Forward Motion

Oh, Florida....

Well.  That's it.  Our last weekend in the United States.  Tomorrow we leave this great hotel and drive to Atlanta.  On Tuesday, we turn in my van for shipment and that evening, board a plane to Italy.  I am holding it together, but just barely.  By this time next week, I'll be on another continent.

It's been such a wonderful vacation.  Almost too wonderful, because it's made it even harder for me to leave.  I keep reminding myself that the kids and I are coming back to Florida next summer.  If I focus on getting through until next summer, instead of the next 3 years, I can maybe stave off the crazy panic that's right under my skin.  Sigh...I wish I wasn't such a mental case about this.

But anyway.  I'll be fine.  It's just the getting over there that is rough.  We decided that we couldn't risk the heat restrictions trying to fly the dog as checked baggage.  In order to ensure that she doesn't get left behind, we are going to carry her on with us.  She jusssst barely fits into the carrier that meets the size restrictions and I'm sure she's not going to be pleased at being crammed in there for so many hours.  But at least she'll be with us.

I'm not good at goodbyes, but goodbye, Florida.  I'll miss you.  Thanks for the shopping and the beaches and the friends and the pedicures.  My toes look awesome.  See you next year.

I could get used to this

I moved to Florida in the middle of 7th grade.  We moved a lot when I was young and when I enrolled in middle school here, it was the 8th school I had attended.  I lived in Largo until I graduated from high school, the longest I've ever lived in one town.  After my freshman year of college, I came back and lived there for one more year before I joined the army. So overall, I've lived in Florida for about 7 years.

For some of you that have lived in the same town or the same state or even the same region your whole life, 7 years probably doesn't seem very long.  But they were the years that I learned to drive, that I got my first kiss, that I became an adult, so they seem like more important years to me.

All I know is that whenever I drive over the Howard Franklin bridge from Tampa into Pinellas County, I look out at the bay and feel like I am coming home.  The traffic is maddening, the humidity is ridiculous, and oh, I had forgotten about the existence of mosquitos in the last year! But this trip really feels like coming home for me.

On Wednesday evening, we met my dad at my brother's house.  My brother has had a boat of some kind since he was probably 14 years old.  After high school, he lived on a 40 ft. wooden boat for years and years.  Now he has a house that backs up to the Intracoastal Waterway and we all climbed aboard a boat (actually my dad's boat, but that's a long story involving a broken motor and somethingsomething inboard lift) and went to dinner.

 

I love being out on the water.  I don't really care about fishing, but I am always up for a boat ride.

Also, when I find that winning lottery ticket, I'd like this house please:

 

And a staff to clean it, of course.

We had a wonderful dinner out, the four of our family, my dad, my brother, and my brother's girlfriend (who I adore and he better not ever break up with).  No surprise, but El Paso had terrible seafood and I missed having good seafood.  I had the mangrove snapper and it was SO. DELICIOUS.  I kind of want to go back and eat seafood at this place every day.

Just as we were finishing our meals, we noticed the wind kicking up and the sky outside darkening.  That is one problems with going to dinner by boat, sometimes the weather won't let you stay for dessert.

 

Here we are leaving the restaurant and you can see how ominous the sky is.  We saw some very impressive lightning bolts that seemed to stretch across the entire heavens, but we didn't get a bit of rain.  That may have had something to do with the speed at which my brother had the boat going:

 

I'm so glad DH talked me into coming to Florida for vacation before we leave for Italy.  I've seen friends from high school and had our own little mini-reunion that was the most fun I've had in I don't know how long.  We've been to the Salvador Dali museum and seen his weird paintings.  DH took the kids to a water slide park and I got a pedicure.  (Totally fair distribution of fun for both of us.)  And we still have more than a week left!!

Many many miles behind us

Ahhhhh.....it feels SO GOOD not to be driving right now.  I'm blogging to you from a very nice hotel suite in Clearwater, FL and let me tell you, this whole family has earned this vacation.  A brief recap:

We left El Paso a little later than we'd hoped on Tuesday.  I had wanted to make it to Ft. Worth, but by 9:30 pm we were still over an hour away.  We stopped in Eastlake, TX and decided we'd get up really early the next morning to make up time.  I have no idea how I got up every morning at 5 am all those years when I was in the Army.  It was physically painful for me to be awake so early, but we pushed on and made it to just west of Nashville on Wednesday.

Thursday was crazy.  We drove to my mom's property north of Knoxville, where my dad met us.  My dad & DH loaded up a tractor and a bunch of other equipment that we needed to get off of mom's property.  I left Alex with those guys and Grace and I turned around and drove back to Nashville.  The guys then took all the stuff down to my dad's property about 6 hours away.  Grace and I had a day to kill while they dealt with all that, so we hung around Nashville and shopped and relaxed.

While there, we went to the Haus of Yarn.  If you are in Nashville, don't miss this yarn shop.  It was packed with so much delightful yarn and tons and tons of knitted up samples!  I loved seeing and touching all the projects.  I knew I couldn't buy toooo much, but I couldn't resist some Zauerball sock yarn because hey, it's already in a ball rather a skein, so that is very practical for traveling.  I also picked up some Lorna's Laces Helen's Lace yarn.  I had just looked at the new Knitty that morning and that's the yarn used for this shawl, Cold Mountain.

