Proof that I love my family

So it's Thanksgiving break, and every year on Thanksgiving my dad's side of the family meets for Thanksgiving dinner at my grandparent's house in Florida. This is cool - it's fun, it's great to see everyone, and of course the food is fantastic.

But here's the thing - this year we couldn't afford to stay in a hotel for more than one night, but there isn't enough room in my grandparent's house to room us. So the plan became this: Thanksgiving morning, starting at about 5 AM, we would get in the car and drive the many many miles to Florida. We would stay for dinner, spend the night in the hotel, and then drive back on Friday morning.

Now, I love my family. My grandparents are some of the coolest people in the world, and my cousin had recently had a baby, so of course we wanted to see her (her name is Genevieve, which I happen to think is insanely cute). But driving all the way to Florida for dinner is a pretty daunting idea. Which is why the fact that we DID go proves the extent of our love. And of course, I actually tend to enjoy long car rides, so I guess it wasn't too bad - my sisters and I got along pretty well, all things considered.

Several other things, however, went wrong with this trip.

On the way there, our back right tire, like, exploded. I don't mean "flat tire", I mean "EXPLODED TIRE". And we had just bought this tire like a month ago! We were driving along the road when all of a sudden we started hearing this weird sound from the back of the car. We might have thought it was the tire, but we had just bought it, so we were like "It can't be the tire". And then all of a sudden we heard like this ear splitting metallic screeching noise and SMOKE started billowing out to the side of the car.

So we pulled over to the side of the road and got out of the car - keep in mind that it was like, freezing outside - and we see that the tire had... erupted. It was horrifying. I wish I had pictures. And there were all these black marks over the side of the car, and smoke going everywhere.

So then we couldn't find the spare tire on the stupid van (apparently it's actually under the van, which is weird) and it was freezing cold and we were somewhere in the middle of South Carolina and we still had miles to go before we reached Florida. Everyone was taking this surprisingly well, probably out of shock. Finally a cop pulled over to help, and he and my dad put on the spare tire (once we found it).

But then we couldn't find a place to get a new tire anywhere, because they were all closed because it was Thanksgiving. And you aren't supposed to drive that far on a spare tire, but we didn't know what else to do so we ended up driving the entire rest of the way on it, and we just went really slow. So of course we showed up kind of late.

The actual Thanksgiving dinner was good and everything, and things were looking up because my grandma gave me like ten books she found when she was clearing out her bookshelves and we actually managed to find a place to get new tires.

But the next morning I woke up feeling awful. I mean, really, really sick. And we were in the car for hours and hours driving home and it was all bumpy and I felt really hot, even though apparently the temperature was normal, and it was just generally horrendous because I was STUCK in the car.

Plus, remember that root canal I got a while ago? Well, the day before Thanksgiving I got sort of phase two of the root canal, where they like fill it up or something, and it hurt like poo. But I took dangerous amounts of Advil and so I was feeling fine on the way there, but, bizarrely, on Friday my jaw was in pain again.

And then I figured out that the stupid root canal was to blame for everything (except the tire), because it was because I had taken so much Advil that I got sick, because Advil upsets my stomach. And my jaw hurt after Thanksgiving because - and I cannot believe how uncool this is - because of how much I was smiling during Thanksgiving! I was fine as long as I was resting my jaw (my tooth never hurt much, but I have jaw problems and whenever I go to the dentist it screws with my jaw, doubly so after something like a root canal where your mouth has to be open for hours) but I was smiling so much the day before that it hurt a whole lot.

And then I got really mad, because it is just ridiculously unfair that I should be in pain for having smiled too much.

So it was like... gah. The actual dinner, and seeing all my family, was great. But the whole freezing-cold-South-Carolina-tire-explosion, sickness-while-on-the-road, and terrible jaw pain thing kind of sucked the fun out of it.

Poo.