Lessons in Gratitude Day 382

Tonight I am sitting at my desk periodically looking out my window at the nearly full moon rising over the trees in the parking lot behind our condo complex. It is a beautiful evening–a little while ago I was outside and watched a virtual “swarm” of dragonflies flitting and pirouetting through the early evening air, which was finally cooling down after a high in the low 90s. Tonight I can hear the chirping of night insects and the last evensongs of the birds as they wind down for the night. Yes, it is a beautiful evening.

Tomorrow morning my daughter and I am going to head out on our excellent adventure–a 780-plus mile drive from East Bay California up through Oregon and into Washington State on our trip to Seattle University where Michal will start training for her graduate program in student development. I’m pretty tired so I won’t write much this evening. I want to hit the hay early this evening so we can hit the road early in the morning. I am hopeful that I’ve managed to remember to take care of all the business I needed to transact here the next few days. I’ve left a number of items in my son’s capable hands to be taken care of in the few days I’ll be away. Now the task is to remember items I want to take with me on the trip (like my computer so I can blog and my camera for recording various elements of our road trip, and other necessary items. Even as I write, Michal is downstairs making sandwiches for us to take with us when we head out.

I am grateful for all that we’ve managed to accomplish today. I did my usual masterful job of fitting a seemingly impossible quantity of “stuff” into Michal’s ’99 Honda CRV. All that’s left is for us to get up in the morning (I always think I’ll get up at 5 a.m. and leave by 6, but I’ve learned to add at least 30 minutes and perhaps as much as an hour to my estimations. While it is a trip we could do in one day, we’re probably going to take it in two, driving the bulk of it tomorrow and leaving a few hours for Wednesday. We’ll see how we feel as we go along. Michal as a relatively new driver is most likely going to ride “shotgun” more than do actual driving, and I’m going to relive my glory days of driving long distances. The last long haul I took was when I drove out to California from Michigan nearly seven years ago. I had a co-pilot back then and we alternated driving for long stretches, though I think I might have driven a bit more than she did. So we’ll see how it goes.

I am grateful in advance for traveling mercies. I am asking our various guardian angels and the friendly car spirits to smile on us as we travel tomorrow. I expect that, although it will be a bit grueling as road travel can be, it’ll also be a lot of fun. I am looking forward to the bonding time–the singing, the telling stories, the interesting sights along the way. Another leg of the journey gets underway tomorrow morning. And I am grateful.