Mom, the Amazing Stunt Driver

Yesterday, just as the rain began, I was about 14 miles out in the boonies, with the kids, in my old car, at a friends log cabin (no, really! she has this lovely little log cabin in the woods, out in the Jersey Pine Barrens!), and anyway, I went to close the moon roof. Nothing. Wide open, no closing. I duct taped a garbage bag over it. That worked great, until I hit 48 mph. The speed limit to get home is a bit higher than that - you get pulled over on Tuckahoe Road if you don't keep up with the traffic. So, Caeli and I grabbed a chunk each of that garbage bag, as it ripped loose from it's duct tape moorings, the rain was pouring down in buckets, the wind was howling, lightning, thunder, blackened sky, pine trees swaying in forms I never thought possible for a tree, flash flooding swept up closer and closer to the edge of the road, and I was now driving 56 mph with one hand, the other hand in a white-knuckled death grip on a corner of the plastic while Caeli had all her weight nearly pulled up off the seat holding the middle and the other side of that plastic. (see? seatbelts ARE useful!) Meanwhile, all through this ride, there was a tornado watch, a flash flood watch, a flash flood WARNING, and the wind was knocking my huge old '86 lincoln town car around as if it were a bath toy. Sunny Rose was ecstatic. she had never ever had so much fun or seen so much AMBITION from her favorite people (us!) during ANY car ride, before!!!