Things that make you go “hmmmm…”

Well, I’ve had another pass through Louisiana. I shook my fist at the state. I double dog dared it.

And then….nothing.
Well, nothing in Lousiana anyway. My trip through Louisiana was almost pleasant. The weather was good. The roads were typical and somewhat bumpy, but in a Toyota Sienna I wasn’t half as annoyed as in the tank I drove last year. There wasn’t any fake construction or ‘merging’ (apply finger quotes in a VERY demonstrative fashion if you want to do justice to my statement) into one lane from, like, 8 lanes. There weren’t any storms or accidents or alligator spottings on the 17-mile bridge.

Huh.

After I got all the way through it, I mulled it over. How could it be? How could I have stopped and stayed the night there and traveled all the way through it over the course of two days and had NO trouble?

And then it hit me.
Then I got it.

It went in through the back door. It knew I was looking for all the normal fake construction, ‘merging’, and alligator-bridge-related problems.

Lousiana made a phone call to Florida before we left and had Florida pose as Bad Cop. Florida was Bad Cop. Lousiana was Good Cop.

I don’t even want to talk about Florida. All you really need to know is that it took me like 9 hours to get out of the state (and I did not start off in Miami…) and stopped at a rest stop and an Arby’s where I’m certain we changed a couple of lives for the worse. It was a kid. There were digestive issues.

It was bad.

Anyway, with all of that behind us (no pun intended, but it IS a good one), we had a great Day 2.

All was well until I fell off a treadmill 2 days ago. Since then, I’ve been seeing small monkeys in front of my right eye.

No. Nobody sees small monkeys.

But I did fall off the treadmill and discovered that I am unable to walk or jog to live versions of awesome U2 songs. I got WAAAAAY too into the gospel version of “Still haven’t found what I’m looking for,” I planted my right foot on a non-moving part of the treadmill while my left foot was airborn and the belt was still moving at top speed. Then, my left foot came down and everything went wonky after that. I tried to grab my poor ipod as it flew past me matrix-style (first things first people. Save the ipod!), but I missed it. It hit the belt and flew off backwards. (This might be an upsetting part of the story except for the fact that I had already dropped and stepped on the ipod in the hotel parking lot, shattering the screen.) With my right hand, I grabbed the arm of the treadmill and tried to save myself. This partially worked, as I did not break or sprain or sever anything. All I incurred were a few belt burns on my left leg.

I was able to show my children the leg and say, “There now! THIS is why we don’t mess around on treadmills.”

Indeed.