On the Road Again (Again)

Whew.

We made it to Richmond…mostly in one piece. It was quite an adventure, though, making such a long trip with two cars packed to the gills, plus an infant and two tranquilized cats. Actually, the tranqs only partially worked on Felicity and they didn’t work at all on Perpetua (I suspect that body mass had something to do with it…Coleman compared it to that great big grizzly that you just can’t take down no matter how many darts you shoot at it), so they spent the whole drive meowing back and forth to each other and with Perpetua roaming around the truck, across Coleman’s lap, and up and down on the dashboard. I could hear them in the background every time I called him.

I, on the other hand, was traveling in the car with Cora. We had planned on waking up with her for her first feeding (anywhere from 7 to 9 am), loading the last few things into the truck bed, and heading out so that we could drive through the rest of her late-morning napping. Yeah, that didn’t happen.

We were still packing and cleaning the apartment all morning (which she did, thankfully, sleep through), and didn’t make it on to the highway until just past noon. I was certain we were in big trouble since we were just starting out when she should have just been waking up for the day. I couldn’t believe it, though, but she slept and slept and slept. It was downright miraculous.

We only stopped three times the whole way from Dayton to Richmond, which made what is normally an eight-plus hour trip into a ten and a half hour trip, but considering we were traveling like the Joads, I call that excellent timing!

It wasn’t all peaceful naptime, but I really can’t complain. Of those ten and a half hours, she only cried for about a total of two hours, in aggregate. Of those two hours, I probably spent half an hour driving with one hand and reaching into the back seat, over the car seat to hold a pacifier in her mouth with the other hand (and yes, that IS about as awkward a position as you are imagining it to be – but I was safe!). I estimate that I spent another two plus hours singing to her to calm her down or keep her calm until we could stop or to attempt to put off a stop if we could help it. And for a lot of the time that really worked. I was terribly pleased; however, when she’s crying, you have to sing louder than her crying in order to get her attention, so I had a bit of a scratchy throat after all was said and done.

And it’s actually harder than you might think to be able to string verses together and blend songs back to back with no possible down time or silences (the silences beget more tears). As such, I resorted to some odd choices, but I went with whatever popped into my head.

And when I came across words or phrases or verses that I couldn’t remember, I would make up totally random lyrics just to keep the singing going and avoid any pauses. Oh, to have been a fly on the wall of that mountaineer…with me driving down I-64, singing wildly and ceaselessly at top volumes, caterwauling absolute nonsense. Strange how such insanity was the key to preserving sanity…

As for Miss Cora’s musical tastes, they are quite varied. Most effective for getting her attention were selections from The Messiah, a medley of Peter, Paul, and Mary tunes, and even a Van Morrison song. Also popular were hymns and the majority of the soundtrack from The Sound of Music. She is SO my daughter!

So we all arrived safely (and from that statement I exclude the bathroom trash can and 5 rolls of toilet paper that were lost when the tarp came up – they flew off the back of the truck and now reside along highway 35, somewhere outside of Dayton) and with our sanity intact (but just barely).

We’re settling in and trying to unpack and organize during naps and in between feedings. I hope to get some more pics up soon, and I even have a new video, so stay tuned…