I know that my Spring Break liveth

Here in the frozen north, we were greeted this morning by the sight of fine fat flakes of snow tumbling softly through the leaden gray sky to land gently on the sodden ground, where they either melted or chose to accumulate in small, slushy mounds, according to their whim.*

This is apparently the way people in these parts know to go out into the garden and hide Easter eggs. Not me, though. I know better. This is no time to hide Easter eggs. Unless you want to get frostbite.

Yes, Spring Break has finally arrived! I know this because it's almost Easter and it's 35 degrees.

That means it's time to head to the AAA office and pick up new, updated trip books about every state between Illinois and Florida. (This includes Indiana. Even though That Stud Muffin I Married grew up there. And even though, because of this, I've spent way more than enough time in Indiana. He and I realize that there is nothing to see in Indiana except Steak and Shakes, cornfields, a city with a race track, and a college town. But one must be fair. And, apparently, obsessive when it comes to accumulating an assload of maps and AAA guide books. So we get the Indiana book.)

We get all these books in order to read about all the sights of extreme historical and cultural interest that we will completely ignore while we barrel down the highway on our annual Spring Break trip to Walt Disney World.

It goes like this: we get up at 5:00 a.m. on Good Friday, bundle the kids into the rented minivan, and start driving. The scenery starts to perk up in southern Indiana, and from there on, Kentucky, Tennessee and Georgia are pretty damned gorgeous. Also kind of scary because of the BIG ASS trucks on the road, not to mention many, many tourists with license plates from Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Minnesota, not to mention HUGE signs advertising XXX porn video places. Thank you very much for keeping the truck drivers of America happy in what I shall chose to call their "down time," but I hope and pray we make it past all those billboards without having to take a single question from the offspring. Did you hear me? NOT ONE.

We spend the night in Atlanta, and the next day, after tucking in heartily to the free hotel breakfast, we take off for Florida. Lower Georgia and Upper Florida are very weird indeed,which is all to the good, and I start to get all giddy and happy when I see signs about oranges and alligators and such.

Then we peel ourselves out the car at the Polynesian Resort at Walt Disney. And start to have big fun, beginning with a glass of wine that is about [_____THIS BIG_____].

So anyway, now I've got to get cracking with the packing.

*Yes, I was an English major. So what.