Ohio trip: Part 1
Every quarter, Susan is obliged to go off to Columbus, Ohio, for an oversight and chat sort of thing with the Ohio Department of Agriculture, as she’s in charge of their grant money for their pesticide-handling program. Since Meredith came around, she’s tended to do these as compressed as she could in time - quick in and out - because Mere Doesn’t Like A No-Mommy situation. She’ll tolerate it, but she doesn’t care for it at all, and is much happier having Mom At Home With Her.
In general, really, she has an idea of the ‘proper’ situation - surrounded by ‘her’ people, things, and so on, and she dislikes being separated from them. And yes, that includes Sissy.
Anyway, Susan suggested that Meredith and I go out with her; I love to go back to Ohio to see people, and Mere has had a Jones to go on a vacation, and to see some of the Ohio folks, so Mere and I jumped at the chance.
Wednesday was a travel day; Chicago to Indianapolis to Columbus, with no planned stops along the way. Mere decided after a stop at a middle-of-nowhere KFC in Indiana to start being ‘the navigator’ and follow our progress closely on the pile of maps that I had with us. (Since I’ve been the ‘family navigator’ since I was small, and I’m a total map freak, this certainly didn’t bother me a bit.) The trip was also littered with my commentary to the Back Seat Driver (Mere) about some of the things we would see on the trip and the things we came across. I’ve been making trips from and to Ohio for thirty years and I know the territory well.
Long trips for Mere usually involve her taking along her DVD portable, and either listening to music or watchign DVDs, and she has a toy box along with loaded with books and games, so she was pretty much set for most of the trip with that stuff or her ‘navigation’ work. She also has been getting into knitting, and she finished a sock on the way.
Once we were in Ohio, the road got more torn up from construction, and the weather got seriously bad; a LOT of heavy rain, and when we got to Columbus, tornado sirens started going off near at the hotel on the far East side of the city. This slowed us down until the all-clear came around, and then we unpacked and set off for dinner with Mark Evans and his family at a nearby steakhouse.
(Mark’s boys had grown quite a bit; I’ve know Mark for many years, and watched the boys grow up from a distance.)
The next day, Susan went off to her duties, and Mere to hers - working on her homework for school (she was missing a couple of days on this trip) and grooving on a jazz station on the Radio. She’s turned into a real fan of jazz and the Beach Boys; it’s interesting to hear her talk about John Coltrane!
After that, we spent the afternoon at a nearby county fair, the last of the season; she had a great time checking out the displays, the exhibits and especially the animals. She learned about the varieties of animals, got to see how big they were (the cows and the mamma pig surprised her in size) and even did well in a little kid quiz on the names for farm animals. Surprised one of the farm kids about her age on the matter.
The big attraction for her at the fair was a bee hive; she was terribly fascinated by it, spotted the queen, and asked a lot of questions. Normally, she’s scared by insects (especially after the spider bite stuff that put her in the hospital) but - well, this was different. She loves honey, for one thing, the bees were behind glass, and she was safe - and totally focused.
But the cold wind that shot through the fair froze her, and she finally decided enough was enough and gave up and we headed back to the car.