Matt and I are leaving bright and early Sunday morning for Tampa, FL for a few days. Matt has a conference and I have received permission to tag along; i plan on doing a lot of reading and writing but also exploring a bit while he's in class. I've only been to Florida once, when I was 12, and that was to Orlando and Daytona Beach. I am anticipating a nice, relaxed time (grandparents have come to our house to care for the boys) and I'm also hoping that I don't spend the entire time in bed, sick. My yucky cold continues to linger - I hate to keep complaining about it, but it's been kicking my butt for about 3 weeks now; I was better for a couple of days but the symptoms just keep evolving. Today is crushing sinus pressure, but maybe some sunshine and orange juice will knock the last of it out.
(I hate detest loathe orange juice, always have always will. But I do feel healthier when I drink it).
I'm glad that if I am going to be sick, at least Matt is going to be in class and not wanting to do stuff during the day. About seven years ago we took a big trip to London, Oxford and Paris, and I spent a whole day in Paris in bed, with sort of the same symptoms. I'd felt sick for awhile already, but it took hacking and sneezing all the way down the Champs Elysees to convince Matt I was really sick. I always have the suspicion Matt has the suspicion that I'm not really as sick as I claim, or as tired as I say I am. I tried telling him, you go ahead and do stuff, do you really think I would want to waste a day being sick if I weren't really - it's Paris, for goodness' sake. He did go do some stuff, but I'm sure he would've much rather us enjoyed everything together, and I totally dig that it's not nearly as much fun without me. I think he may still hold it against me, a little.
We were discussing our planned route, and I asked if we were "going to Franklin and then down to Atlanta, like for David's surgery," and Matt said no, we'd avoid the, ah, jerks of Dillard GA this time. This was a reference to the ticket I got for having an expired registration, on the way back from the surgery, in Dillard. I was kind of irritated because it had only been expired a couple of days, and when the guy pulled us over I could actually see the NC state line. I didn't argue with him because it was in fact expired, but when he asked why we hadn't taken care of it I jerked my thumb toward our oxygen-laden tiny baby in the backseat and said he just had open-heart surgery. When we were discussing this tonight, Matt said he remembered this whole incident somewhat fondly, because it was a reminder that hey, life is going to go on. Registrations are going to expire and tickets will be written and no matter what happens, it can't be any worse than what we just went through.
[He swears he has shared this opinion before, I said I'm pretty sure I would remember it, because that's so stupid. I mean, I hear what he's saying, but it ended up being about a $75 ticket. Matt said he probably told me and I just repressed it or blocked it out so that I could continue to live in the same zip code, let alone the same house, as him without harming him]
[We felt somewhat vindicated a couple of days later when we went through a DUI checkpoint in Asheville. We pre-empted the state trooper's comments by saying hey, we know it's expired, we have an appointment on Monday for the inspection, we already got a ticket, and the troopers said, "They gave you a ticket when it's only been expired a couple of days? Man!"]
[I did sort of laugh in the Dillard guy's face, a little, which probably didn't help us much. He was doing that thing cops do sometimes where they are telling you how much worse this could be, how many additional things they could be ticketing/charging you for if they weren't so swell. What he said was, he is "technically supposed to impound the car." I thought about our little guy and his oxygen tank and his pulse ox monitor and all his meds and all our stuff and us, put out of our car, and my thought was something like "hee hee hee over my dead freaking body." Although, if he had dragged us in perhaps one of his elder deputies would convince him to cut us some slack.]
[When I said above, "that thing cops sometimes do," that was not a complaint about law enforcement, for whom I generally have a great deal of respect. That's why I didn't argue this ticket or the last moving violation I got, in DC for making an illegal u-turn. In both cases I knew I was totally in the wrong so let's just write the ticket, dude, so I can get on with my day].
So here's to a relaxing few days in Florida, with no tickets.
No comments:
Post a Comment