Monday, August 19, 2013

Vacation week 1 of 3 (old draft--2010!)

(Started: Dec 17)

...began with me coming home at 3:20 am on Friday, Dec 17. Couldn't help it--I had work to put in order for others to continue while I am away. Rather, it helped me stay calm--I was bound to have insomnia that night because we were supposed to make a road trip to Vadodara the next day. I would have been much too excited / suffered from HPD (Hyperactive Packing Disorder--one among my various personalized pshychological conditions). Returning home that late kept my disorder at bay and I tried to finish my packing, but felt tired enough to sleep. The alarm woke me up at 7:00 am, which meant I was really sleeping and not wondering whether I slept through the sounds of the alarm.

I was up and packing in no time. Hubs had left clothes and other material out along with the traveling bags--the bugger knows I will not let him pack shabbily and keep repacking until everything is fit into optimal space. A little elf also paid us a visit and did other chores like cleaning the dishes, etc. I excused his laziness to get out of the bed the next morning only thanks to the elf.

The house seemed very quiet and empty because we'd dropped off Mojo and Phoebe at the pet resort the previous day itself. To our surprise and huge relief, they hadn't whined and cried their heads off during the night. The past couple of times that we left them behind, they gave the caretakers much trouble. Mojo would keep yelping for us and Phoebe would join him throwing in barks for good measure. This time I thought of putting them on medication (Anxocare) for calming their nerves, but they surprised us by doing so well without it. We thought of meeting them for a bit before we began the journey and so went to the resort, but the caretaker did not allow us to disturb them.

We were on our way by 9:00 am instead of 7:00 am as initially planned. But that was ok with me. I was the picture of coolness. There was no panic, no hurry, only an adequate sense of urgency to get on the road so as to reach our destination before it became too dark. We took NH-4 to Mumbai, and I drove until we reached NH-8 via Thane. A loo and inform-the-parents-and-remote-road-trip-advisor break later, hubs took over. Bless his soul, he took us through the most boring part of the drive as I caught up on last night's sleep. On a large stretch of NH-8 in Gujarat, bridges connecting smaller roads to villages and towns on either side were being constructed. On the 6-lane road, there were diversions every couple of kilometers, which merged into one lane, so the traffic was considerably slow. Besides, trucks were probably being driven by snakes, because they seemed to be zigzagging all over the place, possibly unaware of something known as a lane system.

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