Thanksgiving was kind of a whirlwind, but good. Got to spend lots of time with friends and family down south. The journey was a bit of a story though, so that is what I will share this evening.
Here was the plan:
Wed 18th - drive to Texas
Thurs 19th - recover
Fri 20th - get up early to drive with Vanessa down to San Antonio for a baby shower I was helping put on
Sat 21st - Baby shower
Mon 23rd - Catch plane back to DFW
Tues 24th - recover
Wed 25th - get up early and drive to Oklahoma
Sun 29th - drive back to Colorado from Oklahoma
Sounds crazy, I know. Welcome to my life.
So. Knowing that I had a 12 hour drive ahead of me, I set my alarm for 5 and went to bed really early on Tuesday the 17th. Unfortunately, this same night there was a really strong wind. Which, of course, would be no big deal...except I found out that night that apparently my bedroom window likes to scream with excitement during these bursts of wind speed. I'm talking an incredibly loud, high-pitched whistling howl that fills my bedroom every 30 seconds or so. This went on from about the time I laid down until 3 AM, at which point I finally entered the sweet, sweet embrace of slumber.
Needless to say, I was pretty delirious when I dragged myself out of bed two hours later to put in my contacts and load up my car. Eventually I got on the road around 6:30 (after quadruple checking that I had remembered to pack the favors for the shower) and began my journey south, glad to have timed it so that I missed all of Denver's morning traffic. See, the winds were still very strong and I passed a number of semis that had been pushed over by them..which of course caused tons of back up going north into Denver.
I got about an hour out of Denver when I realized I had, in my tired haze, left my glasses back at my apartment. For those of you who don't know, I have terrible, terrible vision. Things get blurry about six inches past my nose. I didn't want to have to turn back so I pulled over to double check that I had my spare pair of contacts that I always keep in my toiletries bag just in case. If something happened to the pair I was wearing then at least I would have a replacement and that would be enough to get me through the two weeks and the long drive back.
After a very thorough and increasingly desperate search, I came to the conclusion that I had, for whatever reason, taken them out that morning to make room for other things with the intention of sticking them in my suitcase with my glasses...which I now concluded were both sitting patiently back in my apartment on the bathroom counter waiting to be brought along.
...so. I begrudgingly and very resentfully turned around and began the drive back into Denver. And proceeded to sit in rush hour traffic both ways for the next two hours. Ugh. Don't worry, I spent most of that time giving myself a stern talking to.
Amazingly, I managed to stay awake the entire trip down and finally pulled into my parents' driveway just before 11 pm. Made it about as far as the living room before all of the tired my body had been storing up fell out of the sky and landed on my eyelids. I slept for almost 12 hours.
The rest of the trip went by pretty much according to plan. A few of my friends dropped by on Thursday to catch up, drove with V for 4 hours on Friday to San Antonio, whirlwind weekend of shower and hanging out with people, went to the San Antonio Zoo on Monday then caught the plane back that evening, spent Tuesday gathering and sorting items I had left in Keller, left bright and early Wednesday following Mom to Oklahoma, ate lots of food for four days with extended family, and drove back up to Colorado on Sunday morning.
All in all it was a good, but rather exhausting trip. It took me a few days of essentially lounging around my apartment and napping constantly to recover. Pretty much all I accomplished upon my return was cleaning and restoring rest equilibrium.
A shot of my family doing what we always do when we meet up for Thanksgiving...manual labor! We are fixing the barn roof by bending the metal and cutting/nailing it into place.
Next up: Christmas. D:
~K
