Icy Fog Storm - Damn that Canada and it's Chilly Air

Gallup, Oklahoma City, now Nashville.  Pretty smooth progress without a six month old puppy like last year's drive.  The Winter weather surprises me.  We drive across Oklahoma into what appears to be a dense fog, then we see ice coated junipers all around and realize that the fog is freezing on the branches.  Real otherworldly.   It seems a hundred years ago that I shuffled kids into snowsuits, and mittens and boots -- to drive to the grocery store!  Dear me, I have become a wimp.  Well, I will need to get into snow and ice condition again.  And that's final. 

Packing a Car

A '61 Chevy once held all my worldly belongings.  And I was not unhappy.

Now, I've gathered clothing, computer parafernalia, chargers, and fishing gear...a very small amount of my material goods...and begin the process of stuffing them into my '06 Prius for the long ride to DC.

Forty five years of accumulated stuff will for the most part remain in Long Beach along with my husband, my pooch, my daughters and my heart.

I'll be back, I love it here.

Moving - very very moving

Our lives are so unsettled at the moment.  Amidst the tanked economy, everyone is moving, living afar, taking new jobs, having new babies, meeting new challenges and this concerned me, until I realized that perhaps human lives aren't meant to be "settled."  Maybe settled doesn't mean calm, controlled, secure and happy.  Maybe settled really means complacent, habitual, rote, ordinary.  Perhaps the positive definition of "settled" is an interior state of being and mind.  Settled: capable, decisive, flexible.  Change has become commonplace and welcome.