Just Another Typical Adventure

By "typical" I mean an adventure where if something can go wrong, it does go wrong.

My sister is so excited that she can show off all the great surf spots to my husband. Forgive me as I'm about to sound like a total whiner that doesn't deserve sympathy, but I'm less than excited.

Most people would probably be excited getting to spend a day at the beach with the kids, sitting in the beautiful weather of southern California, and having an outing as an extended family.

While in theory that actually sounds nice to me as well, I have a little less fun when I factor in the practicalities: an hour of packing up for my daughter and I while my husband, who has packed his board and is ready to go wonders what is taking us so long, a 45-minute drive to a beach that is not discernably different to me than the one 2 minutes away, but that has "better waves" which is why we must go there instead, yet another sunburn since my sunscreen doesn't seem to be working on me, a fair amount of time on discipline trying to keep my water-confident 4-year-old from drowning herself, the horrendous amounts of sand in our stuff and my car, the long hike to the bathroom (at least they had one), irrationally priced food at the hot dog stand, no book to read since I finished the one I brought, and to top it off, it still hurts my back to sit in a pike position for that long.

Oh poor me, stuck on the beach. Like I said, I'm only going to come across as the world's biggest whiner about this.

Whiner or not, I wasn't exactly excited about the trip. I hadn't been clear as to whether or not we were actually going, so hadn't started packing/loading the car, so everyone was annoyed they had to wait for me. We finally set off and I'm following my sister down the road.

About 20-25 minutes away, my phone rings, which I have my husband answer because I can't get my headset working. He informs me that my nephew apparently isn't feeling well so if my sister suddenly pulls over, that's why.

From personal experience, I know that my sister prefers to pull over in what she feels is just the right place to park her car. For example, we went to Knott's Berry Farm last year. I refused to pay $8.00 for a hot dog and decided that a Cherry Icee sounded much more refreshing, so got that instead. Unfortunately, it was super hot, I was dehydrated (water is $4.00 for a half liter, which I also refused to pay), and I was taking Tramadol, which I learned about 8 months later was causing my migraines that were bad enough to upset my stomach. Severely.

In other words, add rides and it was a perfect combination for stomach reverse pyrotechnics. I wasn't feeling too great--although it was mostly a headache--when we left the amusement park, and was okay on the freeway, as long as I was staring at the lines on the road. Once we exited and took all of two turns, I was no longer doing "okay." In fact, I was doing extremely NOT OKAY, clenching my teeth, holding my hands over my mouth, and trying to communicate through grunts that I needed her to pull over NOW.

She drove past a completely empty fire emergency zone (I later explained that it WAS an emergency and I would pay ANY ticket in the future if she would just use it), two more blocks where she could have blocked driveways, at a minimum, then made another turn, went another block, and finally pulled over in a legal parking space about four or five blocks and two minutes later than I really needed it.

Somehow, through self-control that I think was only due to me not wanting to clean up a mess in her car, I managed to wait. Before she had brought the car to a complete stop, I had already opened the door and was beginning to climb over my nephew, which she was screaming at me about. I hadn't even closed the car door before, um, exhibiting my illness.

You know how 8-year-old boys think burps and farts are the absolute ultimate funniest things ever? Well, my 4-year-old nephew thinks someone practicing reverse digestion is even funnier. So he's having a laugh attack at the expense of my discomfort, while everyone else in the car is so repulsed, they're fighting reflexive urges to join me.

So, like I said, from experience, I know that she takes awhile to find just the right spot to park.

As opposed to cutting off other drivers to get the hell over to the side of the road NOW.

So when she signalled a turn, left her blinker on, and pulled into a parking lot a half mile away, I knew that there would already be a mess in the car.

I may have been able to hold it in, but the kid is only 4.

Turns out he didn't want to ruin his beach bucket, either, so instead the whole backseat was turned into a biohazard.

I grabbed a pack of baby wipes and some garbage sacks from my car and went to go help. Unfortunately, I am not good with cleaning up that kind of mess and after handing my nephew some wipes and telling him to wipe himself off, I had to bolt.

As I was heading back to my car, I passed my husband and told him to please explain to my sister that I had to leave or I would be adding to the disaster.

We spent probably 20 minutes waiting while my husband kindly helped clean up. During this time, my daughter announced that she had to go potty. Of course, there was not a bathroom or even a building in sight that she might be able to use.

I informed her that she would have to pretend like she was a doggie and proceeded to teach my daughter how to squat and pee and (hopefully) not hit her feet. She did a remarkably good job and was a good sport about it.

She spent the rest of the day telling anyone who would listen (including random strangers) that she got to go potty under a tree!

I'm so proud.