WEST COAST ADVENTURE - DAY 1 of 9

THE CONTRACT – July 11

Were an adept starry seamstress to stitch together the fragmented moments of sleep I actually acquired last night, the finished product would be woefully inadequate for the day before me. I stumbled out of bed at about 5:30 and headed in the general direction of the shower.  I was tired and I was cranky.  It didn’t help that my alarm clock was blinking bold red lies to me for half the night.  At some point during the night we lost electricity, giving new meaning and purpose to my pre-vacation tossing and turning. The sudden strange hum and unexpected pitch blackness brought Aubrey quickly to our room in the middle of the night.  Apparently she was sleeping as soundly as her mother.  So as I was stumbling to the shower, I told Jim (with only a sliver of sincerity) “It would be best for everyone concerned if you left me behind.”  My husband laughed gleefully in response.  He was fully dressed, improbably chipper, and folding polo shirts into his carry-on luggage.  He’d been up for all of about 5 minutes.  How does he do that?  He cheerfully reminded me, “The glass is half-full!”  Sure.  Throw “the contract” in my face when my weary body hasn’t yet managed full vertical.  The contract was my daughter’s idea. When she considered the notion of all four of us spending ten days together in such a confined space, she began writing the rules.  The signed and dated agreement per Aubrey contained the following guidelines. (Italics are mine.)

California Contract

Signers of this document are legally bound (sorta) to whatever they agree to…yep.  Consequence if agreement is broken, the result will be ostracization. (this word doesn’t actually exist- the word should be ostracism and is not meant to imply that one of us will suddenly become a cumbersome flightless and speedy bird, rather, that the rest of the group will shun or otherwise ignore the offender until reconciliation has been achieved.)  

Isaac had to agree that he would stay at a constant glycemic level (AKA if he turns into a Diva, he has to eat a Snickers bar or something.)  It was discovered long ago that my otherwise pleasant son can become enormously cantankerous when his blood sugar drops, requiring family members to shout “Feed him, feed him!”  He had to agree not to pick on his mother (which he can do tirelessly and efficiently while simultaneously making me laugh and making me furious, but Aubrey did allow that “a little picking on Mom” was fine, if not necessary for comic relief.) Mom (possibly in anticipation of being picked on) asked Aubrey to add that Isaac had to get out of bed at a reasonable hour.  And as Isaac’s final portion of the covenant, he was not allowed to whine about the backseat or about his overwhelming desire for the continual consumption of crab legs.  It should be mentioned that with only minor grievances, Isaac held up to his end of the bargain.

Jim’s restriction list included the following:  He was not allowed to eat loudly (to particularly include crunching and slurping) while in the car.  Aubrey is quite sensitive to the annoying sounds people make with their mouths and apparently the volume of Jim’s mouth tests at a higher decibel than the rest of the family… Jim was not permitted to flip out at other drivers or get testy if and when we became lost.  He was not allowed to get angry and he was not allowed to then become defensive when his family members asked WHY he was angry.  And he was forced to order a meal at restaurants or understand fully that if he did not, his family was prepared to order a meal FOR him. He has a longstanding tradition of allowing the entire family to place orders with the waitress, and then say “I don’t want anything.”  This scenario results in Jim watching us eat while all of us attempt to donate forkfuls of pasta, a corner of bread, a leaf of salad, or some such item to the poor hungry man at our table.  I know full well it is somehow based in his deep love to see his family well cared for and his inability to spend a dime on himself, and yet when he ends the meal by saying vexatious things like, “See? I didn’t have to order anything because you guys don’t eat all your food…..” it makes me want to pummel him.

For my part of the pact, I had to agree that I would not rush anyone.  I also had to remain in a positive “glass is half full” attitude.  And I was not to comment negatively about the persons in my family who chose to stay up late watching television in the hotel room when I was trying to fall asleep at a somewhat reasonable hour.

Aubrey was not permitted to “death stare” anyone.  (This is a look of disdain that comes over Aubrey’s face- in which if the offending person were liquid and Aubrey’s eyes had glacial capabilities, the wrongdoer would become frozen solid within seconds. The “death stare” is usually a result of someone in her family doing or saying something that might be in any way construed as embarrassing.  She gives the stare when she believes she will somehow be guilty by association with said embarrassment or if in a private moment at home she just cannot tolerate the idiocy of her family member for another second…)  Additionally, Aubrey was not allowed to give unsolicited fashion advice about the chosen attire of her parents.  (This was particularly difficult for her since she could also not give the death stare.) And adding insult to injury, Aubrey was not allowed to do the “heavy sigh.”  Obviously Jim and I “helped” Aubrey come up with HER terms since she would not have seen any of these things as problematic.

So with the contract in place, we headed to the airport for our painfully long day of flying.  You see, Jim was trying to find the best airfare bargains out there.  And he was successful.  And that meant that the first of our THREE PLANES for the day was a puddle-jumper.  The toy plane we rode from Allentown to Washington D.C. was just large enough to hold us and a few other daring passengers.  There was no carry-on luggage as there was no over-the-head rack.  Jim, thoroughly amused by the plane (and I’m using the term loosely) insisted upon making annoying toy propeller sounds in anticipation of lift-off.  (It should be noted that the sounds coming from Jim’s mouth were eerily accurate when compared to the droning wind-up sound we endured for our entire first flight.)

Aubrey (who was about as enthused as her mother) asked her father a probing question.  “Aren’t you going to feel bad when we die in a fiery crash?”  Jim’s response:  “Not for long.”  I hold firm to the theory that you shouldn’t be able to see the pilot on your plane and I could not only see him, but I took a picture of him and his controls from my seat.

Thankfully we didn’t dust any crops on our way to D.C. and we found Isaac waiting at the gate for our next flight.  It was the only plane (of six total) that we shared with Isaac. 

Coming out of the Santa Ana airport, we were beginning to believe we were on vacation.  Palm trees tend to have that effect on East Coast dwellers.  Our first hotel, the La Quinta Inn, was a lovely hacienda-style building with a beautiful pool area all lit up under the palm trees in the moonlight.

Starving, we ventured out for food but it was too late to find anything decent and we ended up having our worst meal of the entire trip.  It was our first (and last) trip to a Jack in the Box restaurant.  They are all over California and every time we drove by one for the next 9 days, we groaned. The disturbing photos of their mascot used to adorn the restaurant walls and most of their advertisements should have been warning enough.