nashvull

Since I'm too lazy to get up and get the other camera and actually look thru and organize pictures from the past few weeks, you get the Nashville report since that camera is within my reach and well, there are only a couple of shots from the trip. Um, only a couple from on the way home to be precise. I know. I stink.

We had a good long weekend. It was packed full and a little stressful and painful (be advised a five-and-a-half-hour road trip twice in five days is not the best thing for a painful tailbone) but it was nice to be there and get more of a feel for this future home of ours.

As I said before, Ryan's living there with a coworker in a temporary furnished condo right in the heart of the West End. As much as I've resigned myself to the fact that we are indeed a suburban family, dependent on block parties and street hockey and big driveways full of chalk drawings and yards for the kids to run through... it was so, so fun to be in the city. Everything from the garage parking and taking the elevator up to the condo, to being able to walk anywhere to get a bite to eat, etc. Love it. And I love looking out the windows and seeing the city. Especially at night with all the lights. I even love hearing the sirens and the helicopters coming in (which, living a stone's throw away from a medical university hospital and the helicopter pad, you hear a lot of!). Walking to work and walking to go out at night... seems so quaint.

What wasn't so quaint was trying to keep two obnoxiously hyper over-excited kids entertained and well-behaved in the condo. On the third floor. It's been a long time since I've had neighbors on the other side of a wall and underneath my feet. I felt like my whole weekend consisted of "shhh... quiet down... stop it... stop jumping... don't yell... do you have to laugh so loud?... you're stomping... settle down... shhh..." and on and on and on. Did I mention no DVD player or cable??

We looked at a total of I think twenty houses in two days and revisited a few on the last evening I was there. After awhile it all blurs together...
We haven't found our dream house yet. Well, I think I have but Ryan doesn't agree.

We didn't do anything very Nashville or all that fun. We didn't have much free time for fun time. Our dinners out consisted of McDonalds to let the kids run and play and CiCi's Pizza because kids were free. We did play some arcade games, winning some candy and prizes at the pizza place... woohoo, do we know how to have a good time or what?? And about half the houses we looked at were vacant so the kids thought it was great fun to run around a big empty house playing tag and such.

We had a pretty good trip home (after no less than four bathroom stops in the first hour) and made perfect time to hit the hockey game in STL. Savannah read four chapter books on the drive there and back... she had her nose in a book almost the whole trip home.





































I took a picture of this because it makes me laugh every time I get in the car...
Ever since the accident, I can't sit straight in the car, like to drive. I'm okay in the passenger seat because I can lean and situate myself well enough to sit tolerably. However, when I'm driving it's excruciatingly painful. So I sit on a phone book. It's scooted up a bit so my "tail" can hang off the back and there's no pressure on it. (which works wonderfully to relieve the tailbone pain. and honestly isn't too bad driving around town. for ten minutes at a time. sitting on a phone book for six hours, however is another story. i swear i have permanent bruises in a rectangular, phone book resembling shape on the back of my thighs. ouch.)
Anyway, who uses a phone book anymore right? But I managed to find one from when we moved in this house and threw it in the car. It wasn't until after I'd used it for a couple of days that I realized this "Injured?" page was staring up at me. Fitting, eh?

[and disclaimer: yes, we were in a minivan. no, it is not ours. we rented a car for the trip and the van was the only thing they had on hand -free upgrade!!-... ryan and i made fun of each other the whole weekend having to drive a minivan. not that there's anything wrong with that. i just so do not like them. at all. and i felt the need to have a bumper sticker on that said something to the effect of 'no i do not think just because i have two kids i need a minivan!'. ugh. no offense, but as posh as it was (stow 'n go, heated seats, satellite radio...) and as nice and spread out as we could be (more space to trash! was my kids' motto) it reinforced the fact that i just do not like minivans. i do not like the mini van, i do not like them sam i am, i do not like them here or there, i do not like them anywhere! even a long trip to nashville.]

Oh and my favorite part of the trip?
My streak is still alive. Yes, I actually made a seven hundred mile trip without having to pump my own gas. I have now, not only lived in self-serve gas station states for four years, but managed to make a seven hundred mile interstate trip as the sole adult in the car and still not touched a gas pump myself.
When it was decided that Ryan would move down to Nashville ahead of us, we both realized, devastatingly, that it probably meant I would have to start pumping my own gas. It meant the end of an era. 34 non-gas-pumping years down the drain. I mean, I could probably make it here in between his visits, but if we were ever driving down there to meet him? Streak crushed, right there. Bummer.
But. Amazingly I found the one gas station in southern Illinois that still has full-service. (and I only spent an hour online searching for it) It happened to divinely be smack dab right in the middle of my route to Nashville! How crazy is that? Meant to be I tell ya. So I filled up on my way down and rolled into Nashville with still a half a tank of gas. Ryan sent me off with a full tank and I filled up again on the way home. And let me just say how nice it is to once again just roll up to a gas pump, hand your card out the window and simply say, "fill it with regular, please"! Just like old times. :)
The streak is still alive, the game is still on, I still have my "thing" and I'm happy!