Only My Holiday...

My last trip home to Springfield went incredibly smoothly and I made both trips in 3 hours and 10 minutes. I should’ve known that streak couldn’t last.

The plan for Thanksgiving was for Becca to head home after her early dismissal to pick up the babies, and then to head over to my work around 3:30/4:00. Unfortunately the plan started off poorly thanks to the rain and some random road closures so Becca didn’t even make it home until 4. Nevertheless we packed up the babies and all are stuff and made our way home.

The first 20 minutes or so were rather peaceful. But, then little Ares became restless and started whining, which continued for the next 45 minutes. Becca thought he was lonely in the back seat so she put Roxie in the back and let him sit on her lap instead. This still didn't really calm him down, and he continued to whine and fuss in the front seat. To make matters worse, little Roxie had become fed up with Ares's antics and began barking to express her frustration.

So here I am driving 2 mph in the rain with one whining dog and one barking dog. I threatened to pull the car over (and in hindsight I wish I had).

All of a sudden Ares launched into the backseat, choking Becca in the process with her seat belt. So now Roxie is barking even more ferociously at Ares who has landed on top of her and Becca is now cussing at her annoyance and frustration at the whole thing. And, I am simply trying to concentrate on driving. Now Ares has managed to climb up into the back windshield and is trying to get out. The next thing I know Becca is screaming, "did you shit! did you shit!" and then I smell the most foul thing I think I have ever smelled. Apparently the smell also startled the dogs because Roxie immediately jumped in her cage, followed 2 seconds later by Ares. How those two dogs (who really don't care for each other) managed to squeeze into Roxie's tiny little cage I'll never know.

So now I find myself driving in the rain with the windows completely down, struggling to keep myself from vomiting while Becca yells at me to pull over. And while getting out of the car sounded very appealing at this exact moment, my fear of being hit on the side of the road during rush hour was still much greater, so I proceeded to drive the 2 miles to the next exact, which seemed to take an eternity.

Eventually though we do make it to a gas station and we all burst out of the car gasping for are.  I tie little Roxie up and then go look for something to clean the car, meanwhile Becca walks Ares who craps 3 more times.

Cleaning supplies were limited but I managed to find a $6 can of Lysol spray and $4 roll of paper towels.  As I'm checking out, the cashier asks,  "will that be all?"  I say, "actually, no, that isn't all... I really need to borrow one of your cleaning bottles you have over there... we sort of had a mishap."  He let me borrow them with the promise that I would return them.

Amazingly enough, Ares managaed to miss all of the random stuff we had in the backseat (like my clothes) and made the bulk of his accident on his bed and Becca's leather backseat.  So, she was actually able to get it  clean.  I had to make one more request from the gas station employee and that was for some garbage bags to wrap up Ares's bed in.  The employee dropped what he was doing and left the place unattended for a couple of minutes to grab me some bags from in back - and he still hadn't asked what happened.

While this whole incident was pretty bad, it could have been worse.  As we're cleaning up this big van rolls into the gas station with a completely flat tire, followed closely by a squad car.  When the driver gets out, the cop immediately asks if he has a drivers license.  The hispanic drivers shakes his head no, to which the cop promptly asks if he has citizenship.  Again, the poor driver shakes his head no.  "Oooh, so that's why you didn't stop and kept driving on your rim, you didn't want to meet ME!"  I'm not sure what ended up happening here.  I saw the driver later inside the store and the cop left, so maybe he wrote him a ticket.  Or, maybe the cop decided to spread some Holiday cheer and let the guy go.  Eitherway, I think his evening was probably quite a bit worse than ours.

Anyways, the rest of our trip went pretty smoothly (except the fact that it took us a full 5 hours). We stopped 2 more times to let the dogs go to the bathroom.  Ares went both times and we eventually learned that he apparently ate a whole box of kleenexes at some point that day.


Moral of the story, if your dog is incessantly whining in a car, pull over just in case.