Revive

I’m about to go on vacation, which means that posts may be infrequent and sporadic for the next twelve days. Headed up to Massachusetts, or as they say where I’m from, Massatoosis. (You know, I was born and raised on the North Carolina-Tennessee border, and I heard many a folk from Watauga County talk about chewing food and dining room sets. I don’t know why they couldn’t say Massa-chew-sets.)

Everyone who has ever traveled I-95 knows that, to quote Obi-Wan, you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy than the highways surrounding the Metropolitan DC area. Last year, my then-seven-year-old niece, Violet, the four-month-old Redford, and I spent four hours in that bitch of a parking lot, and not at rush hour either. I called my brother to have him Matrix me out of that mess, but the signs were so confusing I ended up driving right into the zone that his Googlemaps had marked red.

On the way home, I got wise—threw my niece (gently, of course, Wa) and dogs into the car at 8:00pm, set the cruise to nine miles an hour over, and hit Durham at 8:00 in the morning. Then I passed out, natch.

So I’m going to try the all-nighter on the way up this time. I seemed to remember having a sample of Vivarin in my first aid box, so I just dug it out. Stamped on the side of the pouch was “EXP 04 99”. Meh. I’ll try it anyway. I mean, the worst that can happen is that it can not wake me up, right? It won’t make me grow chest hair or anything, will it? Or rupture my spleen? Or give me some sort of palsy?

On second thought, maybe I’ll buy some new.