Tag: travel

Homeward Bound

One of my favorite sets of movies when I was a child, it was…

Anyway, I’m headed home in the morning.

Well, in the afternoon, I suppose… I’m packing up in the morning, though, and possibly going to a museum quickly after I do some tutoring, and before I head out.

I’m headed to Dallas area in the morning, and am meeting someone there for a drink or something, and then I’ll be heading home after that, in the later afternoon.

And I might actually be even head to that until almost noon, anyway.

So, I’m headed home at some point tomorrow. 😛

And I’m not opposed to a detour along the way, either… I just need to be able to be in Austin on Monday for hiking.

This time, it will be hot and humid hiking… I likely will miss Madison’s weather greatly. 😛

But that’s okay… the hiking will be lovely, and my skin will be glad to have humidity back in its life… it’s been so dry up north these past few weeks, both in Wisconsin and in OKC.

So… a lot is ready to begin at home… I am almost ready for it to begin… and I am ready to jump on in, anyway. 🙂

This life is beautiful, and this next part of it is likely to be a glorious and fun adventure. 🙂

Here’s to our next steps, y’all: Cheers. 😉

Post-a-day 2020

Guess(t) what!

I keep going back to how, when I was staying with a friend at her house, – yes, a house and not an apartment – she was very excited to inform me that she had guest towels now.  She was so utterly excited about that fact, likely on account of its sounding so grown-up like, that I didn’t say anything about it.  However, it seems to be that this is her first time of having guest towels, right?  Well, I have noticed in the past that one of the first things I do, whenever I move in somewhere, is prepare for the possibility of a guest or guests coming to stay with me.  This has always included having extra towels for these guests to use, and enough blankets and pillows, as well as a handful of other things I consider to be important to have available for a guest’s use.

Now, one might think that I have guests over all the time, if this is something I always seem to do.  I actually think I don’t often have guests stay over, and it has been almost never for my current place of residence this past year and a half.  However, I definitely have had people come stay with me at each of my other residences…, and plenty of those times were last-minute or spur-of-the-moment or totally unplanned sleepovers.  Because of that, I have always just made sure that I am prepared… you never know when the opportunity will arise, right?  That’s how I see it, anyway, and so I make sure that I am always prepared.

If only we could get the part of me that keeps my living space super tidy to view things that way, too, so that I just would keep my living space always tidy… Alas, it does not see things that way so far, and my clutter-y messiness wins out on a regular basis still.  I am, however, working on improvement in that area, and have improved much already in recent years.  And I have finally accepted that, well, I am messy – not dirty, but messy, untidy – with my living and working spaces.  That acknowledgement has definitely helped me to plan a little extra mental space and time to spend tidying up regularly, and so the tidiness has lasted longer and longer lately, and the messy stages shorter and shorter!

Anyway, I’m off to sleep – much still to do in the next day or so, before I head home…, and I am still very tired and sleepy after the car ride yesterday.  I went 872.0 miles, with an average of 27.9 miles per gallon through hill after hill in a lovely Jeep Compass for 13 hours and 42 minutes of drive time yesterday, going from Madison, Wisconsin, to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.  I left at 4:45 in the morning from my brother’s driveway, and arrived in my cousin’s at 20:22 (that’s 8:22pm), meaning I spent 15 hours and 37 minutes on the road, in some capacity or other.  (Though, I really enjoyed the part that involved taking fabulous photos of the Bridges of Madison County, despite the snakes everywhere!)  That’s a lot for a day, especially after having gone to bed at midnight the night before, and struggled to sleep at all due to paranoia around potential bug bites… (It turned out to have been from hiking on Friday that I got the bites, and they just didn’t show up until Saturday morning, all itchy and swollen and red, leaving me to think that something was in the bed, biting me overnight… but, we didn’t piece that together until last night, after I was long gone from the imagined bed bugs that had kept me out of restful sleep those four hours of planned sleep.)

So, anyway, I’m off to sleep now.  Goodnight, all!  😉

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Nature days

I’ve been up north for over a week now, and I hadn’t even noticed it.

I had some definitely intense decompressing that happened at the start, and then have begun truly embracing the weather and the nature here in the more recent days.

I had expected to do much more sooner, but I apparently wasn’t ready for it… today, even, I finally woke up after having slept for ten hours (with bathroom breaks, as usual)… clearly, I was still struggling to catch up on my sleep.

But things in my brain have been healing, and my body is beginning to understand the healing, too.

Hopefully, it all is rolling well now – I want to enjoy my time here by doing more than just catch up on sleep, you know? 😛

On a separate note, I might have two spider bites on my back… not sure, but they seem like massive welts from a bite of some sort, but they don’t really hurt… they just sting a tad if I scratch at them.

So, I put some special stuff on them just now, and we’ll see how they are in the morning… fingers crossed that they improve dramatically overnight, and that the rest of my skin stays well and smooth.

Anyway, I’m off to sleep… here’s a small teaser from today’s afternoon activities.

