I am sure you are all familiar with the concept of The Bermuda Triangle. For those of you who may not be familiar with it, let me explain the concept as I know it.
The Bermuda Triangle is a place that is supposed to be relatively uncharted because once someone enters it, they can never leave. So, it is said it is out in the middle of the ocean somewhere, where people were known to have gone by plane or boat, but never returned. One could say that the TV show "Lost" is based upon such a place.
Well, as parents of relatively small children, we seem to stumble upon our own areas of The Bermuda Triangle, or black holes in the time/space continuum, locally. I am not entirely sure whether these black holes will disappear as my children get older or whether they really do exist.
For now, I might be better off documenting where we've been stuck in a "Bermuda Triangle" and try to avoid the area altogether. I may as well start with our own front door at home. I have to say that, on a good day, with 4 kids ages 9, 6, 3, and 1.5 years of age, it takes at least 20 minutes to get out the front door and into the minivan to go anywhere, assuming that we have dropped everything and headed straight out the door. If all of us happen to be appropriately dressed to be seen in public, then half of the time is spent finding two matching shoes for Xander (my 1.5 year old) to wear. He has about 5 pairs of shoes, but we can only find one half of each pair. Some days I would call it good if I could find a mismatched pair, but I can only seem to locate the right-footed shoe of each. Often the search is accompanied by the usual argument of who-is-not-to-wear-what or the quantity of toys to be brought to the van. Sometimes this makes 20 minutes stretch into an hour.
Once we are in the van, it takes at least 10 minutes for a family of 6 to fasten their seat belts. Honestly, I did not realize how complicated such a simple task could be. I thought that Xander's situation would be the most complex as he has a 5 point harness, but he is usually long since buckled by the time the rest of the children are. Evy, my 9 year-old, is usually buckled first and is kind enough to help Penny, my 3 year old, when her belt is twisted or stuck. Seren, my 6 year old, seems to have the most challenges with the seat belt. Even though Seren sits in the center of the van next to Xander, it seems that in order for her to buckle her seat belt as instructed, it requires of her to take a trip all of the way back to the van. Next, she must go all of the way to the front and remove an item of interest that either Mike or I placed in the front for safe-keeping. Then, the seatbelt requires her to bend over and look under the center seats to pick up any other items of interest, but not any garbage she may have left behind from a previous trip. Last, but not least, as the seatbelt's last demand before submitting to the bucking process, Seren must remove any items of interest from Xander's hands, eliciting a perfect sacrificial scream of disappointment and ensuring the seatbelt's cooperation. At that time, the seatbelt can finally be buckled.
Yesterday, all of the above happened and then some. We had planned to spend the day in San Francisco, three hours away from Sacramento, since we were attending a company-paid Giants game in the evening. Miraculously, we were all in the van and ready to go only 10 minutes after my targeted time of 9am. We ventured on over to a gas station that also serves ready-to-order breakfast burritos as a planned stop to cover breakfast. This took an hour, which was almost as planned.
Then, we left the gas station and just got on the freeway when Penny opened her cubby hole she sits next to, which proved to unleash an entire Pandora's Box of terrible smells. This was NOT planned. We pulled over at another gas station just a mile down the road to remove the smell, which Penny aptly said smelled like puke. Although it was a cup of nasty stuff Penny had been stowing away for who knows how long, it was not puke, but it did almost conjure it when it was removed and cleaned. Penny got some on her and needed to change her clothes. This whole ordeal lasted an hour, then we were on our way again, two hours after we initially embarked on our trip.
We were on interstate 80, well across Sacramento, when traffic came to a complete stop. Bumper to bumper traffic as far as the eye could see, unusual for a Saturday. After pulling up different traffic websites, the information showed that traffic was unusually heavy and slow on I-80 from Sacramento all of the way to San Francisco and we were stuck in it. Then I heard the five most dreaded and commonly uttered words in such situations: "I need to go potty!" That was when I suspected that Sacramento was a Bermuda Triangle.
We pulled off at the next exit and pulled up a different route to San Francisco via I-5. This was not the most direct route (the most direct route was clogged, as Seren would say), but we had never taken it before. It was a gorgeous drive along Sacramento's River and Delta, which tacked on another hour to our exit of Sacramento and took 3 hours in total. Once we left, it took only another two hours to get to San Francisco. We had to rearrange some plans we had for the day, but we got to the game ahead of time and enjoyed our evening.
We drove back from San Francisco uneventfully. However, we were hoping we wouldn't hear those five dreaded words as we passed our original Bermuda Triangle, a Target store we stopped at on a previous visit. We fondly remembered how we stopped for some supplies on that visit then headed to go on our merry way to a San Francisco beach. We got to the van and as we pulled out onto the freeway, Evy said, "Wait! I left my cell phone in the bathroom!" We turned around, headed back, and Evy and I went in to claim her cell phone. We headed back out on our way and as we were leaving the parking lot, Seren sang out: "I need to go potty!" Back to Target we went, where all of the girls made one last trip. Those five little words made one last attempt as we tried to leave the parking lot for the last time, but to no avail. Mike and I were convinced we had to leave that Target if we were going to get anywhere that day. We have avoided that location since.
