Confused yet? Here, let me fill you in.
As you know, we've been "on vacation" preceding our return to our "home" in Los Angeles. What you may not know is that we still have not procured our final address. Our vacation took us from North Carolina to Florida to South Carolina. The "move" started on Wednesday morning, as early as we could manage.
We hadn't been sleeping particularly well, because the cats had to be secured in our bedrooms, and we were sleeping on smaller than our usual king-size bed. When we got on the road Wednesday, we left later than anticipated and spent the first half-hour to an hour of driving back roads that needed plenty of attention with navigating and such. We drove 764 miles that day, crossed one time zone, existed in SIX states, and ended the day with additional construction or other stresses. Stephen didn't sleep well that night, even though we were finally on a large enough bed. He was up super-early on Thursday, and we hit the road after a slow breakfast.
Thursday gave us only FOUR states but still 790 miles and one time zone cross. We got in earlier on Thursday night, had time to blog and check internets, and managed slightly better sleep.
Foto Friday (sorry, kids, no internets at all yesterday - I'll pick it back up next week) started even earlier due to my eagerness to jump-start the day, and our driving shifts ended up being more like 2.5 hours at a time rather than 2. We only existed in THREE states yesterday, and crossed one time zone again, but we drove ... Nine Hundred Ninety miles. This is where today's post title comes into play.
We were mapped to cover 790 miles in 12 driving hours. We reached Stephen's last "I can't drive another mile" point and found ourselves a mere two hours away from "home." We stopped at a Starbucks so we could access the internet, and even though we were completely unsuccessful in booking a hotel in the LA area, we still both came to the (ridiculous) conclusion that we should "press on" and take our chances in finding a place to land before midnight. Never mind the fact that in the decade-plus that we resided in LA, we never noticed where the "cheap" hotels might be. Never mind the fact that the sun had already set, and we'd be driving in the dark. Never mind the fact that cats are nocturnal, and would be coming out to "play" the longer we stayed in the car. "Press ON! Let's get our butts HOME!"
What we didn't know, which may or may not have influenced our adrenaline-&-caffeine lowered decision-making skills, was that for SIX MILES of a MAJOR highway that offered NO alternative, we would "coast" along at an average of 3 mph. We were going home, and while we were crawling along, we continued to "know" that it was the right decision. We finally reached the outskirts of the Valley around 1:15 a.m. TODAY. We finally found a TERRIBLE motel (seriously, it was the scariest place either of us has ever slept) by 2 a.m. and said "fuck it - we need to sleep." And we did, a little bit.
But we got outta there at SIX this morning and headed back into our old stomping grounds, to seek out tonight's housing, as well as take a peek at some of the apartments we hope to see this weekend. Lo and Behold, there is a perfectly good hotel DIRECTLY ACROSS THE STREET from our old apartment, that neither of us could remember last night/this morning. And do you know why we couldn't remember it? Because our brains were hormone- and caffeine-addled!
NEVER make decisions based on adrenaline and caffeine. Just don't do it.
*****
And now, just a few pics for your viewing pleasure, since I completely missed Foto Friday (all timestamps are Eastern Time, and we're now in Pacific, so subtract 3 hours):
So very happy you're finally home. Yay! Glad you made it safely (and with marriage intact) and that you can finally, finally, finally seek out and discover your perfect landing pad. Congrats, you guys. You make it look easy. :-)
ReplyDelete:) ... still so much to do today.
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