Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Someone to Look After Us

Dawn and I always have a good time no matter what we are doing. Neither of us takes ourselves very seriously and that’s a good thing! We’re easily amused and the amusement usually comes from our own day to day comings and goings. We don’t have any problem laughing at ourselves when we make a mistake and let’s just say we laugh a lot!

I’ll give you a few examples; Recently Dawn called me very upset. She had been in the local super Wal-Mart buying groceries and as she was walking in the parking lot she begin to panic. Where is the car? She looked everywhere, it was gone. It was not where she parked it. She pushed the shopping cart of groceries up and down the aisles of the parking lot for over twenty minutes and couldn’t find it. She suddenly felt sick and people were starting to stare at her. Dawn knows that parking lot well. She and a friend meet at Wal-Mart almost every morning to walk inside the store in the winter months. I told her to hang on, I was on my way, I hung up the phone and got into the truck and my phone rang again. It was Dawn. She found the missing car. She had parked at the end of the store this afternoon when she returned for grocery shopping and had forgotten. She had been looking in the area she had parked earlier in the day when she had gone for her walk. All is well; we laughed.



The other night I was in the kitchen dipping some pretzels in chocolate and opened the dry good drawer in the island to look for something and ran across an open package of refrigerated cookie dough. I can tell you exactly who put that cookie dough into the drawer, ME. I’m the one that always makes the cookies. It must have been in that drawer for at least a few weeks. I asked Dawn if she thought cookie dough left in a drawer for a few weeks might still be good and she laughed and said we should throw it out. Needless to say it was thrown out. I must tell you that the dry good drawer is across the aisle from the refrigerator. We laughed and went about dipping the pretzels.

Back last summer Dawn went to the grocery store and bought a cart full of groceries and started to put them in the car when she noticed some things in the back seat that didn’t belong to us. She looked in the front seat and realized she had the wrong car. She paused for a second and looked around to see if anyone saw her and then proceeded to find her car. We laughed.

Recently when it had snowed, we had a few slick places around the exterior of our house. Every time we went outside I would remind Dawn to be careful walking on the slick snow and ice. She told me she was aware of the slick places and that I should watch myself. I assured her I’m always careful. We made it in and out of the house without incident all weekend. On Monday afternoon Dawn needed something out of the car and I told her to stay put, I would retrieve it because she would slip and fall. I stepped out of the house and got almost to the car when down I went. Luckily it was a slow fall and I didn’t hurt anything. We laughed.

Every night before I go to bed, I have to take an antihistamine and an antacid. It’s hell to get old! Anyway, back a few weeks ago I was talking to Dawn as I was taking my night time meds and didn’t realize until I had already swallowed them that I had actually taken a Benadryl and my antihistamine. Needless to say, I slept really well that night!

Dawn mentioned that we might need to start interviewing people right away in order to find someone to look after us before we do some real damage!

Travel Safe Dawn and Denise

Monday, February 21, 2011

Weekend of Funerals

Well, this weekend hasn't been as productive as we'd planned. Saturday afternoon we attended a funeral of a dear friend and Sunday afternoon we attend the funeral of Dawn's cousin.

We did a few things around the house in between funerals. The weather this weekend was warm with temp in the high seventies, so I worked clearing leaves from the front flower beds and trimming a few shaggy looking bushes. We also bathed our fur kids too. 

Travel Safe Dawn and Denise

Friday, February 18, 2011

We're Motivated

It’s Friday once again and I have been reading about every elses travels. Rick and Paulette are in the desert enjoying the nice warm sun; Loree is also in the desert; Al and Kelly are in Arizona contemplating becoming ranch owners and enjoying the sun; Sassy is also in Arizona; John and Carol are kayaking down the Silver River; Bob and Jo are having a great time in Phoenix at the RV Show; Al and Karen are kayaking the Hillsborough River; Donnie and Pidge are having a great time down in the Texas Hill country; Judy is working and exploring in Wet Pine Savannah; Connie and Tracy are in Tualatin, OR looking for temp work; Margie and Roger and Carolyn are Florida soaking up the sun.


We’re so jealous. Really, reading about everyone else’s travels is what keeps us motivated. That means this weekend we are going to take full advantage of the great warm weather and get off our very large butts and get some things done.

Thanks for the motivation everyone.

Travel Safe Dawn and Denise

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Still packing STUFF

The weather went from snow covered ground to sixty degrees almost overnight. Yesterday it was seventy-four degrees here. This warmer weather has got us picking up the pace once again.

We've packed and moved more boxes out to the RV garage. Last night we loaded all the Christmas stuff from the garage sale garage into boxes and put it into the truck so we can take it to the local charity thrift store. We now have a large area to display more garage sale items. People always tell us that we have the most organized garage sale and that it is displayed well. Heck yeah, we’ve pros. We’ve been having garage sales for two years now! Looks like we might be having garage sales again real soon, if the weather continues like today.

While packing STUFF we ran across an old laptop. We bought it many years ago and used it until a couple of years ago. It crashed after catching a nasty virus. We bought another laptop and stuck that one in the closet and forgot about it.

I talked to a good friend that’s in the IT business. I asked if it would be possible to use it just for my photography stuff. She told me she would wipe it clean and set it up with all my photo programs and I would be good to go.

