I would have to say this has been a very bizarre and busy month.  My life of late has been fairly routine and predictable.  Then summer hit and it has been basically non stop travel and weirdness.  Not all weirdness is bad, trust me.  I like the unpredictable at times and I like new things and adventures.  It broadens me (as if I needed broadened anymore after all the fabulous food I have had on vacations as of late).

Two weeks ago is kind of a blur.  Return from China had me a bit out of whack.  Add to it a few rather emotional and stressful events and I was thinking that I might just explode. Thank goodness I didn’t or it would have been quite messy.

Last week came and a trip with a friend got cancelled because of the death of her mother but if anything it made our friendship stronger as we really reconnected over memories of our parents and loved ones and how we deal with end of life issues.  We will still have our “girls trip” one day—just postponing it a bit.

Then the trek to Ohio on Thursday—630+ miles of dead corn and construction.  A day to visit with family and then back on the road on Saturday for the return trip but this time with my brother in law, Carlton.  Remember him???  ( In July 2011 the National Down Syndrome Society was my Comments for a Cause because of him!  Read about it here.)  We had the honor of moving in and helping take care of him for 7 months after Chris’s dad’s death before he moved in with their sister.   We miss him and want him to be a part of our lives, too, so we are going to play host to him for a couple of weeks.  Well…..13 days to be exact if you ask him.

I know that it is going to be a hard 2 weeks for him out of his own normal routine and environment.  We tried to make sure that things here would be similar and easy to transition to.  I tried to “head off” things that I knew could cause some potential problems.  I unplugged the dryer (there was a sad story of my white shirts becoming red because of his passion for wearing Ohio State swag), I wedged a sponge in the door of the closet where the litter box is to keep it from being able to be shut (genius, I know!), I cleaned out a drawer in the kitchen for his stuff, we changed from satellite to cable so that we could have the big tv in the basement hooked up to get all his favorite channels, I got a cd player and put an iHome in his room so he could use his iPod in there, the list goes on.  When we got home we just let him explore the house after we gave him the tour.  It’s what he needed to do.  No door was left untouched.  No cabinet door unopened.  🙂

And how, you may ask, did he receive all of this?  He was upset that I did not have any hot dogs in the freezer, that no food is allowed in the basement and that the tv is NOT in his room downstairs but in the main part.  My reality for the next two weeks—wait–13 days—may be still a little bit altered but we will manage and I am determined to make this a good trip for him.   I have things planned.  And they do not include eating chicken tenders and mozzarella sticks and hot dogs every day!  🙂