and the journey is soon to recommence.
At long last, The Lump slumbers quietly in her crate. I think that perhaps she got into my coffee this morning when I wasn’t looking, and aliens have almost certainly swapped her brain with that of some utterly ill-behaved dog. Probably one who only understands Swahili. Or perhaps Martian. She’s been a hyperactive basketcase all day, in a way that far surpasses anything we’d seen to date. I know she’s a puppy, but this puppyness has come about all of a sudden. I’m thrilled she finally feels better, having recovered from her parasites and whatnot, but can’t she see that I do NOT have time to play?!?
Just kidding. Of COURSE we have time to play with our adorable puppy, and train her and work on making her a good canine citizen. But we are quite busy. Plans have changed yet again, and so Apryl and I are gearing up to make the trek back to California a bit sooner than originally planned. We’ll be leaving sometime next week (Wednesday, perhaps?) on our cross-country drive (though Apryl will return to Alabama for a few more weeks after this trip to spend some time with friends and family before she really moves out there). As a result, we’ve both been packing/cleaning/sorting/plotting with gusto, and today has seen me frantically trying to make sense of the odds and ends that remain loose in the house. And Lump has been decidedly unhelpful, gnashing her little needle-teeth into boxes and attempting to remove anything that has been safeguarded against its own fragility to determine whether my packing skills were sufficient.
The car will be a bit more crowded this time around; in addition to the fact that the Summer of Sloth and Gluttony and Papa Jacques have done their damnedest to expand the girths of both humans and felines respectively, we will obviously be in the company of a third four-legged child. And a mere fraction of Apryl’s worldly goods.
Ah, but we are sincerely excited for another long, hot, crowded ride in the Speeding Oven. At least, we bipeds are. I feel like I haven’t had enough time with my family, but I’m planning to fill the next several days with them. We’ll be returning to better weather and a wealth of good people. And we’ll be returning via a different route than the one I took heading east. We’re leaving out of Peachtree City, Georgia, and driving by way of Nashville, TN; St. Louis, MO; across the corn-laden abyss of Kansas; through Denver/Boulder, CO; across Utah; through Nevada; stopping to ride an evidently epic roller coaster in Las Vegas; and skirting around Mojave National Park to arrive in San Diego just in time to move into our new digs with Matt and Maya.
We welcome suggestions of places to eat, camp, play, and relax along our route. We are totally game for detours that would lead us to gorgeous or otherwise worthwhile environs. Let us know if you have any thoughts for us, and San Diego, we’ll see you in September!
– melanie
