Whirlwind

Today was a travel day. It started around 7:30 am when I realized I could sleep no longer since Kristie was up and packing up to leave for the annual Christmas trek to East Texas. Knowing that I had done very little packing, I decided to go ahead and get started. Normally, we can leave by 10 am and be to our intended destination approximately 6 hours later...including meals, gas, and other stops...including letting the dog walk around a bit. That would have been good today, but we had a few stops to make and a few additions to our normal travel scheme.



Like we were hauling a 16' trailer with this very large mesquite tree on it. I was taking this to Pineywoods so that they can cut it into boards for our camp. The backhoe operator, always good judges of the weight of large objects, estimated this thing to be about 2000 lbs....so I was a bit tentative. We had to stop so many times to check the tie downs and the tires. It was pretty funny how many people would pull up alongside and stare at us. "Hello, it's just us. YEs, we know we have a huge tree on our trailer." We finally made it to Pienywoods around 7:30 after leaving the camp at 11:30. We amazingly stretched the first leg of our 6 hour trip into 8....nice.

Besides stretching our entire 6 hour trip into a mere 12 hours, the best part of the day had to be my final task before leaving the house this morning. Yesterday Kristie had mentioned that something was in the chimney and it sounded like it was trying to get out. A full day at work kept me from coming home to check on it, and I forgot about it last night. Regretfully, I had resigned myself to the fact that the poor animal was probably dead and I would need to remove the body or reap the benefits of a ripe carcass in the chimney for 6 days. The absolute last thing on my list this morning was to open the damper and throw away whatever I found...what I found, or more exactly what found me was a very alive and very in my living room South Texas freaked out squirrel. I had barely cracked the opening and this blur of life came flying by me and dove underneath our couch. I immediately remove our cat from the situation and begin to build a pitiful barricade to keep the squirrel in the living room and not in the rest of the house. I open the back door and before I know it the squirrel in headed toward to the great outdoors. The only problem is even though the squirrel knows the way is open, he or she cannot figure the whole door thing. We have these really low windows in our dining room and Flash the Squirrel in repeatedly throwing itself against the windows to get out. I finally have to step into the dining room (no I wasn't in the same room as the squirrel until this point) and begin to ask Flash to use the door instead of the window. Just when I think I 'm gonna have to catch this thing and let it out. It's gone. Out the door. It was the most exciting part of the day and it lasted about 5 minutes. Funny how life works like that.

Still here....sort of

It's late. I can't sleep. I haven't posted in like 16 years, so I thought it was time to break my blogfast. Things around the camp are steadily drawing me into another whirlwind summer, and that's actually exciting and tiring all at once. Family life is good unless you count having to give my dog these nasty smelling sulfur lime dips for skin allergies. I got to go fishing with Joe Saturday, but it was really, really sad since he caught fish on a fairly regular basis for 3 hours and I caught absolutely nothing...humbling. I guess the biggest thing I've been struggling with lately, or maybe just the thing that has bothered me the most is this: I can't seem to be here...I don't mean here like a physical location, but here in the way someone actually has their mind and body in the same place. It's gotten annoying lately how I can't seem to get my mind in the same room as the rest of me. I've tried getting more sleep, less sleep, more activity, less activity, less caffeine, more caffeine, but nothing really seems to help. I feel like I really need to get away from distractions for a while....no tv, no computer, no work. I remember having that time in my life when, with no distractions, I thought I was pretty focused on grounded, so I know that it is achievable. Hopefully, this weekend on the annual Woodlake Camping Club outing, I will have a chance to sit and stare at a fire for three days, share time, food, and stories with people with whom I have shared life for years. It could be that this is perfect timing for a getaway. We'll see. I'll let you know how it goes.