A few years ago Spencer joined Soccer Club. In Soccer Club (as opposed to regular recreational soccer) he gets to play other school and club teams and gets to travel around the Midwest to soccer tournaments. This weekend his new U11 team had a tournament in Muscatine.

Muscatine is a pretty small town. According to the 2000 census they have less than 23,000 people in town. And this weekend they were hosting both the soccer tournament AND a softball tournament. For a city that has about 10 hotels total, hosting TWO big sporting events should be a big no-no.

But nobody listens to me. What’s new?

Muscatine isn’t that far from us so we weren’t going to get a hotel room. Just like the last Muscatine tournament, we were just going to drive up each day for the games and then drive home at night.

But then we found out Spencer’s team played at 8am on both Saturday and Sunday. If you’ve known me longer than 45 seconds then you know I don’t do 8am. I don’t even go to work that early. I am as far from a morning person as you can get.

So I made a reservation at a local hotel. All was good. We had two queen beds. And there was a pool. We were set.

But a few days later (about a week before our trip), I got a note from Expedia. “Call me. There’s a problem,” was the jist of the email.

Turns out the hotel was overbooked and didn’t have room for us. The dude from Expedia apologized profusely and said he’d make it right. He was going to find me a better hotel and only charge me the same price and give me a $100 certificate for a future trip booked through Expedia. I was totally down with that.

Only he couldn’t find any other hotels. The whole city was booked. Imagine that. A small city. Who is hosting both a soccer tournament and softball tournament. With only 10 hotels. Is booked. This is me giving you the evil eye, city of Muscatine. Consider yourself on notice.

The only room Expedia could find for me was at the Super 8. I was a little leary ’cause Super 8 sounded like a not so nice hotel. But maybe that’s because I’m a huge snob. Who knows.

So the Expedia dude got me booked at the Super 8. He said, “Is that going to be ok?”

I replied, “Yeah, as long as it doesn’t have bugs.”

“Oh stop. Of course it doesn’t have bugs,” he joked in his adorable English accent.

So Friday night, Spencer, Caleb and I checked in to our room at the Super 8. [Skyler had a birthday party to go to and Lee had a softball game so they joined us later that night.]

First, our room was on the second floor. And the hotel had no elevator. WTF?!? What hotel with more than one floor doesn’t have an elevator. Do they think people who come to Muscatine don’t have luggage?

Even though we were only staying two nights, with five people we had a pretty big bag. And with Lee still back at home, I had to do my best Popeye impersonation and lug the bag up one flight of stairs. Turn on the landing and lug it up the second flight of stairs.

Then, the second I opened the door to our room I was smacked across the face with the smell of mildew. I could hear my allergies groan and my asthma kicking up it’s heels.

But what could I do? There were no other hotels available. I did seriously consider sleeping in the van, but I figured the kids would protest. Then I thought about just driving home and waking up at 5am for the morning game. But then my inner night owl beat the crap out of my tiny inner morning person and I relented.

The next morning I woke up with my face swollen two sizes too big and my nose running like somebody forgot to turn off the cold faucet.

And to make matters better, Lee informed me that he got up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and saw several bugs in there.

Kill me. Kill me now.

Luckily we were busy all day. In fact I had to drive all the way back home for several hours for Skyler’s cheer competition and then all the way back to Muscatine for Spencer’s next soccer game. [This is my life. Constantly in the car. When I'm not in shitty motels.] So I didn’t have to hang out in the hotel much.

When I got back Lee informed me that he cleaned out the dehumidifier in the room. [What hotel has a separate stand-alone dehumidifier in the room? Crappy ones.] He also pulled the filter out of the air conditioner. It was apparently covered in dirty and grime and things we can’t speak of. He took them outside, smacked them on the back wall of the hotel and replaced them.

For the love of God, Super 8. Clean your damn filters more than once in a lifetime.

Then as we were getting ready for bed, Caleb went in to the bathroom. He came out and said, “Why are there bugs in the bathroom?”

Why indeed Caleb? If an 8-year-old realizes a hotel shouldn’t have bugs, why doesn’t a hotel realize it shouldn’t have bugs. I’m just sayin’.

So, needless to say, we will NEVER stay in the Super 8 in Muscatine EVER AGAIN. I’d rather sleep in my car. Or wake up at 5am. Or skip the tournament all together. Anything is better than bugs and swollen faces.

My truck is currently out of commission due to a little run-in with the garage wall. So I borrowed a truck from a friend until we can get ours fixed. With full-time jobs and four kids needing to be driven all over town, we can’t survive with just one car. It’s so nice to have such friends that are willing to help us out like this.

