Back Again For A Minute or Two

It's late and we need to be on the road in about 9 hours or less, so this is going to be short. I'm hoping that I'll be able to write more tomorrow evening, or even afternoon. Will have to see how it goes.

I've discovered recently that I am an introvert living a very extrovert lifestyle right now. And it's getting to me - BIG TIME. Actually, it's not that I'm around lots of people all the time - no, that's not it. What is getting to me is that I'm NEVER NOT around people right now. (Mel doesn't count!) When I get up - my parents are there. Within an hour or two, Kara and Eithnee are there and on weekend, Stirling is there, too.

Now don't get me wrong! I love my family dearly. Very dearly. And I love being around them. I just need two or three hours in a day when I am truly ALONE. I can't write when I'm being interrupted all the time. I have time to think, a lot of time to think, while we are in the car. But I am busy looking at the scenery and/or talking to Mel. Besides, it's not that easy to get out the ol' laptop/notebook and write while zooming down the road. Especially in these times of economic crisis when the potholes and cracks in the roads and highways are getting bigger and bigger.

So, here I am, late at night, knowing I'll need to sign off within 10 minutes or so, wanting to write and put down on "paper" some of all that stuff I've been thinking about! And post a zillion photos - of grandkids, places we've been, other people I love and care about.

That will have to wait.

For now, I'm just glad I have this time (NO TV blaring, just classical music from Austria being broadcast on Mel's new little Droid Internet Tablet playing quietly across this motel room.

Is it safe to say that one of my greatest desires while being home this time was that we could buy an RV? Not a big one - just a middle sized one, big enough to live in, but small enough to drive around wherever we hoped to go. It was not to be. I'd hoped for one so that we could have times of being alone, times when I could cook, times when we could 'have someone over' if we wanted, times when we could open the windows at night and listen to the forest sounds without freezing the whole house.

I am happy, though, that we have what we have - a good car, a spacious car, a car with almost 120,000 miles on it now and it's still going strong. Thank you, Father in Heaven, for this gift you gave us 5 years ago! We can haul us and our stuff, or us and two car seats and 2 or 3 more adults. We've gone "four wheeling" in it - yes, we go places in our cars that other people are too chicken to go. :-) We've driven tens of thousands of miles in it - in heat and snow and rain and wind. And it still looks good. We've climbed the side of an ancient volcano (at Crater Lake), drive from Bellingham, Washington to the southern part of Los Angeles, California, driven through deserts, over mountain passes, and Mel has now driven it down the East Coast from Delaware to Florida.

So, yes, I am thankful for our car and pray that it will last us many more years. But deep in my heart I still long for an RV and to be able to take my "house" with me wherever I go.

Well, that's it for tonight. That's the teeny tip of a huge iceberg worth of stuff that I haven't been able to write about and long to write about and will eventually write about, if God gives me life and a good mind in the meantime!

See you later!