Psycho GPS and a 7 Eleven trash can

Psycho GPS and a 7 Eleven Trashcan

Martha really is a neat little thing! We have used her help for finding unique places that we would not have found on our own. However, she sometimes gives pretty weird directions. Every once in awhile she’ll say “turn on road” what road?? Or “Off road”…why would we go “off road”??? And then there is the whole “r-e-c-a-l-c-u-l-a-t-i-n-g” thing every time we pull off the highway for gas. Which is fairly often since my biggest fear after being on an isolated road and having to pee, is being on an isolated road and needing gas.

And then there are times when Martha seems to just do her own thing. The kids and I laugh when she seems to think we are going one place and we are really going another. Oddly, this seems to happen mostly at night when the GPS screen takes on a darker hue. It’s almost as if Martha…becomes someone else! Garrett re-named Martha, “Graham” and we now refer to “Graham” as Martha’s darkside; her alter ego.

7 Eleven

A few months ago the WSJ ran an AP article about a woman traveling across the country with her dog. She mentioned sitting in a hotel room, eating a greasy KFC dinner, while her dog ate organic lamb, rice and vegetable dog chow from Whole Foods. Yep, the dog was eating better than she was! This was the kind of funny stuff she talked about and it was fun to read most of the article out loud to Lloyd and the kids over breakfast. But then she talked about how her car looked by the end of the trip…. like a 7 Eleven trashcan. This hit close to home. I made a mental note to NOT let my beautiful new Sequoia get to this point. But here we are, 2 weeks into the trip and the car is looking pretty bad. I even found a baggie of baby carrots under the seat. At least I think they were baby carrots. I do have pretty good vegetable recognition skills. It’s a good thing they were still in a baggie. We’ve had some pretty hot days and compost happens quickly in a car!

As I mentioned earlier, we are getting Lloyd today. Our goal, in addition to driving the 5+ hours to Spokane, WA, is to clean out the car! A carwash would also be really nice, but I haven’t seen one of those since Iowa!