The Sunday Salon: Road Trip

I suppose I really shouldn’t burden everyone with a Sunday Salon post today, since I haven’t had much time for reading, and probably won’t. M and I are getting ready to set out tomorrow morning on a three-week trip to Texas, to visit family and friends, and start scouting retirement locales. So my reading today has been confined to various reminder lists:

• Have mail held. Check
• Stop newspapers. Check
• Don’t forget to pack prescriptions. Check
• Don’t forget to pack undies. Check
• Stop whimpering. Check
• No – really stop whimpering. Check

Packing for a three-week trip is always a chore, especially at this time of year when the weather in South Texas can be so changeable. So our apartment is beginning to look like the staging area for a NASA mission to a Mars outpost, and I’m starting to feel a bit like David Bowie’s Major Tom (Don’t forget to pack protein pills and helmet. Check).

I have mixed emotions about the trip. I’m looking forward to seeing everyone – it’s been a couple of years since we visited. And this is the first time in over twenty years that we’ll be “home” for my mother-in-law’s birthday (she’ll be 84 this year), which will definitely be nice.

But we’re driving down, and that makes for a very, very, very long trip. And it involves doing a lot of things I really hate doing – sitting in a car for hours at a time, getting up early, living out of a suitcase and having my daily routine disrupted (yes, I know I shouldn’t be such a creature of habit, but it’s too late to change that now).

Plus, it means not being able to play with my computer all day. Bummer. We’ll have a laptop along, but we’ll be dependent on hotel internet hookups and dial-up service along the way, and that’s not an encouraging prospect. So this could be my last transmission for a while (Major Joy to Ground Control).

On the other hand, I probably will get a lot of reading done on the trip. I’m taking along several books I’m reading for various challenges. I even toyed with the idea of picking up a couple of audiobooks for the drive down and back. But I’m not sure how that would go over with M – he likes to listen to Aerosmith and The Who and Pink Floyd and Rod Stewart on the burn through Tennessee. Turned up loud!

So, I guess for now it’s back to the packing (should I or shouldn’t I take dress-up clothes for the birthday celebration? will we need winter coats for the trip back north? and where the hell did I put that travel steamer?). And the reading of lists with helpful reminders. Next item:

• When mother-in-law says I look like I've put on a few pounds since the last time she saw me, resist urge to bang head against wall (my head or hers).