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I see Blogger has been reformatting again, causing me to have to relocate my visitor counter to the bottom of the page...

After the middle of next week I'll be incommunicado for a while: visiting my mother and her husband in Mexico. They retired and moved down there about five years ago and now they're living the vida loca.

My daughter and I will be flying from Seattle to Mexico City and then I'll rent a car and drive the rest of the way. I thought about adding a connecting flight to save the expense of renting a car, but I'd rather not have to depend upon them.

The last time my ex and I visited them down there, we only had one baby and she was very pregnant with our second. They were still living in Montreal, but wanted us to come down there to spend Christmas with them. Since they'd been there so often before, they told us not to worry and that they'd take care of the car rental and travel planning.

My internal alarm bell started going off when their reply to our request that they rent a vehicle large enough to accomodate our son's car seat was: "oh don't worry, those things aren't mandatory down here so you can leave it at home"

I guess I didn't make myself perfectly clear because when we arrived at Mexico City International Airport, they were waiting for the three of us (plus luggage and a child's car seat) with a Volkswagwen Beetle.

Picture four adults (one seven months pregnant), a toddler in his car seat and all our combined baggage in a Beetle....for fourteen hours.

On secondary roads, because they wanted us to "see the Mexican countryside".

I lost track of the number of times I offered to take a turn at the wheel (thinking that I'd at least get us over that forty-miles-per-hour limit that her husband was keeping us at) but the reply was always the same: "you don't know the roads here, just relax and let me do the driving". At the halfway mark he wanted to stop off at a bar for several beers because driving was "thirsty work".

A little tension ensued.

When we finally arrived...demoralized, sweaty and sore...I vowed that I'd drink the local tapwater before I ever got in a car with him at the wheel again.

I'll be away again in another month and a half, arriving on October 1st to visit a friend back east. Of the two trips, I'm definitely looking forward to the second trip more!