When you really need the emergency lane

KC just reminded me that I meant to detail one more story about this summer's journey. This involves the final leg of Xan-and-me-alone, from Rochester to Cape Cod. Angela was already fretting that I had decided to leave on the 2nd of August rather than the 1st, and we had gotten a late start out of Rochester: suffice to say, we were a little behind schedule. After stopping around Albany for lunch, I called Angela once we arrived in Massachusetts.

She was not pleased. "You should have left earlier."

"I will be there as soon as I can."

"No more stopping, OK?"

I agreed that I would not stop, thinking that even if I had to stop, it would be realtively short anyway. We lept driving. That part of the Mass Pike is actually quite beautiful and we were missing the gigantic thunderstorm that broke the 100+-degree heat in the Northeast, so life was going pretty well.

Somewhere around exit 8, around Worcester I think, I looked in the rear-view mirror and saw Xan scrunch his face up in a familiar way. (At this point, I should clarify that I figured out how to turn the rear-view mirror so that I could see him, he could see me and I could still see the cars behind me. Ah, the amazing things you learn to do when you have a kid back there that you need to amuse...) it dawned on me that we had not had a "major" diaper alert (i.e. good ol' number two) for going on 36 hours, so I knew what that face signified. I couldn't smell anything, but I made a mental note that I should probably stop and clean him at the next rest area. I looked back again and saw that his face was back to normal, and that he was looking down at something.

And then his hand came up.

With poo.

Smiling, he brought his hand to his other hand and started mashing them together.

It is at this point that I screamed.

Basically almost causing an accident, I veered from the left-most lane all the way over to the breakdown lane while saying, "Nononono! Notinthemouth! Notinthemouth! Nono!" I then proceeded to change his diaper and subsequent clothing and attempt to clean the car seat (which basically consisted of me putting all of our dirty clothes on it so that he wouldn't get any messier). I admit that I was seeing the humor in all of this and laughing my head off as I was trying to do what was patently riduculous on the side of the road, with tractor trailers whizzing by at top speeds and large ants crawling up our legs.

With mission accomplished, I all of sudden realize that there was an emergency vehicle coming up to me to see what was wrong. The guy in the truck yelled at me, saying that my stop did not constitute an emergency. I mean, really: if that wasn't an emergency, I don't know what is.