Whereas N’s default modus operandi is “everything is exciting,” variations from “what’s supposed to be” require, for M and me, a working to keep ourselves functional and positive. Monday we had some practice.

The first impediment to proper preparation for our twelve-hour drive to visit M’s sister’s family was the partially-hosted-by-us Christmas partying that lasted from Friday night until Sunday night. Add to that my groggy recovery from my weekend’s perpetual headaches and sweaty chills, and my lingering sore throat, and something just had to fall through the cracks. Like more than one shirt with long sleeves and a second pair of jeans (and we were going to Illinois in winter, for crying out loud), the children’s audio books M had so carefully selected from the library, and probably other things I haven’t quite figured out yet.

Due to our shoddy preparation, we couldn’t even really leave, it seemed for a while. I let us sleep in past our 5:30am departure time preference because I thought my throat still hurt too bad to sit in the car all day, but after waking up I changed my mind.

“We’ll be off by around 9:00,” I told M’s sister when I called. “Don’t worry about waiting up for us tonight, though, since we may not get there until ten or eleven o’clock, with stops and all.”

And all.

Around 9:30 we pulled out of our driveway, but two miles down the road, I thought, “I didn’t turn off the water to the outside faucet. It’ll freeze for sure.” We drove home.

At 9:38 we again left, but three miles down the road, M suddenly realized that we’d left N’s imperative sippy cup and a bag of necessary cookies on the dining room table. We drove home.

At 9:50 we finally left for good.

“You did check to see that stove was off, right?” I asked M. She just glared at me.

And really, the drive went great, aside from the occasional misery brought on by my swallowing or M’s realization about the missing audio books. N was mostly contented:

We crossed several bridges, which N loved. She enthusiastically counted them:

However, when I was driving along after dark a noise we’d heard earlier in the day resurfaced in fuller force. We phoned our mechanic on vacation in Arizona, and from our description, he wasn’t sure it would be safe to carry on.

The gas station attendant said “Hello” but didn’t look up from texting when I walked in, so I walked over to the counter and coughed into my sleeve.

He glanced at me.

“Are there any late-night mechanics around here?” I asked.

“Car trouble?”

“Thunk-thunk.”

“It might be a loose tire belt. That happens to people a lot and they usually think it’s something different. But no, I don’t know of any mechanics open this late.”

In the car we decided to park outside of Motel 6 and make some more calls. I borrowed a phone book from the receptionist, but we had no luck with mechanics or car rentals. We would just have to wait until morning, or brave the two more hours to M’s sister’s place in the dark and cold with no satisfactory back up plan.

The adjacent “showclub” made Motel 6 quite unappealing, so we drove next door to its equal, Super 8, from which the club was still visible across the trucks in the parking lot.

After checking in I told M, “I don’t know if they serve breakfast, but I wouldn’t even eat a pre-wrapped Pop-Tart from that office.”

“If you were hungry, you would,” she said.

We woke N up from her car seat slumber and settled in. As crummy as the office had appeared to me, the room wasn’t bad, really, even though we couldn’t figure out how to turn half the lights on. (Later we realized they were slow-to-glow bulbs, so we just hadn’t been patient enough with the switches.)

In the morning a nearby mechanic checked over the car and found nothing wrong, so we continued on our way, with no problems.

Right now, though, a second mechanic is checking over and tuning up the car. He thinks the culprit was an oily spark plug wire or something like that. We’re taking his word for it–we don’t want to be stranded when we drive home on New Year’s Day.

But if we are, we’ll make it fun…as we’ve practiced.