On Toy Story, Mornings, and Why I Need a GPS

Last Friday afternoon I had a little breakdown, and around 10:30am, I left my children sitting at the dining room table, doing their school work, and decided to take a ten minute breather on the computer.  I was surfing around facebook when I saw an ad for Toy Story 1 & 2.  On further investigation, I realized that Disney/Pixar was rereleasing them for a limited time in the theaters as a double-feature and in 3-D.

I immediately logged off the computer and told the kids we were going to the 1:15 showing.

“What about school?” they asked.

“Huh?” I queried.

“School,” they repeated.

“Oh, that.  Well, you can finish up over the weekend right?”  Nevermind that we had a baseball tournament and Tae Kwon Do testing.

Big D, in an e-mail exchange about our change of plans for the afternoon, wanted to know what I was planning to do with Cap’n Jack Henry.

“Hold him,” I said. 

“For three and half hours?”

“Yeah.  Sure.”  Actually, I was anything but sure, but nothing was stopping me at this point.  I was getting out of this house and going to see a double feature.

It actually went very well.  I’m not going to do a movie review because probably everyone who is reading this has seen both of these movies at least a dozen times.  They were just as cute, clever and funny as ever, and the 3-D did not give me a headache.  Jack Henry sat on my lap, bounced to the music, tried to take my 3-D glasses off, squealed occasionally, nursed through half of the first movie and slept through half of the second, and waved emphatically at Tour Guide Barbie.  I guess he likes blondes.

It was a good, albeit pricey, afternoon.

After all these years I’ve decided that I like mornings.  I still wouldn’t go as far as calling myself a morning person, but I’m getting there.

I have always wanted to be a morning person.  All the cool people are morning people.  At least in my mind.  Big D is a morning person, and I always admired how he got out of bed before sun-up and did cool things like iron his shirts, make coffee and read My Utmost For His Highest, while I still lay abed and drooled on my pillow.

Over the past year, I have begun to embrace the mornings a little.  I’m forced from my bed because I have to feed this delicious little baby, but then I find I actually enjoy staying up and enjoying the peace that comes from a quiet house when the baby goes back to bed, Big D has already left for work, and the other two kids are  still  asleep.

I don’t know if it is that my coffee is extra good or that I’m getting old.  Probably  a little of both.

I never really thought much about owning a GPS until this weekend.

Harrison had to be in Mt. Juliet, about an hour from us, at 10am on Saturday morning, for a baseball game.  Annaleigh had to be at a TKD testing at 10:15 in our town, so we had to divide and conquer.  Annaleigh made a special request to have Big D take her since he had to miss the last testing.  I think Harrison wanted Big D with him too, but he didn’t really complain, so we went with those arrangements.

On Friday night I printed the directions to the field from mapquest.  I read over them, folded them and put them in the diaper bag.

On Saturday morning, right as I was walking out the door, Big D asks if I know what I was doing.  I told him I thought so.  He tried to tell me about a confusing bit at the end of the directions.  It was something about a u-turn and running parallel to I-40 and something else.  To me, who doesn’t really get oral directions, it sounded like blah, blah, blah, blah.  I told him I was fine and left the house.

I really don’t need to expound a lot on the details of what happened somewhere between I-24 and I-40 and a little obscure road named Belinda Parkway, but at some point I had to shamefacedly call Big D because it was 10:30, and Harrison’s game started at 10:45, and we were lost.

“I told you to take your first left after you got off the Interstate,” he said.

No, I thought.  You clearly said, blah, blah, blah, blah.  But what I really did was burst into tears, tell him I was never going to find the stupid field, hung up on him, and ignore his next three phone calls.

I blindly turn into the next gas station I happen on while Indiana Mimi is telling me to try to remain calm.  I jump out of my van, tears still damp on my cheeks and stand in line at the register only to have the cashier make a surprising and inappropriate comment about my anatomy.  I marvel at the fact that of all the gas stations in Mt. Juliet I had to stop at the one being manned by a pervert.  He did, however, give me clear directions to the field, and I was able to somehow get Harrison there five minutes before the game started (only to sit and watch them lose 15-2…*sigh*).

I have a birthday coming up, and while I want a new flat iron for my hair and one of those Kindle thingies that are like an iPod for books, I think I am probably getting a GPS and some Valium.

Oh, and sorry Big D for hanging up on you.   I don’t think I ever said that.