Perhaps we’ve angered the gods?

We were so psyched to go to the Arizona Dreamin’ Reader event in Phoenix this past weekend. As you know from last week’s Five Favorite Things we’d spent a lot of time in the past month building stuff and bossing people around. We were seriously invested in the whole thing.

We got more and more excited as we got closer and closer to noon on Friday–the appointed time of our departure. We had all the girls in the office load up the car with the silver tea service I made them spend seven hour polishing, and the flower arrangements we made them glue sparkles to, and the cake pops we made and decorated in the office but wouldn’t let them taste, and the favors we assembled after they cut the ribbons to the required exact 8 inch length. Dave the Durango was packed to the gills. I left to go get our third sister and Ava went home where we were going to collect her.

We headed off to the freeway–as excited as could be, singing and dancing in our seats.

Doesn’t this look HOT?

Then Dave over heated. “Crap,” we all said in chorus, and pulled into the nearest gas station. Charles the attendant was super helpful. We filled the radiator and the reserve and got advice from husband #1. Filled with confidence, we piled back into Dave and went through the McDonald’s drive through for small buckets of iced tea.

Mere moments after we hit the freeway, Dave over heated again. Not like, “Hey, I’m a bit warm. Could you turn up the air?” No, this was more like, “Mother F*****R! I’m hot and I’m not going anywhere.” We were forced to pull off the freeway and call a tow truck.

Thank the old gods and the new for the iced tea from McDonalds. They seemed inordinately concerned about our hydration level at the AAA emergency line. She asked no less than twelve times if we had water. We waited AN HOUR IN THE 103 DEGREE HEAT, GETTING SUNBURNED AND ATTACKED BY BEES AND SNEAKY STICKER

Just before Kelli went Lord of the Flies

BUSHES for Warren, the world’s oldest tow truck driver, to arrive and at the same time Husband #2 showed up, ready to unload Dave the Bastard Durango into his Surburban and drive us back to pick up Ava’s Cadillac where in he managed to shove all the crap into her. Kelli sat in the back seat with seventy-five boxes and sweated. Those cheap cars don’t have vents in the back.

We went back to the drive thru at McDonalds for more tea, where upon we complained about sloshing for the next two hours and 125 miles.

The minute we got to the hotel and all that stuff was unloaded off the bell cart, Amylynn got into an ice-cold shower because she was pretty sure her core body temperature was somewhere in the neighborhood of 350 degrees. The tepid water felt great until she opened her eyes and discovered an epic nosebleed on par with that of the prom scene in Carrie. Not to get too icky – too late? – it was everywhere in that bathtub. Eventually, it stopped and, clearly, Amylynn didn’t die. We can only assume she had too much awesomeness inside and some had to get out.

Be sure to come back to tomorrow to find out the rest!  As a teaser, there’s a fire involved on Sunday . . .