The Check In

I haven't been around much. Things have been insane in my household. More so than usual. My boys and I made the trip to CA 'almost' without incident. I did get stung by some mystery mutant creature in TX and when I tried to flick it out the window if blew into the back seat and got my youngest child. We both lived though at the time I prayed fervently for death to take me.

We took a very southern route to CA, stopping in NM to visit my in-laws. I did stop to take many photos along the way, sunsets were incredible. I'll post them at a later date.

My thoughts are very jumbled, as I said, things are crazy in my life right now and I'm just taking things one day at a time. One foot in front of the other. One breath followed by one more. I can't elaborate, but things will work out as they are supposed to. I hope.

I did make a stop at White Sands National Park to play in the sand dunes for a very short period of time. It was beyond cool, but with pets in the car, stops were short as the heat was just too much for them without AC, even with windows down.

Speaking of AC, it worked sporadically throughout my trip. After having it checked and serviced before leaving town to have a mechanic tell me there was nothing wrong with it, it stopped working exactly 30 minutes after leaving town. Not kidding. Somewhere out there is a mechanic with some very bad karma coming his way. Or should I say carma?

Due to stress and lack of eating properly (or some days at all) I lost weight again. So much so, that as I was locking the front door of my old house, my pants fell down. I left town the same way I entered, flashing my neighbors. Ironically, it was the first time in two years my across the street neighbor had acknowledged my presence...with a smile and a wave.

NM has VERY few rest area's and the few that do exist don't actually have potty facilities. Should you happen come across a youtube video taken from the vantage point of a truckers dashboard, of a woman at the side of the road with her pants around her ankles, (are you sensing a theme here?) kindly avert your eyes please. And don't judge....I'd like to see YOU drink 2 bottles of water and a DP and a cup of coffee and not have to make a "desperation stop".

My house is awsome! I have room for everything, I have cliff and water views, though what body of water I'm not sure. I have no sense of direction as you know, and the haze is so great that I don't know if it's ocean or lake..it's a ways out there. The other side of the house has mountain views. I have a gihugic bathtub (and I stocked up on LUSH before I left DC) and a shower I can walk around in. Why I would want to walk around in my shower I don't know, but darnit all I can if I want! My entire bathroom/dressing room/closet area is bigger than my bedroom was at the old house. DH did good in picking this one out. Everyone says it's so expensive to live here (in CA) but compared to where we were in DC, it's like we get twice as much for our money. Almost literally.

People here in CA seem very friendly. We walked into a fast food place and were greeted with smiles and "have a nice day" and "can I get anything else for you" with genuine friendliness. I hardly knew how to handle it. Home Depot we were greeted at the door with smiles and a store map and before we'd walked around 3 minutes we'd been greeted several more times. Again with smiles. It's almost like a foreign country. so weird.

Another thing I've noticed here is the color. SO PRETTY! everything in bloom. Oh! and I have an apple tree in my yard. Sure, it's slightly shorter than me and the apples are the size of ping pong balls, but it's an apple tree, and it's in MY yard! Yay for apple trees!

Ok, lots of phone calls to make, lots of services to set up etc...and no internet. I'm afraid if I have to order ONE MORE COFFEE out of guilt today for the free wifi I'm using, I'm going to explode! My fingers are already working a mile a minute and my heart is racing out of my chest.

I have lots of pics to post and lots of adventures to tell, but suffice it to say for now, we're here, we're alive (and that's saying a lot right now because I was seriously ready to strangle a couple of kids) and now I need to concentrate on the settling in and appts, and the errands etc. My phone just went dead in the middle of a phone call with a friend trying to greet me to the area, I felt really bad.

ps..thankyou God for inventing the Lorlor (Tom Tom) I use it RELIGIOUSLY!

I'll be around when I can, but the things in my life right now need to take priority and I'm seriously considering closing this blog. Were it not my sanity saver I think I'd have closed it a couple of weeks ago. I haven't been able to keep up like I did in the old days. Hopefully things will settle soon. We'll see.

I miss you all.