Little Orange Men

RoadConstruction
Originally uploaded by neila222.

I hate road construction! I cannot possibly express to you in words how much I despise everything about it – the orange cones, the blinking arrows, the workmen in orange vests doing nothing but sitting on the curb eating sandwiches, except for the lone driver who has driven a backhoe in the middle of the street so he can block traffic just to see how long it takes before someone gives him the finger. All of it makes my eye twitch.

Yesterday, we needed to run to the store for milk and baby wipes. That’s it! I needed two items. I was planning to go to Aldi, which is right down the street. We should have been there and back in about 20 minutes.

When I finally found Eli’s shoes, changed another of Georgia’s poopy diapers and made sure I had my keys, we were out the door about 11:30. I have discovered over the summer that it is damn near impossible to drive down any street in the greater Kansas City area without encountering the evil construction spawn. And I do mean spawn – it multiplies in triplicate every night!

Today was no exception. Just when I thought I had an alternate route available with minimal road construction, I discovered that my house was literally boxed in. I have two streets I can take to get from my house to Aldi. I passed one street, which was blocked by a flashing arrow, orange cones, and a line of cars with very confused-looking drivers. I kept going. Street #2 was blocked off with orange cones and a big tractor-roller-crane looking thing that was attempting to flatten black tar.

When I saw that there was actually no way for me to get to the store, I screamed. I literally screamed in my car. Eli laughed. Then I called his father because I actually needed to scream at a person. He barely got out “This is Eric,” before I launched into my tirade of how every construction worker in the city had some misplaced vendetta against me, and how I felt the city needed to pay for my gas, since I was forced to drive south aimlessly until I could find a street on which to turn. When I took a breath, Eric said, “Who is this?”

Okay, that is NOT funny!!

It seriously took me 25 minutes to finally loop around and get to the damn store when it should have only taken me 5 minutes! To top it all off, they were OUT of baby wipes! I restrained myself from screaming or bursting into tears right there in the store. However, I was desperately wishing they sold alcohol at that point. Since I couldn’t get baby wipes (or wine), I bought myself a one-pound bag of peanut M&M’s to make up for it. *sigh*

Luckily, when I did finally loop around and get back home (at 12:45, no less! 1 hour 15 minutes later in case you’re counting), I was able to get my sweet baby with the very sore gums to take a long nap. At 3 p.m., I finally caved to Eli’s request and let him hole up in front of the TV and watch Dora videos. And I tried my hardest to avoid doing anything productive.

I surfed the Internet when I seriously needed to be packing for the weekend. We are traveling to the bowels of western Kansas for Eric’s cousin’s wedding, where there will be no Internet access or cell phone coverage (argh!). I have to admit I am looking forward to the wedding. And not just because there will be free beer. (Yippee!) It will be nice to go to a wedding and not have to do anything. I can just sit there. No fear of tripping down the aisle. No speeches. Nothing. I can sit there and drink my free beer, and teach the kids how to do the chicken dance. It should be a fabulous weekend!