Way, WAY past my bedtime. I'm stairing up at an unfamiliar ceiling and wishing I was home, in my own house, with all the conveniences it offers.
I'm exhausted. Eyes bloodshot. Back aching. I spent fifteen hours in the car today. Four states in one day. Another solo parental road trip with my Brown Eyed Girl and Mr Blue Eyes. Minnesota bound!
Fifteen hours of balancing, no, enduring the bickering and bantering from the back seat. The continuous work calls. Calls that are otherwise barren until I'm neck deep in personal agendas. (It's like they know...)
Fifteen hours of conflict resolution skills, excellent driving skills - do you even understand how challenging it is to assist two small children while driving 80 miles an hour down a highway by yourself? - and the ability to not be brainwashed into a psychotic state after being asked for the 4688429875 time, "Are we there yet?"
Fifteen hours of potty breaks and fuel stops and food stops - that of course never occur at the same stop - while I tack on minutes... hours to our destination.
I hold sleeping children in my arms as I fumble for a confirmation number, photo ID and credit card after-hours in a hotel lobby. The front desk kid throwing me for a loop when he asks for my license plate number, make and model of my car. My spaghetti brain barely able to spell my last name let alone remember my plate number. I look at him with bloodshot eyes and say, "Colorado. You can't miss it."
Tiny helpers pushing elevator buttons, we find our room. The kids bouncing off each wall overjoyed to be in a hotel, on vacation, out of the car. I too survey the room and unload our belongings from the luggage cart. I'm not sure I've stayed in a hotel ever in the US that didn't have a bathtub. Just a shower. Interesting. I am pretty sure this must be a handicapped accessible room - but on the second floor. I really could care less at this moment to entertain the topic further. It is what it is. I need sleep. I just want to brush my teeth and wash my face... and sleep. No more responsibilities. At least not until morning.
I wait to see which lovely child I will get to sleep with tonight. Mr Flopity Fish or Ms Mini Furnace, who despises covers. My Brown Eyed Girl begs for her own bed and I'm stuck with the acrobat kid flopping around all night. In just the first three hours he has already propelled himself 270' and I've adjusted him at least seven times. He snores faintly in my ear, his right arm strewn across my neck.
We are "snuggling" when I'm awaken by the most horrifying alarm system known to parents - vomit!
My Brown Eyed Girl's head is pitched over the side of the bed. Frantic, I panic and stick my hand under her chin - I'm not sure why parents do this. Why this is our first method if defense. Here is my hand small vomiting child, use this, as if I'm accepting a piece of gum they want to discard.
The hand does not work. I fumble the nightstand and produce a half filled, cheap, disposable hotel cup - of water. But it buys me ten more seconds to scramble for a trash can.
I love motherhood.
So it's 3:00 a.m. and I just drove fifteen hours to be on my hands and knees performing motherly duties, in a hotel. Limited resources, no bathtub, no washing mashine.
But I'm lucky, minimal damage. Thank god IT wasn't IN the bed. Thank god she wanted to sleep by herself...
She is smiling and we laugh at Mr Blue Eyes snoring through all the drama, turned sideways in my bed. I prepare her, us, for what could be a very long and inconvenient night. She is good spirited.
I lay awake dreading that horrible noise again. I dread having to tell the hotel tomorrow. (How does one begin that conversation, that confession?) I pray this is a result of too much junk food along the way and not the flu. We only get to see our cousins once a year and she will be devistated if she is sequestered to the room.
I hug the edge of the bed. I am being bullied by a three-year-old bed contortionist. I keep one eye open and know that tomorrow I will look and feel like death.
