On the Road Again

I was very confident early in the summer when I said no road trips this year.  The epic road trip of 2014 was too fresh in my mind to commit to cramming everyone in the car and heading out again.  However, summer has a way of breaking down my will and the pleading of my children combined with heat that is creeping up and up and up have persuaded me to climb in and hit the road once more.  

I really wanted to go and see my sister in Chicago, but we made that trek last year and the thought of repeating that drive made my stomach hurt.  Oklahoma with its tiny towns and tiny speed limits: gut clench.  Missouri with its up and down and up and down hills: stabbing pain.  Southern Illinois with its never-ever ending farmland: curled on floor in fetal position.  Chicago was out.  I briefly considered Nashville as well, but again, I have made that drive so many times I felt the ennui of it before I even mapquested it to be sure of the mileage.  Ugh, that section of TN between Memphis and Nashville where if you miss Jackson, you are doomed to eat at Loretta Lynn's Kountry Kitchen.  I think I am still digesting breakfast there from the last time we made that mistake.  No thank you.  

As my mother is one of twelve children, we have relatives everywhere and I thought about who was close enough, liked us enough and was an easy enough drive away for me.  Taos, New Mexico quickly won out and I am now looking forward to a road trip!  One long day drive for a normal person or a two day easy drive for me and we will be there.  We will have a scenic stop in Lubbock, TX.  This is exciting because none of us have ever been there.  The next day we will hit Taos and I can smell that cool mountain air already!!  It was 49 there at night this week!  49!  That is February weather for us and the kids are gleeful as they think about packing jeans and a sweatshirt.  Kids, heck, I am gleeful thinking about packing jeans and a sweatshirt!  We will hike, we will take a chair lift up the mountain, we will be tourists and we will get to visit our amazing aunt and cousin.

We are a little crunched for time and will only be there a long weekend, but it will be worth it.  Also on the way home we are planning a stop in Roswell, because we are so close we just have to.  Sadly for me, Laura Ingalls Wilder never lived in New Mexico so there is no LIW homestead to visit, however, there is a BILLY THE KID museum!  I am trying to decide if this museum is worth the hour of road time out of our way.  It is, right? It's Billy the Kid! I apologize because I am sure he really was a murderer and all around horrible person, but I read a very fictionalized account of his life as a young teen and have a fangirl sort of fixation on him.  That and I believe the movie Young Guns is more documentary than fiction. I made the kids watch Young Guns in preparation for the museum stop but they were not impressed.  They also did not like the Goonies, so I do not look to them for movie reviews. Their brains aren't even fully developed yet, so really, what do they know? SG just read this over my shoulder and proclaimed me to be rude.  Again, what does she know?  I am sure it is not worth the hour of extra drive time, but I feel it necessary as a mom and historian to make the stop.  Plus I will get to make them listen to the two Billy the Kid songs I have again and again and that will be a lot of fun for me.  

Zoom.  Or, as we are in a Prius, whirrrrrrrrr.

I find that I am as excited as the kids now to get on the road and have this adventure.  I know that the miles might drag and there will be goldfish on the floor of my car from now until forever.  I know we will push it a little too far and have to stop in places to use the bathroom out of desperation and then worry about our health for the next ten miles. It will all be worth it because we will laugh, we will sing out loud and off-key and we will see and experience new things.  Also, my kids will tell you, road trip mom is fun mom.  I can't wait to see their faces as they see western mountains for the first time and I can't wait to hug my aunt and my cousin.  I guess sometimes the things that you think you can't stand to do again turn out to be the things you really need to do.

Tennis? Anyone? Please?

The boy and I have had a lot of quality time together this summer while waiting on SG.  Her Strength & Conditioning camp is only an hour long and as it makes no sense to drive there, come home for two minutes and then drive back to get her, he and I hang out up at school for that hour.  I thought he would be up for tossing the football back and forth or basketball on a real court, but it is pull of the blue cement tennis courts that have captured his heart and imagination.  I have played more games of tennis in the past month than I have in the past thirty years and for good reason: I do not like tennis.

