This weekend, I had to go to a wedding outside of Buffalo, New York. I live in Fall River, Massachusetts, which is not exactly around the corner. Now, if I had gone straight to Buffalo from Fall River, it would have been about an 8 or 9 hour drive. I could have dealt with that… a long ride, but not that bad.
But no.
I had to first drive to Brooklyn, NY (200+ miles) and pick up my mother. That added an additional 4-5 hours to the trip. I was looking at 12+ hours in the car with my mother and my husband.
Now, I love my Mom. I really do. My husband I can deal with. But put the two of them together, and there goes my sanity.
We started off with what has come to be known as ‘The Great Noodle Debate’. My husband announced he ate noodles for lunch before we left home. I knew I shouldn’t have said anything, because I know he doesn’t shut up, but I couldn’t stop the words from coming out. ‘But we don’t have any noodles’, I said. ‘Yes, we do’ he said. ‘No, we don’t’ I said. So we went back and forth for a bit, and then he said ‘We have a whole cabinet full of noodles’. I could not let that slip by. I know for a fact that not only do we have no noodles in the house, we certainly don’t have a cabinet full of noodles.
Now, I was annoyed, and the sarcasm guard came down. 'Where exactly can this magical Noodle Cabinet be found, ‘cause I have never seen it’ I said. That was it…he was mad. He told me he ate penne pasta for lunch. I told him penne pasta was pasta, not noodles, and he accused me of being a nit-picker. Whatever. We then got into a whole long debate about the difference between noodles and pasta, which ended with the both of us pissed off, and about 100 miles of blessed, sweet silence.
The silence was finally broken by him telling me I was driving too fast, and by my mother yelling ‘Slow down! Slow down! That car is braking!’ The car was about a half mile ahead of me. I turned up the radio and kept my mouth shut. We still had a good 6 hours ahead of us.
By hour 7 I think I was legally insane. My Mom was yammering about ‘how weird it was that there were no wild monkeys in North America’ and my husband countering that with ‘the only marsupial in North America is the Opossum.’ I piped in with ‘I know of at least one wild monkey in North America, I call it the Great Golden North American Yeti’ and shot my husband ‘the look.’ I was quite proud I was able to piss him off all over again with just one small sentence (remember, I am insane at this point).
We finally make it to Buffalo, check into the hotel, change and go to the wedding.
I do not like weddings. I do not like dancing. I spent most of the time watching other people dance, and making comments to my mother. I had dubbed the Best Man ‘Frankenstein’ and in my best Frankenstein voice I was saying ‘Ugh, me no like dance’ and ‘Ugh, dance baaaad’. My Mom found that amusing. My husband was still not speaking to me. 
The next day we drove over to Niagara Falls. We were on the Canadian side, and I had a fleeting thought of committing murder and running off to live in hiding in the Canadian wilderness. I held myself back from pushing The Man over the edge. I did have a quick fantasy of him falling into the mist, and me yelling ‘Noodles!!!’ and then laughing maniacally. There were so many people around, I didn’t think I’d make it very far. Oh well, maybe next time.
On the way home, we had the ‘Deer Incident’. Somewhere in Pennsylvania, on a dark and twisty road, I came around a curve and saw a big-ass deer standing in the middle of the highway. I wasn’t going that fast (maybe 70), but too fast to stop, and if the deer had been standing in the middle lane rather than the left lane, I may not be writing this right now. Of course, this triggered my husband and my mother to start screaming at me, and I nearly exploded with rage. Was it my fault there was a stupid deer in the road? Would either of them driving the car have changed the outcome? No and NO! So shut up and stop screaming at the person driving the goddamn car!!
Never again will I agree to a road trip with them. Never again.
Sincerely in insanity,
Rose
