If the toast had had legs, it would have run the hell away

In my last post, I said my trip to Assachusetts to stay with my mother was colorful, and I wasn't lying. But I'll get to that in a minute.

The trip started off on rocky footing. My mother drove down the night before so she could follow me back to her house the next morning. I told her that wasn't necessary, but before I'd hung up the phone she was parked in front of my house.

Off we went.

We left Mulletville when the two kids would need a nap, but Diddly woke up crying 20 minutes into the trip so I pulled over and fed him. We got back on the road. Thirty minutes later Junior started crying. He said he was going to throw up, so I pulled over, this time into a Friendly's.



While I was comforting Junior, my mother jumped into my car.

"I'm coming with you," she hissed. "I'll leave my car here."

"That's silly. We're fine. Junior's tired. He needs a nap."

"We have to get back on the road. You can't do it alone. The children are falling apart. Go! Go! Go!"

(Have I mentioned that my mother is someone easily shaken by stressful situations? The woman could talk you off a bridge.)

Off we went.

Thirty minutes later we realized we had no idea what town we'd left her car in. We called my step-father and begged him to call every Friendly's in southern Assachusetts and ask if there was a blue Subaru in the lot. He said no. A pipe had burst in their basement. It was flooded. There was no hot water. I shouldn't stay there. And he wasn't calling Friendly's.

"The gods are conspiring against us!" my mother cried.

I told her I should go home, but she remembered that her sister, who lived nearby, was in Florida for the week.

"We can stay at her house. It'll be perfect."

By that point I was exhausted. I'd been up since 4 a.m. I'd packed the car full of the kids' shit. I was worried about Junior's stomach. Neither kid had napped. I just wanted to get somewhere.

Off we went.

If only I'd known that a funhouse of visual vomit awaited. In the years since I'd been to my aunt's house, she had apparently developed a crazy ass obsession with colored textiles.

There were stripes and checkers.





Plaids.



Florals.



Gingham.



And then. Then there were the polka dots.



Every



where



you



looked.



Nothing



was



safe



from those



damn



little



dots



and circles.



I never realized how much I appreciate solid colors, how comforting my home of naked, unpatterned walls and furniture are. Quite honestly, this is my idea of hell



I'll take two crying kids, a frenzied mother, a lost car and no sleep over this



any day.

What about you? Do you polka until you puke? Does your dinnerware make people seasick? Do busy patterns brighten your day or bogart your brain? You know where I stand.

P.S. Special thanks to Chuck, who located my mother's car in a town called Seekonk.