Anticipation

It’s Monday again, and we are at the pool. Again. I love that the kids can swim in November. And, it’s the only time I get to blog!

The last week has been a little calmer than the previous ones, thankfully. We are under contract on our new house, so now I get to sit back and coast a bit. (Dramatic pause.) Bahahaha! Like that will ever happen!

I AM hoping for a little less chaos until we move, though. I’m thinking about doing a little out of town visiting, cracking down on school work, and trying to maintain a somewhat normal routine for the next two months. We’ll see how that works out. It feels really good to have our home purchase going, though, so I don’t have to worry about looking anymore. That’s a HUGE weight lifted.

It’s starting to get a little tight in the camper all of a sudden. I mean, it’s always been tight, but we’ve all been pretty irritable lately. I think that knowing you will have a new place waiting makes it worse than just being resigned to tough it out until it’s over. We never really said things like, “Man, I miss my bedroom,” or, “I sure wish I had my kitchen back.”

But, we HAVE started saying things like, “Oh, I can’t wait to have my new kitchen,” and, “Won’t it be nice to have our bed back, and have our own bathroom again!” The anticipation leads to impatience, and the impatience leads to crabbiness, and the crabbiness leads to bickering, and the bickering leads to pulling your hair out, and… I’ll stop there. Let’s just say, we all have pretty short tempers, and the boys are doing a LOT of fighting.

The winter Texans have begun their annual migration, which means our little park is blossoming into a full-scale retirement village. Nearly every space is taken now, and the internet network has slowed WAAAYY down. (What do these elderly folks DO on the internet all day and night?!?!?) Trying to scan 14 page documents on my wireless computer (that uses the network) has become impossible, so I’m extremely glad the contract-negotiating portion of our real-estate deal is over. Our fantasies of lying in bed watching streaming Netflix on REAL CITY internet are but smoke now, and we’re saying things like, “I can’t WAIT until we get our high-speed internet! We’re gonna get the REALLY fast one!”

We have to visit one of the oh, twenty redbox locations around us if we want to watch a movie, or we have to provide our own entertainment. We’ve played cards, learned to make new offensive noises, and made a big family production out of emptying the black water tank. We all stood around the drain pipe with a flashlight one night, which has a clear section so you can watch it empty. Craig finally banished the rest of us indoors because he was embarrassed by the spectacle and afraid someone would hear the boys making exclamations like, “Ooh! Did you see THAT one!?!” It was pretty funny.

You can take ‘em out of the country, but….

Thankfully, holidays are coming up, so we’ll get to do some traveling and visiting, will get to stretch out in other people’s homes, and eat food at tables big enough that we can cut our meat without elbowing someone. The boys will get some new toys to keep them occupied, and we’ll actually be GLAD to come home to our little portable casa. No matter where ‘home’ is, it’s always nice to return there when you’ve been gone. It’ll be even better when we have our own rooms, but for now, we’re happy just to have one!

I’m a little worried about my first GF Thanksgiving, having to pass up some of my favorite foods like squash casserole and sweet potato casserole, not to mention all the baked goods. I’m taking a few GF things, but nothing exciting, since I can’t do much cooking. I could have begged someone for the use of their oven, but I decided it was okay for me to take it easy this year, considering the circumstances. By next year, I’ll have my favorite dishes converted, so I can take my own, but I’ll just have to pass this year. My sweet mom-in-law is making her wonderful dressing with GF cornbread for me, which will be awesome. (Her dressing is in the cookbook!) As long as I have turkey, dressing, cranberry relish, and some kind of sweets on which to gorge myself, it will still feel like Thanksgiving, lol.

Time to go work on the venison stir-fry we’re grilling for dinner.

Happy Thanksgiving to all, and safe travels!