Day 10 - It All Falls Apart

And we were doing so well…

We got home. In one piece. But, [swear words redacted], it was stressful and angrifying.

I love my husband, I really do. Really, I do. I do, as in I said those exact words, took the ring, changed my name, been living thirty years with him. You hear that huge, honking BUT coming, right? Yep.

BUT…

He absolutely drives me up the freaking wall in nanoseconds when he doesn’t listen to me.

Early? In the morning? With no caffeine in him, since he packed it in the bottom of the SUV, and didn’t bother retrieving it last night? That would be a perfect storm of Not Listening To The Wifey.

And I have a detached retina in my second sight, so I could sense an Impending Bad Thing.

Sometimes, I can prevent it. For example - take a different road, go earlier or later, rearrange my errands, if it’s a traffic thing. So, when hubby gets all eager-like to pack the car, I give him Very Specific Instructions on where to put a particular canvas bag, and even more so, to take the plastic bag with the grapefruit spoon out of that bag, and place it in the center console. For quick and easy access.

Yeah. Should I have double checked? Well, on this trip, he’d been pretty reliable, and all the other specific things were actually done, so I assumed.

Oh, such a regretful decision.

We got on the road decently early – and ran into stopped traffic almost immediately. Ugh! Well, it turns out, about an hour later, we found that it wasn’t a case of Perennial Failure to Zipper in a Merge, it was a case of a serious crash. Which we were thankful to miss, but oh the backup and people not being able to deal with it.

Finally, open road (or what passes for it) on I-95, heading north.

Our first stop was in Fayetteville, SC, where a squishie had popped up at a museum. I was not aware of the Airborne and Special Operations Museum, but there it was, on a rather nice (new-looking) campus.

And we were a half hour early for opening.

I thought to get back on the road, but a text to my mom updating our status gave me pause. Honestly, we won’t be going south for a long, long time. Might as well wait the half-hour out in the parking lot, relax, and get it while we made the effort to get here. Well, honestly, she’s right. So we waited, rested, and watched wave after wave of buses and recruiters fill the parking lots.

Recruiters? Yep. We heard them chatting right behind the vehicle before opening, after which they drifted up the hill to the museum.

Hubby joined the crowd getting in, while I sat in Guarding the Friend’s Things mode. She’s gotten them this far, it’s not going to fail on my watch! Well, that’s my attitude anyway.

Back on the road, but now with a bit of a detour. I collect the state soils – yes, each state and territory has one! If you’re curious, here’s one of the URLs that shows what type for which, just click on the map:

https://www.soils4teachers.org/state-soils?q=state-soils%2F

I have more than twenty-five already, and friends are scouting a few more. All I need is a spoonful or two, nothing much, because they go in little gem capsules, are labeled, and slotted into gem trays. Efficient system with built-in display. (I have the same type cases for sand as well, and I’ve gotten two more beaches from the trip!) So it’s not hard to stop, hop out, grab the bag and grapefruit spoon (serrated for ease of mini spade digging, of course) and do a quick scoop-dump scoop-dump, and back in the car, back on the road…

Hmm. Mmm-hmm.

Off the interstate, turn right…

Into Selma.

No, not that one, though that’s what we thought at first.

Wow, this is a place that time has left behind. It is old, worn, tired – exhausted and exhausting. There’s a main street with shops that would have been pretty, forty years ago. But now, the pull is very strong towards an economically depressed backwater.

I’m not jumping on the bandwagon of “let’s trash Selma NC.” Our beleaguered country has so many problems, why pick on one small town? I’m giving you an idea of what it’s like in a place that time, or tech, or agricultural shift, has dropped. Tobacco was king here. Now, I’m as anti-smoking as they come; asthma and watching my grandfather die and having pictures of what it does to lungs, does that to a person. But there’s an economic price to pay somewhere along the chain, and sure as shooting won’t be some greedy CEO in his private jet or yacht. Unless a concerted effort to work on switchover solutions is made, things like Selma happen.

Small wonder parts of the country are so angry at other parts.

It was around this point in time that hubby’s case of tunnel vision combined with his perpetual avoidance of responsibility.

Hubby doesn’t like paper maps. Getting a Garmin was a godsend – till he used two of them into the ground. Did he go out and get them fixed? Nope. He started relying on the Google maps feature on his phone.

Then he started giving me times and mileage to the next turn, not the destination.

And I see it – Cecil soil, the state soil of North Carolina, in the fields, with decent access to said soil! And no one behind us! Easy! Grab bag and spoon, do the thing, back in, let’s go!

Um.

That’s when Dipstick MacGonagal admits that he may have not followed directions.

