We then drove down to Carlsbad to visit the caverns the next day. Upon arrival we found ourself in the position we often have been in on our trips - arriving to a place after all dinner options have closed, with not a stitch of food to be found anywhere nearby, and half the hotel’s promised amenities closed or not functional. That was Thursday, and the whole evening was overshadowed by the disastrous presidential debate - we watched it while eating chips and dip for dinner - and then spent the rest of the night obsessively texting friends and listening to post-debate analysis which was all impossibly grim. I’ll say right now that the debate has, and continues to, cast a pall over our remaining time on the trip. Thankfully we had the Carlsbad Caverns and bat flight from the caverns the next day to lose ourselves in, but it was difficult to forget the sight of our democracy crumbling right before our eyes.
After the caverns it was time for our multi-day trip back west, and here’s where things started to get disorganized and messy. On this leg of the journey, we dealt with extreme heat and giant electrical storms that knocked out entire cities’ power, so some of my plans had to be canceled, and we had many harrowing drives through lightning that had me absolutely terrified of our car getting hit (the H said he’d been through that and it was no big deal, but with my fear of sudden loud noises I was an absolute wreck). We only had a few minutes at White Sands National Park because it was too hot and lightning was on our back, and then an all day excursion to the Gila Cliff dwellings had to be scrapped entirely due to weather and just not having enough time (and being generally exhausted).
I took us to the world’s largest pistachio in Alamogordo which no one gave a shit about but me, we spent a very hot and unpleasant afternoon in Tombstone as an unplanned stop which I kind of wish we’d skipped (again, everything was closing, nothing to eat but shitty nachos which gave me diarrhea just as all the places with bathrooms were shutting their doors, and the H pressured us into doing this gun show slash tour which was so loud I immediately ran away and cowered blocks away by myself in the heat for nearly an hour until the stupid thing was over, and he was frustrated with me for hemming and hawing about committing to doing it because I knew it was going to be my worst nightmare and it was), then spent one final night at a hipster hotel in Tucson (the McCoy) which ended up being tons of fun with a DJ’d pool party and some of the best vegan sushi I’ve ever had. Then Monday we had a seven hour drive home, and then it was over.
So how was the trip? Again, mostly good, memorable, and whatever mistakes I made in the planning couldn’t have been helped - things like weather can’t really be planned for. All of our lodgings worked out; we even finally got some fun on the water slides at the place by the caverns, once they were open; and the sight of hundreds of thousands of bats careening out of the cavern as we all sat silently in awe is not something I’ll soon forget. I wish the last few days hadn’t fallen apart the way they did, but I think we were all pretty over it by then anyway. We never went hungry due to the ridiculous amount of food we brought, and I spent *about* what I expected on restaurants and gas. Getting two high energy boys to bed each night in one hotel room was a bit brutal. Lots of jumping on beds and pillow fights and pulling the whole room apart and not listening. As always, I had to think for everyone, making sure we had what we needed for each thing we were doing, packing up hotel rooms every one or two days, planning ahead for not being able to get directions due to no cell service - it was extremely mentally draining. But there’s no helping it - I want to do these complicated trips, and only I can make them happen. So I really have no business complaining.
One of the sweetest moments was, at one point when conditions in our hotel room were especially chaotic, I joked that when we get home we should continue to all sleep in one bedroom. Everyone yelled out “noooo!” except Theo, who said, “yeah! That’d be nice!” How cute is that?
Whenever I leave the house overnight I’m convinced a) the cat will die and/or b) someone will break in. Thankfully neither of those things happened, but I was left with a huge mess that ruined my day today and probably will ruin several more - despite having a neighbor start my car every few days so it wouldn’t die, the car was dead. I called AAA to jump it this morning so I could run errands, and he mentioned my battery was on its last legs and if I turned off the car it probably wouldn’t start again. This lead to a five hour odyssey which included, but was not limited to: calling a battery place the AAA guy recommended only to be told I’d have to get the battery through my dealer since my car’s a hybrid, calling the dealer to order the battery and being told it would cost $900 and wouldn’t be here for a week, then being told I’d have to personally come into the dealership to order it, getting to the dealer and having to run around and loudly demand somebody get someone in the service department to help me since nobody was available anywhere in the entire dealership (I guess everyone goes to lunch at the same time?), then being told by the service guy (who did not test anything) that no, I probably didn’t need the whole hybrid battery replaced but just the regular battery and anyone could do that, and I’d have to leave the car all day to get the battery replaced and so should just take it to some battery guy to get it done quickly and cheaply, then trying to leave but discovering I’d been blocked in and having to run around and ask everyone if that was their truck, half of whom completely ignored me and wouldn’t answer me until I started yelling, “hello???” in their faces, until finally it got moved, then going to the original battery guy I’d called who proceeded to COMPLETELY DISMANTLE MY CAR looking for the battery but couldn’t find it and then after an hour of this told me again I’d just have to go to the dealer, waiting for my car to be completely reassembled while calling the dealer multiple times and never even getting to voicemail but just being told nobody can take my call and to call back later, calling the H and sending him multiple pictures of my engine only to be told he can’t figure out where the battery is, either, then deciding I’m so goddamned hungry I have to grab something to eat and might as well take my chances and get groceries like I was supposed to even though I may not have a running car when I get back with bags of melting groceries, then deciding to check on the kids since they’ve been left alone now four hours and haven’t eaten anything, only to have Bobby not answer any calls or texts to the watch I had him put on before I left just in case, then deciding to use the tracking device on the watch and being shown that he’s inexplicably blocks away which got my heart pumping (thankfully I called Theo’s watch which he was not wearing and Bobby answered - he had his watch on silent mode (why???) - and everything was fine, no explanation as to why the watch’s tracking was so off, which it’s never ever been before), then trying two locations to return some red box videos we’d rented on the road only to find them both gone, then leaving multiple messages at multiple car dealers and repair places only to have none of the calls returned, and finally getting home to cook dinner and do three loads of laundry and all of my backed up event work and having to leave a window open on my car all night in case it dies and needs to be jumped again but we can’t get in to pop the hood to be jumped because someone broke the lock, and being convinced someone is going to steal it or sleep in it all night and ruin it because now anyone can break in or take it with the window open, and finally after multiple calls getting an appointment at 8 AM tomorrow, and now there’s this issue of leaking oil and that plus the weirdness of this battery issue means I may have no car for many days and I leave for Korea early next week. And have a gig an hour and a half away tomorrow, and dropping the kids at summer camp two and a half hours away on Sunday and then I immediately have to go sing at Knott’s and will barely make it if I make it on time at all.
Today was unbelievably stressful and one of those rare days where you just feel like you’re going to lose it all day and I turned into the kind of person who gets in people’s faces and demands things and is not polite or friendly which is not like me at all. But right now everything is very uncertain - I would say maybe I’ll just take the car to the dealer and they’ll switch out the battery and it’ll be no big deal…but now is the perfect time to address the massive pool of oil under my car that I initially thought was from the H’s old car but as of today I know isn’t, and has to be fixed immediately. So I most likely will be without a car for a while. I don’t know what I’m going to do, tbh. I haven’t thought that far ahead. I’m just going to take it one minute at a time. See, this is why I used to trade cars in every three years. Not a very happy homecoming.
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