View of the bright morning sun through the splattered bugs on our windshield.We left St. Louis this morning. The boys had previously not expressed any desire to go see the arch. We drove by and took some pictures, but continued on eastbound because my wife and I had already seen it from the inside during our drive across country in 1999.
Driving east on I-70 with the Arch in the background.Then it was strangely quiet in the back seat for a while.
I looked back to see ES hiding under his blanket. I asked him what was wrong.
No response.
So I left him alone. Then he took the blanket off his head and sat there sulking. So I asked him what was wrong again.
He grumbled that he wanted to go up in the arch.
He was so mad about not going up in the arch, that he lashed out with one of those angry tantrum statements, "You never do anything for me! We never do anything that I wanna do!"
At that instant, my wife earned sainthood, and I earned a couple of very nasty bite marks in my tongue. My instinct was to lash out with anger against anger and start listing the things that we've done for him and call him and ungrateful little snot.
Luckily for all of us, my awesome wife was much quicker on the draw. While my blood was coming to a boil and steam was about to spew forth from my ears, my wife spoke in the sweetest, nicest, most gentle voice possible, apologized to my son for not taking him up in the arch and used some expert parenting skills to divert his attention to other things like his Nintendo DS.
Lunch in the Middle of Nowhere, Illinois
We stopped for lunch at a DQ off the freeway in Casey, Illinois. Walking into the DQ in Casey was similar to walking into the Crazy R back in Goodland, Kansas. The place was PACKED with locals, and there were two and three way conversations going on back and forth between tables about deer hunting, chopping wood, combine harvesters, and local sports. When we walked in the door, it got a little quiet and they all sorta stared at us for a few seconds before carrying on their conversations.
My poor wife was sitting with her back to some people talking about deer hunting and got to listen to them describe the shooting, following the blood trail, and other gorey details she didn't care to hear while she tried to eat her lunch.
The rest of the drive across Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio was pretty uneventful. We stopped for dinner at Panera in Columbus, Ohio, and spotted an unusual dinner guest there.
Who me? This guy was looking for handouts from people sitting on the patio, and when nobody would give him any, he went and helped himself to the trash can next to the front door of the restaurant.
Tangent: He made me think of RJ from Over the Hedge. Man that's a funny movie! If you haven't seen it, I HIGHLY recommend it! End of Tangent
Tomorrow is THE BIG DAY. It's our LAST long day of driving across country and we finally get to see the house that we've been the proud owners of for one month now. I'm actually surprised my wife fell asleep - she's SO excited she's beside herself! I expect she's going to be up at the butt-crack of dawn and kicking our butts out of bed to get on the road as soon as possible in the morning, so I need to go to bed.
Okay, time to hit the rack. G'night all.
It is 4:47am and I am wide awake. But I will be kind and TRY to let you all sleep until 7!
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