Our son is looking for a new truck. He’s currently drive a solid truck that’s older than he is. He’s wanting to do some traveling for work, and the Mom in me wants him to have the fancy navigation screens and allllll the airbags and Onstar and all the features. His current truck, which we purchased new in 2004, doesn’t have many of those things. We found just what he wanted in Houston, maybe 200 miles away and went to check it out for him.

Y’all. A couple of years ago I had a wreck in Dallas. My fault, since I was driving. My husband said I had room to change lanes, and I did not. I had just enough room to move over so that semi could total my beloved Yukon. Then we were trapped in Dallas because Enterprise couldn’t get their act together, but that’s another story.

I say that to say this: I am not a big city kind of driver. I know I need to learn, so I drove us to Houston. We got there about six, which isn’t exactly prime driving time. More like one of the circles of hell, actually. Fortunately, traffic stopped moving a lot so I had time to nap, knit fourteen afghans and smoke a brisket while we waited.

I set the destination through Apple Maps so it would go to the screen in my Yukon 2.0 (aka the Newkon.). My husband then divided his time between telling me to follow the map and telling me to ignore the map because he knew a better way. God help me.

He’s really good at knowing when I need help. That’s when he’s quiet. If I don’t need him, he’s more that happy to pipe in with suggestions. He offers to drive, which makes me crazy because he’s a paramedic and driving an ambulance through Houston and driving my car with me in it through Houston are not the same things. I usually need an ambulance after the second one, and that ambulance needs to take me to a psych unit.

Here are some quotes from the trip:

Why are you going that way?

Follow the map. You have to learn to watch the map and anticipate.

Don’t follow the map. Keep going.

Oh, don’t take exit.

You should’ve taken that exit.

I know a better way. Ignore the GPS.

Are you doing ok over there?

It’s like that old joke about how things that seem cute when you’re dating are things that are listed as “probable cause” after you’ve been married a while. And we’ve been married a while. I finally got us home, and managed to get over 25 mpg out of the Yukon, which is frankly about as aerodynamic as a cinder block, but is a much more attractive color.

I know I’m cranky. I’m 48 years old. I’m experiencing PMS, perimenopause and what appears to be an unprecedented growth of chin hair ALL AT ONCE. I’m starting to resemble a bear; growly and covered in fur. I also like to eat a lot and hibernate, so there’s that, too.

So to my husband, please don’t poke the bear. They might need a GPS to find you…and you’d just argue with it.