Checking in from the road - ThinnerTimes

LisaM · 06-20-2007, 01:40 PM

Hey, guys,

At my sister's in West Texas, and just wanted to check in. Had to go to a public library to do it--she has no Internet service. Have read through most of the threads I was part of before I departed on Sunday, but wow, you guys have been busy since then! Thanks for the answers on my menopause thread...

glad Carrie had her HIDA scan, hope the results are definitive and get you some relief, dear... Glad LisaBoston's feeling better... glad Dyann's back (hi, dear).

I'll post more another time. This keyboard has one of those dang plastic covers on it, and it's making my fingers bananas. Plus the 10-year-old next to me is on his fifth cellphone conversation since I got here, and I'm trying not to land in jail.

Love y'all
Later

LyndasRoom · 06-20-2007, 01:43 PM

Thanks for checking in Lisa! Safe, fun trip!

AlabamaChick · 06-20-2007, 02:21 PM

LOL Hi Lisa!!!!! Hurry home!

Duckie · 06-20-2007, 03:34 PM

Hope you are having F-U-N!!!

SDeRossett · 06-20-2007, 03:48 PM

Texas is pretty hot this time of year. I lived in Houston for 6 months and though it was just about unbearable. Thank goodness for AC. Did you read about the topical hormone therapy I was telling you about in the last post? The gal I work with brought the info in if you're interested. Let me know. Have a great visit.

Sharon

LoriAnn925 · 06-21-2007, 06:50 AM

Well, I'm not in West Texas, I'm in DFW, but as far as Texas weather goes, its not as hot here as what it could be. We are getting hit with rain storm after rain storm, and its kept the temperature down. But wait a couple weeks, and our temps will be up past 100 easily probably pushing 110.. YIKES! I'm really hoping for a cooler summer this year.. and only get to 105 or so.. lol

LisaM · 06-21-2007, 10:21 AM

Trying to get things resolved with getting my sis into another rental house, as the guy who owns the one she's in is trying to sell it...

Sitting here in the library again this morning, listening to all the rustle, rustle, rustle going on around me. The ten-year old is not here this morning, thank goodness. Unfortunately, he was replaced on my right by a mom with her fidgety, squealy two-year-old, who continues to repeat over and over and over again, "Wanna play! Hey mom, wanna play. Pwease!" Punctuated by a certain amount of nonverbal, very vivid, shouted punctuation. On my left is a woman who may be in the beginning stages of TB or the end stages of bronchitis, if her cough is anything to go by. My God, I'm spoiled...

Let's see, temperature got up in the mid-90s yesterday, it's 80 degrees now, supposed to get up to 91 today. My sympathies for the DFW folks on the rainstorms - my husband's bosses house was flooded in Southlake, they're still cleaning up from that.

Sharon - if you'd like to send me that information by PM, or post it in the menopause thread, that would be grand. Maybe I can check it out once I'm back in Illinois.

What else? Let's see. My sister drives one of the mega earth movers up in the Davis Mountains. Her tires are taller than she is. She stopped by the house quickly for a cup of coffee this morning, in what she called the "little" dump truck, and I had to climb up four steps just to get to the height of the cab. Too funny. And she's the size I am now, a 5'2" tall, blond, with that tomboy femininity. She's raising two handicapped kids on her own, she works about 13 hours a day, and gets a lot of respect from these tough guys she works with. Can you tell I'm proud of her?

The breadth and width of the West Texas sky is amazing - here's a link to a picture of the Davis Mountains and the West Texas scenery, if you're interested, on Wikipedia. The picture looks just like the 50-mile drive from I-20 on a farm-to-market road to get to Ft. Stockton. There's more green than in this picture, as they've had more rain in the last six months than they've had in the last ten years.

The sky in West Texas is rivaled only by Montana's Big Sky Country, and that's where my trip will continue on to next week. I had hoped to get out to Cali to see Donna, but didn't want to get her hopes up, so didn't mention it previously. But, finances being what they are, I am going to have to go straight there, rather than being able to detour to Cali and go up through Oregon and Washington and Idaho to get to Montana, as I'd hoped.

