Headin' South!

  

22 Jan 2013

Well, Hallelujah!  Our tabs arrived in the mail today at two o’clock and we were heading south within minutes afterwards.  We’d been sitting around all morning waiting for the mailman to arrive so we were more than ready to go.  Kaleb and I played games and Kory did a few small repairs on the RV while we waited and waited and waited.  Kaleb also got a bit of schoolwork done both while we waited and while we were driving.  I love homeschooling.  It’s just so darn flexible.

I said my good-byes to Dani this morning before she left for work.  She’s the only working one in our bunch so she has to get up early and she has a long commute.  Chris insisted on washing her car before she left so she was delayed while Kory and Chris both dried it as she backed out of the garage.  I looked like a scene from a movie or something, with guys holding towels, one on each side wiping down her car.  Too funny.

Just minutes before the mailman brought our much anticipated delivery, Kory was eating lunch in the RV.  He came outside with a worried look on his face and said, “I’m in trouble now.”  He didn’t fully disclose what the problem was so my mind started racing, thinking of all the possible things that could have gone wrong.  Fortunately, it was none of them.  Then he smiled.  Good grief.  He knocked out one of his front teeth again!  It’s the same tooth he initially lost while gnawing on dried fish in Norway.  He knows it’s a vulnerable spot, but he forgets about it and munches hard on apples and carrots, and today, artisan bread.  Rather than slice it with a knife, he just yanked off a chunk and tore it with his front teeth!  That’s all it took.  At least he was able to save the tooth, as I was worried he’d swallowed it or something, but I’m not sure what it will take to attach it again as I think he broke the post.  Ugh.

Kaleb and I cracked up as Kory put on a silly hat, his new dark rimmed reading glasses he hunched over with a hideous smile and started chasing us around, looking like something that just crawled out from under a rock.  And he gives ME a bad time about having relatives that were Ozark Mountain hillbillies! (He wont' let me take any photos of him!)

I had plans to stop and visit a few of my professors at Pomona College on our way through Claremont (east of L.A.) today, but with that tooth out, I wasn’t about to show up anywhere that anyone knew me.  As it was, we just drove slowly through my alma mater campus as my mind raced with memories from my college days over 30 years ago.  I’m sure when I graduated from such a prestigious educational institution, I never envisioned returning in a motorhome with a toothless husband.  At least Kaleb has potential.

We stopped at the nearest Costco to gas up, get a little food and then we sat in the parking lot and ate dinner.  I also returned a camera I just bought before we left on our trip.  It was already acting up, so they let me swap it out for a new one.  Sweet.  I lived in an apartment at one point, just blocks from that Costco. I wanted to linger in my old stomping grounds as long as I could.

I thought it prudent to get a little closer to Phoenix tonight to save some of the driving tomorrow so we drove east about an hour after dinner and we are now tucked away for the night in a Walmart parking lot in Beaumont, California, not far from Palm Springs.  Kory did all the driving so he’s tired.  His left wrist started swelling so I’m praying he doesn’t have an inflammation attack like he had in Norway last year.  I’m not so confident to drive the rig, but I will be doing most of the driving tomorrow so he can rest it before it gets any worse.  There’s not much between here and Phoenix anyway, so the driving shouldn’t be too bad.  We had stop and go rush traffic for a good part of today’s journey and that would have just done me in.

The temperature in southern California is dreamy.  It was 81 in Phoenix today and at least in the 80s around where we are now.  I’m ready to break out our shorts and short sleeved shirts.  I’m starting to feel a bit spoiled… but then I look at Kory’s big smile and that feeling goes away quickly.