When I was ten, my mother signed me up for a week long tennis camp.  Ten was the year that my body starting gearing up for puberty and in order to do so, I went from being a short, skinny, long-haired kid to a short, chubby, lanky-haired kid overnight.  I never once in my ten year old life expressed an interest in tennis so I think this was her ploy to keep me from watching TV and eating all the sweets in the house while she worked.  My main exercise seemed to consist of walking down the basement stairs to see what kind of frozen treats were hiding in the cellar freezer.  Ever eat so many Freezer Pops you kind of burn the inside of your mouth off?  I did.  Every day.  This should lead you to know that the idea of camp alone was traumatic but then add to it I was expected to RIDE MY BIKE THERE AND BACK.  Please know that in addition to being chubby, this was a very clumsy year for me and I had more bike accidents and flat tires than successful bike rides.  The same woman who took my bike away for a week due to fall after fall was now telling me it was okay to ride there and back for a week.  My mother, in an effort to assuage her guilt over this camp, recently clocked the mileage from her house to said tennis courts and tells me it is 1.2 miles door to door.  Can I just say that for a chubby, short-legged girl riding a crap bike that 1.2 miles seemed like 12?  My father refused to fix one more flat on my sweet ten speed after fixing one a week for a month and I was stuck riding an old bike I pulled out of the depths of the garage.  It was stuck in whatever gear that is that you pedal with all your might and the wheels turn so grudgingly it is like you have the brake on.  No, I didn't have the brake on, neither brake worked.  But there I was, on this deathtrap, sent down major thoroughfares, holding a racket in one hand, pedaling my heart out and chubby legs off to get to a tennis camp I didn't want to go to.  I hated it before I even got there.  Then I got there and I hated it even more.  Short chubby kids do not make great tennis players and I was no exception.  I was terrible and as this was in Lancaster, NY, the teenagers in charge saw no reason not to tell me so.  I think they groaned as much as I did when they saw it was me next in line.  I spent a lot of time languishing in the back of the line and huddled around the water cooler dreading the ride home and dreaming of Freezer Pops.  Somehow, I made it through that terrible week and vowed to never play tennis again.

Until this summer when the boy spotted the tennis courts and said "Mom, let's play tennis!".  I quickly lied and said "Oh buddy, we only have one racket." I forgot that the boy who can't memorize math facts has the entire garage and its contents burned into his memory and he quickly came back with "We have two.  One is under the shoes by the door and the other is in the green bin by the recycling can."  I said we didn't have any tennis balls and he said we did, under the couch in the front room as well as in the pool bag.  Realizing I was not going to win this, I gave in and said alright.  This was also early in the summer when I was determined to be a great mom.

I apologize to any real tennis players as I describe how it is that the boy and I actually play tennis.  I realize it is a true sport and its players are amazing athletes.  The boy and I are not amazing athletes and we have butchered the sport beyond recognition.  Given that the boy has very little depth perception, he has a hard time recognizing that the ball is coming and where it is once it gets there.  This in mind, the ball can bounce more than once.  It can bounce ten times, but if he gets a racket under it and returns it, I will hit it.  He can knock it into the next court and it counts.  He can step on the fault line, over the fault line, in the wrong box and still serve.  It counts.  Every  now and then I will hit the ball over and somehow it will hit his racket and come back at me and we are both so surprised we stop and say what a great hit it was!  He will tell me he gets a point for hitting it and I will agree.  That's right, a point. There is no love, fifteen, thirty in our games.  Everything is a point.  I hit the fence behind you?  Point.  Hit it so hard it got stuck in the fence?  Point plus bragging rights.  Landed in the corner of the opposite court? Point.  It is Calvinball on the tennis courts and he thinks he is great at it.  I was surprised to find I was actually having fun with it as well.  It is as hot as can be, but for an hour we are kings of the court: trash talking the other, hitting as hard as we can and laughing, by God, we are laughing.  My problem with tennis now is that he wants to play it every time we are waiting on SG and while he is obsessed, I am worn out.  We are also midway through summer and I am fine with being decent mom and not great mom.  He actually thinks he is good at the game and I am wishing some random teenager would come by and laugh to give him some perspective.  But then I remember that this is the kid who stopped playing games at recess because he wasn't picked anymore and if wants to think he is a great tennis player, who am I to say he isn't?  Actually, it is probably my heinous playing that is really holding him back.

This is absolutely my face the entire time.

SG has two more weeks of her camp left and I have five more times driving which means five more days of playing tennis.  I can handle five more times over two weeks.  I will keep trying to substitute basketball, football or sitting quietly in the shade, but I know he will keep picking tennis.  He is stubborn like that and there is too much tennis in the news recently for him to give it up now.  Personally, I think they should lay off that tennis player, Sharapova, and her grunting.  I grunt like that just getting the rackets out of the trunk.  And walking to the court.  And waiting for the boy to hit the ball back.  And running across two courts to hit it back.  Grunting makes it better.  I think I will suggest that we add points for grunting and see what the boy thinks.  Ha, what am I thinking?  He is a boy, he will love points for grunting!  I think we will both really take a shine to this and bring tennis to a whole new level; plus points for grunting may give us a score higher than ten!