Sarasota Vacation, Day One

After a fairly uneventful departure, we were on the road with Joey driving his car behind us. A couple hours later, we stopped for gas and lunch- which basically meant digging pepperoni rolls out of the large box in the back.
Sadie was next up to drive Joey's car, and I found that extremely stressful, for me.
I kept repeating phrases such as, "This is good for her.", "This is good for me.", "I will find a way to stretch and grow from this."
But every time I lost sight of Joey's car behind us, I would panic. When Ron would weave in and out between lanes of traffic, and pass trucks going 80mph, I would yell, "Slow down! She can't keep up with that! You're pushing her!"

Ron saw me constantly watching the car behind us and summed it up best with, "Is your umbilical cord getting stretched too far?"

Yes. It was.

Sadie drove through two tunnels, and made it through toll booths.

She did great. And then a couple hours later we stopped again and they woke Aaron up and it was his turn to drive. I was quite relieved. It didn't make sense- she was still in a car with a teen driver.
But somehow knowing she was no longer behind the wheel, I could relax and take a nap. I no sooner closed my eyes when Ron announced it was my turn to drive.

I now had the job of driving a van with twenty bicycles strapped to the top, pulling a beast of a trailer, while constantly watching the rear view mirror, in case the teens got lost, broke down, or a bike flew off the van and smashed into their windshield.

We made it to the hotel, where our ground-floor rooms open directly out to the pool. The kids wasted no time changing into their suits and I wasted no time getting online to post photos.
Sadie didn't want to swim with the others, but was willing to sit by the pool and keep an eye on them so they'd be safe.
Ron was taking dinner orders when a toad hopped from the pool area right into our room! I caught him, tried to talk Sadie into kissing him, but the money wasn't good enough, so I let him go.
Ron left to get the food, and I left the door open, so I could listen to the kids splashing in the pool.

A woman and her child were walking by my room, and I heard the child say, "Mommy, do you think I could go swimming?"

"It might be too cool to go swimming, Sweetie." she answered.

"Those kids are swimming." he said.

"Yeah, well those kids are idiots." she said.

I stopped typing. She looked in the room and saw me sitting on the bed, eyebrows up. Then she put her arm around the child and hustled him down the sidewalk.

I was indignant as hell! How dare that bitch call my kids idiots!

A few minutes later, Sadie came up to the doorway, positively drenched.


It turned out those idiot teen boys had the bright idea to toss her into the pool.