It's now December 14th. We leave in nine days. Since I last wrote we (read that me) have made several commitments to the trip. We have hotels in Ogden, Utah; Denver, Colorado; Kansas City, Missouri; and ...Orlando. The elipses indicates about a 1600 mile stretch with no hotel, yet. You see I got excited booking on Priceline; the only drawback is you can not cancel. So I mapped out day one: Olympia to Ogden. Snow? You betcha. Night two (December 24) is Denver. Why Denver on Christmas eve you ask. It's Kelly's 21st birthday. As the mother responsible for 20 really bad birthdays, I thought the coup de gras would have to be a 21st birthday on Christmas Eve in Ogden, Utah. (No offense, Utah). So that means we will have to make it to Denver.
How bad were Kelly's past birthdays? There was her third that was attended by me, my room mate Sue, Sue's potbellied pig Lucille, my Old English Sheepdog Nellie, and Tyler...all wearing party hats at the dining room table. Or then there was her sixth. It was just after we moved to the Cispus Learning Center, 10 miles out of Randle. She was in kindergarten. We invited her whole class (15 kids). It snowed, and snowed, and snowed before the party. Only Joyce McMahan's parents braved the snow and cold to bring her. Not bad enough for you? When my parents were alive, we'd travel to Satsop (see most boring, rainy, depressing place on your atlas) to their house. Christmas eve, the tradition was to go to the cemetery (yes, you read that right) to put luminaries on the graves of the dead (who in Satsop are the lucky ones). Did I mention it rained? We'd put them on our ancestors and others who were buried there including "the babies" who we found out died when their mother's car was hit by a train. I know: cheery to boot. For years we spent every Christmas eve running around the cemetery...it was pretty, though.
So damn it, this birthday, Kelly's 21st will be different. Sitting in a bar on Christmas Eve in Denver, Colorado driving God knows how many hours in God knows what kind of weather in a car that at best is questionable...Did I mention Robby is going with us? He's Kelly's good friend from high school. Not only do I have to be the responsible adult, I also have to be the macho one on the trip.
In the last two days, it has snowed 11" at my house here in Randle. That does not bode well for the trip. We are forecast to be in a deep freeze for at least a week. Are we in Ogden yet?
I'll post a photo of my house today in the snow.
Oh, and I have a return flight booked for December 28th from Orlando. My cousin Don today said I had better not count on making my flight. We'll see about that!
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