2005: 40 Thoughts in 40 Days

The summer I turned 33, was a traveling kind of summer.  And those are a rarity.

It's not so much that we don't like to travel, it's just that real vacation time, away from everything, just doesn't happen often for us.  Living away from his parents when we were first married, meant that vacation time was spent traveling to Buffalo to spend time with them.  Once we moved to Buffalo, we began to vacation in Ohio, seeing my family and our friends there.  Add to that - financial reasons, or time constraints, and now having two kids... "real" vacation time away just didn't happen for us on a regular basis.

As life happened, my mom had moved to Florida - and that opened a big vacationing opportunity for us during that summer of 2005.  Baby girl was still young enough to travel easily, and D-Man had turned into a young lover of all things Hollywood (age appropriate of course), so we hooked up a portable DVD player in the car for him, and set off down the road for North Port, Florida.

My memories of that trip are of seeing the temporary housing communities set up from when Hurricane Charley went through the area the year before (Mom's first summer in Florida, and the Gulf Coast where she lived got hit with a doozy of a hurricane), little gecko lizards that were jumping EVERYWHERE...including across my sandaled feet while we ate breakfast at a Waffle House (I was not impressed to say the least, and these things look NOTHING like the cute little Geico gecko on the TV commercials.), and we also made some other new friends while we were down there...like this fella who poked his head up a few times in one of the ponds and stretched his legs in the area as we walked to the community pool.

Thankfully we made it out of Florida before getting eaten by crazed geckos, or giant gators, and before Hurricane Katrina formed and caused chaos that year.

In August the opportunity to travel to Washington D.C. presented itself to us, and with Mr. D. being the history buff that he is, and since I had been there when I was in high school and relished the idea of going back again to fully appreciate what I missed out on back then, we jumped at the chance to visit!  I don't know if I was more excited over the idea of getting to go to Washington D.C., or getting to go out of town for the weekend with just my hubby and no kids.  Either way, I was ecstatic!

We did all the touristy things; Lincoln Memorial, Capitol Building tour, Arlington Cemetery, Library of Congress, National Archives, pic in front of the White House, and a visit to one of the Smithsonian museums. (It was only a weekend, how quickly can we cram as much as possible into that one weekend?)  On the last day, Mr. D. was already committed with another activity, so I hopped on the Metro Rail in Baltimore, and made my way into D.C for a morning of sightseeing by myself.  It was August in Washington D.C. and it was hot, and after I had finished walking the length of the mall area and made my way to Union Station to catch the Metro Rail back to Baltimore, I was receiving my share of strange looks.  Strange looks AND I had strangers such as the security guard standing in Union Station asking me if I was okay and offering me a seat to sit down and rest myself.  A bit odd, but I chalked it up to our nation's capitol being a very friendly place.

Silly me...they apparently knew something that I had not yet discovered even myself.  I don't know what it was about my appearance that set it off, but I obviously didn't look well to others.  And in another week or two, I would discover why... :)

C.