Only this time, it was not to crash a wedding. It was to take the Youngest Princess to Camp.
The day started out like this. The Oldest Princess told me that she when she left her house early the morning before, she had put her trash in the back of her car meaning to put it in the dumpster at the end of her road on her way out. But, in her hurry, she forgot about it, and brought it all the way home with her. She realized this when she went to her car to get something and was greeted by a strange smell. She remembered the trash and quickly removed it from the car and put it in our trash can.
There was a light rain falling about the time we got ready to leave. So we all grab a handful of the Youngest Princess's things and head quickly for the car. When we open the back, we are greeted with boxes and boxes of curriculum. Heavy boxes. So we all drop our stuff in the front and middle seats and proceed to haul heavy boxes of curriculum to the house. Did I mention we are having work done on our house? So we did this in the rain, which had turned into a heavy sprinkle by now, over boards, around a dumpster and dodging stray roofing nails. Hair getting frizzier by the second.
We get in the car and begin backing out and I realized we did not have a phone charger in the car. It is not good for ladies to go on a trip without a phone charger in the car, so the Oldest Princess pulls back into the driveway and runs to her car to get a charger.
We begin again. This time we make it out of the driveway and a little down the road before the Youngest Princess dramatically lets us know that she can't find her blanket. She said it was with her pillow, so whomever picked up her pillow must have left it. I happened to be the accused party. I was offended. I also happened to know the blanket was not with the pillow, because the only thing left on the bench after I picked up her pillow was a sweater that I fussed at her for leaving on the bench. I smugly reminded her of this.
We backed up and pulled back into the driveway for the Youngest Princess to go in and get her blanket. She found it and came back to the car. I did not ask her where it was. Didn't feel like belaboring the fact that it was not where she accused me of having left it.
Our first stop was for gas. We pulled into the gas station in the Walmart parking lot. The station was busy, but not jam packed like it usually is. Several of the pumps were not in working order and had bags over them, but you do not see this until you have pulled up to the pump in excitement thinking you have scored a pump without the wait. After casually observing people pulling up and realizing the pump is out of order, I noticed that this does not make most people smile, shrug, and slowly pull to another pump to patiently await their turn.
We found a working pump and were waiting in line behind the cute little young couple dressed for church, just trying to get a quick tank of gas. The young man would put his card in the card reader, punch a few buttons and wait. Then he would take the card out and closely examine both sides of said card. Then repeat. This happened a couple of times. I am watching other lanes looking for an opening. The young lady gets out of the car and tries to help the young man. He, meanwhile, has run into the door of his car and now has a black line on the sleeve of his church shirt to prove it. They are still trying to figure out the problem, when another lane opens up, on the other end of the station. I point this out to the Oldest Princess who begins carefully moving in that direction. I point out that she needs to go the other direction to pull up to the pump on the correct side. Meanwhile, the little couple we were waiting on, have with lightning speed, jumped into their car and have beat us in moving in the right direction. So instead of following them to the other side of the station and waiting behind them again, we decided to do our shopping first and then return to get our gas.
We pull over and park. As we are walking in to the store, there is a mother with a three or four year old little boy walking our way. Well the mother was walking and pushing a buggy. The little boy was full out running ahead of her while she is yelling for him to slow down and not get too far ahead of her. Does a three year old even know what "too far ahead" is? I am assessing the situation trying to figure out if I need to run interference and stop said child in some non-threading way. Before I could safely do so, the child was past us and the mother looked at us and said, "He had a frappuccino this morning." What was she thinking?!?
We continue on to purchase a watch for the Youngest Princess. She needed one because she could not use a watch that connected to wifi while at camp. We purchased the watch without any craziness and got back to the car.
The Youngest Princess took the watch out of the packaging and proceeded to set said watch. I told her those kinds of watches are hard to set so she should not get discouraged. She fussed that the paper did not tell her how to set it at all, and began to figure it out without said paper, while we got gas. We managed to get gas without any wait this time, but the angry people around us (remember pumps with bags on them from before?) were backing up and zipping around and I was afraid for our lives for a few minutes there.
