The Trip Home

The ride home was not fun! We got a later start than we had hoped to. By the time we had breakfast and got through the construction in Orlando it was already noon. I had agreed to drive and save the money it would have cost to fly with the understanding that we would be making freqent stops so that I could get out of the car and move around. I do not do well for more than a couple of hours in the car. My back and hips start to hurt and my knees lock up. I thought our plan was to stop for the night around sevenish. Apparently Tom had other plans. As the day wore on I noticed my feet and ankles swelling so I swapped places with Kacie and got in the back seat and tried putting my feet up on her pile of pillows and blankets hoping the swelling would go down. The swelling kept getting worse 'til I didn't even have ankles any more and my legs were hurting. It was really scaring me because I have never swelled up like that before! I kept asking Tom to stop and he kept saying that he wanted to get a few more miles in before we stopped since we had gotten a late start. I think he was really hoping that I would just fall asleep so he could drive straight through the night. It finally got so bad that I was crying and literally begging him to stop. Of course by then we weren't near any large cities so our hotel choices in the middle of BFE were skanky and skankier so we got in a fight when I told him, as much as I wanted to get the hell out of the car,I was not staying there. So we went to the next exit and found an acceptable hotel. This was sometime between 10 & 11 and I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow. By morning the swelling had gone down and I felt alot better. When I explained to Tom how frightened I had been by the swelling he apologized for being a butthead and made sure we made stopped every couple of hours the rest of the way home. By the time we were about midway through Ohio we ran into snow that turned into a full on blizard as we returned to Michigan. We did spend a few minutes calculating how much was left in the bank and fantasizing about turning around and heading back to Florida! LOL