On the Road

Monday, June 6, 2011
In which Collette leaves town for three days at an ungodly hour…

Up by 3:55 in the morning.
Car packed.
32 bottles of water.
Off on the road at 4:30.
Four hours of asphalt to attend a three-day seminar regarding how to teach Linnea’s class in the fall because for some reason St. Louis couldn’t provide the training.
Cold beef for breakfast.
Quo Vadis and Tina Fey’s Bossypants on audio to pass the time.
Trying to keep the eyes open after a restless night of sleep.
A few ‘interesting’ things on the way…
Random pockets of early mist, like snatches from a graveyard.
Trash can hanging over a mile marker.
Sign for ‘Vacuum Museum’ in Salem.
A convoy of no less than eighteen military vehicles stuffed with explosives.

Springfield.
Baptist Church.
8:30 registration.
9:00 session begin.
Three hours of seminars led by a woman who had been an army nurse in Germany for nine years, whose oldest son had been a missionary with Jews for Jesus, and whose daughter had just graduated with a degree in Jazz Dance and worked on a cruise ship in the Royal Caribbean fleet.
An Hispanic girl who could have been Carrie’s twin from high school, in Hispanic form.
Another girlish-looking mother with light red hair, freckles, and Asian-looking eyes. Very unusual.

Lunch break.
Cold beef.
A gentleman threatening to do cartwheels in the gym.
And the usual hopeless gathering of floral skirts paired with sports sandals.
Highs maybe at 92.

13:00 session resumed.
Three hours.

16:00 departure.
Hotel check-in.
Too hot out to do anything but hit up the store for…
Rotisserie chicken and white American cheese for dinner.
King-Sized bed.
Nothing else to do but The Cosby Show.
Asleep before nine.

And in other far more interesting news…
They were all going to have a brand new first cousin sometime around Carrie’s birthday. Eriic and Amanda were having their very first. That would be a range of 35.5 years between the youngest and oldest cousin.