While Lee Was Away.

Last week, Lee was away at CreationFest, and I was "vacationing" on my own at home with the kids. The plan was to spend the week hanging out with my Mom and with Nan, and that went pretty well. When he left on Tuesday, I was quite sad to be without him for a week. I cried. He laughed at me, but gently, and kissed me goodbye. He called me at least three times a day while he was gone, and we exchanged text messages and picture messages via his phone and Jon's phone. So we were hardly separated, really, but then again, we haven't been physically separated for more than a day since we were first married... Lee drives me crazy, but I love him so much, and it felt good to remember that I can't even stand to be separated from him.

He had a lot of fun, too. Of course he and Jon came home with a DVD full of pictures and videos, but only one of them had Lee's face in it. They took pictures only of the bands and of the candlelight service. Boys! But anyway, let me try to go chronologically here.

Tuesday after he left, I just cleaned the house all day. My self esteem goes Up up up when the house is clean, so that felt GREAT! Then Tuesday night I went to see Nan, just to hang out for two hours. We needed to go shopping for the upcoming wedding, but it was just too hot.

Wednesday, I got up and went to see Mommi - finally. Well, yes, I had just seen her last week for Jubilee day, but before that it had been waaay too long. So we hung out, talked about kids, walked to pick her littles up at VBS, then went swimming. I left rather suddenly when it started to rain around 2. I had something to take care of.

What? Well, my fridge was broken, and I needed to call the landlady, Mary. Not my favorite thing to do. So I got home, made sure everything was spotless, then called her. She was very cool about it, sent her son-in-law over to look at it, then called Lowes to see what they would do for her (nothing, except hook her up with an expensive repairman). Then her other son stopped by to make sure I had enough coolers. Finally, Mary called back to say she had gotten nowhere and would try again in the morning.

The next day I went to my Mom's again. We went grocery shopping together, and she scored an awesome deal on breakfast cereal. I got some picture frames for two 5x7s I bought from KodakGallery.com.



That night, Nan and I did go shopping for the wedding. We went to K-mart, and Nan bought new shoes for the kids for the wedding, and a pretty pink shirt for herself.

The next day, the repairman was to arrive sometime between 10 and 2, so I spent the whole morning on edge. I didn't get the phone call until 1. The repairman came, along with my landlady and her son, and after an hour my fridge was fixed. Yay for cold food and yay for not owning your own appliances. What he charged her to fix it was almost as much as a new fridge!

I went to see Nan again that night but only for an hour to drop off our wedding clothes so we could change at her house. She wanted to iron Lee's shirt and pants for him. After that, I stopped off at Salvation Army on my own - I had a little money in my pocket from a special gift and I wanted to buy something for myself. I found a lovely little black dress for the wedding that fit me well, plus a jean skirt and a khaki skirt for work, because I am turning into a skirt kind of girl, and a book for each of the kids for sitting still while I pored through the racks!

Then we went to bed insanely early (8pm!) because I had to get up at 1am to pick Lee up from Creation Fest. I had a really hard time falling asleep that early and ended up with only two hours of sleep, but that wasn't a problem.

The kids popped tall at 1:30am - somehow my alarm did not go off, but I have a pretty good internal clock for stuff like that. We dressed, stopped at Weis for drinks for the trip, then jumped on the turnpike. I figured the turnpike would be the hardest part, with the toll booths at all, then some peaceful backroads to get Lee. Ha ha ha.....

Well, the turnpike was actually easy, since there's noone on the roads at 2am. I've been passenger for the tolls enough times to not be scared. I knew we were going the right way because we went through the tunnels I fell in love with on the way to Chicago as a little girl (Tuscarora, Blue Mountain, and Kitattinny :) ). I got off at the right exit, paid the toll, and then began the "exciting" part of the adventure.

A combination of three things led to my brush with doom - darkness, paralyzing fog, and mountain roads. Now I am a very careful driver. I have never been in an accident, thanks be to God. And Lee said, 'just stay on the road until you see the signs for Creation. There will be a Y in the road where you can veer left into a town. Stay right, on the main road." So when I came to a Y in the road, despite HUGE signs pointing left, I went right.

It felt wrong, right away. So I called him, and he said I probably did the right thing, that it was a long lonely road. So I kept going. And going. I knew something was very wrong when I began to climb a dark dreary mountain. It was like driving in Perry County. Only steeper hills, curvier curves, and darker dark. Some of the curves were so sharp they were marked 5mph. I started to cry. At this point I was just looking for someplace to turn around safely. It was so foggy I couldn't even see the side eof the road, though I doubted there were any driveways. I watched for things that I *could* see, so I would know I was going the right way when I *did* turn around. Things that were obvious, like a one-lane bridge ("yield to oncoming traffic" signs on both sides - that's scary) and a huge yellow contruction truck.

Finally I found a place to turn around, and did. I was forty minutes out of the way, but when I got back to the main road and went left instead, it felt right immediately. There were signs for Creation shortly after. When I finally saw Lee, I was soooo happy.

Unfortunately, Lee was so tired that I had to drive home, too. But there was light by then, and I had Lee to bounce worries off of, so it wasn't so bad. If I was worried about falling asleep, that was cured when a driver three car lengths ahead of me fell asleep and bounced off the median into the side of a tractor trailer, shedding little bits of tire and car all over the road but just missing me. I was wide awake the rest of the trip.