Road Trip!

A good mother will not have a DVD player in her minivan. A good mother loathes the idea of her children bickering over whether to watch fifteen minutes of Castle in the Sky or fifteen minutes of Finding Nemo on their way to school. A good mother makes play lists of fun and funky Power Pop music and plays them for her children, in order for facilitate their appreciation for good music and the life of Alex Chilton.

But what's the name of this blog? All together now...

I am so bummed that I caved in to Michael's refusal to get the DVD player option on the minivan. On Friday we're supposed to drive all the way to Carmel - that's, what, three hours? My kids are going to be at each other's throats the whole way. Instead of popping in 88 minutes of mindless entertainment (the exact length of the Lion King), I'm going to be desperately searching for music that they all like -- something sufficiently raucous for Zeke and Abraham, with a female vocalist for Sophie aka Betty Freidan, and easy to understand lyrics for Rosie ("What did he say, mommy?" "What did he say?" "What did he say?"). Fun. Oh so fun.

The very words "road trip" make my skin crawl. Remember when road trips meant a 2-liter bottle of diet coke, bags of Doritos and ruffles, a couple of extra-long Slim Jims, and your entire tape collection? Not to mention the occasional not-so legal recreational substances.

(FYI, researchers in the Netherlands have proven conclusively that marijuana does not significantly impair driving. In fact, it might actually make drivers more attentive. What with all the paranoia.)

Now road trips are all about whining, punctuated with a few episodes of vomit.

And don't suggest a book on tape. Try finding something that can be enjoyed by a 10-year-old, a 7-year-old, a 3-year-old with a four minute attention span, and a baby.

This is going to be about as much fun as the time Michael and I went to Staten Island to visit his aunt with the noise phobia. Every surface in the house was littered with little pink clotted earplugs, decorated with a bit of green earwax, just to make it all that much more appetizing.