Heading down I-75 to Nana and Poppy's

We were able to clean up the paint damage with some toothpaste

Christmas Ticket by Oscar

and an old sock to the point that you really had to look to find the scratch and dings in the paint.  And that’s the best that we can do, but it reconfirms that we can never have a new car.  We don’t deserve nice things obviously.  We head out early the next morning when John’s snoring wakes me up and I see no point in delaying getting on I 75 again to see how bad Christmas Eve traffic could be.  I’m hopeful that everyone had this day off and 

Moving Target by Oscar

  have already traveled to where they wanted to be.  The only problem we have is the strange inability to navigate with GPS out of south Georgia.  When we finally cross into Florida on some back road, it’s like we left a strange land where roads didn’t line up, signs meant

Mommy gets to take a pic

  nothing and we couldn’t figure out east from west.  We did continue to drive south at least.  I can only hope that signs mean nothing around here because I keep saying that mid Michigan is the most racist place I’ve ever lived, but find when I’m down in the south that I think differently.  When we drove past early morning conglomerations of trucks at

Daddy Driving by Oscar

  stores down here, I wonder if there is a “meeting” and something nefarious being planned.  I actually took a picture of an article in Aunt Nette’s newspaper where they refer to the Civil War repeatedly as the “War Between the States”.  I had heard it referred to as the “War of Northern Aggression” down here before, but never seen such a euphemism in print.   We’re driving through “Jeff Davis” 

Foolish Mommy by Oscar

 county with his parks and schools and the diminutive form of his name, as if they are on a first name basis down here with Jefferson Davis, the president of the rebellion.  I wish I could understand it.  I’m from the south and I would think that I would have this same desire to lionize the Confederacy.  Take a second and forget  slavery (which is really what the war 

Trucks Refueling by Oscar

 was about no matter how much Southerners protest that statement), but what is there to be excited about?  Even if you say that it was a step for state’s rights, you didn’t make it, so it was a step backward for state’s rights, so why celebrate it?  Also, if you think of yourself as an American, a patriot, or any of the other 

But I Like Subway Trains by Oscar

 stuff that you want to claim as an American, that only exists because the south didn’t win.  So, again, why would you celebrate a failed rebellion that would have torn apart the country that you now belong to?  And that doesn’t take into account the moral and ethical issues that were the crux of the fight.  I’m 

Light through Sippy Cup by Oscar

flummoxed and I’ll move on now.  We finally hit I-75 and my ideas of Oscar napping since we got such an early start or staying asleep when we put him in the car were demolished by this time.  We were lucky and I-75 was wide open all the way.  We dropped Oscar off with Nana and Poppy in Spring Hill and headed out with their car to return the rental car in Tampa.  All went smoothly with that and now we just wait to see if they charge us some serious money for damaging the car. 

Please enjoy the original art by Oscar who used my phone in the car to become a photographer.  He was so proud of his work and took some surprisingly good pictures of the weave of his pants, his spiderman shoes, DVDs in a truck stop that caught his eye as well as other things on the side of the road.  These are all (except for the ones at the truck stop) from a car going 80 miles an hour with a phone that is super outdated.  So, I have to say that he takes a better picture than me.