Been slacking on internet time.  I really don’t have much of it now.  I guess that’s alright though it is going to take some getting used to.

Days 3 and 4 were like days one and two without major hang-ups.  We drove farther, though there was plenty of snow and wind until the last three hundred miles of the 1600 mile journey.  The only real hard times were driving that Uhaul with trailer down snowy mountain passes.  I don’t ever want to do that again.

About 4pm on day 4 we arrived at our new home.  It was a majestic moment.  I swear I could hear angels singing. I’d woken up at 330 in the morning that day and got moving right then.  After a long day of driving I was ready to relax.

I ought to explain the destination a bit better at this point.  Our new home is a log cabin on a mountain side.  The cabin is not done being built, but livable.  There’s a chicken coop about thiry feet on one side and a pasture on the other side where hopefully someday soon a bison will be roaming around and getting fat so I can eat him.  and out front is a large garden where I am going to chase little critters out of when they try and eat my crops.  It’s a hobby farm.  It’s a 180 from where I was a year ago living on the busiest street over boutiques and restaurants in Minnesota.

Our first morning started and we climbed the mountain behind the cabin.  My legs burned every step.  At the stop you can see one peak higher that the first and one more peak higher behind that.  I wanna get myself into good enough shape that  can whistle while I easily get to the top of that third tower.  After the hike we ate chicken eggs that were still warm from being layed.  Max really digs finding eggs.

My next goal is to get a kitten, maybe two.  After so many years of apartments and rental houses I can finally have a little tiny fluffball.  Oh, and I should probably find a job too.

As soon as I get into a town with the laptop, I am going to upload the video I took of when one of the chickens snuck in the house.  We are having a really good time 🙂

I don’t really want to talk about day 2.

Started out an hour from where I started yesterday.  No biggie.  I have all the time in the world or the six days the moving van company has allowed me.  Driving 1600 miles in that time should be a breeze…right?

Since I screwed myself last night with the wrong choice of parking lots to park the Big Rig for the night I am going to have to spend some time driving forward and reversing 7 inches at a time so I can get the heck out of the hotel parking lot with guest rooms that have brown goo on the second bed that we were afraid of.  (I purposely got a room with two beds so an eight year old would not lay on my face, but plans are altered sometimes)

It was 800am when I exited the building to move the Big Rig.  It was 930 when I called uhaul’s roadside emergency hotline to let them know I was stuck between a Cadillac and a hard place.   I got out of the Rig to see if there was any way to move further when the nicest man from India asked if he could move the car and help me out.  “I cun drive! I cun drive!”, he said enthusiastically.

He gunned it forward.  He gunned it in reverse.  He scared the instant coffee from the lobby out of me.  I told him to get out of the cab, but he still insisted on helping me.  So, for he stood behind the RIG for the  next half-hour and I heard him yelling, ”  COME COME COME!  GUUD GUUD GUUD!   BAK FOWAD!” and I was peeing my pants laughing, fulling knowing that we were getting nowhere and hoping someone was getting this on  tape.  He was nice as can be, but I was going batty.

Somewhere in there a very solemn man who looked just like Al from Home Improvement walked up and asked if he could help me as he was a truck driver.  Have at it, I told him

He only needed about 45 seconds.

I was standing about 30 feet from him as he exited the Rig.  Something came over me as though I was an impulsive child and I ran to the truck driver and gave him a grateful bear hug.  Being as he was solemn and stoic, his arms were stiff at his sides and it was clearly the most awkward hug on record to this date.

I was out.  Me and The Max were on the road and we were free.  Got to North Dakota in good time while singing along to the oldies station and I felt amazing.  But, as North Dakota goes it started snowing.  We started slowing.  We slowed to about 30 miles per hour and I felt defeated and pulled off to check the weather report.

Heavy snow ’til 2am.  Crap.

I went to the motel I was near and asked if they had any rooms.  Course not.  I asked where the nearest town was. Forty miles.

