Texas Continued

Chapter Three: IKEA

Sarah took us on a day trip to IKEA in Dallas. It was my first time and I was so excited. Amazing!!! It was like a beautiful museum.

Ruby found a few things she wanted to take home as well.

Mindy and Mother took us all to the Puple Pig Cafe for some good ol' Texas BBQ. It was pretty darn good. We will be visiting it again, I am sure. ;) The following day we left to go home to Indiana. It was very hard saying goodbye to the Skinners. Texas is just too far away. We were up until midnight almost every night and we were exhausted and ready for our beds at home, but we had a wonderful and memorable time.

Chapter Four: The Trip Home and The Arkansas Black Hole

Are you ready for this? We weren't. We had a slow start heading home because we were not anxious to leave the beloved Skinners. Still we got on the road. We were planning to drive straight through and make it home by three in the morning. Then we hit the black hole called Arkansas. Seriously, what is up with this state.

I was driving on I-40 and the water pump went out. So my power stearing was out and the car was basically just coasting, so I pulled over the side of the busiest interstate I had ever been on. We called Daddy and asked for advice, then looked up a couple tow truck numbers on the internet and found where we were on the map. It was eighty something outside and pretty miserable. Poor Joey, Mommy and my girls were stuck in the back of the car. Mother started stripping the girls down to cool off even.

When Mindy finally got ahold of a local tow trucker they told her they could not pick us up unless they had a mile marker. We were about half a mile away from one, so Mindy got out on the passenger side, hiked over the guardrail and walked the half mile. There wasn't really much space to walk on because on the other side of the guardrail was a small rivine. I was so worried that we would never see Mindy again.

Finally, a State Trooper came along and answered all of our prayers, but pay attention because the story is going to get a lot more interesting now. The trooper saw that we had babies in the car and offered to arrange a ride and service for us. He said he would stay with us until we were all settled. He called the nearest tow truck company and repair garage (we were limited because it was a Saturday) and the tower said that they could just hoist us all up on the back of their truck. The trooper said, "I beg your pardon," in the best southern accent you can imagine. Then he proceeded to tell Mindy that Triple HHH would be towing us. With his thick accent it sounded like he was saying triple AAA, so Mindy corrected him and said that we did not have service with triple AAA. He repeated himself a few times and we finally understood what he meant.

The tow truck arrived and they only had room for two people. The trooper offered for Joey, Me and the girls to ride in his car. When I asked if I should get their car seats he said that I would be riding in a state trooper car so who would be pulling me over. Really, I wasn't convinced that he would be the safest of drivers. Nothing else had gone so well for us in that state but I went with it. Joey climbed in the front and the girls and I went in the back. No joke, when we got in it was an M-16, Ruby and Me and Annalyse, with a shotgun hanging in front of us. It was a very memorable ride in the squad car as I tried to keep my two year old from playing with the multiple weapons in the vehicle. As cars drove by they kept staring at me and girls in the back seat as if to say, "what did you do?"

Once we got to the repair garage the trooper began to reassure us that we were in good hands. Then the garage door got stuck trying to open. They couldn't get our van in. The trooper tried kept reassuring us that we "should" be fine, but we should stear clear of the building across the parking lot. He said it was full of truckers and bad stuff, but we "should" be okay. We knew it was a bad sign when the trooper was reluctant to leave. We went inside out of the heat to a small waiting room (pictures to follow). As we waited the man working on the broken garage door opens up the door yelling out to his coworker, cussing him up and down, then yells that he is going home and slams the door. Next we hear his truck leave. We were convinced we were never getting home. Then when we asked the toothless receptionist if we could use the restroom she said we shouldn't because she doesn't even use it. She said it had never been cleaned. GROSS!! Black hole, people, black hole. How do people live in this state.

Finally, they got smart and just lowered the van off the tow truck and pushed it in the garage. We started to notice that Mindy was spending a lot of time out in the garage. We figured out why. The guy fixing the van was a very grungy looking Thor-like man, according to Mindy. She said he caught her looking at him and he just smiled and lifted his shirt up to wipe his face, showing all of his stomach muscles to her. At least Mindy was having fun.

They weren't joking about the building across the parking lot. We went in to use the restroom and we had to cover our eyes and plug our noses. It was aweful.

Ok, so we are stuck in Arkansas in a run down repair garage with dirt and grime everywhere and Thor working on our van. Then a little boy shows up with a grown man's shirt on. He starts asking us if we have snacks and stuff to do. So we share our snacks with him and we plug in the computer and let him watch movies with Ruby. He starts telling us that he lives upstairs with his dad because the police man shot his house and blew it up. Oh dear. At one point I was on the phone with Sarah, explaining the events up to that point, when I have to put down the phone and yell out to the kid's dad, "do you want him to have that saw." Oh dear. Sarah was probably thinking that we were going to die.

Here is the view from our holding cell into the garage.

Our holding cell. We just tried not to let anything touch the floor.

We added a few more holes to the wall.

We waited about six hours for the van to be fixed before we were finally able to leave. Needless to say, we stopped at a hotel for the night. Mindy was the only one who struggled to leave. She would like to see Thor one more time. As for the rest of us, we will find a different route to Texas next time. One that does not include Arkansas.