Another Trip......

I'm leaving next Monday on another trip, and I hope to have a plethora of pictures to share. In fact, I bought a camera connection kit for my iPad (I'm not lugging the laptop, and I'll explain why in a moment) so I can upload pictures each day. I hope I hope I hope I hope. (My iPad is one of the first generation ones, so it doesn't have a camera.)

This trip is with my mother and both sisters. I know, I know, I hear you screaming "hypocrite" because I'm going on a trip with the same woman I've referred to as the She-Devil. (On her nickel, too.) Believe me, she's been called worse names. And she has earned every single one of them.

Example: At the company where she worked before starting her own business, they were putting a big fancy aquarium in their newly renovated lobby. Someone came up with the idea of buying a fish to match each employee's personality. There was a long pause, then someone said, "Where the hell are we going to get a barracuda for Carol that will fit in that tank?" So it's not just her children who think she's harsh and fearsome.

She has recently joined this traveling club at her bank, a group with whom she has made several trips. You can only be a member of this group if you have x number of dollars in your bank account. That goes against my grain (not to mention my bank account), but it's right up Mom's alley. To be fair (fairER?), Mom had a poor upbringing and a hard time with five kids and a worthless husband, even harder to feed all of us after the divorce. She got a whopping SIX DOLLARS a week for each child, and by golly that was still the amount my father was paying when I turned 18. He had started sending the checks to ME by that time, and he dutifully wrote a $24 check every month. No more, no less.

But I digress.

Mom enjoys traveling. Wait, let me restate that. Mom enjoys THINKING about traveling. She enjoys the looking forward to it, the planning it, the packing, the talking about it. She hates almost everything else about it. She once raised holy heck on a cruise ship because the LIBRARY WASN'T OPEN during its posted hours. She missed a connecting flight one other time (I thought it served her right for flying from Savannah to Atlanta to get on a plane to Tampa), and I was astounded when they didn't give her the entire airline as compensation.

Don't even get me started on the time she took Sweet Girl and my then-three-year-old nephew on a Disney cruise. She has such fond memories of that cruise, and both children were scarred for life. Sweet Girl called me crying about her Nanny's treatment of the youngster before they even got to the port.

Darn, I have digressed again. Back to THIS trip.

Even though a group is going on the trip, it can't be much fun to travel alone, so Mom talked Katydid into going with her. When Hubby and I were in Wisconsin, she called to see if I wanted to go too. I bit back my immediate response of, "Hell no," and said something almost worse, "But there's a football game that weekend." Then she told me that Frogger Blogger was going too, and I told her I would think about it. I couldn't let all three of them go off on a trip and not go myself! Besides, that would be an odd number, and it would make room assignments and seating assignments on the motor coach either difficult or crowded, so I agreed to go. Besides, I'm the one who is retired, and the other two had to use precious vacation days to make the trip.

And I AM looking forward to the trip, truly. I am grateful for the fact that I CAN go, and I'm appreciative of the fact that Mom insists on footing the bill for all of us. I'm NOT excited about riding on a bus for two days. The last time I was on a motor coach, I accompanied Sweet Girl's high school band to New York City for them to perform in Carnegie Hall. (Very cool experience.) I left a voice mail for Hubby somewhere in New Jersey along the lines of, "Just so you know, Hell is not a place. It's a bus ride." And they were good kids, truly. That's just a lot more sitting than I can handle.

This trip is to the Pennsylvania Amish Country and Williamsburg, Virginia. We are leaving early Monday morning from the bank, a little less than two hours from my house. We are going to see a dinner theater production of Fiddler on the Roof and a production of Jonah, with which I am not familiar. We are going to tour Amish farmlands and have dinner with an Amish family. (Please, please, please, please Mother, don't find fault with anything. Please.) Then we are going to my personal favorite, Hershey World. They can just leave me there. We tour Williamsburg the next day, and then make the trek home on the motor coach. When we get back at 6:00 PM on Saturday (Mom's 80th birthday), I will jump in my car and drive very fast (but not breaking the speed limit -  much) to the aforementioned football game. I probably won't make the 7:30 PM kickoff, but Hubby will be there already and I shouldn't miss too much of the game.

I just happened to have a picture of an Amish buggy handy. Sure it's a Wisconsin Amish buggy, but it fits the topic. Sort of.

Because we are traveling on a motor coach, luggage space is naturally limited. I don't like having a bunch of luggage ANYWAY, particularly when there is more than one hotel involved. Hence the reason I'm going to have to depend on my iPad instead of my laptop. It's not that bad, but it's a pain to use HTML code when I'm blogging. On a positive note, you won't have to read any lengthy posts like this one all next week. Score! I'm going to take a shoulder bag slightly larger than my usual purse that will hold my camera, iPad, iPhone, iPod, and Nintendo DS. (I've got to have a variety of things to do on the bus ride, but I'll mainly read.)

I think it will be an exciting adventure. And we'll see how this one goes before I make a decision about accompanying Mom to Australia in April. Fifteen days...holy smokes.