northern transportation

i am in edmonton now. carys had a great trip down with grandad and mo, and the reason she drove down that fearful mackenzie highway (cracker of windshields, imprinter of black flies and wasps on vehicles) is because there weren't enough adults to accompany three under threes. my mum had flown down to kelowna to collect us, so she had used her round trip ticket already. she could have flown down, but she doesn't like my dad driving the dreaded mackenzie highway alone. true love indeed. the mackenzie highway is gravelly, dusty, pot holey and not aesthetically pleasing.

another aspect to the mackenzie highway...not alot of places to stop. my parents needed gas, and stopped in a place called enterprise to get it. enterprise is close to the alberta/nt border. and not for the first time this summer...the gas station had no gas. this does happen a lot. there wasn't a gas station for another 200 kilometres, so my parents had to stop at houses and ask if the residents would be willing to sell them gas. it took three hours of knocking on doors and driving to locations people who had no gas for sale recommended them to, but eventually they got some and went on their merry way. carys was apparently an angel for the drive.

we had a fairly uneventful flight to edmonton, except we were sitting beside my former eighth grade teacher (kelly, you can guess which one..have fun), and that was, well, odd.

upon arriving in edmonton, we met up with the limo driver who would transport us to pammie's house, but wait! we were short a car seat. the airline had lost one of our carseats. luggage we could leave without, but not carseats. it was 6.30pm, everyone was hungry, babies were tired and whinging, sebastian kept asking

why can't we leave the airport mummy? which gave me the best reason to repeatedly snap in not my quietest tone

because the airline lost our carseat.

we were a cranky little tag team.

over one hour later, the car seat was found, and we were off. 20 minutes into the journey, sebastian announces,

i need to do a wee wee

how badly?

wight now mummy.

there is no use in asking him to "hold it". but i am so tired and upset i cannot fathom pulling over into some place, unsnapping him out of the carseat, walking to a store, begging to use the loo, doing the wee wee and then reversing the above steps. so i rummage around in my bag, and pull out a water bottle.

zip goes the zipper

aside goes his bobs

out pops his willie

ahh sighs my son

as wee wee fills the bottle. he was right, he really did need to go. afterwards, he looked at the bottle and informed me,

i don't want to dwink that.

but kevin costner did in that terrible movie he directed...but sebastian is no kevin costner. (good).

oh, and we got charged an extra 100 dollars because the limo driver had to wait an extra 90 minutes for us. can you imagine.

the next day i got an incredible gift...the entire day to myself. and i spent it with my girlfriend kathryn, but more on that later. i will post again tonight.

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i'm glad everyone survived the trip down. i'm thinking the airline owes the limo company an extra C note, not you, but what do i know.

and what is it about little boys that they can't seem to notice they have to pee until they are seconds away from flooding the nearest concave surface? at least now seb has a memorable story to tell all his class chums when he gets home. just tell him to call it "astronaut style" :).

glad you got a day off! i'm jealous, of both you and kathryn. have fun!

Posted by: knobody | August 07, 2005 at 12:43 PM