Home Sweet Home

Listening to: Rooney, "Losing All Control"

Back in good ol' freezing cold Pennsylvania. To celebrate, I just made some chili--my mom's recipe--and it's simmering in the crock pot.

That's definitely something I would come to miss, if I moved permanently to a warmer climate. Not just chili, but all those comforting, cold-weather things: a good, warm cup of tea; a good, warm cup of apple cider; chili and stew and all those things that make you feel better when an icy wind is blowing outside. I'm already planning to make taco soup sometime in the next few weeks, and I'm on the prowl for a good baked potato soup recipe. I just have to get the kitchen stuff unpacked, first! Boxes, boxes everywhere, and not a place to step.

As you can imagine, the writing has been going...well, not at all over the past several days. The actual process of moving took far longer than we expected on Saturday. We didn't get out of there until around five o'clock--and we'd been shooting for about noon. But my obsessive cleaning paid off...the inspection went well, and we don't have any extra charges on the bill. Woohoo! Go, OCD!

We also got to use our watchie talkies, which we bought about three months ago. For a much better price than Amazon has, btw. It pays to keep an eye on woot.

We made it as far as Front Royal, VA, before TH's taillights started swimming in front of me. We hadn't planned on stopping for the night, but I'm a better-safe-than-sorry kind of girl. I've driven once when I shouldn't have--when I'd been awake for twenty-four hours, had worked a full shift, and had three near-death experiences in the previous seven hours of driving. Let me tell ya--you start seeing some scary stuff when your brain is overworked and there's nothing but asphalt ahead. I was lucky to make it out of that experience alive, and I never intend to repeat it. So stop we did, at the first hotel we found.* We got home the next day around noon.

The hours and days since have been filled with unpacking, a bit of cleaning, seeing friends, the Steelers game and too much Yuengling, and some more unpacking. The next several days will most likely be more of the same (except the Steelers game and beer). Maybe I'll squeeze some writing in there, but there's no guarantee. I'm not officially "out" of NaNoWriMo, but it's not looking pretty.

But we're home, and tonight we eat chili, and that's good enough for me.


*That accepted pets and is one of the chain that'll give us a free night after we stay two nights. We passed a few other hotels, drove all around town, and stopped at a 7-11 for directions before we finally found it. Someone needs a GPS.