Forty miles and an hour or so later and the exit to this supposed town was too snowed in to enter.  The town after that was another thirty or forty miles so we trudged on.

Halfway to the next town and the portion of the interstate that is not covered in ice and snow is down to the width of a Smart Car.  I’m driving thirty and there is a line of cars half a mile long behind me.  They hate me.  I can sense it.  I can really sense it when the one truck passes me and lays on his horn for a good thirty seconds when he passes. He got what he asked for though

Made it about 250 miles today.  Not good.  I had to stop not only cause North Dakota has the worst weather God invented, but because an accident was blocking the whole road at one point and they closed the road.    I’m beginning to worry about the six day rental.

Friday, February 12

Woke up this morning at 4:12am.  I didn’t want to.  Seems though, however, that on days when something big is happening once you wake up there is no shot in hades you are going to fall back asleep. I didn’t have to be anywhere until ten am either, I was awake without reason.  I was supposed to be to work today.  Then I was supposed to drive to The Max’s elementary school and pick him up.  After that I was supposed to drive into the sunset. This is what happened instead.

Yesterday, (Thursday) my Full Service Moving Co. with the salesman with the groovy British accent basically let me know that even though they had told me they would pick up my things on Wednesday, they might not come until Saturday.  Or, they might not come at all.  In a panic I dialed me local uhaul to inquire if they could set me up with a moving van that could haul a seventeen year old sedan with extensive hail damage.  They said I could pick it up the next morning.

There was no more fancy moving company coming, so I was going to need to transfer my belongings from the house to the van myself.  I phoned my job and let them know I was going to miss my last day.

The van was ready for me at ten this morning and I went right to work.  By three in the afternoon I piled in everything I could carry solo and would just have to wait until my buddy got off work to come and help me load the heavy stuff.  I wasn’t sure when he was showing up, but I knew it was going to be later that the 4pm departure time originally hoped for.

It was 830 when we drove into the sunset dense fog and snow flurries.  The uhaul dragging car trailer was easy enough to drive, albeit very very slow.  I was never going to break the mammoth rule of getting myself into a position where I needed to reverse.

By 930pm I was fading fast and I gave up getting some miles in, so I stopped in Saint Cloud.  I spotted a Motel 6 from the interstate and took the exit ramp, excited to meet my new bed or the night.  We were barely in the parking lot when I stopped and went to the front desk with my all important question: Can I turn this big rig around if commit to driving all the way in the lot?

“Sure, there’s a large area at the end of the lot where you can get around no problem!”

That last sentence there cost me more time that I am comfortable admitting to.  I figured I’d better turn it around at night just in case cars parked later than I and blocked me.  I spent an hour or so on that pipe dream.  Let me be honest, if there were NO cars at all in the lot, I probably could have manages to make a loop with a bit of skill.  The lot was full.  I had to pull all the way to the edge of the property and hope the people I was blocking in will sleep later that I.

Day 1 is done.  I’m really just down the interstate an hour from where I started.  Feels good though.  Tomorrow I’ll see Montana!

Don’t read this:

Last Thursday The Max was yakking and dry heaving into our family’s designated ‘puke bowl’ for a good 12-16 hours.  On Friday he was feeling better but I was queasy so I stayed home afraid I was going to develop the same symptoms at my job.  It was snowing like crazy on Friday, and the last thing I wanted was to be cooped up in my car for thirty-five miles while barfing.  But, I was fine.  The weekend treated me well until Sunday night I was on a phone call and mentioned how I thought I might vomit.  The other person on the call mentioned several times when they had thrown up and dry heaved and all that puke talk did it for me.  I lost my can of Campbell’s chicken soup and the handful of hot tamales I’d eaten for dinner.

Went to work on Monday feeling OK.  I thought I musta gotten lucky and avoided the full on stomach flu.  ‘Bout four o’clock in the afternoon every ounce of fluid in my body exited me.  Being sick is never pleasant, but I was in the midst of one of those illnesses you seem to outgrow when you are 12.  By ten o’clock last night there was nothing left inside of me.  I bought a scale last weekend for the purpose of weighing moving boxes so I had recently weighed myself.  I was down seven pounds.  That’s gross.

