We started this morning with the rain pouring down. No biggie right? Wrong. Today is the first day in a 12 day road trip. We need to load the car, get the animals settled and start our journey. We need to still check out of the military housing we’ve lived in for the last 3 and a half years. They don’t let you just leave. You have to have your residence pre-inspected. And then regular inspected. And then they try and find any tiny thing wrong so they can charge you for it. Jokes on them. one of the things that calm my usual raging anxiety is cleaning. When my brain is scattered and scared and out of control I can find peace and order in cleaning my space. You could tell the inspector and office worker were surprised. They called our quarters “immaculate” and “amazing” and they wished everyone left their house like that. Ha. Anxiety self soothe for the win. We have a cargo carrier on the roof. Neither my husband or I are familiar with using one. We’ve followed the instructions on installing it and loaded it evenly with a tarp covering everything (its raining remember?). But less than 10 miles down the road it becomes obvious that the straps are not working right and the tarp has all of these awesome balloons forming from the wind. We pull over and make adjustments. 20 miles later we pull over and make adjustments. An hour. We do it again. Wtf, google save me! Yeah. We were making some rookie mistakes. Already a couple hours into our 4400 mile trip and I have learned more about roadtrips than I’ve ever known before. Let’s not forget the kitty constant meowing. The dog is panting nonstop and mildly freaking out. This dog is such a baby. She keeps trying to climb from the backseat to climb in my lap. I muse outloud “we should have gotten her those calming meds for the drive.” My husband responds saying he thought she would calm down by now. This is gonna be a long 12 days.

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton