Somewhere in Illinois...

Well, it is 1:32 in the morning and the kids and I are somewhere in Illinois. The kids are asleep here in our hotel room, but, as usual, I am wide awake with insomnia.

My little sister called this morning (well, guess I should say yesterday morning now that it is past midnight!)...anyway, she called to wish me a late "Happy Birthday". We wound up talking quite a while in spite of the urgent need for two orders of broccoli on her side of the phone (one raw with dip and one steamed, please!) and World War III on my side of the phone (Darcy kept ordering Rayna OUT of the library where she was doing her homeschool reading. Rayna, on her part was quite indignant that her sister would be so hateful and bossy. She might have left peaceably if Darcy had phrased her demands more diplomatically...or she might not of...we will never know! As it was, they were struggling with each other at my GLASS PANED library door, one on either side. I had visions of either shattering glass, or, more likely, Rayna getting her finger smashed in the slamming door as she, herself, had done to her brother not so long ago.) Amazing how the simple sound of a phone being lifted from its cradle can turn a peaceful day into utter bedlam. Motherhood.

Anyway, Reena and I had a good conversation in spite of all the crises that erupted throughout our conversation on my end and the starving children on her end! Reena asked again if we would come up for a visit. I again hemmed and hawwed. There is just never TIME enough to do all the things I want to do. After I hung up, though, I thought, "Well...why not today?" Poor Grant hates for us to drive places alone. He always points out that I have an atrocious sense of direction. That is true. I have lived in the KC area all my life and I still can get incredibly lost only a little ways from my own home. My problem is that whichever way I am facing ALWAYS feels like north to me. And, of course to my left would be west and to my right would be east and behind me is south. That is how MY internal compass works. Add to that that I have absolutely no memory for places. Every place looks rather unfamiliar to me...even if I have already been there a few dozen times. Then, if you put me one street over from my normal path, I am utterly baffled. But, the thing my husband doesn't realize is that I am really good at following a map. If I have a map, I can get where ever I need to be going without trauma. It is just that I usually don't have a map with me! I actually do really good on LONG trips...it is the short jaunts that stump me...the ones that I should be able to navigate instinctively! So, it was that my husband was less than enthusiastic about my sudden desire to load the kids up in the car and drive to Illinois. But, bless his heart, he gave in. So, here I am in the Green Acres Hotel somewhere on Highway 54 blogging away surrounded by the gentle sleeping noise of three children. ....you know, it is so peaceful when all three of them are asleep! Of course, they stayed up until 11:30 watching episode after excrutiating episode of "Power Rangers". We arrived at the hotel around 10:00pm after I had driven five and a half hours straight through non-stop pouring rain. Darcy was eager to post the blogs she had written today...but, for some reason, neither of our laptops could finish acquiring the network address of the hotel's internet. (Maybe there were already too many people ON the internet here?...I have no idea...I am so technilogically stupid...really.) We tried one last time at 11:30pm...still no go. But, when I tried again at 1:30am, both computers popped onto the internet lickety split. So, here I am typing away.

We promised Reena we would arrive by noon tomorrow. I plan on just heading out from this hotel whenever the kids awake naturally...course, I have children who do NOT EVER sleep in the car and who easily stay up until midnight, yet still bound out of bed by 7:00am (if not sooner) full of enough energy and orneriness to easily carry them through the entire day. They utterly exhaust me. I don't understand how I wound up with THREE children who require almost no sleep at all. I have friends whose children still go to bed at 6:30pm and don't get up until they are awakened at 9:00am or so and will still fall asleep the moment the wheels of their car begin rolling. Where do they GET these children?...and how on earth did I manage not to have at least ONE child that sleeps????? (One of my friends even has all three of her children trained to sleep until almost NOON...it is just so amazing to me.) My children never drag...they are always ready to roll (I, on the other hand, almost never feel ready to roll!)...but, at least they are generally very happy, cheerful children--except for when I am on the phone, then they become alien beings that I don't quite recognize! They are getting better about the phone thing, though. For a while, I just made it a rule that the moment the phone rang, everyone had to go to their separate areas and remain there until I hung the phone back up (sort of an automatic "time out"!). That worked really well...but, I haven't been as consistant with making them do this as I guess I ought to be--mainly because the phone just rings way too much. Still, maybe I need to get back to that, again...it did work awfully well. I am just getting so old and tired. I remember how AMAZINGLY consistant and strict I was when I only had one child. Then they began outnumbering me (and I hit my FORTIES) and one day I realized that somewhere along the way I had begun demonstrating the learned helplessness that results from exhaustion. I lost my grasp on consistancy...which made the problems snowball even more.

Back to the original subject, though!...it will be really good to see my little sister and my nieces and my brother-in-law again. It has been about a year since I have seen them (and then that was a very brief, sad visit while we were all in Texas for our aunt's funeral...and my niece (Reena's then five year old daughter) ended up needing to be taken straight from the funeral to the nearest hospital with bleeding complications from her liver problems. Annika's little sister, Frankie (then two years old) ended up coming back to KC while her sister remained hospitalized in Texas and was later air lifted to Chicago for treatment. Frankie stayed with us several weeks while her older sister was being stabilized. That was the last time we saw any of my sister's family. I wanted to see Annika again while she is still feeling half way okay. Reena and Joerg will be taking her back to Chicago in mid-November to be evaluated. Her liver values have been critical enough for quite some time now that if she were listed for a transplant (her third) she would be placed right at the top of the list. But, the doctors have been trying to buy more time before they put her little body through that again. They might put her on the transplant list when they see her in November. I guess, knowing that, more than anything made me think, "Let's just go TODAY." So, here we are...in the Green Acres Motel somewhere on Highway 54 in Illinois. Tomorrow (oops...guess that is "today"!) we will arrive in Normal and get to see the birthday girls! (Annika's sixth birthday was Oct. 16th and Frankie's third birthday was Oct. 9th... Reena's 36th birthday was Oct. 8th and Joerg's (Reena's husband's) 36th birthday is Oct. 19th. And Ty's (our little brother's) 34th birthday was Oct. 14th. And my 44th birthday was Oct. 15th. It is truly the birthday season!...and the cousin nearest my age had his 42nd birthday October 7th! And my oldest nephew will have his 24th birthday October 19th. Hmmm...October 7,8,9,14,15,16,19,19!)

Guess I'd better get some sleep...if I can!