Bad Day on the East End

Well nothing like a little ride in the country to make a gal homicidal.

We decided to "make a drive" as my father-in-law calls it. He had to go to the bank in Riverhead, make a stop at Borders. Then the plan was that we would stop for lunch and a winery on the north fork before taking the Shelter Island ferries back to the Harbor. Ideal? Idyllic? Bah!!! What do you know!

First instead of taking the direct route, we have to drive over freaking backroad in this godforsaken county. Invariably the road is poorly paved and filled with information about my father-in-laws self-absorbed adventures. GREEAATT. At this point the kids start complaining about sea-sickness caused by the winding road and bumpiness combined.

Then we stop at the bank so FIL can cash MIL's jury duty check. Then we take so more back roads past every trailer park in Riverhead until we make our way back the highway and made our way to Borders. In Borders I run the kids around to the appropriate section so they can look for books. The Angel was specifically looking for the Edgar and Ellen series....but they were sold out! Darn. I start looking around a couple of minutes later when Daddy takes over. I have looked for about 5 minutes when I am told that FIL is done and it is time to go. 10 minutes in a bookstore? What kind of monster can do that? Cripes, that is completely un-natural. Hubby does his best to buy me some more time so I can find Sarah Vowell's Partly Cloudy Patriot. Finally hubby rushes up to tell me that his mother has abandoned the store and is sitting in the car. My luck has run out. 15 minutes is the limit. I check out.

Now we are back in the car.... circling, circling around and around. "What should we do now?" FIL asks. "Well," Hubby responds, "You did say something about lunch before hitting the winery". "I DID?" FIL queries? "I said something about lunch"? Hubby and I exchange glances. Does this mean he doesn't want to go to lunch, does this mean he doesn't want to pay for lunch? Has he just lost his memory or more likely, his mind? Who in enfer knows? "Forget it" I say. "Let's just head back".

Now begins the back-pedaling from the front seat. "OH, it's ok, we can do lunch" Even Hubby is peeved. Nope.. the kids are being irritating, let's just get to the winery and go home.

Naturally this is the time for the kids to start in on how hungry they are! So we travel on... kids bitching, ILs mumbling back and forth about why we aren't stopping anymore.. until we get to the winery. It is the quickest trip in the world. We taste the couple that we want buy them. The kids each get a soda and a handful of "palate-cleansing" crackers and we are off.

What a nightmare! No more country drives for me!