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Today

Today, I had delicious food and beverage, provided by my cousin.

I was upgraded for free to a rental car that was more than double the price of what I reserved, and is much nicer and fancier and comfier.

And the guy gave me an extra 5% discount for a hassle I had in picking up the car (some locations are closed, and the reservation said that someone would be in touch, if I needed to go to a difference location, but no one got in touch to tell me to go to a different location. So, we showed up and found a son in the door, which indicated what nearby location was open, and we went there instead.).

It is a Jeep, and I am excited.

And the plates remind me of a good friend of mine!

And I started my period today, and day two is the day on which I have to go to the bathroom somewhat constantly…, so that was a bit of irony for me, – I had wanted to be past day two by the time I arrived to my brother’s house, you see – but it’ll be okay.

Also, I have to stop for an hour at nine in the morning to tutor somewhere that has good cell service… aka a real city.

My options are 2:45, 4:16, and 5:50 away (hours:minutes)… so, we’ll see what happens with my bathroom breaks overnight tonight, and that will determine if I leave for the farther-away locations, or just the nearest one… :/

Anyway… off to sleep now!!

Wish me safe and happy travels for tomorrow! 😉 ❤

Post-a-day 2020

Oklahoma, OK

And so the adventure has begun…

I had a bit of a cry fest this morning, on the phone with my mom, after I asked her to help me clear my mental space, and prepare myself fully for this whole trip.

I couldn’t handle the packing and all, and hadn’t yet started almost any of it, because the sheer volume of what all needed to be done to be gone for three plus weeks was really starting to stress me out… and I had only determined this the day beforehand, and gotten home late that night, after sitting and waiting for hours at one place, and then sitting in absurd traffic that supported the unfortunate and extreme unconsciousness on which our country tends to run, for another couple hours.

And I needs to leave home by 1pm.

So, I was stressed in terms of packing, to say the least.

Add to that my intense stress that has had me feel such an urge and almost-need to take this road trip ok the first place…, and we have some rather intense and almost incomprehensible levels and quantities of stress… it’s no wonder I was asking for help.

But, I used a lot of tissues, and I cleaned out my sinuses really well, and, though my mom went on tangents at times, the clearing really helped me to clear the space for myself, and get to work… and not just get to work, but get to work excited about it all.

And I left well after one… more like 2:35pm…

But I am here.

And I am happy to be here.

And my cousin is happy to have me here.

And I am going to sleep now.

Goodnight. 🙂

Post-a-day 2020

Struggle Bus

Boy, has this weekend been giving me a run for my money… oh, wait… I don’t really have any money….

Well, it has certainly made me feel like I am slowly falling to pieces via a slow and painful inward collapse from anger, frustration, and helplessness…

And I know everything will be great and more than fine, and I am great and more than fine, and everything else hopeful and positive in my life will be amazing… I know all of that.

Nonetheless, I am having lots of emotions hit me pretty hard this weekend.

An escape to the forest and mountains would be spectacular right now… some nature would be good for me, instead of a house in the middle of a city with all of its parks closed for the time being…

Anyway, I haven’t got that option.

But it was nice to visualize it for a few moments…

Perhaps I’ll just go to sleep somewhat early again tonight.

I slept really hard and well last night, and for eleven hours – clearly I was lacking in sleep.

Now, we shall see if tonight’s rest will help me tomorrow…

Time for some more meditation and reading, and then I shall pray for healing through sleep.

Wishing you all well,

Peace

Hannah

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A Retirement for the Day

We had a lovely retirement party for my uncle this evening… 35 years working for the same company, doing, essentially, the same work, day after day… completed.

Of course, we are not exactly permitted to be together for a party, so we did a Zoom video conference party – which, actually, allowed even more people to come than would have been able to make it even if we had been allowed to have the party in person, and saved All of us loads of time in driving, and even allowed for last-minute (literally) guests to join the party – and made it a total surprise for my uncle.

I ended up organizing the call, since I was the most apt to figure such computer-y things out, as well to manage a group of people and make things happen the way we want them to happen, and so I arranged with everyone (via a liaison I enlisted – aka my cousin who was originally put in charge of organizing things, but who quickly handed them to me, when we discovered his lack of and my having experience in such a thing) when to meet and how, explained the goal of the quick conference and how it would run, offered up and accepted my mother’s ridiculous idea of our all singing, “For he’s a jolly good fellow”, after the initial surprise – yes, we had discussed how we would be all out of synch, but that that merely would add to the enjoyment of my aunt and uncle, who would be the recipients of our group singing – and informed my aunt that we were all ready.

The surprise was lovely, the singing hilarious; the photo I was asked to share was a hit; the ‘quick five, max ten minutes’ for the call turned into 45 minutes; as arranged, my aunt went through and had each of us say something individually, and lots of tears happened, even from those who avoid tears, especially for such occasions as this public one; and we all had a lovely time from all across the country, and even down to El Salvador.

