Dinner in Indiana by way of Ohio

It's been a whirlwind 48 hours. A very close extended family member received a very significant diagnosis which meant that we wanted... needed... to get over to visit as soon as we could. So our plan was to leave yesterday, visit today as was possible, and then head home. 

Now, there are a lot of moving pieces when you have this many children as well as this many animals. One of those was D. started his spring break today and needed to get home. The original plan (or at least one of them, I'm not sure exactly how many different plans we came up with) was that we would take two cars to Indiana, then I would drive people home and J. would continue on to Ohio, pick up D., then they would drive all the way home. This didn't sound like a lot of fun for anyone. It also meant that D. would have to sit in the student union all day waiting because the dorms closed first thing in the morning. It wasn't exactly an ideal plan.

Then yesterday morning as I was getting dressed, I thought, if I were to leave right now, I could go pick-up D. and meet everyone in Indiana for a late dinner. D. wouldn't have to sit around all day and he could also visit our family member. So that is what we did. I quickly organized what I needed, leaving J. to get everyone else organized. (The original plan had us all leaving after lunch.) Plus, it left the van for TM whose only time to move-in to his new apartment was this weekend and I took the smallest car with the best gas mileage for the longest trip. (You gotta love a car that you can fill up and drive for 350 miles on just $30 of gas. And that's at current prices.) 

I kind of binge listened to The Hidden Brain podcast as I drove. It seems that I have no difficulty listening to podcasts while I am driving, and it helped pass the miles. Once I collected D., he drove back to Indiana. We were a little late for dinner, but they had ordered for us, so food was waiting. In the interim, J. had taken everyone swimming at the pool, earning him the fun parent award. The other reason for the dinner was that W. and MC had come this weekend as well, so we were meeting them and doing a small celebration of W.'s birthday. Our birthday gift to W. was not telling the wait staff that there was any special occasion, thus sparing him publicly sung birthday greetings. Except for maybe R., no one in our family enjoys public displays of birthdays, so it was actually a very good gift.

We had a wonderful visit with our family member, had some lunch and headed back home. J. and I both agree that the whole thing felt a lot longer than just 48 hours. It was totally worth it. 

One funny story, because it still amuses me. I might have mentioned here that I do not do puns well. Family members might say I don't do puns at all. This is because I tend to visualize spellings of words, and once I have one spelling in my head (plus its meaning), it is rare that I even consider another word. The words may sound the same, but to me they are completely different. The other thing you need to know is that I really am not interested in technology. (I know that surprises you.) I know just enough to successfully function in society, but have no desire to bother learning anything more. This includes various cords. Since I really dislike the way cords look strewn about the house, I have even more antipathy towards them. 

Well, since I was driving the very small car, and the very small car does not have a CD player, J. quickly downloaded Spotify on my phone so I had something to listen to. He also showed me how to attach my phone to the car's speakers using the special cord. (I'll ruin the story if I name the cord, so hold on.) I did have a moment of enlightenment when I realized what this mystical cord, which seemed to be so incredibly vital to many of my children's existence, actually did.

Coming home, D. had plugged this special cord into his phone so he could listen to music as he drove. The display helpfully told me that "Aux Input" was currently happening. I wasn't driving, so spent some time staring at the display, when I realized...

Auxiliary

As in Aux

As in Aux Cord

I may have startled D. with my exclamation on figuring this out. You see, all along, when people would get in a bother over whether or not they had an "Ox" cord, it made no sense to me. But then, since most technology makes no sense to me I didn't worry about it. It was yet one more of those mysterious things that I totally didn't care about. 

But they were saying Aux Cord. This makes so much more sense, especially combined with my new knowledge of what the Aux Cord actually does. I do like having little mysteries like this cleared up.