Day Twelve

We left Amarillo, Texas shortly after breakfast and hit the road to Albuquerque, New Mexico! The drive took about 4 hours, it was relatively uneventful. We stopped in Adrien, Texas to go to the Midpoint Cafe, which is allegedly the midway spot between Chicago and Los Angeles. (1139 miles to get to each city). Teddy seemed off most of the day, very tired and fussy, and no appetite at all. Henry did pretty well. Some day I'm going to keep a tally of how many questions he asks because I truly think today was at least 1500 questions. They range from reasonable and genuine curiosity such as "When do the mountains end? Do they go all the way to the sky? Does the sky ever stop?" to "How much longer? When we will be there? A little while? Or a long while? How many minutes? How high do I need to count until we get there?" And on and on and on, you get the picture.

Remember that time on day 5 when I said it would be totally okay if we did not experience any more barf during our trip? Unfortunately the world did not grant us this wish and as I mentioned before, Teddy seemed off all day with a low appetite, and after registering at our hotel in New Mexico, walking to the room, and opening the door, Teddy took about 4 steps into the room and barfed ALL over the hotel couch. It's important to note that this hotel opened 2 months ago (the front desk woman mentioned it when I complimented how nice it was), the sofa is a beautiful West Elm brown sofa, and while thankfully the barf did not stain and is truly not visible after being scrubbed clean with a towel and Febrezed. The woman at the desk (same woman who checked us in) seemed to really not care at all about the throw up, she instead smiled very intensely and asked about 10 times "IS THE BABY OKAY????" She said she'd send someone down to look into if there was any cleaning they could do for the cushion, which was several hours ago, and whenever I walk by she just gives me a huge borderline scary smile so I think she forgot. Whatever, it didn't stain and it doesn't really smell so I'm going to move on.

We stopped at Walmart when we got into NM and I needed to show my ID when I used my credit card because it wasn't signed. The 70-ish year old woman was all excited asking why we were in town and I of course told her we were moving cross country and you should have seen her face when I said we were moving to California. It was as though I told her we were moving to the North Pole. Her bright smile immediately turned sour and she hesitantly said "Oh..." followed with a cherry on top statement of "I hate California". In hindsight I should have said something clever and moderately bitchy such as "Oh you do? I had no idea, I will cancel the remainder of the trip since you don't like it there." All I could mumble at the time was "that's fine" took my receipt and left, but what the fuck? I can only imagine what happened in California for her. And to be honest, I can't stop thinking about why this woman would hate California so much. SO MANY QUESTIONS. I'd like to get her and the woman from Uranus, Missouri (remember the "Thanks for picking Uranus!" lady) together for a heart to heart and dig real deep into their stories because I feel like there must be a good story to be told by each of them.

We're staying 2 nights in New Mexico, and trying to figure out what the next few days will hold. Tomorrow we're going to explore Albuquerque a little bit. Teddy seems back to normal and is starting to ask for snacks again so I think he's okay, but I'm happy to have a day out of the car for him to take it easy and make sure he's on the mend. This 2 hour time change is really messing with the boys sleep so time for bed. I wish my energy level was higher to be productive after the boys go to bed (laundry? Netflix? anything) but let's be honest, I usually fall asleep before they do.