Of course, that might change now.

I’ve been driving around this borrowed truck and parking it in front of my house (since my truck is in pieces in the garage). We haven’t had much success with parking in front of our house. At least four or five times somebody has hit one of our cars that is parked in front of our house.

One time a car from a block up rolled down the street, missed every. single. thing. in it’s path…except my car. We weren’t home and had left the kids at home with a sitter. The sitter discovered our car was involved when the cops knocked on our door to let us know.

One winter a guy slid as he turned the corner and side swiped our car. Even though we are THREE houses down from the corner. He was in a work truck and, although he didn’t knock on our door (presumably because it happened at the butt crack of dawn), he did leave us his insurance information under our windshield wiper.

Another time a young girl was driving up our street, was a little too far to the right, and ended up taking the side mirror off the Geo Metro we had waiting for Justis to get a license. I was walking out the door to take one of the kids somewhere when it happened. And she didn’t even stop. Just hit the car right in front of me and kept going. Justis ran after her and saw which house she stopped at a block away. So we were able to get her insurance information…eventually.

And we’ve also been hit one or two times where nobody stopped to give us their name or number. Luckily those times the damage was minimal.

We thought we were pretty safe since it’s summer. Most of the previous accidents happened on very icy days in the dead of winter. But around 3:30pm. Just a mere 10 minutes after I had returned home from picking up Skyler & Spencer from school. And a mere half hour before I had to pick up Keaton and Caleb from school. [Don't even get me started on these staggered school times.] There was a knock on the door.

There was a little old lady on the other side of the door. “I accidentally hit your car,” she practically whispered.

My first thought was, “Oh here we go again.”

Then my second thought was, “SHIT! The only car parked in front of the house IS BORROWED FROM A FRIEND.”

I tried not to panic as I walked out to the borrowed truck with this woman. She had no damage to her car…that I could see. Then I turned around and looked at the borrowed truck. The side mirror was still attached, but the glass was cracked in a spider web pattern. The edge of the running board was knocked clear off and laying in the middle of the street. And there was a white streak streaming across the dark blue truck from the trunk to the hood.

I took a deep breath. Screamed “FUCKING MOTHER FUCKER!” In my head. And then calmly asked her for her information.

She was very nice. And very apologetic. I told her, “Thanks for stopping and letting me know rather than just driving off.”

She replied, “Oh I would never do that. I’m not that kind of person.”

“You’d be surprised how many people out there are that kind of person,” I mumbled.

Thankfully my friend is handling it very well. He’s very handy with tools and, as a contractor, knows a lot of people. So he can get it fixed cheaply (I hope). And the little old lady has insurance so that’s covered. But I felt awful having to make that phone call. “You know how you let me borrow your truck? Well some little old lady just hit it in front of our house.”

This month sucks. I’m going to go cuddle with bottle of vodka.

Keaton finally got his driver’s permit at the beginning of July.

I’ve been begging him to get his permit so he can then get his license. We need another driver in the house to help get everybody where they need to be or to run to the store for milk or something. I never thought I’d have to twist his arm to get him to get his permit. I thought all kids wanted to drive the second the law allowed. And in the state of Iowa he could have gotten his permit on his 14th birthday.

But then again I didn’t get my permit until I was already 16 (although I taught myself to drive when I was 15). And then I only got my permit because it was required for driver’s ed. I guess little enthusiasm for driving is a family trait.

So he got his permit, but then he was gone the whole month of July to camp and grandparent’s houses. There was no time to teach him the basics or let him get behind the wheel.

That all changed this month. Now he’s home. And he wants to drive. Every chance he gets.

But he’s not very good.

He just needs more practice. Or at least that’s what I keep telling myself.

Yesterday we were leaving to go to take him to church group. He, of course, wanted to drive. And I’m trying to ignore my anxiety and let him get some experience. So I tossed him the keys and jumped in the passenger seat.

He turned on the truck. Put it in reverse and said, “This is the first time I’ve ever driven out of the garage before.”

Famous last words.

He stepped stomped on the gas and the truck jerked backwards. We were flying out of the garage.

“YOU’RE GOING TO FAST,” I screamed…too late.

He was going to fast. And turned too soon. The bumper hooked on to the wall of the garage. And we were still moving.

I jumped out of the truck. The grill was laying in the middle of the garage floor. No longer attached to the truck. One of the headlights was dangling from the truck like an eyeball on a Halloween mask.

Then I looked over at the garage. The garage that’s part of the house WE ARE TRYING TO SELL. The wall was completely bent out off the cement slab. The cinder blocks that hold up the wall were knocked out and laying in the grass. The garage door frame was bent so the rolly things that ride through the track to open and close the door would fall off track if the door was moved.

