I love you more than Taco Bell.

Life is busy, and I am lazy, so between those two is the reason I forgot to tell you that Eve had another check-up in January.  So, she had a check-up in January.

Check-ups are easy, it's just making sure no one wants to over-scan your kid that's the hard part.  Like, I'm all for being diligent, but when I say Just put it on our tab! all fun and fancy-free, I don't really mean that.  We are already in medical debt up to our eyeballs, and that's saying something because my eyeballs are even higher than most people because I'm really tall.  So, the hardest thing is convincing the ultrasound tech that no, I don't really think we need to have a chest x-ray since we're going to get a chest CT done in an hour.  It's already like an x-ray, but better.  I know this because I've seen the bills pictures.  I should be more scared of extra radiation, but isn't that like spitting in the ocean at this point?  Right now, I'm most scared of not having this paid off before the cyborg collection agents of the future thaw my cryogenically frozen body.

Blood pressure cuffs could keep us busy for minutes on end.  MINUTES!



Laser beams.  LASERS!



The guy in radiation let Dan look at the computer to make sure the pics were okay.



Dan said they were cool.  Eve was like, sweet.



Everything looked good, dot dot dot, victory tacos.



VICTORY TACOS!  And Eve tells me, "I love you more than Taco Bell."  Which pretty much means that I'm the awesomest and you better not forget it.

Then it was totally snowing and the roads were icy but I was like, WE ARE DRIVING STRAIGHT UP TO MARYLAND RIGHT NOW.  And I said it just like that, in all caps, but I boldfaced right now.

I get nervous driving on ice ever since back in college I decided I was going to drive to the pharmacy (in my pajama pants) and pick up some medicine.  I hit a patch of black ice and flew off the road.  After the tow truck got me out of the ditch, I decided I didn't need the medicine all that bad (but I certainly could have benefited from a real pair of pants and probably a bra, and most certainly something on my feet that weren't the combination of socks and ugly shower shoes of the late nineties), so I backtracked to go home and there was an ice-accident in front of me and then I couldn't stop and then I hit the car who just hit the car in front of them and then the police officer came over and said, "Didn't I just pull you out of a ditch and tell you to go home?"  And then I finally made it home and put on a bra and vowed never to drive on ice or use run-on sentences again.

But vows are meant to be broken.  Except for marriage vows.  And silence.  And celibacy.

The ice was the worst getting out of North Carolina, but once I hit Virginia, it turned into a lovely blizzard and I felt comfortable driving at normal speeds, probably lulled into a false sense of security because the freshly fallen snow had covered up the road and my ability to see any icy patches.  There weren't many other vehicles out, but that may have been because I was driving in a snow globe and couldn't see ten yards in front of me.  The thing that started sucking was that my wiper fluid thingamajigger stopped working so any precipitation would immediately freeze on the windshield.  It's hard to drive when you can't see but it makes for a more exciting trip when you get to pull over every few minutes to scrape down your windows and hope oncoming traffic can see far enough ahead to not run you over.  I live for this shit!

And I totally claim responsibility for holding up traffic on the Potomac River bridge into Maryland, for all of y'all who were cussing at the black minivan going 15 mph on the evening of January 25th.  But everyone knows that bridges freeze before roads, and as the roads were already frozen, I assumed the bridge was frozen, too, just frozen longer.  Which really didn't matter since an ice cube that has been frozen for a day isn't any less frozen than an ice cube that has been frozen for a week, unless you tried to add alcohol.  Anyway, with only two lanes and no place to pull over, I think we can spend the extra five minutes not honking or shooting the bird or mouthing really angry looking messages that I can't hear but making it safely over to the other side where you can relax because the liquor stores in southern Maryland are ALWAYS OPEN.

So, it only took an extra couple of hours to get up there but it was worth it, because I got to bundle all of them up like Randy from A Christmas Story and send them outside to play in the snow in the middle of the night while I stayed inside and had a glass or four of something good.



The only thing that had more salt than the rim of my margarita glass was my van.



...but if you pour salt on a slug it will shrivel up and die get skinny, therefore, dot dot dot, salt is good.  Eat more french fries.  Peace out.