With Six Months to Spare Could I Read it in Advance?

If my normally sultry bedroom voice sounds a bit muffled today it’s because my lips and tongue are slightly swollen and a bit numb from a half a bag of David Sunflower Seeds. They were a tad salty. I ate them in the car in lieu of dinner from Salina, Kansas, to Apathy, Kansas, on the return trip from dropping off the General at the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center. The Boss had purchased food for us to eat in the car but due to a technical difficulty it remained at home while we were on the road. I didn’t want spend money on food on the road so while I stopped for gas on the return trip I grabbed a bag of seeds, thinking that the seeds would hold me over until I arrived at home.

I learned a few things on the trip home. One is that I cannot eat an entire 5.25 ounce bag of seeds by myself on the 168 mile drive home. I learned that the bag’s slogan, “Eat. Spit. Be happy,” works a lot better when you remember to roll down the window before you spit. Most of the shells stuck to the window, but the one that ricocheted back would have scratched my cornea if it wasn’t for my glasses. I also learned that spitting seeds out an open window at 75 miles per hour isn’t such a good idea. I thought they were blowing backwards away from the car until I looked in the mirror and screamed because all the seeds stuck to my face made me look like I had contracted the pox. They blow back into the car.

The booming metropolis of Bonner Springs, Kansas, popped a few thousand bucks for some billboards advertising the shopping opportunities in their fair berg along interstate 70. For the life of me I don’t know what they have besides a Wal*Mart and a Chinese restaurant. Then the Kansas Highway Department closed the one and only exit ramp for Bonner Springs for construction without ever once posting a sign indicating that the exit would be closed. They got their money out of those signs! This particular exit is also the exit for Apathy, so while I flew past said exit I laughed because who in their right mind would turn around at the next exit and drive back to Bonner Springs for Wal*Mart? I exited near the Kansas Speedway on a road I’ve never driven on that wound its way in a large circle with no posted speed limit. I figure that if there was a large circular drive with no posted speed limit near the speedway the speed limit must be somewhere between 180 and 220 miles per hour. I was wrong.

Now, the technical difficulty that left the food in the refrigerator and brought on the sunflower seed buffet was the moment when General Mayhem brought out the sheet of paper that told us where to check-in once we arrived at Hutchinson. It was at that moment that we realized that check-in time was between 2 and 2:45 in the afternoon and not between 5 and 5:45 in the afternoon as we previously thought. I glanced at my watch. It read 1:00 pm. I’m not certain if the words “Oh, shit!” actually left my mouth or if the internal monologue remained internal, but a few seconds later the boy and his gear and I were in the car and speeding down K7 for the 3 ½ drive to the Cosmosphere. The ride was fun and the boy remained calm and when we finally arrived we discovered that the only thing he missed was the half-hour parent orientation and a one-hour lecture/discussion that he would have difficulty sitting through. I won’t be surprised if he asks me if we can be an hour and a half late for space camp next year, too.