I tried not to cry. I tried not to yell. “Just pull the truck back in to the garage,” I sneered at Keaton. And I walked back in to the house. To hyperventilate.

He’s a new driver. He’s just learning. There’s going to be bumps in the road. Literally. But it will be ok. This is what I kept chanting to myself to calm myself down.

Later, after my heart stopped raising and my blood pressure returned to normal, I went to talk to Keaton. “I’m not mad at you. You know that right? I’m frustrated this happened, but we’ll get it fixed. You’ll get a bit more practice in and navigating garage walls will become easier for you.”

So now we just need to get it fixed.

On my first day of kindergarten I was sitting on the bus on my way home from school. I was young and scared and apparently even then had a bad memory, because I couldn’t remember if I was supposed to ride the bus home or to daycare. One of my friends convinced me I was supposed to go home. So I did.

But when I got home nobody was there. I tried the door knob. It was locked. I knocked on the door. Nobody answered. I didn’t know what to do. I was five. I had no experience to deal with a situation like this. So I did what any five-year-old would do. I sat on the step and cried.

After a while my neighbor spotted me and came out to save me. She called my mom and then the neighbor either took me to daycare or my mom came and got me. I don’t remember which. It was a long time ago.

My point is…issues with the bus seem to run in the family.

Today was the first day of school. Last year Skyler and Spencer graduated from elementary school and are now attending the intermediate school. This means they go to school an hour earlier. Get home an hour earlier. And ride a new bus. They go to the same bus stop, but it’s a different bus number for this early bus.

After school the intermediate school kids ride a shuttle bus from their school over to the middle school. At the middle school they disembark the shuttle bus and get on their regular buses to ride home.

I met the bus at the bus stop at 3:15. Skyler leaped off the bus and ran over to our truck. We sat there and waited for Spencer to jump off the bus. But the bus driver shut the bus door and drove off. I scanned the kids that were still lingering around to see if Spencer was chatting with a friend. I didn’t see him.

“Was Spencer on the bus?” I asked Skyler.

“Yeah….I think so. I saw him on the shuttle bus.”

Hmm….where could he be.

I tried to call his cell phone. No answer.

Skyler said, “Oh no. My twin brother is lost.”

I tried to remain calm as I said, “It’s ok. We’ll find him.” But there was a bit of a quiver in my voice as inside I was screaming “WHERE THE FUCK IS MY KID?”

I wasn’t really sure what to do. I figured he probably got on the wrong bus, but how would I figure out what bus he was on. I couldn’t really drive around the whole district stopping buses to see if my son had accidentally gotten on their bus.

I tried Spencer’s cell phone again. No answer.

I decided to head for home to call the transportation office. On the way I called Lee to let him know we were one child down. Lee was no help.

By the time I got home I was shaking. WHAT IF SOMEBODY TOOK HIM? WHAT IF HE GOT ON THE WRONG BUS AND GOT OFF IN SOME STRANGE NEIGHBORHOOD NEVER TO BE HEARD FROM AGAIN? I was trying to remain calm. But I think we all know calm is not my strong point.

I called the transportation office and began to ramble about how my son didn’t get off the bus, but we’re pretty sure he rode the shuttle bus and he’s probably on the wrong bus, but who know what bus that is or how I’ll find him and…

The woman who answered the phone interrupted my crazy with “What bus was he supposed to be on?”

“He was supposed to get off at [location where he should have exited the bus],” I responded, out of breath.

“What’s his name?” she asked.

And then I could hear her radioing the bus driver. Followed with “Oh ok. You have him? Ok. Yeah. Yep, Ok.”

I was trying to patiently wait for her to return to the phone. But, again, I think we all know patience is not a virtue I practice well.

She finally came back, told me they found him, they are taking him back to the school so he can ride the later bus home.

Whew!

So at 4:15 I was back at the bus stop to meet Keaton, Caleb AND Spencer.

Keaton climbed off the bus and headed for the truck.

Caleb skipped off the bus and ran towards the truck.

And then we waited. No Spencer.

I was about to burst in to tears. Or have a heart attack. Or both.

I looked at Keaton with my crazy eyes and screamed, “Was Spencer on the bus?”

Keaton said, “Yeah.”

I sent Keaton over to the bus to go find him before the bus pulled away.

Turns out the bus driver was talking to some kid on the bus who was blocking the last few kids who were trying to get off the bus. So after a few minutes Spencer FINALLY walked off the bus and came over to the truck. He had tears in his eyes. I had tears in my eyes. We were a mess. But at least everybody was accounted for.