Fine. Just grab the canvas bag, extract, let’s go!

Um.

No, he decided to pack said canvas bag in an inaccessible location.

Okay, now I’m furious.

And that’s when I become aware that we are most certainly being followed. A white truck has been trailing us, turn for turn, on some seriously back-back roads.

I lost my stercum.

There were words, they were again short, and Anglo-Saxon in origin, and they were blue enough to leave streaks hanging in the air, gently chiming against each other as I made some odd turns. Yep, still being followed.

Can’t stop. Can’t turn around.

Drive out of the state soil into another profile, all while getting further and further off track, because Dahlink Hubby won’t pull out the paper map. Oh, which is also in the canvas bag, and I told him throughout the trip must be accessible.

More Words Were Said, at tremendous volume, and quite creatively expressed.

We finally lost our tail taking a rather difficult 120-degree turn to a park, hubby promised, with our target soil. He slowed down, peering after us, as I glared at him in the mirror. But he went straight. Eventually. After thinking about it.

Hubby then proceeds to tell me THREE FREAKING TIMES that we only had plus or minus eleven miles to go to our destination…

I haven’t been that angry in a long time. Most of my anger is cold. This… was a raging inferno, and I wanted sooo badly to blast nincompoop hubby to the hereafter.

(Oh, yes, he knows what I write. He’s my editor, so he reads it all before it gets sent out. Also reads it after it’s posted. Oh, yesssss, indeed, he knowssss….)

We finally land at a dog park. Wrong soil type.

Well, at least hubby can jump out safely, get the canvas bag, and place it somewhere accessible, and also pull out baggie and spoon.

Back on the road, to reverse to where we last saw the orange soil, not this chalky gray-white stuff.

Only, hubby decides to completely change the route (???!!!), because that’s what the computer tells him to do.

Not reverse the route, which would have gotten us soil and back on I-95 quickly.

More stercum was lost.

Lots of it. I left indiscriminate piles of it in some poor hinterland of North Carolina, which I’m sure didn’t deserve it.

FINALLY we found some of the proper Cecil soil, and after circling the “country block,” came back to snag some. We must have been on the border of two soil profiles, weaving back and forth between wavy lines of orange or chalky gray.

Back on the road.

It didn’t take us long to get to Richmond, where he could hop out and get squishies at the two locations. I stayed with the car, because Guarding Friend Things, though I did some stretching.

Again, back on the road.

After a while, I needed a break, and food. And freaking caffeine, because wow I so badly wanted to yeet hubs into the verge.

Finally back on I-95, after way too much time farting around. Food, caffeine, facilitation…

And walking back to the SUV after said facilitation, my underwear decided to yeet me instead.

Now I’m holding it up with one hand wrapped in my skirt wondering what in the bleeping heck? And I can’t take it off, or hitch it back into place, because rest stops on interstates aren’t known for pockets of privacy and discretion.

Sigh.

The rest of the trip was uncomfortable, because that roll of cloth cut into my thighs and cut off circulation. Bad for driving long distance.

And laser-focused on the erroneous map Hubby McHubs didn’t help, taking us so far out of our way home that we ended up in West Virginia, completely missing when I told him to take State 15 north to miss both traffic and going way the flip out of our way.

Time added to the trip duration.

So uncomfortable, and my prodigious tushie was numb from the “bum roll.”

It was a slog.

And them, the storms started rolling through.

At least I got a few rainbow pics, but geez, what an interminable trial! I had had thoughts about taking three days to get home, but that would have the added cost of another hotel night, when we’d “only” be out a few hours. What a mess!

We did land eventually, but it took three more hours than it should have, thanks to Mister I Don’t Do Paper Maps.

He’s been demoted from navigator. Until he either fixes the Garmins, or decides paper maps are fine, yeah, he can stay home.

I’m not going through that again. Hubby doesn’t want to go through that again either, for what it’s worth.

Yes, we’re okay. Matter of fact, he just took the laundry basket upstairs, after giving me a cuddle. We’ll fix this problem; we make a concerted effort to always do so. We even have a trip coming up, and he bleeping WILL use the paper maps, or there’ll be fire and purgatory to pay. We’re taking bestie on that trip, and she knows what happened, so he knows he can be duct-taped to the roof rack and replaced.

Friend’s stuff is safe, tucked into a corner.

I have sand samples, squishies, shark teeth, shells, and a precious soil sample to show for our trip. (Why do they all begin with “S”?)

And you have a story of survival into hostile territory, with if not a happy ending, at least a satisfying one.

Till next time, go ahead and take bets who’ll be riding shotgun and navigating!