the devil went down to georgia

We ... survived! Against the odds, my little family of four (yes, we are luckily still four) made it to and back from Augusta, Georgia for a long weekend trip. Oh yes, did I say that the air conditioner in the van is broken? And that we were driving to Augusta, the absolute center of hotbed misery in this universe (yes, Augusta is beyond Houston, even). And we were driving during late April? Oh, and that Q and E could not stand for the windows to be open because - who knows why? I guess it mussed their hairstyles?

I did note one good thing about driving without air conditioning. The extreme heat and accompanying sweat means that your body tends toward dehydration, which means I can drink diet coke and not have to stop every hour. Except for this morning, when I had to stop every 45 minutes for the first half of the trip. But that was because of the coffee. My husband loves me.

Here is the real issue that I have, though. My wonderful son Q is full of energy and emotion. Have I ever happened to mention that? (That was a JOKE!!) Anyway, we know what kind of kid he is and love him allthemore for it and expect him to act that way. On the other hand, E is full of life and smiles and positive energy and patience. So we do not expect her to act like a little heathen. (oh, other than the whole flip-off episode, but that was MONTHS ago). Do you see where this is going? My lovely daughter turned into a demon this weekend. Even worse - she turned into a teenager demon. She had attitude. She had insults. She had the eye-rolls and the barbs. Plus, she had the screams and crying and that insane, on-the-edge laughter that made me want to call 911 for emergency psychiatric help. DH had to take her out of the house and sit with her in the van for about an hour one night during a thunderstorm, noless, because she was peeling the paint off the walls with her screams. You know, I was remembering that she pulled this exact same thing when we were there in January to visit Gerald in the hospital. I have no idea what causes it, but her grandma and grandpa laughed loudly when I asked them (very sweetly) if I could just leave the kids with them this time. They had a panicked look in their eyes, too. Demon teenage E was gone by the time we got home, though, thank the spirits of the universe. Like I said at the beginning of this post, it is a happy thing that we are still a family of four.

It was good to see DH's parents. We looked at some family photo albums and talked about Gerald a lot. He sure was a cute and smiley kid - 1st kid, 1st grandkid. There were about five times more photos of him than of all the other 3 boys. DH went through a bunch of his shirts and CDs and DVDs and picked a few things to take. It wasn't easy. It's still hard to assimilate all of this.

We're back in the happy rut again now, after our spring break of sold-out movies with me and 2 small children in the rain sadly looking into the theater, croquet admist the deer poop, the frantic cell phone acrobats at Busch Gardens in a search for missing children, and of course the amazing demon teenager I met down in Augusta.