Adam rushes out the door this morning to insure the SUV we’re borrowing.
He comes home, perfect timing as I’ve just gotten Olive to sleep and put her in her car seat. He comes in, slams the door, Olive is awake!
We load up, us in the front, Olive in the middle, Gus in the back. He’s ridiculously unstable yet refuses to sit or lie down and instead spends the entire ride lurching around while coating all of our luggage, gifts, etc. with a festive coating of dog hair, cemented in place with generous gobs of drool.
We can’t figure out how to turn the air down below sweltering, but we need it on to de-fog the windshield so we drive sweaty and smelling of anxious dog, down to Vancouver.
We pick my mom up and while throwing her luggage in the back Gus tries to escape. After getting sharply reprimanded he tries to go the opposite way and climb over the middle row of seats.
I throw myself over Olive to try and protect her from the frantically lumbering mass of paws and jowls, while simultaneously yelling at him to get in the back.
Chastened, he resumes his unsteady careening.
Hey! We’re on the move!
We arrive at the ferry with plenty of time to spare. While we wait, I feed Olive. She spits up on me, cries, I feed her again. She feels wet so I change her on the only free space available- my lap.
She pees. On me. And my sweater. And my pants. Aannd the front seat and the new diaper.
I get a new, new-diaper, change her and go to meet Adam and my mom on the upper ferry deck.
We get lunch, and midway through, Olive pees again, soaking through her diaper and cute Christmas outfit. As i stare at her and groan “Olllive! Not again!” she shoots me a huge gummy grin.
I get up to go to the car to get a change of clothes for me, a new diaper for her and a fresh onesie.
As I get up, Adam asks why I don’t just wait until we get back to the car, and I say, “Because she’s covered in pee! I’m covered in pee! Everything is covered in pee!”
The family beside us stares, mouths agape as their forks hover over their unfinished meals. All I can do is apologize and start laughing.
Down on the vehicle deck I wrestle Gus for access to the back, and try to quickly find clean pants in our suitcases stuffed to the brim with clothing and presents.
He tries to escape again as I close the door and I narrowly miss shutting his slavering jaws in the door.
I huff and puff up the three flights of stairs, as I reach the top I hear the announcement that the ferry is docking and it’s time to return to your vehicles.
Olive pukes all over my moms shoulder.
On the drive in between ferries I fiddle with the dashboard until I somehow get it to spew cold air instead of hot. Except I don’t know what I did or how to undo it, and now we are freezing.
Internets, we still have three hours to go.
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