I'm going on vacation this weekend -- as previously mentioned -- YAY! I'm up a dawn because I have to pack before I leave this morning and I have to leave EARLY because I am f i n a l l y closing on my refinance. YAY! But that means I have to get all my stuff ready because I am meeting S and his family for shrimp maybe before I leave town. Which means I get to see my baby before I'm gone for 2 days. YAY!

So even though I'm up with the sun, I'm in a pretty great mood -- let's see how long that lasts! Interesting Heather fact: every time I have left on any sort of vacation I always believe, somewhere deep back in the recesses of my little brain, that something will happen to me and I will die. Isn't that strange and morbid? It actually develops into a conscious thought for a brief part of every drive and then it goes away again. I think it's that thought that keeps me driving just a little bit better than I am normally wont to do while on vacation. It started back in high school, I think. I was pretty good friends with this guy who worked with me at the grocery store and he had a bit of a crush on me. (In THOSE days, if the random guy didn't have a crush on me then I had a crush on him and these crushes were ALWAYS going in the wrong direction.) Actually, he went through a period where he was a bit obsessed with me (I tried to ignore it, we were friends -- I didn't want to screw it up) and during the HEIGHT of this time was my family's then-annual weekly trip to the Outer Banks. I was driving down and that was a BIG deal, I was a little anxious about it. I shared my feelings of anxiety with my friend and he said that he had been thinking for some time that something was going to "happen" to me while I was gone, said in an ominous tone that could only mean one thing.

Hmmm, and lots of things happened that vacation but none of them resulted in my death -- but ever since then that feeling has never really gone away...

My friend, he was right to be concerned though -- spending that week apart caused me to back-burner the friendship more when I returned and allowed me to break free from his crush on me. Weird how remembering ONE thing spirals you into remembering so many others, isn't it??

Anyways -- I am like the Army today, I'll be doing more before 10am than many of y'all will do all damned day! Hope your weekend's good, I know mine will be...

love
HP