On the Road Again. Or Still?

It's Monday which means time to check in here. I'm so ready to get settled into our apartment and then hopefully into some sort of routine with my writing. We shall see.

Hubs and I have been on the road all week which I know surprises no one, and guess what? We'll be on the road all this week too. As I've been saying for several months now... 'tis a season.

Except I think 'on the road' is a way of life here as opposed to just a season, but I like to pretend one day we'll be settled down with our feet up and no place to go.

Also we really do enjoy all the going, we just need a little staying now and then for balance. ahem.

We left NJ last Tuesday and took our time getting to SC. We arrived on Wednesday morning, and headed straight for the lake to dump a carful of belongings. Not in the lake, but in the storage unit we're renting near the lake. We've got the little red car in storage there too, and she started right up on the first try. That doesn't always happen with the little red car, but apparently heat and humidity agree with her, so whoohoo!

Next stop was back to town to my sister and brother-in-law's home to dump the rest of our luggage, shower, change and then head back over to the other side of town to collect Daughter2 for dinner with the in-laws. Not her in-laws or our in-laws, but Daughter1's in-laws.

Course Daughter1 and her hubs were way over on the west coast where they currently reside, but their families had a lot of fun catching up over dinner. Both sisters were there too, just no newlyweds. Pretty sure we're going to see the kid's in-laws more than they do, but that's okay because it gives us a chance to talk about them. Hi kids!

Thursday I broke down and got a haircut, my first since we moved. I went to my daughter2's stylist so it wasn't too traumatic. Y'all finding a new girl to cut my hair ranks high on the list of move stressors. We had a nice lunch afterwards with Daughter2 (I'm not even living there yet, but already loving how easy it is to see her) and then we drove back out to the lake to meet up with our builder.

He had our actual large blueprints and also the gazillion pages that go behind the floorpans. All the lines and squiggles and footnotes referring to insulation and electricity and foundations and muckity muck muck. Oh I know it's all important, but I want hubs to worry about the part that's not fun. Just skip straight to the pretty drawings of my house please.

It feels very official to have blueprints, although there are still one or two little bits and pieces that need correcting, and we have to tag trees on the lot as to what stays and what goes, and then somebody has to come say it's okay because you can't just knock down all the trees when you're beside the water, nor would we want to, and then there's all the choosing and the paying of course, but still... it's nice to have blueprints.

On Friday we met Daughter2 for breakfast, then hubs drove me to meet up with some college friends so we could transfer my luggage to their car for the ride to North Carolina. We're moving to South Carolina which I know is confusing, but I was going to a sorority reunion in North Carolina. And hubs was going on to Tennessee to catch up with his folks, because we were in the neighborhood.

More or less.

I had a fabulous weekend in the mountains with college girlfriends. The kind of weekend where we talk too much and laugh too much and relax to the nth degree. In other words-perfection. 

The view's not bad either.

The weekend went by way too fast, and on Sunday hubs picked me up and we headed back to NJ. It was slow going because have mercy, the traffic! Yikes! What should have taken ten hours took fourteen so we didn't roll into my mom's driveway until 1:30 in the morning. I know! 

We have a glorious forty eight hours with no where to be, then it's back in the car and over the border. Legally of course-ha! We're going to a wedding in Canada, and since Prince Edward Island is basically the end of the earth, we're making some stops along the way. It's a beautiful part of the world, and we are so looking forward to catching up with friends as we travel north.

Life is a highway, and we're riding it that's for sure!

With Eagles Wings

I forgot I wasn't 19 still and stayed up gabbing long into the night Friday and Saturday both.

Ooops.

As it turns out I'm actually middle aged.

Not in my head of course, but the rest of me is saying that's true.

I spent the weekend with old friends from summer camp and when I say old I'm talking about the good kind. The kind of old that means a long long time and not the kind of old that means crows feet and small bladders.

Is this all too much for you today?

It's feeling like it might be too much for me.

I think I mentioned I'm tired. And middle aged.

Last year a reunion was organized on the property of our former campground and it was so much fun we decided a sequel was in order. The campground is still a campground but the girl's camp as we knew it has moved to another property site. The grounds have changed a lot since the 1970's, but when we're all together we fall right back into our old vocabulary. It's the Dining Hall, the Craft Shop, and the Lodge just as it was 3o-something years ago.

All my life I've struggled to explain how I feel about this place and these friends to people who were never there. It's a piece of my heart that remains tender, that when pricked spills out in both laughter and tears.

I've written a couple of posts in the past (here and here) in my attempt to put thoughts and feelings into words, but the finished product wasn't very satisfying. So here I am again-full head, overflowing heart, the right words still just out of reach. Perhaps there are some things in this life that aren't meant to be described, only felt.

Some forty years ago many of us were campers. We sailed and rode horses and ate in a dining hall. We sat on dusty cabin floors or atop sleeping bags laid across a bunk as we shared things weighing heavy on our young hearts. Moving into the college years we became the listen-ers, camp counselors to cabins full of campers unpacking their troubles along with their tennis shoes. We taught canoeing and John 3:16. We laughed and sang and prayed. We wrote letters to many of these campers throughout the school year and we pray for them still.

Thirty+ years have somehow come and gone since I was a camp counselor. The pool may be new and improved, the buildings painted or moved, our bodies older and our everyday lives separated by geography, but that thing that made camp camp?

It remains.

Camp was always a refuge, a safe place to learn and grow, to speak without fear from the deepest part of your heart. We united as staff members way back when and shared life in all its multi-layered glory and despair.

We still do.