Now, with watch purchased and a full tank of gas we were really ready to really get this party started. The Oldest Princess asked if we ever used our car's navigation system. I told her that we usually just used our phones, but we could try it.
I punched in the address several times and got no results. The OP suggested we use the voice controls. Great idea. It asked me what country. I said United States. It said, "United States, is this correct?" I answered yes. Then it asked what city and state. I said (using imaginary addresses for the blog) Mount Pine, Mississippi. It said, "Mount Lion, South Dakota, is this correct?" It was so far off from what I originally said that we were all flabbergasted! So laughingly, we tried again...
"What country"
"United States"
"What city and state?"
"Mount Pine, Mississippi"
"Mount Lion, South Dakota?
"NO!"
We try again. This time we get the right city and state. Then it asks me for the address. I said, "100 Street Name." It comes back, "107894 (last part of street name given)". Is this correct? "NO!"
By now we are laughing so hard that we can barely speak to be understood by the car. And I am having flashbacks to a night in Florida in my sister-in-law's car when she and I and our husbands tried to use her voice activated navigation system to get to Walgreens. By the time we were done, we were locked in and had the heat going so high we all thought we were going to be melted by the car right there in the Walgreens pharmacy drive-through. Maybe I should refrain from further use of automobile voice navigation systems.
So the OP says to let her try. She gets to the street name and number only she says, "One zero zero" instead of saying "one hundred" as I had done. She gets the same results that I did. Crazy numbers with the last part of the street name behind it. We decided it would be best to stick with what we knew, and use our phones.
About this time, the Youngest Princess's watch beeps. She exclaims, "Ugh! It better not be doing that!" to which the OP states that she could look at the instructions to figure out how to turn the alarm off. I look at the time and see that it is on the hour and know it will probably beep every hour on the hour. So she says the paper did not help her. But then she notices that she was looking at the wrong paper. She was looking at the paper that told how to change the batteries. She found the little instruction paper and told us she thought she had it figured out.
We debate stoping at the new Buc-ee's, and came to the conclusion that we would. As we pulled in, we see that everyone else in the whole wide world had come to the same conclusion. The place was PACKED.
Our family has a saying, "Walk with purpose." We walk to get places. Unless we are taking a leisurely stroll on a forest path. With no one else around us. No one waiting behind us. We walk with purpose. The two ladies we got behind, had never been taught this concept, They were in no. hurry. to go an. y. where. I saw a break in the crowd and took it knowing the girls would follow me. At the same time, the OP, figuring she had plenty of time to observe her surroundings behind such slowly walking people, decided to stop and look at something that caught her eye. The YP turned to tell her something. The OP was not behind her anymore. I was not in front of her anymore. I was trucking on ahead about half of the store length away by this point. I do an over the shoulder check to see if the girls are hanging in there with me, and do not see either of them. But about 30 yards away down the aisle, I see our friends, still ambling along at their same pace. And then I spot the girls still stuck behind them. I wait on them. The OP says, "I stopped to look at something." The YP says, "I turned around to tell her something and she was not there. I turned back around and you were not there!" I told my little chickens to follow me and we started off again.
This Buc-ee's had a sweet bathroom attendant. She was nothing like the last Buc-ee's bathroom drill sergeant that we had a run in with. I found a stall, and the girls went to the other side where the attendant said she knew some were empty. I was washing my hands when the girls came around the sinks looking mischievous. At about that same time, my phone loudly pinged in my pocket. I thought somehow they must have figured out how to ping my phone and were using it to find me. They assured me that it was not them. I guess I did it myself somehow while washing my hands. Old people and phones!
We returned to the car and traveled a few exits further until the YP said she was ready for us to stop for her lunch. We pulled through a drive-through without too much excitement and managed to get back on the road.