Also, fun fact: the grandparents (my grand, that is) couldn’t quite get the technology to work for video conferencing, due to their having older phones, and so they each were Skyped or telephoned in and held up to the computer screens of others, so that they, too could be part of the celebration, despite their lack of technology or technological skills. 😛

It was adorable.

In short, it was a spectacular 21st century retirement party, in more ways than one.

Our family is no stranger to long-distance and cross-country calling and video calling (and jut working with what we’ve got and making it work wonderfully) – we have had our fair share of people living here or there around the country and world – but this was the first entirely digital event we have had…

And it was actually really quite cool.

Technology is quite spectacular, when we allow it to do its best and we use it well.

I express tonight extreme gratitude to all those who have played a role in the development in technology connected to what our family used today – thank you, all.

Post-a-day 2020

Get your a** off the floor ;P

The biggest mistake was sitting down.

If I hadn’t sat down in the first place, I wouldn’t be stuck here right now, battling mentally with what it will take to get me to get up, go put on some clothes, and finish my post-shower, pre-bed activities so that I can go to bed and sleep.

However, here I still sit, leaning against my bed, instead of in it, and just a towel wrapped around my hair… eyes drooping closed and slowly rising again to determine if I have made it into bed yet, only to be disappointed to the point of closing them once more… the cycle repeats.

Okay, fine, I’ll get up and finish things up… I just don’t have anything for tomorrow, though I have more than one thing I would love to do tomorrow (if only it weren’t all dependent upon another), so it is harder for me to want to go to sleep.:.

Well, perhaps I can develop something wonderful simply by waking earlier than needed, and taking the time to explore what I might like to do, and then do it…

We’ll see about that…, but it is enough to get me up, so, here I go…

P.S. I Really want to go somewhere next week – no school, no work, no events… let’s either get a cheap plane fair somewhere or drive somewhere, a state or national park, perhaps(!)… ye-he-hess (Mr. Burns style, fingers and all).

From nothing to something

It’s funny how the biggest and smallest of things can all tie back to the tiniest of events.

For example, tomorrow, I have an interview for a job that, temporary as it will be, will require me to wear the traditional business attire for about three months straight, at least five days a week.

I don’t own enough variety for that… I don’t even own enough pants to make it through a week of that.

That has never been my style of job or workplace.

But, because of this crazy series of connections, it seems to be my projected future these next three-ish months.

And that business clothing situation is caused by my connection to Japan via the program in which I participated while living there… a time that was invaluable in my life and that helped me develop more into the person I wanted to be than I ever really expected was possible…

And the whole reason I got to have that transformative experience was because of a simple phone call I had with an old professor of mine a few years back, in which she asked me a question, and then I broke down crying, and then she asked me another question…

And that came about because, despite my intention of applying to ten different colleges and universities, I read the letter from the president of the one college, and knew instantly that that was where I was going to school, and so I applied to nowhere else (risky, I know, but I was clear).

And the whole reason I studied so much French when I got there was because I didn’t want to lose what I had worked so hard to learn in high school…

And the whole reason I studied French in high school was because it had a cooler accent than spoken Latin would have…

And I can go back further, even, but I’ll leave it for now…

So, I am about to have a really neat yet temporary job that requires a bunch of work clothes I don’t have, and I had the greatest breakthrough in my life, all because French has a cooler accent than Latin…

Essentially, I find it funny, as shown in this example, that the smallest of things can lead us to the biggest or smallest of things in life… you never know what will take you where…

It has me wonder now, what my activities and choices today will create for my future self… can I take on a better attitude now that will prove exponentially better for me in the future, perhaps?

(I ask this question because I have found myself being quite negative as of late, and I am not enjoying it, nor am I liking it.)

Let’s consider that tonight, and see what my dreams bring me by morning…

Goodnight, Dear World… hasta mañana. 😉

P.S. I heard someone singing in rehearsal for a new musical today, and my heart went all melty – I swear, my heart belongs to his voice always and forever(!)… also, go see the show, if you can.

Post-a-day 2020

Ugh

I am going on what is intended to be a fun, freeing trip tomorrow.

And I am extremely stressed.

Not like pull your hair out stressed, but more like remember to breathe panicked stress…

I kind of hate packing for things that sound tiny but are actually more of a big packing situation.

If I were just going for the one thing, my packing would be simple and light.

But there is also this hiking at the end… which requires and entirely different set of everything…, and, therefore, requires a lot more space in the whole packing realm.

I had wanted to bring this small duffle.

The next size up is a carry-on hard-shell suitcase…

But, perhaps I need to use it anyway, and just have a light suitcase, instead of having to carry multiple small bags for all the hiking and whatnot stuff…

Ugh…

Anyway… bedtime for sure, now.

4:10 alarm for the gym before work, then work, and then trip with Mom.

Fingers crossed for restful sleep tonight (entirely unlike last night, please).

P.S. Happy Valentine’s Day!! ❤

Post-a-day 2020