I said that to say this: I did not build up this weekend to be much of anything. Sidney and I were to drive to Benton to stay with my brother and sister-in-law. Most likely dinner and a little goof time before going to bed and get up a little early to drive into Little Rock for the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure. The troop was slated to be in the parade at 9:30 so we had to meet at 9:00. After the parade, I was to meet up with my sister-in-law and we were going to have lunch and mani/pedis. All of the plans were to change throughout the weekend, but that is the great thing about expectations: when you have none it's easy to be flux.
I left work early on Friday to get the mini-me from school. We hit the craft store to get the supplies for the poster, ran to the gas station to fuel up, and then went to another to use the restroom and get snacks. (The one I purchase gas from has only a kiosk, so we have to go elsewhere for grindage.) Once the tank was full and the bladders were empty, we hit the road. This was the first trip the girl and I have been on without Dad. We've stayed at my mother's house before, but that's just 30 minutes away. This was two hours away and in a city. We were on an adventure of epic proportions. Sidney discovered that she likes Nacho Cheese Bugles but doesn't like Bacon and Cheddar Potato Skins. Yellow car and Slug-Bug is a lot easier to play on the interstate. Truckers will honk their horn if your sitting in front and the windows aren't limo-tint, if there's not a lot of traffic, and if it isn't in the middle of a curve. She found out the meaning of exponentially, and also what an exponent is, so I guess we're ahead of the curve when it gets to that point in math class. She saw her first full-sky sunset. Living on the Ridge and in the woods hampers some things. We made it to Logan's Roadhouse where my daughter mastered the art of dropping a peanut from her nose and landing on a bulls-eye target. She annihilated her popcorn shrimp and drank all of my tea with my Truvia. I have created a monster with that one. Once we got to her aunt and uncle's house, it was time for her to dress for bed and then we started on the poster. I drew out the lettering and smeared the glue. She glittered it and placed the stickers. [see photo gallery] I contemplated not bothering to try to sleep once I laid down. When I found out I didn't have a box fan in my room I knew I was doomed!!! I downloaded an app for white noise that put my daughter to sleep almost instantly. I, however, was filled with anxiety that the alarm clock wouldn't go off on my phone while the white-noise machine was playing. That kept my conscious and sub-conscious working overtime.
When 5:15 came around, I got up and started getting ready since the meeting time cranked back to 7:00 and at the hotel instead of downtown. (I have to say I am REAAAAALLLLYYYY glad this change happened. We would have never found them otherwise.) I got her up about 10 minutes later with the threat of not going if she didn't drag her keister out of bed. I don't do well with repeated pleas for getting up especially when it is that person's event is why I am out of bed and why I am getting them out of bed. Thirty minutes later, we're attempting to load directions onto my phone to get us out of the neighborhood and onto I-30 by way of an eating establishment and a Starbucks, preferably. My phone kept locking up. It took nearly ten minutes to get it to load the directions to the hotel. I was getting frantic at this point, but we made it. Got to the overpass, saw McDonalds, went over the interstate to get there and somehow missed the turn to get there and ended up at a gas station. No big loss, "top 'er off," I thought and in the mean-time figure out how to get over there to McD's. I busted a U, on the other side of the overpass and tried again. I'm not sure either move I made to get into the parking lot was legal, but at 6:30 in the morning on a Saturday and I am running a little behind is not the time to question it. We nixed the Starbucks for a me a coffee from the Arches and a couple of McMuffins; the girl got o.j. We were on our way. I called the troop leader to let her know we were enroute, but might be a few minutes late to which she replied there were still some eating breakfast so there wasn't any danger in my missing the bus. It took no time at all to get there since there's not a whole lot of traffic on the interstate on a sleepy Saturday morning. I can see why she changed the time because the line for the shuttle was crowded. The bus couldn't carry very many people at a time, so it was taking a lot of time for transport. We voted for walking since it was just a mile and I believe we made it there before the ones on the shuttle did! We also had fun during the walk.
I have been in crowds before. Trying to get a good vantage point to see the fireworks at Disney is a crush, but I have never seen that many people in one place that were in such good spirits and so many of them were genuinely nice. The spirit of the day was prolific throughout the crowd and it seemed that we were all sisters (and a few brothers for support.) The costumes ranged from hysterical to phenomenal. Some were down right scary. The common theme was PINK. The number of birds that died for that day were innumerable; feathers were everywhere. I was sincerely glad someone picked blue for our shirt color when it was time to try to work our way through the crowd. We put tattoos on the girls' faces for the only decoration. There were some that had no part of their body unadorned. All of the pink aside, we were there for a reason. We got to witness the profound stories of survival and tragedy. How there are new generations alive today because the mother/grandmother survived breast cancer. How a thirteen year old is still alive because she heard the recommendations for self-examinations and found a lump. This is why millions of people participate in this foundation. Fighting for awareness, fighting for survival, fighting for a cure. To see this in person gains perspective that one cannot garner from watching on television or in print. If you have not been affected by breast cancer in your immediate family or your circle of friends, statistically speaking you will. Taking the girls to the race made an impression on me and I hope that it will make one on them as well. I know that we will be there next year and we will be IN the race, not just in the parade. I wonder if we could get a sponsor for this trip?
By the time we were through with the parade, to say we were tired would be an understatement. On our immediate agenda was to figure out where and when we were to meet up with our kinfolk. She was in the midst of her own function with Jr. League and incommunicado. The last message we had with each other was that she would be done not at 1:00 as originally anticipated, but closer to 11:30 and we would eat lunch together. I looked up her facebook page to see if she posted her exact location and merely got Scott St. I took this opportunity to drive around downtown and we stumbled on the capitol building. Since I had never been up close to the building and neither has she, I drove us by there and snapped a couple of pictures. It was after that we saw Starbucks with a drive-thru and picked up a couple frappachinos. We then made a couple more loops around downtown and went across both bridges (not the interstate one) and managed to see just about every point of interest there was to see. We eventually parked to wait for her to get through and then we went the backroads back to Benton which is where my mini-me saw her other "first" and it was a plane dragging a banner advertising for StateFarm. Another first was she saw her first complete sunrise. It apparently was meaningful for her because she said it was the first time she has ever seen the sun rise from complete darkness.
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