It won't be long...

You're coming home!

How to be Alone

"Lonely is healing if you make it"

Musical Interlude

Three of this week's favorite songs:

Ink

This tattoo is unreal.  As soon as I saw the picture, the words echoed through every part of me.  What poignant simplicity...

What in the world happened to my hand?

Please notice the large purple bruise at the bottom of the palm of my hand.  I have no idea what happened!  I noticed after lunch that my hand was feeling a little sensitive in that area.  Then the color kept getting darker!

It doesn't really look any worse now, but I can't, for the life of me, figure out what I did to hurt myself in the first place.

Life List

I have friends that keep life lists, itemizations of all the things they want to learn, accomplish or do before they die.  I had never really wanted to put a list to paper, as it were, until today.  It turns out that while I was painting my fingernails, my college roommate was learning to change the oil in her car.  When she texted me her accomplishment, I was honestly a little jealous, which is why learning to change the oil in my car now tops my life list.

1. Learn to change the oil in my car.
2. Build a fence around my own yard.
3. Cage dive with Great White Sharks.
4. Foster dogs waiting for forever homes.
5. Fluently speak French and Spanish.
6. Hike to the bottom of the Grand Canyon.
7. Raise a family.
8. Grow a garden.
9. Cook okra gumbo like my grandmother.
10. Make crawfish etouffee like my mom.
 

I realize it isn't very long, I want to keep adding to this list (and, obviously, accomplishing as much as I can).  I will update on my progress.

Thanksgiving

I need to remind myself of all the wonderful things in my life, rather than feel sorry for myself.  I am grateful for:

1. My dogs, Paisley and Kai.  Have you seen them?  Aren't they CUTE?!
2. The gift of hearing.  The click of my keys as I type.  The creaks in my car while I drive.  Beautiful music that plays for me while I think....
3. Family!  My sisters, my dad, my stepmom, my grandmother, my momma.  Each relationship is so special and different.
4. A car to take me anywhere I want to go.
5. My girlfriends, who each show me how much they love me in a unique way.
6. The stars that put into perspective how tiny I am.  They teach me to think outside of my own existence.
7. A paycheck that allows me to meet my needs and wants.
8. Every person who has taught me a lesson.
9. Crossword puzzles, Entourage and my computer.
10. My Aggie ring :)

I know you got worried because there wasn't a trip report last night

E-mail from 6 August 2010

We're alive and well...in L.A.!  We had a tough go of Arizona, so, after arriving in Flagstaff, we agreed that pushing through to Cali was in both of our best interests.  Three states in one day!

Last night, I wrote: Leaving Las Cruces this morning seems like ages ago now.  Our biggest problem was salvaging the tamales that Andres gifted to Drew during our stopover in El Paso.  The tamales quickly found a home in a gas station-purchased, Styrofoam cooler (with complimentary ice).

There was great scenery traveling through New Mexico.

We drove through a little rain, but no terribly threatening weather.  However, the rest of our day was "wrought with adversity."  There were two life-threatening (but not for us) avian encounters.  The first early in our day when a pigeon swooped in EXTREMELY close to the car, almost crashing into the windshield, and both of our first reactions were to duck for cover!  We had a good laugh over it, and the pigeon survived her non-encounter with Drew's car.  It wasn't much later before a road runner literally crossed our speedy path...Meep meep!

We stopped for lunch in Pie Town, NM, at the Daily Pie Cafe.  The locals made us feel very welcome.  We did not eat any pie.  I know.  We should have.

Things took a turn for the less-than-ideal when we crossed over into Arizona.  Their highways and intersections are not labeled well, so we almost missed several important turns.  There were a few times where we turned around and around and around looking for a junction, and more times where we made hairpin turns, so that we wouldn't have to turn around and around and around.

We were glad to reach the Petrified Forest National Park.  We stopped at the souvenir shop for a map, took pictures at the entrance, and were disgruntled to find a $10 park entrance fee.  Agreeing that calcified wood just wasn't worth it, we turned the car around and continued on our quest for the Grand Canyon.
Hoping to catch another natural wonder in Arizona and fulfill our tourism quota, we tried visiting the Meteor Crater just outside of Flagstaff.  It was also a perfect time to stretch our legs after being in the car for so long.  We wound down a 2.5 mile dirt road to a mountainous formation surrounded by prison-like barbed wire.  We got out of the car and up to the ticket gate where we stopped in our tracks.  They wanted $15 per person to look at a hole in the ground.  Outraged, we got back in the car and continued on to Flagstaff.

It wasn't much further to Flagstaff, but Drew needed a nap and my mood had soured.  The thought of driving further still to the Grand Canyon and back, spending the night in Flagstaff and getting up for a third day of driving was not appealing, so we stopped for a meeting of the minds over Chicken McNuggets and cheeseburgers.  It was decided that our hatred for Arizona and their tourism ploys was too deep to stay there any longer.  We had no choice.  We had to carry on to Los Angeles.

So we did it!  And we're here, two border patrol inspections later (the first I'd ever experienced!).  We're looking forward to three days of getting Drew's house in order, beach-going, seeing friends and orienting ourselves to the Pacific time zone.  I know the weekend will fly by.  I'll keep posting pictures on FB of our LA adventures, so be on the lookout!

We made it to New Mexico!

E-mail from 4 August 2010

Wow, what a first day!  If you know Drew and me, you know that doing anything on time just isn't in either of our genetic codes.  We didn't leave Austin until noon, so, of course, it didn't take long for us to make a pit stop for lunch.  We only made it as far as Fredricksburg before the hunger pangs hit us.  We decided to make it a quick lunch and stopped at Dairy Queen (or DQ Country, as some of you know I like to call it). 

The afternoon flew by at 90 mph.  We had (mostly) gorgeous scenery, and I suffered only one (music-related) melt down.  I had heard one too many twangy country songs at that point.  Drew is now teasing me for calling the trees stupid (my exact words were, "This scenery is boring.")  Luckily, we travel very well together, and laugh just about everything off. 

The area past Fort Stockton, towards Big Bend, is so pretty.  The plateaus, mesas and hills are plentiful and they give way to small mountain chains that appear blue in the distance.  As we got closer, we could see the mountains were covered in small trees and plants.  The fauna looked like a carpet covering each mountain because of the crevices and the shadows they cast.  We changed into Mountain time zone, so we are now an hour beyond everyone in Central. 

We met Andres, Drew's best friend from law school, in El Paso, where Andres grew up.  We had dinner at L&J Cafe and spotted a rainbow on our way into dinner.

The food was great and really hit the spot.  After dinner, Andres took us, in his new car (!), to a look out spot on the east side of the Franklin Mountains.  We had a 180 degree view of El Paso and Juarez.  Drew and I took a picture there.

After saying goodbye to Andres, we made the 40 minute drive from El Paso to Las Cruces.  We're excited to see the Petrified Forest and the Grand Canyon tomorrow!