with a six-year-old and a ten-month-old that lasted for ten hours straight. Okay, I did finally make it to California at midnight on Friday night, but it wasn't easy.
The first three and a half hours were nice, until we reached St. George where we stopped at Red Lobster for dinner. Only then did I realize that using the restroom was going to be a problem. How was I going to hold the baby (who screams if I step two feet away from her) and use the bathroom? Yes, I finally decided the only way was to have Bianca hold her. She sat on the floor (yuck!) and held her, and Portia still cried the entire time. I had to do it again at a gas station in Las Vegas (after getting stuck in horrible traffic that set me back an hour), but this time I would not let Bianca sit on the floor and the baby nearly slid out of her arms.
It was a scary gas station. When I walked in, a homeless man was yelling at the cashier about something being illegal (I never figured out what that was as Bianca was doing the pee-dance and really had to get in there). But I locked the doors of my car while we went in, got in the car, locked up immediately and then drove off. As we were waiting at the stop light to get onto the freeway, I realized one of the lights in the car was on. I had Bianca open and shut her door three times, but that clearly wasn't it. I had to get on the freeway, then exit again and pull off onto the side of the road. As I was going around the back of the car, I realized the back light was shining on. So, I opened the back quickly, shut it hard, then saw that the light went out. I got back onto the freeway again and started thinking--how did my back door get dislodged? I hadn't opened it when I stopped in St. George or at the gas station. Then I started to panic that someone had tried to break in. It wasn't until I called Eric and he sufficiently freaked me out by asking if I checked closely enough to make sure someone hadn't hidden in the back of the car. The next exit was Stateline where I pulled off yet AGAIN and parked in the lightest part of a casino parking lot, opened the trunk and found to my relief that it was packed with nothing more than the bags I put in there. I double checked both the girls who were sleeping soundly in the back seat to make sure they were okay. By now I was completely paranoid.
As I hung up the phone and felt completely alone, I realized how much I missed my dad. The last time I had driven to California was with him a year and a half ago. Not only that, but taking road trips with my dad is one of my favorite memories of him. He always used to fly out and drive with me when I'd drive home for summers in college. When we went to California two summers ago, he had flown out to Utah because I was planning on taking a road trip on my own. He was always so good about offering to come along on my road trips.
As I passed into California from Nevada, I looked into the empty passenger seat, my hands still trembling from fright, and asked if he was here with me. That gave me a little comfort. For surely he was.
I made it okay finally and am I glad to be here! But I'm not looking forward to the drive back.
