Not Inadequate

Check out this awesome message that got caught in my spam filter yesterday -

The next time I read a blog, I hope that it doesnt disappoint me as much as this one. I mean, I know it was my choice to read, but I actually thought youd have something interesting to say. All I hear is a bunch of whining about something that you could fix if you werent too busy looking for attention.

Girl, please. Anyone who reads this swill knows it’s not that interesting. Probably I’d be a lot more insulted if it were properly punctuated.

We’re here!

I have about 8 zillion pictures of those rocks, but I will spare you.

We got here last Tuesday, just in time for some kind of hurricane-ish thing. It was wild. Supposedly there were 90 mile-an-hour gusts. Ninety miles an hour! That’s hurricane-y, right? I felt like Giraldo, practically.

On Wednesday afternoon, we made our way to the next town over, which has a Safeway and a Walmart. We went to both, because why not double down on the shopping fun the day before Thanksgiving? I pretty much refused to do a big turkey dinner, and bought regular groceries instead. On Thursday morning, we went to the beach.

The Beach!

When we got home, I made chicken-sausage-mushroom-noodle soup and cornbread and called it dinner.

It was terrific.

Yesterday was the most difficult day so far – even worse than Wyoming, which was a walk in the park comparatively. There are a lot of mountains all up in the way when driving to the Oregon Coast and not a lot of ways to get across them.

We could either dip way south and drive up, or drive way up and come down. OR! Look – the map shows a teeeny, tiiiiiny red road that seems to cut across to exactly where we want to go.

Note: No more teeeeny, tiiiiiiiny red roads on the Adventure.

I have lived in Colorado my whole life. Mountain passes ain’t nothing but a thang. Until yesterday, when we were cruising along on our little two-lane, no shoulder, no traffic tiny red road, blasting Lenny Kravitz and all of a sudden encountered a sign that said 10% Downgrade Next 6 Miles.

NOW we were on a little two-lane, no shoulder, no traffic tiny road that was covered in snow and ice and had a very scary drop off about 3 inches away. And we were going down at what felt like a 45 degree angle.

Oh, and no guardrails. What’s up, Oregon? I gotta pay extra because I’m not allowed to pump my own gas in this state, but you can’t spring for a few guardrails?

I moved the car from Drive to 3. Then to 2. Then to Low. I white-knuckled it down the side of that freaking mountain going 10 miles an hour, chanting to myself “just don’t look, just don’t look”  at the side of the cliff and telling Jim to pray.

And when we finally made it to the bottom, I burst into tears. I kept blubbering “I was so scared, I was so scared, I was so scared.”

I was, y’all. I was SO SCARED.

Thanks to everyone who has been praying for us. I felt it yesterday.

Saturday we drove from Boulder to Rock Springs, Wyoming. It’s about 350 miles and it took us 8 hours.

Now I know you might be thinking That’s Some Sissy Driving You Did There - What Are You, A Bunch Of Weenies? (or if you’re Kristy, you not only thought it, you texted it to me directly.)

However.

Bear in mind that I have two little kids and they are insufferable in the car. Big kept saying “I just need to move my body!” Poor babies, only Indy drivers are strapped in tighter than kids in carseats. Plus also think how much progress can be made when kids who didn’t have to pee in the nice, clean Starbucks 5 miles ago are suddenly verging on an accident when the only option is the side of the road. Not to mention that they both had been….irregular, shall we say, since we left home 2 weeks ago and Concerned Mom gave them some PediaLax tablets on Friday. Which both happily and unhappily kicked in on Saturday. Of course it would make it too easy if they coordinated those efforts, so we had to stop multiple times for THAT, too.

It’s a post about poop, people. Deal with it.

And that doesn’t even count all the stops to get snacks to shove in their pie-holes so they would be quiet for half a second.

PLUS it was windy and snowy and blowing snow and very scary for a good portion of Wyoming.

We also saw TONS of antelope. Very cute, the antelope.

Anyway.

That was day one.

• I am writing this on Friday night, and we are getting ready for the drive to Oregon. We went to Target to pick up the requisite snacks for the drive, and I saw this -

SQUEEZABLE FRUIT. What is that? Just mashed up fruit? In a bag? Is chewing too much work now? I see the bag has some kind of spout to suck your fruit from. I suppose that would come in handy if you were an astronaut. Or if gravity disappeared suddenly. It’s organic. That’s…something.

Horrifying.

• Here’s what bugs me when I go into a Walmart or a Target – the entrance doors are on the left and the exit doors are on the right. Every time I try to go into a store, I have to negotiate a stream of people with full buggys exiting the store.

We walk on the RIGHT in this country. The RIGHT. I want to  enter a store on the RIGHT.

• As we were checking out, I saw that the checker was bagging cleaning supplies with  food. I don’t know if they don’t teach checkers this stuff anymore or what. It seems like common sense to me, but when I started rearranging stuff, she gave me A Look. I said apologetically, “I don’t want chemicals in with food”  and she goes “oh” with a blank look on her face. And then she asks, “what about a magazine, can that go in there?”

And I was all like MAGAZINES are FINE, just don’t put the ATHLETES FOOT CREAM in with the CHEERIOS, YOU NINNY. But not out loud. Because I have self-control like that.

We are driving from Colorado to Oregon.

I wonder how often I will be relying on these:

I don’t want to be overly dramatic here, but I may have stumbled upon The Key to Driving with Small Children.

