It happened. I’m still recovering.
We started on Thursday with takeout and our master planning session. How would we load the sheep? How would we give them water? What time would we need to get to the festival? You can try to lay out a plan in 15 minute increments, but good luck carrying it off!
We left at 6:30 on Friday after a stout breakfast and enjoyed a pleasant drive through Westernmost Vermont and upper I-87 in New York. I confronted my timidness about traffic pretty well and drove all the way until the New Jersey border. After a brief orientation to driving a truck, my mother hopped right on the Garden State Parkway and soon the traffic was resetting my standards for intensity. I didn’t realize that while I-95 around Boston is busy, the DC area was worse. Much worse. Turn signals are pretty superfluous, apparently, and following distance just means not hitting anyone. Mom generously drove the length of Jersey, Delaware and into Maryland, where traffic and timing forced us to get straight on the metro to get to my sister’s place to change for our 5:30 dinner reservations. Traffic had made us late, and now we were rushing. Fortunately, the big derailment was all cleaned up and we went straight to my sister’s apartment, where she, my brother-in-law and my little niece awaited.
With all that my mom has done for me as a partner in this business, a nice dinner at a really fine restaurant seems like the very least I could do. We went to the Blue Duck Tavern. Here’s where I do my “country gal” routine: I grew up in a suburb. I now live in a suburb. I have been to cities. But I do not live a lifestyle of fine dining, Uber-riding, subway-navigating, or traffic-fighting. I was well out of my comfort zone and felt conspicuous and backwards. The food was really amazing, though, and Mom talked about relaxing for the first time in months. This trip was her well-earned vacation from caring for Grandma, who has dementia.
We returned to our hotel in Maryland and collapsed into bed, knowing that tomorrow would be a big day of travel, traffic, and logistics management.
