Not Inadequate

Sorting through books and deciding which ones to read in the next house…

(the white, adjustable height folding tables are these. I got sick of the kids having to play on tiny coffee tables or taking over the dining room table which had the unpleasant side effect of me listening to legos hit the floor all day long. Plus, we can use them for school. You know. When that happens.)

(if you’re new here and wondering what the heck I’m talking about, read this,  this and this. And maybe this, this, and this if you become enthralled with this CrazyPants Rodeo.)

Last Saturday, we took the kids up to Seattle. We went to the Space Needle -

And looked at the amazing view -

And had the most expensive meal we’ve ever eaten -

Then went to the Ballard Locks -

And watched the boats -

It was an absolutely glorious day in the Pacific Northwest.

Well, except for a few periods where we got lost and blamed each other. Apparently being lost in a big city does not bring out the best in Jim and me. Mostly Jim.

I can say with confidence though, that it was all his fault.

Also at some point, Big rubbed his hand or his face all over some disgusting pile of germs. Three days later, he woke up at 5:30 am, announced he didn’t feel good, and coughed all over my eyeballs.

So now we all have the plague or something.

Okay peeps.  Here’s the thing.

We are in the throes of planning the next leg of our trip. We are rather indecisive as to where we want to go.

We spent November, December, and January in Bandon, Oregon. We are in Washington until the end of April, when we will head to Yellowstone and spend May hiking around in a giant volcano. In June we need to be in Colorado, to visit various doctors and rotate some of our stuff into storage.

From the middle of August until the middle of September we are going to be in St. Louis; and I am working really hard to spend October up in the Great Lakes area - ideally, Michigan’s  UP.

And I’d like to visit Minneapolis or Duluth in there somewhere.

But that still leaves some holes in the schedule…

Where should we go in November? December? What about that pesky six weeks between the beginning of July and the middle of August?

Any ideas?

Where have you been that you loved? Any place off the beaten path that’s worth a look? Any place that’s magical at Christmas?

We love tours of factories and other interesting things, art museums, science museums, being near the water, etc.

We are considering checking out Kentucky, Tennessee, maybe the Carolina’s…. then maybe circling back around to Colorado through Texas in spring of 2013.

I am looking for suggestions and advice, so don’t hold back.

I had to pay bills the other day.

Gross.

I thought I’d take the opportunity to answer the thousands* of emails I get asking me how I’m hauling my stuff around on this adventure.

Here is my bill paying kit:

That’s it. A storage box and an file folder box thingy. It’s amazing, actually. I used to have a whole filing cabinet full of crap, but before we left I found a professional shredding service and got rid of a TON of useless paper. Convincing myself I could get by on fewer Sharpies was harder.

I love Sharpies, man.

Envelopes, Stapler, Checkbook, Calculator….

Also inside the box are MORE boxes!

‘Cause that’s how I roll. All the components of my life are neatly packed into little boxes, then those boxes are placed into bigger boxes, and then finally, into one last large heavy-duty plastic trunk.

Like a set of matryoshka dolls.

Except less pretty (which I say with complete insincerity, because to me organization IS beautiful).

Places for my beloved Sharpies, Scotch Tape, Pencils…

And little hockey pucks full of other random treats. I love the little hockey pucks. And little flag post-its. I buy them compulsively.

There you have it! An entire office in one little box.

The best part is that when I am finished with it, I get to put it away (in yet another box) and avoid thinking about it for a while.

What else would you like to know?

* thousands being the number of emails I get in the rich world of my imagination, wherein you are all absolutely burning with curiosity about the details of my life and I graciously bestow my wisdom, whilst remaining modest and awesome.

Okay, so here’s what happened.

In this neighborhood, there lives a tiny pack of six geese. All the locals seem to feed them and they wander around the neighborhood, fat and happy. They are cute, and we make honking noises when we see them. A couple of days ago, they were right down the street eating some corn a neighbor had set out, and me and the kids walked down to see them.

We stayed across the street from them; and when the kids wanted to get closer, I took the opportunity to tell them that animals will protect their food and their babies, and that the geese might LOOK all soft and cuddly, but they are wild animals who could hurt us if they wanted to.

It was all nature-lesson-y and stuff.

So we watched and talked and the geese were very cute and ate their corn.

And then the geese had enough.

They started walking across the street toward us, making little screechy chirping noises, hissing, and puffing up their feathers.

WELL.

I knew this was a bad sign, what with being an expert birder and everything, and started to hustle the kids back down the street. But our retreat was not hasty enough for the geese, and they kept advancing. Faster and faster on their little geese legs.

Of course, in my mind I was all, “walk backwards. make eye contact. NO! don’t make eye contact! wait, that’s dogs. Run down a hill! They can’t run down a hill! or is that bears? they are getting closer!” etc. etc. etc. After about three seconds of being stalked by a flock of geese, I calmly invited the kids to run back to the house, and I told the geese “OKAY! We’re leaving!”

