I called you a ho. Heh.

Continuing the “Leaving Vagina, entering Asshole, crossing the Tennessee Taint” tour…

Its hard to imagine a state longer than Virginia, unless its Tennessee. There’s this little tail thing on Southwest Virginia that may appear to only be a few hundred miles, but, I assure you, that tail is at least a 3-day drive. I was bad, I amused myself by taking photos while driving. Bad Melia, I know, but it was better than nodding off or gouging a hole in my head with my iPod.

Oddly, once we crossed the state line into Tennessee, the world seemed to glitter a bit. I have nothing against Virginia, its a fine, fine Commonwealth, but there is just nothing like getting out of your state and into a new one (well, ok, I go to Maryland a lot, but that doesn’t count, either. Go with it, please).

Oh, let me back up a bit. The HoJo was not good. The beds were like torture racks that someone decided were a little too evil and Dozer was coughing all night. Nobody really woke up happy, and half of the day was spent trying to walk without wincing. I, once again, should NOT be allowed to pick hotels. Its a curse.

We get into Knoxville and find our new hotel, with HoJo PTSD, we drove up and it looked dumpy. I said (ahem), “Well, the HoJo looked nice from the outside, even if it sucked on the inside, so maybe this will be the yang to that yin.” So, I went in, looked at the room and noticed the smell of paint. Strong paint. I’m allergic to paint fumes. Pretty badly, actually. Somehow, it didn’t register with me that this was a bad idea, aside from the dumpy room that I tried to paint all sunshiny with my pain+driving+total denial optimism, there was paint. Yes, Freedom pointed out to me that this may not be a good idea, and in the time it took him to go to the car and bring back an air mattress, I had determined it was not the 10 hours of driving, but the paint, that was making my skin crawl. Yes, Freedom, you were right. Again. Meh.

Hop online, cry to Hotels.com (ahem, y’all need to hire me), and they book us at a much nicer hotel, with a pool. Sadly, I had to pay the difference, but whatever. We find a lovely Italian-ish restaurant that feeds the kids for free, eat fried asparagus (f’in yum!) and head back to the hotel (awwww yeah). The girls and grown-ups all hop into the pool (Enigma is on strike, evidently) and swim for an hour or so. Suddenly, without warning…

Mary Sunshine swims underwater.

Gasp.

My baby is swimming.