I loved Nashville.  DH and I are considering someday maybe retiring in that area.  Right now that seems so far off, but I was glad to drive around the city and enjoy it.  Saturday morning was another early one as Grace and I drove down to Florida.  We stopped and picked up the guys in Gainesville, then kept going down to Clearwater.

After 4 long, long days of driving, the last thing I wanted to hear when we checked into the hotel was that it was overbooked.  They didn't have a room with double beds for us, so they gave us a king bed room with a sofa bed.  The king bed had such a sag in the middle that it was shaped like a contact lens.  When we pulled out the sofa bed, the sheets were filthy.  AND the wifi did not reach to our room on the end of the corridor.  It was immediately clear we would not be spending our FL vacation at that place.

So yesterday, we checked out and drove around looking for another hotel room.  Remember, one of the reasons we'd decided to stay the extra weeks in FL was because the room was so cheap.  Finally, we ended up at a TownPlace Suites Marriot place in a 2 bedroom suite.  It costs more, but it has a full kitchen, thereby eliminating the need to eat out all the time.  We also decided to trim our expenses by rescheduling a side trip that would have involved a rental car and extra hotel rooms.  So overall, we feel like this was the best choice and we can relax.

Let the vacation begin.

Here we go

Well (well well), I'm sitting here (here here) in this very empty house (house house).  Okay, I won't do that the whole post.  But it's very echoey.  All the furniture has been packed up, lots of our stuff has gone into long term storage, and all that's left is a few hundred pounds of some clothes, kitchen stuff, and odds and ends for unaccompanied baggage.  Tonight we sleep in a hotel, thank heaven, because that air mattress is not nearly as comfortable as it looks.  It's like sleeping on a cold pancake.  Tomorrow, hopefully no later than noonish, we head east out of El Paso.

It's been a crazy week as you can imagine.  The packers and movers have all been great.  I'm withholding my final judgement till we see how the stuff arrives in Italy, but so far, these have been the best packers we've ever had.  Fast, kind, and helpful.  I did find 2 drawers that they completely skipped packing, but overall they did a great job.

Here's a little list I made a few days ago.

Things we have sold -

DH's truck

our big screen TV and our regular TV

One GPS with other likely to follow (since they don't have European maps and Garmin wants a small fortune to upload them.)

our dining room table set

Many large tools that I cannot exactly identify

the washer and dryer (sob!)

the porch swing

the garage refrigerator

the grill (the dude bought it even with the gunk from our last BBQ still stuck on there, he didn't care, he said.  Ewww.)

Things I will miss -

Chick Fil A

Borders bookstore

SuperTarget

Hundreds of cable channels and my DVR

Closets

central air conditioning

Tamales

Good riddance -

Walmart

This $*%&# wind in El Paso

driving the speed limit

Time Warner Cable company

killer speed bumps

Hello -

gelato

pasta

wine

bread

fresh gorgeous produce

those metal roller shades that make the room so dark you can take a nap at noon

driving really really fast

I'll be checking in again when we get settled in our hotel room.  The hotel room I'll be confined to trapped with enjoying with my family for 3 weeks in Florida.  We have changed our plans about 14 more times, but for right now, we are back on the direct Delta flight from Atlanta on June 30th.  It turns out United/Lufthansa had heat restrictions for pets too, so no point in stopping in Frankfurt if we don't have to.  We just have to hope that the heat is not going to be an issue.

It seems like more than a year since we got to El Paso and I have really enjoyed it here.  I'm ready to go, but it's been fun.

They're coming....

Y'all.

The packers are coming.  TOMORROW.

(Insert primal scream here.)

I'm here to tell you, the day before the packers come is the worst of all.  Everywhere I look I see 5 things that need to be done.  And I just marched out to the garage and informed my husband that the next time we move, the kids and I are leaving 2 weeks early and he is doing it ALL himeself.  He has gotten all wrapped in a a trailer he bought at the last minute, then he's helping a neighbor with trailer and he is not here in the house to do the 5 million things I need done.  This is what happened last time, only he was stuck at work.  So that's it.  I'm tired of doing the moving myself.  And yes, I am kind of kidding here.  But only kind of.

Our travel plans have changed yet again, but I am not even going to get into that.  We're making a stop before we head to Florida and we bumped the flight back one more day.

But oh!  I am so distracted I can't even keep a thought in my head.  I meant to say right off - our visas are here!!!  Yay!  That is a huge relief.  I was envisioning them not being here when we left and having to keep postposing everything and it's just all good that they are here.  Whew.

Oh!  I finished the Klaralund Noro Sweater!  I had the best of intentions to take a photo for you, but that did not happen.  It's totally too hot to put on a sweater anyway, even just for a quick photo.  So picture this:

Only about one inch longer and all the tails woven in and that rogue dropped stitch fixed and looking gorgeous on me.  When I unpack and reblock it in about 3 months, I'll do a bunch of pictures for you.

Okay, I have to get back to freaking out and worrying that something important is going to get packed or not get packed.  But let me leave you with this video that provided me with a much needed stress relieving barrel of laughs today.  I know a lot of you don't click on videos from blogs, but really, I think you'll like this one.  I am too frazzled to figure out how to embed a video here, so just click the linky.

http://www.facebook.com/ext/share.php?sid=88259687842&h=Tg2Bn&u=y7l6Q&ref=nf