Live From Remote Part I

Hey folks, I'm blogging from the road this week. I spent about 7 hours in the car with my family yesterday and almost everything worked exactly as expected. Ella colored her new activity books for almost the entire length of the drive. She was absolutely absorbed in staying in the lines and color combinations and coordinating stickers. It truly was the best three dollars ever spent. Dan downloaded a book about the history of Salt (which is slightly more interesting than the history of granola because there are wars involved.) The book is called surprisingly "Salt: A World History" and guess what it's alot of consecutive facts about... salt, not much story. But it turns out that's ok, because I can drift in and out of paying attention, bouncing from getting out the Fritos, to checking the map and sitting blissfully still as the country side goes by. Which brings me to the exception that proved the rule that everything would go as expected.

While trying to avoid Chicago traffic, Dan disobeyed the electronic woman telling us where to turn and then she had to say that she was recalculating after every 100 feet we didn't obey her commands to whip a u-ie (how the hell DO you spell that?! you-ee? Yuwee? WTF?) and eventually we did listen to her and drove these long windy roads between IL and IN that were barely two lanes and sometime we were doing 45mph and I was thinking this is how the horror movie starts, the killers jack into unsuspecting GPS systems and lure families onto a dirt road, and since clearly we are relying on the GPS we won't know how to get away and clearly no one will even be looking for us until we don't get home on the right date to pick up the dog or blog on time and all sorts of havoc is wreaked from there like a typical slasher sorta thing, except I didn't really bring a tiny bathing suit and so I suppose it wouldn't be that typical a slasher movie with my middle aged self in a tankini beating the crap out of the slasher and then later suing him for damages.

But anyway, we made it to the highway without incident and it was sorta fast and so now we know we can totally trust the chick in the gray box attached to the dash board issuing directions. And I also now know that an army without salt couldn't cure meat and like two thirds of the salt in the US during the civil war was on the North side, and I now also know that some people in the East used to cure duck with a mixture of salt and gun powder (yuck.) And lastly, I know it is fun to blog poolside while Ella freezes her butt off in the outdoor hotel pool.