for us when we are aged, confused and ineffective, our adolescents and teens, are catching the worst of it. Some are dying. Obama just today declared this virus a National Emergency. Vaccine availabilities are lagging pitifully, some fear the danger that may be lurking in half-developed and possibly mercury contaminated vaccines and won't even get them when they are ready, ER's are bulging with misery.  I can hear the haters now, "Screw bringing down Wall Street, this virus is the bomb!"

The Emergency Room at Transylvania Hospital in Brevard, North Carolina didn't seem too crowded.  In fact it was kind of nifty since the windows facing out framed the heli-pad and we were treated to an exciting view of their emergency rescue 'copter humming-birding in and out.  In the waiting room with us were just a couple of people looking forlorn and uncomfortable wearing surgical masks.  I was one of them.  Seems the puking in my car was the big DING! that should've alerted me that something was indeed awry.  And in my usual state of blissful denial, I ignored the sore throat, cough, nausea and bone-snapping aches allowing that lotus-eater bliss that comes from regularly eating Aleve. (Angels sing!) When that stuff kicks in, the baseball bats raining down on my long bones and skull cease for at least 8 blessed hours.  Normal, un-cranky and even personable are descriptors for me at these times.

Truth be told, my kids were sniffly and complaining when I embarked on  my annual pilgimage to the cool serenity of the autumnal, on-fire-with-unbelieveable-color Appalachians.  My kids are always sniffly with something.  It's part and parcel of attending that giant infested petri dish we call High School.  But this was more.  After both their throats closed up in a red inflamed clench, and the fevers began their attack, they were Clinic-bound with their father.  After each receiving a swab up the nose, ("Mom I think they touched my brain!") and swabs in the throat ("Mom, I thought I was going to hurl all over the guy!"), tah-dah!  The cards they swiped with the kids' boogers revealed Swine Flu, or for the more scientifically inclined, H1N1. 

I like hi-nee.  Works for me.  Like something unwelcome up the wazoo!

"Mom, I have the Swine Flu!"

"No. You've got to be exaggerating. Can't be, my little drama queen exciteable one.  Princessa della Luna, put your Eagle Scout brother on..."

"Mom, it is H1N1 Swine Flu. I have it too. You better get checked."

"Ohhhhhhh... (Expletive deleted just this once. It was saltier than usual.)"

That's how my mother and I landed in the ER. 

And, yes, I have apparently french-kissed the pig.