My Tickety Tack Trip Home (1 of 3)

It was supposed to be so simple.

I was going to wake up ready and rearing to go on Saturday, drive out to Danbury, attend my conference, get my network on, and then take the train up to Boston with Justine. This sounds simple. Oh, but the best laid plans of mice and men, as they say.

The problems started around 8:30 in the morning on Friday, when I woke up to a text that says “Oh, find me at NEACUHO today!” from a friend with whom I went to college. I roll off my phone, which is lodged between my abdomen and the couch, and realize that the conference is TODAY, not tomorrow. Which means that I should have been checking in about half an hour ago, instead of laying with my ass in the air on the couch. So my first logical move, after cursing a little, is fire up the laptop to get directions to Danbury. Of course, I can’t find the email with my registration information-- apparently it doesn’t contain the words “NEACUHO” or “WCSU” or ANYTHING ELSE that Thunderbird might pick up as relevant to the email. I get directions, then head up to grab some clothes.

Well, having come in from Boston the night before at about 11pm, my clothes were still rolled up in a ball in my book bag. Which is fine, I can just iron them out. So, I run to the linen closet to grab the iron.

Funny story about the iron-- my mother CLEARLY got it in the divorce, because the only thing we had in there was a small travel iron. Working with what I have, I run to plug it in and get started. No sooner do I take the thing out of its box than the handle falls off. FALLS OFF. So now I have a piece of iron that is going to get very hot and a handle that’s going to continue to be very useless. I give ironing without a handle a shot, but it turns out that maybe travel irons don’t get so hot. At all. Or maybe get colder.

So I throw my clothes in the dryer and head up to brush my teeth. Now, I consciously chose not to pack toothpaste when I left for home, since I knew that my father would have some. Hmm. I was correct in this assumption, but I was incorrect in assuming that it would be the kind of toothpaste that a normal , god fearing 60 year old man might use. No no… I find Spongebob Squarepants toothpaste.

Let that sink in for a moment. My assumption is that he has been brushing and singing the theme song.

After a fight with the dryer, my only recourse to unwrinkled my clothes, I run out to start my car, which hasn’t been driven in 3 months. No surprise, I turn the key and nothing happens. At all. Not even a glimmer of a vroom. So my father, in his way, offers me the boat (read: Buick), which has been running a little that morning. He offers to back it out of the driveway, since I haven’t driven in a while. Lets consider for a second that he will be having me drive an hour away in the car, but is distrustful about my ability to back out of the driveway. Logic, where you at?

Oh, did I mention that I had to stop to put gas in the car, and that the front tire might have been significantly under inflated? By 9:30, halfway through the keynote speaker, I’m finally on the road, hitting speeds close to 90 in a car demographically driven by ladies in their 70s, and which has a surprising amount of bass in its stereo system. I guess they can’t hear the radio otherwise, but can feel the vibrations. Its how Beethoven composed his symphonies towards the end, and I assume that the same holds here.

I eventually did get to the conference almost and hour late and had a blast, and had the best damn story in the place about the “tickety tack hot mess” my trip was.