Tammie Thursday: Road trips and family bring out my inner pirate…

I missed the past two Thursdays but I have a good excuse.
I was in the wilds of Northern Maine.
Let me explain…

Northern Maine is where I grew up. The little town of New Sweden, boasting approximately 630 people, is a mecca of nature and all it’s wonders. Potato farms, cleared by the Swedes in the late eighteen hundreds, are scattered throughout the 34.7 square miles, surrounded by thick forests made up of mostly pine trees.

This bustling town is where I grew up into the Tammie you all know and love.

Sadly, the technology age hasn’t managed to infiltrate this little town of stubborn swedes who still think their black and white television is “good enough to watch the farm reports and the news”. Hell…my grandparents were finally able to get cable television to their home in the nineties.
Let’s just say that life is still moving in the slow lane in my home town and leave it at that.

Anyway, the internet was unavailable and I had no way to update anything unless I used my cell phone, which incidentally was not in a service area unless I drove two miles up to Thomas Park and stood on top of a picnic table. Have you ever tried to write more than a text message while typing on a cell phone balancing precariously on a wobbly picnic table?

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me tell you about the entire trip, from beginning to end. What is more mockable than my life?

We left for Maine on a Friday morning. Surprisingly enough we got an early start and our usual delays were non-existent. Mr.Man, myself, Miss Know-It-All, Veggie Stick and Little Beatle (our three children) packed all our belongings and the dog into the minivan and headed north.

Veggie Stick, the dog and I all get motion sickness, so we are pretty heavily medicated when traveling. We learned about the dog’s weak stomach the first year we took her with us. She vomited all over Veggie Stick and her blanket, not once but twice within an hour of leaving. Veggie flipped out and bitched for hours, resuming her ranting after going into a restroom and noticing we’d allowed her to go in there with wide streaks of mascara smeared across her face. So now we knock her out with enough Dramamine to tranquilize Rush Limbaugh.
The dog and I are doped up but still aware of everything going on around us. The one year I did take two Dramamine instead of one, Mr.Man fell asleep at the wheel while driving through construction on I-81 in Pennsylvania. We were on the inside lane right up against a huge concrete barrier. I was dozing and noticed the wall was VERY close. So close in fact, I could have reached out and licked it. That’s when I looked over at Mr.Man and saw he was sleeping. I woke him up and neither one of us slept again the entire trip.
I actually had a plan that I thought would work to keep him awake but the kids ride in the back seat and it’s not actually viable. Besides, depending on how good I do my job keeping him awake, it might have actually ended up being a safety hazard.

I don’t know if any of you have actually traveled I-81 through Pennsylvania before or not but it’s lousy with tractor trailers. The trucks dominate the roads and are adamant about letting you know that. We’ve been boxed in by truckers on many occasions,for no apparent reason,and if it weren’t for this route being the fastest way to travel from WV, we’d take another route. Since that’s not an option we move through Pennsylvania as quickly as possible just to get out of there.
We do try to make the best out of the situation though and play little games to entertain ourselves. As we pass each truck, I always look over to see if the trucker is a “looker”, meaning does he look down into our vehicle to see if he can catch a glimpse of leg or boobies?
In the past I would do nothing to the “lookers” and remain calmly in my seat as we passed. But this year for some reason it annoyed me. Maybe it’s menopause? Who knows what triggered my “looker” rage but I felt more and more irritated as I kept looking up into the trucks and saw the lookers looking down at me.I’m really not an angry kind of person either so I’m thinking it was probably just boredom.
We ended up side by side with a WalMart truck. The guy driving was a looker. Traffic wouldn’t allow us to move anywhere so we were side by side with him for several miles. He was looking every time I checked to see if he was looking. No, I wasn’t wearing a v-neck or anything revealing, but I was wearing shorts. It’s the middle of summer for crying out loud. Who’s going to wear sweat pants and a turtle-neck in that kind of weather?
After I’d caught him looking one too many times I finally scrunched up the right side of my face and gave him an ARGGGG…doing the best pirate face I was capable of.
The next time I looked over, he was laughing. I prefer laughing to leering to I decided to make pirate faces to all the lookers after that. It kept me entertained, Mr.Man entertained and the kids all pretended to be asleep because they were embarrassed.

The best part of my little adventure was pulling into a rest area and seeing two or three truckers pointing at me and laughing.

After travelling through New York and then staying overnight in Connecticut, our second day is always entertaining. Driving through Connecticut and on the Mass Pike where it’s like parallel parking while doing eighty miles an hour always feels like you’re on a theme park ride. Who needs to be stimulated when you’re scared shitless? Stopping places in New England is fun too because of Mr.Man’s southern accent and my Maine accent. We are both stared at like we have a penis growing out of our forehead or something. And the clerks always ask questions so we have to answer and they can hear us talk. I feel like I’m in a freak show. Yep…travelling through New England feels like a day at the carnival.

But I’ve said too much already. I’m going to have to tell you about our actual vacation next Thursday. Is visiting family actually considered a vacation? Well I guess the time I spent with my cousins the Beericksons would be considered a vacation activity.

I’ll see you next week and the saga will continue then.