Channel 82.5

"Don't say another word!" yelled Patrick, screaming at his two kids in the back seat.

"Sorry, dad," said Patricia with a pouty expression on her face.

"Yeah, sorry," said Anne sporting the exact same disappointed expression.

If Patrick were feeling any other emotion other than complete stress from being forced out of his own home by his wife, he might have felt bad about yelling at his two darling girls, but that simply wasn't going to happen today.

"We just really want to go to Cindy's," said Anne, maintaining her pouty lipped expression.

Cindy's was both of the girl's favorite fast-food establishment. This was mainly because of their mother who would frequently take them there for after-school snacks. It wasn't the best place in the world, at least not in Patrick's opinion, but to his daughters it was a 5-star restaurant with fantastic burgers, fries, and ice cream. The positive eyes of childhood were truly an incredible thing.

"Yeah, we want a milkshake," said Patricia with a happier tone, now piling onto the complaints of her older sister.

Patrick scratched the top of his head as he continued to drive down the highway.

"I know, I know, in a bit."

"Okay," they both said simultaneously.

Patrick was hungry too. He wouldn't mind going for a bight at Cindy's, maybe even get one of those milkshakes, but he was pretty tired. Not only of just being awake, but of the constant toil and struggle between him and his wife. Both of them wanted their marriage to work. They had once been in love, but now every time he came home from his job, his wife did absolutely nothing else but note his flaws:

How he wasn't raking in enough money.

How he wasn't being attentive to her needs.

How he wasn't spending enough time with the kids.

The list went on and on. And he hated that. He wasn't so much upset at his wife's constant berating of him, but rather that there were even flaws to berate him with, that there even had to be a list that went on and on. Patrick had always been very hard on himself in many ways, but he was never harder on himself when it came to the condition of his family. He knew that his wife was certainly at fault (at least he felt that way) for kicking him out with the kids, and that he shouldn't be putting this much strain on himself. But he couldn't help it, he always had to have a lot to think about.

The first thing on his list of personal to-dos was finding a place for him and his girls to stay for the night. He picked up the GPS off of the front seat and handed it back to Anne. It was an older model GPS made by some company that had likely gone out of business or didn't even make GPS's anymore.

"Here sweetie, look up the address for the nearest Radisson Hotel on your phone and then type it in the GPS."

"Okay," said Anne. Anne flipped the GPS's switch on and it began a very slow powering up process. When it was finished, Anne started to try and type all the necessary information in, but found the touch screen to be very sticky and frustrating.

"You know," said Anne. "I have GPS on my phone. It works better and its voice his prettier."

"That's okay sweetie. I'd like to use this one. It's always worked just fine and I can sit it up here on the dash of the car and look right at it."

"Okay," said Anne, and she started typing on the old model GPS again.

Patrick decided to turn the radio on, if only to have some noise in the background of his thoughts. He was normally not very particular about what he listened to, whether it was music, or audio books, or the news, he normally didn't care, but right now he had a lot on his mind, and didn't want to risk hopping off of his thought train just to listen to something that struck his interests like a catchy pop tune or interesting story. So he turned to one channel he knew would not peak his tastes, but would provide suitable background noise for him.