first

I wish I would've taken a look at the mileage that was put on the Kia Rondo that drove from Reno to Carson City to Tahoe to Carson City to Tahoe to Quincy to Reno. No matter what the number was, I'll always remember the stretch between South Tahoe and up past Emerald Bay. There is nothing worse than billion foot drops, eight inch soft shoulders, barreling logging trucks, no guardrails, and your kid in the back telling you he's "a little bit nervous on the way the road looks".

Me too, buddy, me too.

When the speed limit is 10, go 8.

Srsly.

Let's break all this down. Do you have time? Do you really care about my vacation? I'm not sure if I do. The time I mean. I definitely care about my vacation. The contracts came in at work, signaling the start of Hell Month. Which inevitably stretches into Hell Summer. Which usually lasts into October.

I'll get out what I can.

The flights:
were a dream. People actually tapped me on the shoulder to tell me what a good boy Jake was. Mulitple people! I win the parenting game!
I told him I had a saw in my bag that I packed to cut his feet off if he kicked the seat in front of him, and he believed me. Sucker. I told him that he wouldn't be able to wear his Red Chuck T's if he got loud. If you are ever in charge of Jake, you can pretty much get him to do anything if you threaten to take away his Red Chuck T's.
The DVD player was heaven sent (not really, it came from Best Buy) and he watched Cars and Underdog (ask him to tell you about that movie, if it's just to hear him say "Shoeshine" again and again) and Curious George and everyone was happy.
I'll never travel with the boy again as long as he is in a carseat, that was a little bit pain in the assy, but doable.

The car:
kinda blew. I had a code for a free upgrade, and I was thinking along the lines of Sunfire --> Grand Am (remind me to tell you about the time that upgrade saved my life. It involves me not wearing any underpants because I had to go to church. It will all make sense later.) but Enterprise decided they needed to dump the Kia Rondo onto some unsuspecting outtatowner. It was big on the outside but the Hyundai Accent that was laid to rest last summer had more interior room than this thing. Poor Jake suffered with his seat smack jammed up against the front seats, and my knees hit the dash when the seat was all the way back. Plus it looked like a minivan. Which is just embarrassing.
I am way too pretty to be driving a minivan.
You are way too pretty to be driving a minivan.
Don Rickles is way too pretty to be driving a minivan.
Momma from Throw Momma from the Train is way too pretty to be driving a minivan.

Carson City:
was smaller and white trashier than I imagined it to be. The casinos were sad. Everything was a casino, in true Nevada fashion. Christmas on a cracker, the CVS was an effing casino. And a busy one at that. None of it was glam. All of it was pathetic. There was casino night at the church even.
Hell, putting a slot machine at a gas station is like bringing a case of booze to a wedding on an Indian Reservation.

Or something.

Soylent green is people!
We've got to stop them somehow.

Carson City hosted a carnival for the Fourth. I love local carnivals. More than I should. There is something about the long skinny multibanded ponytails on the scabby toothless carnies that makes me want to throw a dull dart at a half filled balloon and win a fish with a 10 hour life expectancy just so I can teach my kid about death in the wildwest while we bury that guppy in a desert hillside.
Jake is apprehensive about carnivals.
Jake is a downright princess about carnivals, especially the rides.
I call him a princess because that is the nicest P-word I can think of to describe Jake's girlyboy fear of anything that moves and his increasingly annoying sensitivity to sounds and smells and flashing lights. Now I'm not one to post a million pictures of my brat, but take a look at this series of shots.

me: "Jake, wanna ride one of these rides like a big boy?"
Jake:






"maybe the car"
which was "not so bad! not so bad like pooping and going underwater!"

Anything that's not so bad is like pooping and going underwater to Jake. Because pooping and going underwater are the two things that he thought were really bad but turned out to be pretty much okay.
Carson City fell somewhere between pooping and going underwater. It was strangely refreshing, but it made my eye makeup bleed onto my cheeks and I may have burned out some nosehairs.