On this installment of The Cobb Family Journey, I'm going to share a few of our day to day challenges! Well almost 4 months into our trip we are still going strong, but not without hiccups or life's tiny snags! First and foremost it is not likely that you can spend every waking minute with your family and not have a fight or two! The kids have adapted well to the lifestyle on the road, but they can sometimes get on each others nerves. They sit next to each other for hundreds of miles at a time and when we arrive at a campground they are right next to each other and when they go to bed..... You get the idea! This causes Mom and Dad's nerves to be a little sensitive with, "he's touching me or she's putting her feet on me or those are my headphones", and then I go off on a tangent of "You guys need to be nice to each other" or "No talking for the next 15 minutes" and the list goes on! Karen and I have been getting along pretty well considering the stress the kid's fighting puts on us! School has officially begun and that had put an added stress on us with a pretty full regiment of school work assigned to us via the Internet and the 200lbs of books and supplies sent to us from the school! Yes, 200lbs of school work! The lowest point of our trip came when we started the 1st day of school on Kaylee's birthday. This was a recipe for disaster!
First off we couldn't get our Internet connection to work, as we were in Bumble fudge, South Dakota and Karen is trying to get the lesson plan for the day, so we could teach on the road. You see we are supposed to be out of the campground at 11:00am and it was 10:15am. So, I have a wife who is close to tears because the Internet won't come up and the printer won't work, then I have a 9 year old daughter who's crying, because she doesn't want to do school work on her birthday and then I have a 6 year old boy who is upset, because he has nobody to play with and he doesn't want to do school work either! I finally go in to Karen and say we are leaving for South Dakota and my response from her with tear filled eyes is "I'm going to lose it if we don't get this stupid printer to work and we need to be out of here in 30 minutes. I can't do this! I try to calm her to no avail and go back outside to my crying 9 year old and try to console her, while my 6 year old asks me to take him to the play ground! I am now at my breaking point and go back into the trailer to find my poor wife in tears still cursing the printer! I said "we are leaving!" A fight ensues about how the school work is going to get done and we don't have time and so on! I grabbed the printer and ripped the plugs out of the wall and said "We are leaving and I proceeded to go outside and start unhooking the camper with tears in my eyes! I was so upset that our family seemed to be falling apart and I couldn't do anything about it.
We packed the camper up and as I started to hook up to the camper Karen asks if we are going to see the Corn Palace? I reply with are you F*%*ing kidding me still with tears in my eyes! She said "We are here and we have to see the Corn Palace" or I won't hear the end of it from my Dad! So off to the Corn Palace we go as I go into my cave mode! This is the mode in which I totally shut down from anger and don't say much of anything! Karen knows when I get to this place just leave me alone. Karen and the kids went into the Corn Palace and I chose to sit in the truck with Norman to cool off! After hooking up to the trailer and heading west on highway 90 Karen asked me when I was going to talk again and I said not yet, but I would let her know. We were heading for South Dakota and had 600 miles or so to cool off. It took almost 2 days for me to calm down from that state of pissed off!
We have since figured out the school work and how to best get everything covered with the kids! I wrote this to show the real world events that happen when you travel the country with your family. I have learned its OK to get mad at each other and we can't do everything perfect! If you are one of the followers of this blog thinking about do such a trip beware that there is a learning curve and it comes with lots of curse words and sometimes tears, but all in all I wouldn't change a thing!
We have since landed in Custer, South Dakota and things are going great! We spent the last few days with Karen's parents, seeing Mt Rushmore, Crazyhorse, Custer State Park and the buffalo! Its a breath of fresh air to have some of our family close if for only a few days. It really reminds us of how important a good close knit family is! The kids really enjoy spending time with Nana and Papa and so do we. As the weekend, is coming to a close and next weeks school work will be here, I look forward to a better week of school with our kids! And that, my friends, is the whole story with the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God!
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