Holy moly. I’m having an adventure. You know what the thing is about adventures? They often kinda suck while they are happening. Let me list the problems that have come up:
- Leaving my National Park card at home.
- Losing the key to the skybox.
- Severing the wire that controls the trailer lights by bottoming out going into my friend’s road.
- Having one of the turn signals for the trailer fall off. Well, it didn’t fall off entirely. It’s hanging by a wire. But the nuts went walk about.
- Mis-writing down the dates for our camping dates in Idaho so I had to up and run out of Utah without really saying goodbye.
- Being so tired and exhausted that I was seriously worried that my kids would have to walk 5 miles to town to get help. We had an intense discussion about how to go about that. Details here.
- Either I’m allergic to something in Idaho or I caught the baby in Utah’s cold. My nose is dripping like a faucet. My throat hurts.
- I’m not sleeping much at all. Folks decided that now is the time to resolve months old drama. Fuck you very much. Because I can’t talk about any of that drama during the day and I mostly don’t have screen access to write down my racing thoughts… I feel shitty. I’m up half the night ranting and crying and feeling like shit. We must not have other people feel intimidated. The fact that I feel intimidated as fuck and I was actually assaulted instead of, you know, being a whiny bitch who reads words on the internet…
I think those are the problems so far. I bought sleeping pills. I have to sleep at night whether I like it or not.
I feel guilty, like I’m only complaining. The complaining is the stuff that loops round and round and makes it hard to focus on other stuff.
I’m actually having a lot of fun. In the rosy glow of memory this will be a wonderful experience, even with the problems. Driving is going better than I thought it would. I am so happy I didn’t have higher driving mileage goals. I was very smart to know I have limits.
I am having a hard time with the strain of the trip. I’m looking ahead to Yellowstone. I’m glad we will have five nights there. I am happy we will have more time to play during the day rather than packing and unpacking. I’m not sure I can handle the jump from Ranchester Wyoming to Mount Rushmore after that. I may need to break that up into two days of driving and stay at a hotel. I’m tired. I don’t have other long in-one-place stays until Duluth and Chicago and Michfest. Those are all 5/6 night stays. Otherwise… all the 5+ night stays are Disney. I’m a spoiled brat.
I am going through medication really slowly because I am often/usually driving until dinner time so I’m entirely unmedicated during the days. Given that I’m using 1/2 or 1/4 of my normal quantity of meds… I think my mood is going surprisingly well. I’m being more patient than I would guess.
I am really enjoying the time with the kids. I know I spend a lot of time with them anyway, but this is different. We are talking about the stuff we see. We spent a while discussing fracking earlier tonight. We are talking about farming and lifestyle choices. The kids are incredibly observant about their environment so they are pointing things out to me all over the place. We are having fun looking at the flowers. So many gorgeous flowers.
It is fun talking to them about things like rangeland and forest and desert. I like educating them. It is satisfying.
Ok, it’s bed time. Night oh internet.