The Adventures of Mae-Mae and Lucy

Since becoming mothers of adult children and leaving the child-rearing adventures behind us, my sister Marilyn and I have been on many new adventures. Many of them involved getting lost in Orlando on our way to you-know-where - sometimes even on you-know-where property. Once we involved Lynnette in one, circling the Magic Kingdom at midnight, searching for our hotel and trying to figure out a first-edition GPS system. Then there was the adventure where each daughter tried to direct us from a local map - that plan doesn't work when you don't even know where you are on the map to start with. Oh yeah, and the adventure when we thought we were close to Epcot because of the banners saying "Epcot" - when actually we were so far away from Epcot that the guy in the roadside kiosk we stopped at to ask for directions didn't even know how to get there.

Sometimes we get lost before we even hit the state of Florida, like the time we circled some city in Alabama a few times before Marilyn said, "Haven't we passed that grocery store already?" We had, and passed it a few more times until we realized we were on the highway bypass that circled the city. We finally got off the bypass and continued on our way.

Another trip south involved our daughters, a couple of oversized duffel bags holding our suitcases that we tied on the car roof, a car roof with no actual luggage rack. Two duffel bags tied on with clothesline that was designed not to hold a knot. It was a lot of fun, stopping at every rest stop to re-tie. Oh, and we got to meet a lot of fellow tourists who would pull along side of our car, honking and pointing at the roof, as if we couldn't see the duffel bag as it slowly made its way off the roof and down the side window of the van.

Yet another trip treated us to the novelty of a facetious gas tank gauge, which we didn't really comprehend until we had to pull over to the side of the road because the van refused to go any further. And yes, it had already stopped twice, but we thought it was because it was an old van. We didn't even consider the fact that we had already driven twelve hours on one tank of gas - the gauge still said it had some gas in it. Keep in mind that this was before cell phones, so guess who got to trot down the Florida Turnpike, hunting for one of those call boxes. Meanwhile, Marilyn was back at the van, trying to determine her next move, should a car pull over and abduct me, because a middle-aged, overweight woman leaving a van with another woman and several kids is a prime target.

But our adventures are not relegated to land. One adventure was on a cruise ship, spending four days in a stateroom the equivalent of a shoebox, with the bathroom seemingly consisting of a tin can and a spray bottle (this was before we realized Master Card could get us on the Disney Magic and Wonder).

We don't try to limit our adventures to vacations. Once there was the adventure of moving a massive entertainment center made of seemingly petrified wood (think HEAVY). Of course we had no moving equipment except us, and we had no real moving truck, just a van because that was all U-Haul had that day. Luckily we also had no tape measure, because that would have proven that said entertainment center was no way going to fit into the van. But, come to think of it, we wouldn't have believed the tape measure anyhow. We would have determined that the thing was going into the van, and eventually it did, which was fine until we got to the moving destination (a storage place) and realized it had to come OUT of the van and down the very long path to my reserved storage locker. Luckily again, there were some dudes unloading their stuff, and after I asked them in my best Southern drawl, they helped us out.

Which brings us to today, when yet again Marilyn who is from Baltimore, rented a van in Nashville, for us to drive five hours to get some furniture from a storage shed in Mississippi, to drive five hours back, to store at my house in Nashville, for her daughter who currently lives in Bolivia. We did it without getting lost once or running out of gas.

Sounds like we're ready to tackle that Disney World again!