I did not run, but kept backing away as fast as I could, keeping myself between the geese and my kids. For all I knew, running would provoke them, and I steeled myself to take a bird DOWN.

Eventually they were satisfied they’d chased us off and went back to the corner for a victory lap around the corn.

When I got back, the kids were hysterical, having flung themselves at their Daddy, sobbing that “the geese were ATTACKING US!”

I recounted the whole story to him, but when I got to the part where I had heroically put myself in danger to protect my children, he only looked skeptical and said, “THAT’S why you didn’t run?” and didn’t give me any credit at all for being a self-sacrificing SUPER HERO.

Which I so obviously AM, JIM

OBVIOUSLY.

I swear. Rude.

Six Severe Weather Alerts. SIX.

GUSTS ABOVE 100 MPH ARE LIKELY.

I’m not gonna lie, it’s a little scary.

** When I wrote this yesterday, there were 5 alerts. I had to change it to 6 last night. This morning when I woke up, there were 8. EIGHT. Lots of ominous warnings about houses falling of the edge of the hill and cars being swept away by less than a foot of rushing water. Oy.

It was Big’s birthday last week and we went to the beach when Jim got off work. We happened to get there during a very low tide, and felt SO lucky to see all kinds of creatures -

Ochre Sea Stars

More Sea Stars

This guy (we think it’s a sea anemone – this kind maybe?

I love it here

So we are here, on the Oregon coast, about which we have been dreaming for over a year.

It’s pretty swell, mostly.

I’ve been so worried about how the kids will adapt and how Jim will manage to work and making sure everyone had enough books and Legos and room, that I kind of forgot that all this is a big adjustment for me, too.

In fact, it’s probably been a bigger adjustment for me than the rest of them. Which in the spirit of being totally neurotic, makes me feel guilty. After all, this whole crazypants idea was mine. I should be totally unshakable in my conviction that this is the best thing for us. Right? Instead I have Vague Uncertainty mixed with occasional Panic Attacks.

Here are a few of the things that make my stomach crawl -

• Will we ever be able to buy a house again? The first time we bought a house, we got a VA loan and sailed through closing by handing over a measly $700. Easy! Then we sold that house when I got pregnant with Little and Jim’s company started making noises about relocating us. We rented a townhouse while we waited to see what was going to happen. After renting for seven months, we bought our second house. We had to turn over every scrap of financial information we possessed even though we had a large down payment and had been homeowners before. It was a giant hassle. Who knows what the requirements are now? I can’t imagine that being essentially homeless for a yet-to-be-determined amount of time will look good to lenders.

• Because we sold in the worst real estate market since the Great Depression, we are broke. Broke-broke-broke-ity-broke. I don’t like it. The cushion we had saved was all but demolished by the sale of the house. Since all this was my idea, our broke state is my fault. Obviously.

• What if we spend so much time on the beach and traveling and doing nothing that I continue to suck at school? I mean, let’s face it – school has been on the back burner for a while now, what with the selling and packing and traveling and all that. Actually, it’s not even on a burner. It’s more like in an old whipped cream container in the back of the fridge. I HAVE to get back on track. What if life is so different and so constantly changing that Little suffers? Big is off to the races with his reading, but Little needs some one-on-one time with mom and our phonics books. The cost of The Adventure can’t be that she starts out behind in reading. Reading is a big deal. Not optional.

Those are the biggies. There are plenty of little things too, though. Like I miss my kitchen. I miss my king-sized bed. I miss my shower, as crappy as it was, because at least I could move around in it without rubbing up against a mildew-y shower curtain (note: buy new shower curtain). I miss being the person in charge of where the couch goes, or how the kitchen is arranged. All my nesting instincts are being foiled and I feel slightly restless. I miss making bread – none of the kitchens have been suitable (as in they haven’t had an oven). The kids are, um, irregular without homemade bread, so if they are backed up – you guessed it! – my fault.

What if everyone loves doing this and I’m the killjoy who needs a place to call home?

What if everyone gets mad at me for being such a whiner? This was, after all, a choice we made freely. No one made us do this. Are you allowed to complain about problems you created by deliberately choosing to turn your life upside down?

What if they really have discontinued the one style of jeans that fits me?

AND THEN after fretting about all this stuff for a while, it finally occurred to me that all these things are….well, I don’t want to say silly, but the fact that I’m a worrier and the degree to which I worry is a shortcoming. Of mine. Something I really need to work on – for my own sake. Everyone is fine. My family is fine. They are healthy and fed and bathed and having fun. They have mom and dad and each other and a giant pile of Legos. Instead of giving in to hours of worry that is not accomplishing anything but wearing away my stomach lining, I need to find a way to roll my eyes at Neurotic Deb and tell her to shut the eff up.

Dang it.

Self-awareness: So. Unpleasant.

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.