Our kids are getting to an age where it is really hard to make the long drive down to Southern Ontario, where most of our relatives live. It’s at least six hours in the car and they’re really good for about three hours and then they start getting really antsy, throwing toys around in a snit and whining until our eardrums pop. Unfortunately, our families are not very inclined to travel up to Ottawa — our parents are getting older and can’t travel as well. Also unfortunately, our families are inclined to hound us constantly about when we are coming down again.

When Gal Smiley was born, we naively thought that we’d get away with only going down twice a year, a rule we have broken both of the years of her life. Just this past August, we had a major trip planned for the end of the month, but wound up making a special weekend trip at the beginning of the month to see Sir Monkeypants’ mom before she took an extended trip to India. Since we did the Drive Of Insanity twice in one month we swore we wouldn’t be going down again until Christmas at the earliest…maybe we’d even get all hardcore and go for next March.

But of course, that isn’t going to work out at all. Everyone we know in Toronto has planned a major life event for one weekend in October — and of course, everyone has chosen a different weekend. On the first, my friend Lisa is having a baby shower for her first child, an event I swore I would attend back in the happy days of April, because she had come up to Ottawa for my own shower a few years ago. The very next weekend is Thanksgiving and LittleSis is having her first big family dinner for all my sisters and nephews and nieces. On the 14th, Sir Monkeypants’ mom is returning from India and a visit to welcome her would be considered appropriate and would win us major brownie points. The very next weekend, an old friend of ours from university is getting married in downtown Toronto, and all our friends from up here are going, so we’ll be real sticks-in-the-mud if we don’t show up. So far the 28th is still free so I’m expecting another invite any moment now.

If only I hadn’t wasted so much time watching Star Trek in university, I could have perfected that teleportation system. Damn that Jean-Luc and his lovely bald head!