End of the Journey...

There's nothing quite like waking up soaked in toddler pee.  Poor kid leaked through his diaper... and evidently that made him cold, so he needed to cuddle.  In my groggy mostly-asleep state, I wondered how he could possibly sweat so much.  I woke up very quickly when I realized that it wasn't sweat.  He didn't really seem to mind...

I think that my body dislikes being suddenly reintroduced to all the things that it's allergic to... I feel like absolute crap.  Dizzy and congested and coughing.  FUN!  Can't wait for the Sudafed and Motrin to kick in... I have things to do.  Mostly the massive pile of post-vacation laundry that's covering the living room floor...and even more after Oliver's leakage this morning.

Thing is, I'm not sure KS counts as a vacation.  I did there exactly what I would have done here, but less comfortably, and without coffee.  It was...ok.  The library was nice - lots of stuff for Oliver to do and surrounded by a nice park.  The coffee place was 50/50...They served me the WORST cup of coffee I've ever had...and I complained to a friend while in a public place.  The next time I went back, I explained exactly how to make a good latte... and the girl behind the counter was eager to make sure everything was just fine.  So, one good cup of coffee in 10 days.  I also read...and slept.  Oliver and I spent lots of time at the park.  We went down to the river one day and I tried very hard to get decent pictures of him near trees with yellow and orange leaves.  He doesn't take direction very well... :)  We hung out with John, my dad's best friend, a lot.  That was nice - he's a cool guy.  My aunt and cousin came down for a day and a half - also nice.

Oliver did amazingly well.  I worried that he'd dislike the travel portion of this - it's not much fun to sit in the car for days on end - but he didn't whine or cry about it at all.  He said a couple times that he was ready to stop at a hotel or restaurant, or that he wanted to get out of the car, but that's it.  He likes his grandma Norma very much... and he was pretty good with John, too.  In the 10 days we were gone, I think his communication skills improved significantly.  He even used hotel potties.  He's such an impressive kid :)  He does still say "no I don't want to do it" way more than anything else, though...

Only one of the hotels we stayed in was truly awful...right across the street from an elevator, and the damn thing had fans or something on ALL NIGHT.  That turned into a sort of white noise machine, but it didn't make up for the shabby room.  I can't help but think of serial killers whenever checking in to hotels... especially remote hotels in creepy little ghost towns.

Then there were all the creepy little ghost towns themselves.  Oklahoma, Texas, and Kansas all have dozens of these tiny little towns with boarded up shacks half falling into ruin.  Some buildings are nothing more than rickety frames or stone foundations.  Once in a while, amid the rubble, there'd be a house or two that looked cared for...like someone was still living there.  I couldn't help but wonder why.  Even in the towns with maybe a hundred or two hundred people, I couldn't figure out why anyone was there at all.

Eh.  I can't focus anymore.  Think I'm gonna feed the kid and nap... see if I can get the icky feeling to go away.  Might write later about some books... might not... :)

Home.

We're home.

I'm tired... so I'll write more about the experience (or lack thereof) after I've spent some quality time with my bed.