Talk About a Trip!

Whew! What a trip! I now have much to gab about for this and future blogging.

I'm not sure if I mentioned that Buddy was staying back in Virginia with his best friend's family. It was kind of like reverse summer camp ~ we went away. Everyone did well with the separation, but we were sure glad to see him again! We ended up having to stay an extra day in Michigan so we didn't get back until Wednesday night.

The day before we left, I got to make a fun trip in to the doctor. I've let stress affect me too much (I need to read Lora's recommended read about The Frazzled Female) and I broke out in shingles. If you don't know what they are, because Hubby didn't, it has something to do with the dormant chicken pox virus. My mom's had them three times in her life, so I consider myself lucky. This was no walk in the park, especially considering I was getting ready to take a road trip. You don't want to go meet a new realtor, the building company representative, etc., in your yuckiest, least tight clothes with your pants pulled down a little where the waistband doesn't touch the bumps. Saggy pants in any style really aren't that attractive. So I thought of how bad poor Job had it and marched on in a little bit of style choosing a decent shirt as loose and long as possible ~ and saggy pants. Hey, there's only so much you can do.

We left on Saturday and didn't get to the Detroit area until a little after 2:00 Sunday morning. We used hotel points for our visit, and we had guaranteed our room when we reserved it online, but whenever we're going to be super late we usually call ahead when it starts getting around 10:00 at night just to let them know we are definitely coming. Fast forward to my husband's new favorite commercial he saw watching fishing on ESPN. It's for some Evinrude boat motor, I think, and a husband and wife are fishing out on a boat. She's quite the chatty one, and he's not. At the end of the commercial it says that the motor only needs serviced once every 21 million words for a woman, 7 million for a man. I looked online, and apparently there is a study that says women say three times as many words as men (there were other studies, but that one popped up several times on the google list). So back to the phone call, which I made to the hotel to confirm we were coming. I let them know our name, that we were going to be late, about what time we expected to be there, wanting to make sure they knew we were coming, and various other tidbits of information that were completely relevant to the conversation. I hang up the phone and Hubby says something like, "21 million words." He proceeds to tell me that when he calls to confirm when he's traveling that he's going to be late, he just says his last name, he'll be a late arrival, and that's about it. Not that he's rude, just not what I would call "informative." I'm informative. I give people information they might need or like to know or like to have, or that they might not need or like to know or like to have. Regardless, I'm informative, talkative, and friendly. I'm 21 million plus.

This is the first black squirrel I have ever seen. My husband has talked about seeing them up in Michigan. This one was close to our hotel.

This is a windmill farm we passed on the way home. We weren't able to see it on the way since it was dark. Not like the windmills I grew up seeing!

We were able to get things worked out on our house purchase/build. I can't wait to start posting pictures along the way. They already had the basement poured and the driveway completed and were waiting for a contract before they started any of the construction. They are going to try to have the house completed by the end of October, but it depends on the weather cooperation. We'll be living in a furnished apartment until then. The nice thing about this particular apartment is that it has a one-car garage, which will probably hold some of our stuff, because I don't know how we'll be able to even fit all our school books and supplies we'll need for three months in the apartment. It will be nice to have it close and handy and not underfoot. Actually that applies to everything since we can line the walls with boxes if we want.

I finished a book on the trip and started another one. I read "The Cat Who Could Read Backwards" by Lilian Jackson Braun. It's the first book in her Cat series, and I was fortunate to find a paperback with all three of the first books in one volume. It took a little while for me to get into the book and the characters, but once I did I enjoyed to book. I wasn't able to figure out the whodunit, which doesn't bother me, since I'd prefer to not know all through the book who it was anyway. I haven't had any trouble getting into the second book and I'm probably over halfway done with it. I just don't have much time to read right now since I'm so busy packing boxes and trying to make plans to move in two weeks.

I have more to share about our new house, about Hubby's retirement party today with his office and how I was sneaky (but I'm only good sneaky, even though I'm good at being sneaky), and homeschool planning amidst a move, and for new highschoolers on top of it! But I am still very tired from our trip and this post is long enough already. It will become a full blown novel if I'm not careful.

I'm looking forward to tomorrow with Heather & Reese and Know & Tell Friday, but I haven't had time to really look at anyone's blogs since I've been home, so my Nancy Drew instincts haven't kicked in so I can figure out what they're asking in the questions this week. :)

And by the way, I'm so computer illiterate it's shameful. Sometimes my blog locks up and I don't know why, but one of the suggestions by blogspot is to clear some temporary internet files and then repost. So if you're subscribed and get extra emails because of that, sorry. I don't know how else to fix it. I actually had to let my "Pictures" post post in the middle of the night before I actually left because I was having problems.

Hope everyone is having a great week!