Forgotten Sleep

Last week, Loving Husband had to go to New York City for business. The trip happened to coincide with the largest snow storm our area has seen in the five years we’ve lived here. Despite my best efforts to get him to return home early before the multi-inch snowfall propelled our area into a freak-out of grande proportions, he stayed in the Big Apple.

When he finally came home, the snow had stopped, the sun was shining, and the ice was forming. This meant that his car, which he’d parked in an uncovered portion of the airport lot, was stuck “due to severe ice.” The airport parking authority was holding his car hostage. So, we were a one-car family for a few days.

Let’s fast-forward to a couple of days ago. We finally had the chance to rescue his car with the kids in tow. Rush hour traffic in our area is adventurous enough, but the real excitement occurred once we made it inside the airport parking deck.

He’d parked on the fifth floor. So, round and round the spiral ramp we drove, with Big Girl complaining in the background that she was getting dizzy and was about to throw-up. This, of course, was the Drama Princess talking, but you get the point. Loving Husband gets so distracted that he goes one level too high and, then, freaks out a bit because he thinks the car has disappeared.

Finally, we figure out that we do need to go down a level, but Loving Husband disagrees with me about the route to the exit. He heads back the way we came, only to discover it is a one-way ramp. The only way to get to the correct ramp is to drive around in circles, literally, in the middle of the parking deck. I felt like we were the automotive version of Ring Around the Rosie. Fortunately, no one was around to see us…we were the mini-van version of bumper cars.

Little Man’s hysterical laughter punctuated with cries from frustration and fatigue and Big Girl’s screams of dizziness and imagined (or impending) nausea made me wish we’d gotten it on video. At least then we’d have had the chance of winning some American’s Funniest Home Videos money for our trouble.