long ride

2 days in a van with 6 children, one of them a fussy toddler, is enough to make anyone wish for a little break away. A good choice is perhaps a week at a luxurious spa with unlimited massages and gourmet food. Instead I got to return to a house that hadn't seen a dustcloth in 8 weeks and the packers arriving the next day. In the next 3 days I have to supervise everything getting boxed up and put on the truck, clean the entire house, and make sure no one wanders away or goes hungry. 

The drive itself was uneventful except for heavy traffic, rain, and many, many bathroom stops. If you want to know how many times a 7 and 8 year old need to go potty: every 90 minutes on average. By the end I made Charlie utilize the little blue potty in the car so we didn't have to stop on the side of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel to get an up close view of the bay. It took a total of 17 hours in the car and about $35 in tolls to arrive in Virginia. It dawned on me this morning as I slogged through the steamy heat just to get a bag of ice at the store that I can't recall the last time I was here in August since we don't usually return form Maine until mid-October. I'm acclimatized to Maine summers where you might need a jacket in the evening, even in July. The positive is that this is my last trip south, the negative is that we have to pile back in the van on Thursday to make our way slowly back up the East Coast.