Away We Go... (Bethany)

Well, friends, I have sworn to be in bed by midnight, which means that I have exactly twenty seconds to...oops, missed it. Oh, well, the best laid plans, etc. It's exactly five and a half hours until I will rocket out of bed fresh as a daisy and do my whirling dervish bit for an hour, forcing each member of my little family out of their deepest sleep and into the mini-van (GO GO GO! You can sleep when you're dead! When I was a kid, we left at 3 a.m.!).

Jed will rocket out of bed with me and spin around in circles until he has gathered every piece of electronic wiring and gadgetry that he can find and has stuffed it and handfuls of creepy Lego robot pieces into his backpack. He will feed the dog, kiss the cat, put on his rock-and-roll underpants and his Iron Maiden t-shirt and stand at the door, black socks pulled up to his knobby knees, and ask over and over again if we can go to Dunkin Donuts on the way out of town. It's on the way, Mama, MAMA, MAMA, MAMA, it's really on the way and if we miss that one there's another one, PLEEEEAAAASSSSEEEE!
Meg will turn her back to me and beg for five more minutes and then get up slowly, whimpering, her eyes still closed, and on her way out of the room in this state, she will stub her toe on some bit of the house and have a full-on cry until I agree to go to Dunkin Donuts after all and use up our entire stock of band-aids on her imaginary injury. She will insist on a lengthy hug-n-snuggle, which will be just exactly what I have no time for, and just exactly what I need, turns out.


Adam will still be snoring quietly until I threaten to tell Jed to ask him about the difference between handling and stability when it comes to race cars, and then he will get up, grunt, and shut himself in the bathroom with the New Yorker. Five minutes later he will emerge and begin frantically closing windows and emptying trash and worrying about what he has forgotten.


Meg will forget Little White Bear. Jed will forget his headphones. Adam will forget his pills and the CD he really wanted to listen to. I will forget to email somebody about something silly and we will spend the first hour of the trip fighting over whether we should turn around and go home. We will become convinced that we have left the oven on. Neither of the kids will remember to brush their teeth.


Our cargo so far consists of many metal t-shirts for Jed, which should play well in the Mid-West, flowery dresses for Meg, plastic toys with too many pieces, a small plastic sheep who goes with me everywhere, and a whole lot of good music. Generous friends have handed off their well-loved travel games, and each kid has brought a random assortment of total nonsense to gaze at and fiddle with.


Perhaps most exciting to the Groff guys (and gals) is the three cases of Ipswich Ale and Stone Cat Hefeweizen, packed with tender care and best wishes by our friends at the Mercury Brewing Company. We promise to arrive with some of it, but it may come in handy along the way.


It's been 41 minutes now, and I am interested to see if I can, in fact, leap out of bed fresh as a daisy with so little sleep. The whole shooting match (I mean that metaphorically, Adam, you can't bring the gun) will be interesting to see. I am excited to spend so much time with Jed and Meg, and Adam and I have never minded having hours to chat. I'll let you know how the rest of my predictions pan out.


..and to all a good night...