wordplay

Great, great articles about introverted travel here and here.

And by the way, my best tip to add to the second list: take kids! They help integrate you into the community you're traveling in by giving you something to talk about AND they give you a great excuse to escape just about any social situation. :)

It's a beautiful morning here. Actually, it's overcast and a little chilly, but this is my absolute favorite weather. We slept with the windows open last night, so I woke up to light cool breezes and singing birds. When I was a girl, the windows in our house were almost always closed, as (a) we ran the air-conditioner full-time for 8 months of the year (I grew up about half an hour from the Gulf of Mexico, so it was always very humid and very warm) and (b) my father is a compulsive freak and was generally made nervous by having the windows open; I'm still not sure if it was the perceived lack of security or some sort of energy efficiency measure, and I doubt he is, either. Sleeping with the windows open is a pleasure I discovered as an adult, then, and it still feels like a luxury to drift awake with the wind and the sun and the birdsong coming in.

It was a good morning; it's 1 pm now and we've already had the car serviced, filed our income taxes (which, serious ouch and there's a really GOOD reason I should quit my job), took A to drama class, waited in an excruciating line at the post office to order the kids' passports, and decided to go to a cousin's wedding in South Carolina in May. I also started looking at our travel through the end of the year. ( Right now, here's what it looks like. )

This is still reasonably busy, but not crazybusy. We still need to figure out a time for a beach weekend or two; that's tricky because I'm not sure how cool the water will be here in June and July is pretty much booked. One thing that's NOT listed here is Toronto in early August; I'm not sure I want to drop the money on that, especially not after I've just paid that enormous tax bill, so I'm waiting a few weeks to see how it shakes out. I am not allowed to add any trips to the fall this year - well, maybe some day trips for hiking and MAYBE one weekend to Williamsburg around Christmas, but really. I burned myself out with too much activity last fall and early winter, and it's a busy time for the children anyway, and so I'm trying to reel it in a little.

I started doing the nuts-and-bolts planning for the west coast trip this morning and I could use the help/guidance of any of you who know the Pacific northwest well; hiddenhibiscus, help a girl out, if you see this. ( Read more... )

I am feeling better - it really is amazing how therapeutic sleep and rest can be. The crud lingers, but I no longer feel drained and defeated by it, and that's really all I ask. Breathing's contribution to one's wellbeing and energy level is, I feel, highly overrated. :-P

( M. and I straighten out our travel and activity schedules until the end of the year over YM )

...

I'm exhausted just reading it all, and that of course doesn't count all the little, one day things - the meetings and parties that will accompany the beginning of school, the everyday stuff. Autumn does this to me every year - it grabs me with its wonderful and drags me all over the place. It doesn't help that Halloween is just this insane time with children's activities, and that their birthdays are six weeks apart and on either side of it. The time between the beginning of school and Christmas is just one big blur.

That March/April week, by the way - the plan is for me to fly to Atlanta for the dezzikitty/jiggery_pokery nuptials at the same time that M takes the kids and flies out west to see his family. (Yes. I am making him fly from the east coast to the west coast by himself with the children. Yet another reason M should be the world's first atheist saint.) I'll join them after the wedding weekend for a day or two in Sacto, then drive up the Pacific coast through Oregon and Washington, ending up in Vancouver. It's a part of the continent I've never explored before and I am beside myself with excitement. I just want to DRIVE and SEE. Thoughts/recommendations/ideas? Stuff to read? Good city blogs?