So we are off on our roadtrip! It is my first trip alone with Livy, except going to see family, and so far it is amazing! Other people add stress and expectations, even if the people are fun, but when it is just the two of us, we are so chill. We do as we please, eat what and when we please, and say what we please. There's just nobody in the world who you can let down with like your child. Livy only wants to have a good time and be with me, and as long as we are doing that, she couldn't care less what we do. It's very freeing to travel with someone who thinks that my conversation is the most interesting in the world and who loves me so much. She is as spontaneous and non-planny as I am, and she couldn't care less if we play everything by ear. Also, we don't get to be alone very much, and I love it. Okay, enough gooey. Here's what we did today:
We left Atlanta in the late afternoon, after packing our stuff, putting ice in our cooler, and going to the grocery store. We have cashew and almond butter, yogurt, pepperoni, ham, cream cheese with onions stirred in, bananas, apples, milk, and lemonade. That's mostly what we are going to eat all week. We're going to picnic almost all the time. We have two overflowing suitcases filled with clothes that we will probably have to wear more than once, stuffed animals, this laptop, and the most basic toiletries. We didn't have room for shampoo, so we are going to wash our hair with soap. I'm proud to be the kind of people who think that stuffed animals and a laptop to blog on are more important uses of space than shampoo. We think that most people are too clean anyway. Maybe we won't even wash our hair!! Ha! See how carefree we are!
We made the drive to Chattanooga and got here just before dark. The whole way we listened to The Spiderwick Chronicles by Toni DiTerlizzi and Holly Black. It's the story of three siblings who move into an old house and discover that it is inhabited by all kinds of fairies. So far so good. It's no Narnia, but I like it. Livy is mesmerized by it. We are staying for the next two nights at a Super 8 motel in Fort Oglethorpe, GA, right outside Chattanooga. Staying in downtown Chattanooga is super cool, but also super expensive, so we are just going to drive in both days. After we settled into our room and decided important things, like who gets to sleep on which side of the bed, we went out for the evening.
We ate supper at Zaxby's (not out of our cooler like we were supposed to, ha ha, carefree), and then we went to see The Princess and the Frog. We loved it. The music is so much more fun than other Disney movies (jazz and zydeco), and I liked the humor. There is some mysticism, of course, but we choose to blow off that stuff. Instead, we focus on how the princess is a super hard worker who has to learn that there are other values to have besides just career and how the prince is a lazy womanizer who learns that hard work and real love (not just partying with lots of women) are important values. We like those lessons. Plus, talking frogs, who doesn't love those?
Now we are snuggled up in a big king sized bed (a real luxury for us). Livy loves to sleep with me (she wishes she could all the time), and it's a treat for me too. A treat that is only fun because it isn't every single night. :) I'm gonna post this and then maybe finish my new Anne Rice novel, The Mummy or Ramses the Damned. It is a lot of fun, so far, more like the Mayfair witches and less like Interview with a Vampire and The Vampire Lestat; that's a good thing. Plus, come on, a mummy who wakes up and turns out to be all hot, brilliant, and charming? (In fact, Jenn, could you please tell Brendan that I now lust for vampires and mummies. Mummies are kind of like Frankenstein's monster, right?)
This picture is our before photo. We asked a lady to take it at the RaceTrac where we filled our cooler with ice. Even though I am terrible about remembering to take pictures (they make me feel disconnected, sometimes, like I am an observer of life instead a participant, so I never have gotten in the habit), I am going to make a real effort on this trip. I want to have a photo record of our adventures, and I want you guys to see the cool things we are doing. I have decided that it is okay to spend a bit of my time on the meta-level, watching our progress as we make it.