This is great news for me. I need a computer dedicated to photos and nothing else. I take a lot of pictures. I can spend hours in front of the computer cropping and sorting pictures.

Anyway, we’ve been busy and hope to stay that way until we get all this STUFF packed up and into storage. Then we will have to sale the house and the car.

We’re getting there, slowly but surely!

Travel Safe Dawn and Denise

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Crazy Texas Weather

Just to show you how crazy Texas weather is, here is our five day forecast. Looks like we'll be wearing shorts next week.



Travel Safe Dawn and Denise

Monday, February 7, 2011

Welcome New Followers

WOW! 105 followers! That is impressive. We’re always excited to see new people joining our followers list.

This blog isn’t very exciting to read at this moment. Our lives are pretty boring as we are not on the road yet.

We have spent the last few years researching and getting our lives in order so that we can take the BIG plunge at start our fulltiming adventure in the near future. We’re not sure when that will be yet. We still have some packing to do and we need to have a few more garage sales and we have to sell the car and the house. That seems like a lot but it isn’t compared to what we’ve already done.

The other day Dawn said she was curious how we’re going to feel once we get it all done.

That really got me to wondering. How will we react when it’s all done? Will we experience a temporary state of shock? Will we collapse and feel sudden numbness? Will we be overcome with pure excitement and be jumping for joy?

It doesn’t matter! We will deal with it. What matters, is that we’ll be done with that chapter of our lives and will be moving on to the next.

So maybe in the not so far future, our blog post will be filled with tales and pictures of interesting places.

Travel Safe
Dawn and Denise

Sunday, February 6, 2011

Dangerous Roads

On Friday, the weather here was cold and the roads were covered in ice. The news media was repeating warnings about road conditions and warning people to stay off the roads. Several interstates are closed and most overpasses are closed.

We stayed home. You don't have to remind us how dangerous the roads are.

We live in a hilly area. Our house is located on top of a hill. We live on state highway-66. There was little traffic until around noon. That is when the excitement started. There were cars sliding down the hill sideways. People running off the road into the ditch. A jeep traveling down the road lost control and ran through the ditch and into our neighbors fence. The fence is there to keep cows in the pasture. We watched from our window as more and more people lost control of their cars. At one point we had more cars sideways in the road then those facing the right direction.

There was several semi trucks stuck on the slope of the hill unable to get any traction. That caused a problem for all the cars behind them. The police showed up and shut down the road while the county sand trucks worked for more than a half hour to get the area sanded enough for the semi's to get the needed traction to make it up the hill.

We watch as people stopped and help those stranded people get their cars moving in the right direction. Men in 4x4 trucksstopped and pulled cars out of the ditch. It was upsetting to us to watch the guy that mowed down a portion of our neighbors fence not even stop as he got back on the road and let the fence owner know that he had hit the fence. We had to call and tell them. We wanted to make sure he was aware that his fence was down. We didn't need cows thrown into the mix.

This excitement continued all day. We had to call 911 on two different occasions because the road was so loaded with cars, trucks and people trying to push their vehicles. It was a real mess. This went on until nine p.m.

On Saturday the weather was much better. The temp got up to around 50 degrees. The snow and ice started melting and the traffic was back to normal. We got out and ran a few errands. All the grocery stores in town were running over with people trying to replenish their pantries and get the groceries needed for their SuperBowl parties. Luckily we didn't need anything from any of those stores.
 
The weatherman is predicting more snow tonight and more on Wednesday. This has been a crazy winter here in north Texas. We normally don't even get an inch of snow in the winter.
 
Travel Safe Dawn and Denise

Friday, February 4, 2011

SNOW, SNOW Everywhere

WELCOME to DALLAS SuperBowl goers!


The weather here in north Texas is unbelievable. We almost never have freezing tempatures for more then a couple of days. We have suffered a weeks worth of freezing temps and sleet and ice storm. Last night it snowed and it is at least five inches deep now.

There are freeways shut down due to the ice and snow. Snow plows from west Texas have come into Dallas to help with the freeways. We don't have that kind of equipment here because we don't have a need for it until NOW.

The weatherman is calling for more snow on Tuesday.

The good news, The temp is going to start raising on Saturday and by Sunday it's going to be in the forties. At least the weather for the SuperBowl will be good!


Travel Safe Dawn and Denise

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Ucky Weather in North Texas

The weather here in north Texas is absolutely terrible. It started with an hour of thunderstorms and a few hours of sleet and then finally snow. It is 19 degrees here. So we have taken a few naps and eaten all the snack foods we could find. There is nothing good on TV.

I wish I had a good book to read. I love to curl up with a good book. Dawn on the other hand, has only one thing she likes to read. Her Atlas.  She takes it to bed with her at night. She knows her atlas front to back. I guess that's what make her such a great navigator.

She has asked which direction I would like to head when we do get to leave here. I'm not sure which way I want to go. I've been so busy just trying to get to a point where we can leave that I haven't given it a lot of thought.

Dawn is a planner. She enjoys making plans and putting together list. So now she wants me to think about which direction I want to go. I guess I better decide.

Travel Safe