"Mommy, I need the potty!"

Even though today’s blog doesn’t contain any mention of Dunkin Donuts, that will come into play tomorrow as this week’s Thursday 13 is “13 things to which I am addicted!” I came up with nine off the top of my head, which is scary in itself. In the meantime, enjoy the adventure of our drive home.

After a tiring weekend in the bowels of . . . oops. . . I promised my husband I would quit saying the bowels of Western Kansas as he thinks I’m going to offend someone. If any of the 20 people who live in Western Kansas are reading this, I humbly apologize.

Anyway, the kids were exhausted. They played hard and slept little, so I was hopeful they would sleep on the drive home. Georgia did for a little bit, before she decided she was tired of being strapped down, and screamed from Topeka to Kansas City. No amount of singing would help and she threw every toy I gave her. She was pissed.

Eli seemed content early in the drive watching his DVD player – he currently has a frightening obsession with the Teletubbies which I pray daily is just a passing phase.

As we tooled down I-70 in the pouring rain, we came upon Junction City. You all my know it as the place Timothy McVeigh stayed the night before he drove to Oklahoma to blow up a building. We think of it as the last place to stop for a bathroom break before Topeka which is 50 something more miles.

We asked Eli, “Do you need to go potty?” He said “No.” “Are you SURE? This is the last stop before Topeka. If you don’t go now, you’ll have to wait almost an hour.” Again, “Nope.” We drove on past. About five minutes later – “Mommy, I need to go potty.” Oh crap!

“Sweetie, we just asked if you needed to potty and you said you didn’t.” “But I need to go nooooow.” “Well, you’re going to have to wait about 45 minutes until we get to Topeka.” “But mooooomeeeeee! I need to go potty noooooooow!”

I was left with two options. I carry a porta-potty in my trunk for just such an occasion. Option #1 we could pull over along I-70 and whip out the porta-potty. However, I think I mentioned it was pouring rain. Complete with scary lightning. So that option was a big NO. The second option was to hand Eli a cup to try to pee into. Luckily, my car always seems to be littered with numerous empty coffee cups.

I’m betting there are a number of guys out there who use option number two as opposed to stopping the car. . . never mind – I don’t want to know. Anyway, after evaluating Eli’s aim in the bathroom at home, I decided I didn’t want urine dripping from the back of the driver’s seat, so that option was out, too.

We were left with every car game we could think of, listening to Eli’s favorite Wiggles CD, and promising him candy if he could hold it.

I have never seen Eric drive faster, and when we got to the first exit, he took it and pulled into a McDonalds. Eli, who had been moaning in complete bladder agony for the last half hour looked across the street and said, “I don’t WANT to go to McDonald’s to go potty. I want to go to the Dairy Queen over there.” Considering I would have peed in an outhouse when I was on the verge of bladder explosion, I was beginning to think maybe he was exaggerating. Hmmm . . . I wonder who he gets that from.