The girls then think to tell me that when we were in Buc-ee's, a guy came out of the stall in front of them. They said he looked shocked to see them, so they were pretty sure he was in the wrong restroom and had just figured it out. They were so shocked that they both ended up going in the same stall. I told them, somewhere in another car, someone was having a conversation about being in the Buc-ee's bathroom and seeing two girls coming out of one bathroom stall. The YP said that no one saw them come out. The OP said, "Well, we look enough like sisters don't we?" Ummm, no. Then the OP said that in yet another car, the boy was telling his story about accidentally going to the wrong restroom. Lots of Buc-ee's bathroom stories going on here. I have two from previous trips to Buc-ee's and I have one more from this trip before the blog is through. If you have ever been to Buc-ee's, I'll bet you have one too!
About the time our previous conversation ended, the YP announces from the backseat that her "I don't need the paper, I can set it by myself" watch is on military time. And it did beep on the hour again. And she has only 20 minutes before we are there to figure it all out. I told her welcome to the world of self-set watches. She should have gotten one with an analog face.
We finally get her to camp and she has registered under her first name. She has all her life been called by her middle name. Now I am having flashbacks to when the Young Prince went to a Gap Year program and went by a different version of his name than he had always gone by. The OP and I just shook our heads.
There was some confusion over which color team she was on and who was really her leader. But they got that all figured out.
She was kindly instructed to turn off her phone and turn it in. Right there at registration. No phone. No electronics. For TWO WHOLE weeks.
They took us to her room and the OP, my friend who had met us there, and I got her settled in. She took the sheets that I took to college. I tried to throw them away a while back and she insisted that they were the best sheets ever and she wanted to keep them. The fitted sheet did not fit very well on the bed. We made it work, but I'm afraid that when she sleeps on it, it is going to pop off.
The OP was helping her put her things away, and the YP said, the drawers on the left. But the OP kept going to the drawers on the right. It took her several times saying it before the OP realized she was going to the wrong drawers.
We met a couple of the roommates, took a few pictures, and then decided to go get our free Frio's popcicles. As we were leaving the room, the OP asked the YP if she had her phone. Calculated low blow there, OP, low blow.
We went and got our popsicles and ran back into one of her roommates. The roommate came to camp not knowing anyone else either. So they bonded and decided to hang together. I was glad that we did not have to leave the YP alone. The roommate's parents decided to leave when we did, and after hugs all around, we left them walking off toward the group. The OP snapped a picture of them.
So, we left to go and eat lunch with my friend who met us there. I wish I could say lunch was a good experience, except I think we made them mad by coming in 30 minutes before they closed, and none of them wanted to be there or had been taught the "walk with purpose" lesson either. It was rough. We finished our lunch and stood in the parking lot for over an hour catching up.
Our trip home was less eventful than our trip there. Although we did stop at Buc-ee's again, and for the second time I walked into a stall on someone. At Buc-ee's. TURN the LOCK people!!!! Turn the LOCK!!! Then the little red occupied sign will show and no one will walk in on you!!
Also, we were planning on having Japanese food for dinner, and I knew that we didn't have any good soy sauce at home. Buc-ee's for the WIN!!! They had soy sauce, people!!!! Soy. Sauce. Woo hoo!
We also purchased some car air fresheners. The OP opened mine and "accidentally" popped it on the string so that the glitter would decorate my dashboard. So sweet of her! Then we made it the rest of the way home. It started raining just in time for us to get out of the car. Both the dog and the girl's bathroom were so excited to see us that they leaked. So we had to take care of both of those issues before we could eat dinner. My Prince was glad to see us as well.
While getting out of the car, we realized that the YP had left her bag of camp snacks in the car.
After we went to bed, I tossed and turned and prayed for her and her sweet roommate all night. Knowing that I couldn't text her or hear from her was as hard on me as it was on her going without her phone.
The next morning we put together a box with another set of sheets, her snacks, and letters from all of us, even the dog (who sent her one of his treats for being so brave). My Prince took it to the post office. She should get it by Wednesday.
That afternoon they posted a parent update with some pictures. She is smiling in every one she is in, so I hope that means she is having a great time. We will know for sure in two weeks.
If you have hung in with me this long, you are a trooper. The OP says we need our own reality show, because we are quite an entertaining family. And, if you just can't wait for more, don't worry, I'll have more to report in two weeks when we go back to pick her up. Until then, prayers for her are much appreciated.