So, I was then at the point where my tounge was begging for drops of water.  I spent until about three in the morning with a stop watch set to three minutes.  At the end of each three minute term I allowed myself a sip of water, any more than that would not sit right in my stomach.  There were a couple times I just couldn’t stand it and gulped down a swallow of H2O only to have it be rejected  shortly after.

I think I am on the upswing.  My stomach is much better, though my body feels like somebody locked me in a clothes dryer all night. I really want some coffee for this headache.  But, I got to watch The Price is Right today.

There’s not many things more repulsive than hearing someone describe their illnesses, you’re welcome.

My recent absence is the result of a frantic rush to get my house packed up at least one week before moving day.  I can do most things last minute and half arsed, but moving is an art form and I have it perfected.  I believe most of my woes so far as packing is concerned is the result of owning too much crap.  I believe most of my woes so far as owning too much crap is the result of spending weekends at thrift stores.  I can spend an hour or more browsing the rejected goods, walk away with one choice find and buy The Max a toy and it never costs me more than ten bucks.

Yesterday I was suffering cardboard box overload and left the house to visit a nearby Salvation Army.  While I carefully picked out a BRAND NEW REI SWEATSHIRT for 2.99 (tags on-thank you very much) Max found himself a game.  The game was called, Gassy Gus. Twenty years ago, if I had brought that same game up to my mother, she would have shamed me, for nice young girls DO NOT play with toys that induce gas.  Mom always used the word, “toot” because fart was basically a swear word in our home.

I was about to tell my son to put the game back and find some nice toy trucks when I figured I could make a post out of such a strange toy.  We all know I have been lacking as of late, so I told him to toss it on the counter and allow the lady with the killer eye glasses chain to ring it up.

There he is.  The game is simple.  You are dealt cards with foods on them like broccoli and pizza.  Each card has a point value and when you play a card you have to pump Gus’ head.  Pumping his head fills his stomach with gas.  The goal is to get rid of all your cards before you cause Gus to ‘blast gas’.  If, on your turn Gus blasts gas, you are required to take two more cards.  To make the game interesting there are additional cards called “Belly Blaster Cola”.  You can add a cola card to anyone’s turn and they have to add three additional pumps to Gus’ torment.

It’s a game about farting. Fart Fart Fart.  (Sorry Mom)

Here’s a video of what Gus sounds like when he blasts gas.  And from now on, I am not going to say fart.  I will simply ask those who smell like eggs if they are a Gassy Gus.

Countdown to THE BIG MOVE is officially underway.  All this means is that I have decided on a date to drive the golf ball into the sunset.  I kinda want people to decorate my vehicle like I was a newlywed, only have them write “Just became jobless and homeless” instead of Just Married.

But plans are set.  I found a mover.  I emailed my notice to my job, and half my house is packed into boxes that used to contain eggs and bacon that were served at the restaurant where I will work for a bit longer.  And while I truly am sad about the people who I love that I am leaving behind, I am sooo excited.

Q: What’s more annoying and exaggerating words by elongating them?

A:  Repeating them with more emphasis.

I am SSOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO excited about my move.

I had one.  I had a whirlwind sort of weekend, and now it is over.

And how ’bout them Vikings?!

I have been mssing around on the internet for quite a few years.  I have been trying to make a site for most of those.  My CSS savvy sister is helping me finally get it done.   Well, she is doing the work, I am like the never satisfied lady in Sleepless in Seattle who makes Tom Hanks move the kitchen cabinets around repeatedly.    Anyhow, here’s a image she created.  It basically is a representation of my nights after Max passes out from too much fun and warm milk.

Thank you Sarah!

Team Conan

Something else I’ll end up deleting in a month.

Took this from themushroomkingdom.net.

I bought my Wii mostly for this 8-bit game and have since geeked out plenty looking up stuff online to help assist me in rescuing that princess who can’t keep herself out of trouble.