Prep

It’s that time of year!

Time to go to Florida & spend a week with my folks.

There is so much still to do.

Packing – My packing, his packing, their packing, food packing, electronics packing, DVD packing and then the inevitable ‘no you can’t take that’ unpacking. We took the Wii with us the last couple years. The first year it was fine, but last year my folks put a tv in the boys room & we connected the Wii to it & hardly saw Mayhem all week. I think maybe we can go Wii-less for 10 days. They will have their DSes  & our entire DVD collection to watch during the football heavy moments.

I’m having problems with what books to take surprisingly. After all, I have a Kindle now so it should be a no brainer. But I don’t have that many Kindle books yet so maybe I should bring some dead tree books with me. But nothing is really saying “READ ME!” at the moment & my folks mostly read political thrillers & spy novels which do not interest me, so there is nothing to read when I get down there and that make me VERY VERY NERVOUS.

Prepping – Our house sitter is a vegan. So NOTHING in our house is edible to him except the bags of  veggies in the freezer & the Mike’s Hard Margaritas (and I’m not sure about those). Not that I have to feed the house sitter, but I like to leave a little something for him. Last year he was a vegetarian who ate cheese so it was easier. If he goes macrobiotic next year he is on his own.

Cleaning – Don’t want the house sitter to think we’re slobs. ..Ok, so he knows we’re slobs, but there is no reason he should have to live with it

Mapping – Harder than you think, even with Google maps. ESPECIALLY with Google Maps. Yesterday they suggested we go down I95 to I4 and then across. Today they seem to think we’d be better off cutting down through Virginia & North Carolina & meeting up with I26 in South Carolina before ultimately taking I75. Since on neither occasion did they manage to get us from our house to the main road in the fastest manner, I am dubious of their advice. Having made this trip about 15 times now I know that, unless there is a major traffic slowdown due to construction somewhere, it really does not matter which way we go. We’ll get there at the same time give or take an hour or so. The problem is the directions themselves. If we go down I95 we don’t need to pay attention to exits until we get on I4, some 12-15 hours after we leave here & then it does get direction intense once we leave Kissimmee because it’s all state & county roads. If we take the cut through VA & NC route it starts off direction intense on state & country roads but ends up on I95 to I10 to I75, which is a well marked no brainer (most of the time, saving only last time when we did miss the I75 exit). So it’s mostly a matter of deciding whether we want to get lost on our first day on the road or on our second day. We always get lost at some point.

Personally I am pushing for cutting through VA & NC and then taking I95 to I4, thereby doubling our opportunities for getting lost because after 15 years it all gets kinda same-y & you long for a little minor excitement. Not ‘suddenly needing major car repairs 500 miles from home or your destination’ excitement, (we did that in 2002) but ‘I think you missed a turn there 10 miles back’ excitement.

I’ve got some fingerless gloves I am crocheting to keep me occupied in the car (because just like the boys I get whiny if I don’t have something to keep me occupied as a passenger. DH just goes to sleep) and some audiobooks. So far we have Murder in Mountparnasse by Kerry Fisher and Agatha Christie’s The Secret of  Chimneys, which should probably get us there & if not I have a bunch of Stuff You Should Know podcasts to fall back on. We haven’t chosen the annual Douglas Adams book yet; though So Long & Thanks for All the Fish has been mentioned a few times.

I’ll be tweeting & Facebooking updates Friday & Saturday. I’m http://www.twitter.com/ComfyMom if you want to follow along on the adventure.