The Big Jump and a big party.

October 29, Ardmore.

The Big Jump, miles of country roads and highway heading straight south back into the warmth and almost home. We made it before 2 PM, no fuss and no hum, the way it seldom is traveling with small children. They slept til Oklahoma City, 220 miles strong, and were quiet as shadows the rest of the way without even having left their seat once. Sara wasn't so lucky and arrived a while after us, she had to stop repeatedly to accommodate a fussy Gigi.
For me it was a day stretched to the brim, no rest and all work, after the road came the much taunted Kelly Miller Circus Halloween Party, and going shopping for it after cooking a late lunch, getting the kids ready in lightning time and the headache that started in the morning when I drove on for hours without eating (no stopping til the kids wake up is the golden rule of kid-totting circus traveling) growing worse, and the fatigue setting in with a vengeance, the party went on in the trailer with Sheyla and her family who'd come up from Dallas but I crashed, I couldn't go on anymore.
Nicolas got second place in the Halloween kid costume contest and I take full credit for that as Fridman left me to my devices to go rehearse his Black Angels skit with Julio, Jeremy and Johnnie. I put him in a Goodwill-bought clown jumper, dug out his biggest shoes and asked Deya to paint red dots on his face. Dylan I dressed like Johnny Depp's Cry Baby with a black leather jacket, white shirt and red Converse shoes, slicked-back hair and an eyeliner tear on one of his cheeks.
I think they both looked drop-dead gorgeous, what else.