Befitting my melancholy mood, a torrential downpour assaulted us for a quickie yesterday. But like always, there’s a silver lining (well…pink) in them there clouds! Wow, one of the coolest sunsets of our 6 weeks in Boca.
Off to the races, leaving Florida Palm trees behind, we tore ourselves from that gorgeous beach and packed every spare inch of the car (aka living space for the next 2 weeks.) A fitting last few words to check in with our Condo Association Management office (“What?!” you ask, “You finally gave up your job managing an office for 25 years and you volunteered to head up the HR committee in Boca?!”) and then:
We’re on the ROAD!
1. The Florida Panhandle is loooong.
2. New Orleans is Central Time, so a google maps 11pm arrival is really a midnight arrival FL time. Oops. What’s another hour of driving!? Push on through.
3. Hotel prices in New Orleans in July are shockingly low. Hmmm. Wonder why…(Hotel Reservation lady in a southern drawl…”It’s hot here, you know.” Me: “oh, we just left Boca and it was 97.” She: “Oh, honey, this is a bit different.”)
So…another 4 hours to go before we sleep! Dave’s playing his Road Trip mix-CD’s (yup, you knew it) and I’ve read the first 90 pages of the current Novel draft, trying to get my head around the HUGE amount of work I still want to do.
The sunset has been going on for at least 1/2 hour, over the Gulf Coast in the Panhandle. Really astonishing beauty, unlike anything we’ve ever seen.
I’m incredibly grateful I’ve so much to look forward to: dying to know what the new apartment will look like, what returning to CA after three decades will mean in reality, glad to be seeing Jason and Mangpo, the Stanford writing crowd, and re-establishing a writing/revising routine.
In the meantime, I’m so glad we have a concentrated two weeks of seeing this country, of spending time together before our lives completely and totally upend themselves. But, really, how cool is that?!
xxxoo to all,
Gail
Gail Ansel 