Over The River and Through The Woods ...

Sometimes I have a packing list for my travels. Sometimes I just count how many days I will be gone and start counting underwear. Sometimes I think I just want to take a credit card and my boarding pass and just leave. I guess I’m saying there’s all kinds of packing, and no matter how hard I try, I usually manage to forget something, even with a list.

This current trip was a no-list trip. Because we’ve got a lot of different things going on, I just tried to think of those activities and pack accordingly. The main things to remember were my passport (for the cruise), my wallet (for the stuff I would forget), and my laptop (how else would you keep abreast of my adventures?). And I am happy to say that all those things were packed and successfully loaded into the car.

On parts of this trip we will have Lindley and Everley. Since part of this trip is a road trip, we will need a car seat, which each parent has in his or her respective car and which I have two of in mine. Since L and E will be riding in the car at some point during this trip (but never together), we would need one car seat to accompany us (they are both eligible to ride in the same size/type card seat but they are not eligible to ride sans car seat). So guess what we forgot to put in the car? Yup – the car seat, any car seat, of the at least six that are in residence in Nashville.

Naturally the absence of the car seat hit me when we were about an hour out of Nashville. Of course those flying in on Thursday could check one of the car seats with them. However two of those, Maribeth and Everley, are flying with an airline who requests a fee for checked bags (which is why we have their pre-packed checkable bags with us in the car). The other person flying in would be Molly, who is flying on checked-bags-free Southwest. Conceivably she could check a car seat. But since none of the car-seat-needing individuals were conceived by her, and since she nor her airport pickup wishes to wait for a checked bag on Thanksgiving, it was obvious that a new car seat was going to have to be purchased.

Thank goodness for text messaging, and Maribeth’s ability to text me (and my ability to retrieve said messages) exact car seats and stores where I could get a parent-approved car seat – in other words, which car seat to get at Wal Mart. Which we did today at some Wal Mart along I-75 in south Georgia. I also picked up some contact solution, which I realized that I had about 6 drops left in the container I brought from home. And some reader glasses, since the ones I bought at Dollar Tree last week for $1 broke today and Molly does not approve of the band aid method I used the last time my Dollar Tree readers broke (yes, I used a band aid, a real band aid, to wrap around the leg to secure it to the glasses part – it’s a variation on the nerd fashion). I possibly picked up a few other items, as one cannot go into Wal Mart without coming out with at least a sack of stuff.

But the best part was the checkout lady who, when observing my car seat purchase, said that she needed to get another one of them, because the dog had chewed through the straps of hers because that was when she had a car that the door wouldn’t close and the dog got in and chewed the straps and it was chewed down to where there was just a few threads left.

Anyhow, now we have a car seat and are headed to our next stop which would be lunch, possibly at Sonny’s barbecue. We’ll arrive in Orlando (but not Disney World) this afternoon for Phase I of this trip, in plenty of time to figure out the car seat straps before we actually have to strap a child into it.

By then I’m sure I shall have remembered something else I forgot …
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Today is a great day because: I had breakfast at Truitt’s with Steve; shopped at Wal mart and met nice checkout lady; lunch at Sonny's with Steve; chat with bellman at Orlando hotel; another nice bed waiting for me at the hotel; Steve picking up Starbucks drinks and mug for me