However, my best friend's birthday is 07/07/07, in Columbia Falls, and I must be there for that. You can't get a more special date than that, I would say, and we've been friends for more than 20 years. In fact, the picture you've seen of me in my before pictures was taken in her home on her birthday two years ago. She hasn't seen me since, and I think it's time. Columbia Falls is a small town (about 3200 people) right outside the western gate of Glacier National Park. Basically, her back yard is a mountain.

Ah, must be time to go, the video-watching, cellphone junkie ten-year-old has come back from yesterday to replace the two-year-old charmer, who has been hauled off by her mama to parts unknown. Oh, good, and he's developed a cough since yesterday. And the TB lady just answered her cellphone, too. I think I'll go wash the keyboard germs off my hands five or six times before I go back to the house...

More travelogue as I go...

JenBear7 · 06-21-2007, 10:40 AM

I love reading your posts .. you crack me up! Missin you on myspace IM! Hey your friends birthday is 2 days before my RE-birthday!

Keep us entertained.. (or posted.. whichever way you wish to view it).. have fun!

sdgrrl · 06-21-2007, 11:12 AM

I too have been reading with great bemusement your travelogue of Texas. I am a huge fan of "King of the Hill"...Seen Peggy Hill anywhere?

I was surprised to read that you had thought to surprise me. Sweetie, just the idea that you had thought to come see me makes me all ferklempt! What a doll you are! I definitely agree you need to be at your friend's for that special birthday. I've been to Glacier and it really is God's Country up there. I'm going to take Josh to the 3 national parks (Zion/Bryce/Grand Canyons) around the middle of July. We had promised him like 2 summers ago that we would go there, and life always got in the way. Now he and my Visa are going there. I can ill afford it financially, but sometimes you can't afford not to, KWIM?

Here's hoping you don't get the Texas Consumption, and post whenever you can, we're loving it!

LisaM · 06-22-2007, 09:30 AM

Glad you guys are enjoying the ongoing story...

And Donna, if I had the money, honey, I'd be there already.

OK, back at the library to use the computer. Came early, in hopes the ten-year-old cellphone junkie would be sleeping late. He came in within five minutes, swear to God. I got up and moved to the other end of the computer section after he stood up over his monitor and yelled to his friend Wanda sitting a few seats away that she needed to "Come look at this!" Honest to betsy, he's like some weird little gnome following me around.

Now I'm sitting next to laughing boy. Nice-looking man, late 20s, Hispanic, very serious-looking when he sat down. He's watching something on the computer and laughing to the point that he has tears running down his face. Swear. I think I've been too insulated, having an actual computer at my actual house. This is much like riding public transportation, simultaneously fascinating, annoying, and often a little freaky. All that's missing is the smell of diesel fumes.

On to the story... my family is already trying to pull me into their emotional dramas--my sis tried to bust me last night for something that I said FOUR YEARS AGO that hurt her feelings, something I don't even remember. Also, found her a house that's only like three doors down, twice the space she has now, reasonable rent, took her over to see it, she hated it. Probably because I picked it out.

OK, Laughing Boy now looks like a bobblehead doll. He must agree very much with whatever he's looking at on the screen (his screen is 90 degrees opposed to mine, so I can't see it), he's nodding agreement over and over again. Or maybe he's chair dancing--badly--to a music video.

Continuing with the family drama, my brother has some bug up his butt because he wants me to come to East Texas (completely opposite of my travel direction). He offered to pay for gas, but good grief, it would add more than 12 hours driving time to my trip, and not to put too fine a point on it, I don't want to! So I'm not... and I got a lecture about how I needed a "change of attitude." He can bite me.

So, I'm moving my leaving day up to Monday--I was leaving Thursday. And I'm heading north. Not sure where I'll land between here and Montana, but solitude is looking pretty darned good right now. All I have to do between now and then is keep my mouth shut so I have a chance to escape without telling my family members to take a long walk off a short pier.

Laughing Boy's back at it--he's got a nice laugh, but it's odd, when you don't know what he's laughing at, then his face goes back to completely deadpan. Oooh, Lord, that wasn't a laugh, that was a giggle. I have to walk by his computer and see what he's snickering at...Time to go wash the gerbies off my flying fingertips from the public keyboard, too... ew.

More later...