Okay, this is the Boulder VRBO we have stayed in for the past two weeks -

Living Room, with legos and dollhouse stuff strewn about. Jim has an almost visceral hatred of wicker furniture for some reason, so every day I tell him how much I like it.

I don’t, in fact, like it even a little; but it’s more fun if he thinks I do.

The kids’ room, with two twin beds covered in ancient floral -

Our room, with a queen bed. QUEEN! We have slept on a king bed for 15 years. The next place has a queen also, and frankly I don’t know if our relationship can survive this downgrade. It’s so…..crowded.

And finally, the teacup-sized kitchen. Last night Jim was pulling some break-and-bake cookies out of the oven and could not find the hotpad.

This kitchen has THREE drawers. And he couldn’t find the hotpad.

I mocked him.

Obviously.

I mean, it’s practically my DUTY in these kinds of situations. He got mad at me for making fun of him, which surprised me a little because it’s not his first day here.

Since we are only in Boulder for two weeks, this place is perfectly serviceable, if not ideal. I have learned a few things already about how Adventuring this way might go.

Firstly, the kitchen was filthy. FILTHY. Like, chunks of food from who-knows-when on the dishes filthy. After I recovered from the shock, I took myself down to Target, bought some cleaning supplies, and washed every single dish in the place.

I was really grossed out and horrified, as anyone who knows me in real life can probably imagine. But New and Improved Relaxed Deb realized that this might just be how kitchens in rentals are, and that a thorough cleaning might be part of the first-day festivities no matter where we stay.

Secondly, my life-long hatred of dust ruffles has been validated all over again. I cannot make the beds and re-tuck in the sheets (because of course, my husband kicks like a rabbit all night and rips the bed apart) without tucking in the stupid dust ruffle too.

Then I pull out the dust ruffle.

Which in turn untucks the sheets.

Which I then re-tuck in.

Which starts the whole thing all over again. But with cursing.

Dust Ruffles: Stupid. Maybe even Evil.

Driving to Oregon tomorrow!

Big Hairy Tarantula

Big Disgusting Roach

Cute Little Frog Beetles (doing something I escaped explaining to the kids. thank goodness)

The only one of about a zillion pictures that managed to capture the Amazing Proboscis.

The Butterfly Pavilion is a terrific place to visit, especially for elementary-aged kids. We were able to see lots of great bugs in around 2 hours. We even saw some butterflies emerge from their cocoons! Sucker Mom bought ridiculously expensive t-shirts in the gift shop and we ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in the car on the way to the American Girl store.

Today I’m at Heart of the Matter, giving away the complete works of James Herriot, courtesy of Library and Ed. They are also offering readers a terrific coupon code, which you can use to purchase the set for less than half the normal cost!

Click over to enter or claim the coupon code.

Toward the end of the weeding down/packing/storing part of this insanity, I was plagued by doubts about what we were doing with all our stuff.

Like, are we bringing enough stuff? Too much stuff? The right stuff? I felt alternatively anxious we weren’t going to have everything we needed and disgusted that I thought yarn and 42 jackets qualified as a need.

Plus I worried about the stuff that was going into storage. We got rid of SO MUCH STUFF because I couldn’t justify paying to store it. Hundreds of dollars worth of stuff. Will I regret that? Or will I regret what we kept? We have done that before - paid a fortune in storage rent to store things, and then frowned at what we unpacked, wondering what possessed us to think it was worth saving. Will we do that again? We don’t know where we will be in one or two or even five years, so it’s hard to anticipate. Nevertheless, I find a way to lay awake in the middle of the night, fretting about my future mini-muffin-tin needs.

Worrying: it’s my superpower.

We found these amazing foot lockers at WalMart for $20 each. Over the course of 3 weeks, I proceeded to buy every one I could find within a three-WalMart radius. We have 25 of them now, and they are what we are hauling our necessities around in.

Don’t do the math. It’s upsetting.

So, here’s what I packed:

• 2 bins of clothes per person
• 1 bin of shoes (for all of us, not just me)
• 1 bin of jackets, hats, gloves, swim suits, etc.
• 2 bins of toys, crayons, playdoh, paper dolls, activity books, magnetic toys
• a magnetic whiteboard
• 2 bins of books for the kids
• 1 bin for bill paying and other assorted office-y stuff
• 1 bin for bathroom/medicine cabinet supplies
• 1 bin of yarn and needles (one bin! a sacrifice! I put all my yarn in ziplocs and smashed as much air out ot them as I could)
• THREE bins of kitchen stuff – a crockpot, the Kitchen Aid, bread baking supplies, etc
• 3 bins for school – workbooks, notebooking stuff, the mom binder, and a tiny printer
• 2 bins of food I know we’ll eat and don’t want to re-buy. Expensive pasta, organic tomato sauce, organic coconut oil, a bunch of spices, and so on.

The cabin we will be staying at in Oregon is apparently almost 100 miles away from a WalMart or a toy store, so I took out a bunch of clothes I was going to take for myself and stuffed Christmas presents in my trunks instead. I also crammed rolls of paper towels, paper plates, and plastic spoons into any extra space I found. I found a tiny spot for about 3 books for myself, and have already started laying the groundwork for  getting myself a Kindle.

Plus there was room for my computer, Jim’s work computer, and a couple of suitcases that we’ll use when we are driving (instead of carrying in 14 foot lockers, which might garner suspicious looks from the Holiday Inn Express people).

So. There you have it. Does it sound like I covered all the bases? Did I miss anything? What would you change if it was you who had gone mad and embarked on this journey?