Day One

Day One: Complete.

We’ve arrived safely at our hotel in Baton Rouge.

The trip today was pretty uneventful, which is exactly how we’d hoped it would go. Especially considering that, for all my bravado last week, we broke our 3-hour rule straight out of the gate and did a shot from Pearland to Baton Rouge…a 4 hour trek.

But Daphne did exceptionally well, spending the entire time playing with the parade of fidgets, books, and toys that our family was kind enough to ensure the car was stocked with, while I filled up the rest with the barest essentials of life.

Like Cloudspire with all the expansions, a coffee urn, my Birks, and McGnabb the Yard Gnome.

Speaking of the car, it did fantastically well today too. (Despite riding low from all the above detritus being jammed into its trunk/backseat.) Naturally the gas mileage took a slight hit from the extra weight but, hey, an extra gallon of gas or two could never get between a man and his gnomish life partner.

We traversed the strange and unsettling “Freeway on Stilts” that spans the Atchafalaya Basin, and avoided being attacked by alligators, swamp people, and/or the denizens of Vidor, TX, all to arrive safely in Baton Rouge.

Shortly after checking in we Door Dashed some dinner from Red Robin (at which Daphne promptly turned up her nose and demanded microwaved popcorn instead), and we are now all lying in bed together, generally decompressing from today’s car trip.

One of us has a mouthful of microwaved popcorn and the other just looks like he’s been microwaved.

Entertaining parental post-script to the above picture? A good percentage of that popcorn in her mouth somehow escaped and ended up as a kernel-y paste that has since been mashed into the sheets. So now the hotel room smells like a dollar movie theater and we’ve got 20-grit, exfoliating bed linens.

Tomorrow the plan is to take a morning dip in the pool and then bug out of here after a quick chlorine rinse off. We’ve already marked out our first “midpoint” rest stop, and I’ll do my best to get more pictures. (A difficult feat to accomplish while driving.)

See you then.

T-minus Five

Houston, we are five days from launch.

I’d like to say things have been super busy here in preparation for the trip but, if I’m being totally honest, I pretty much pencil sketched this whole thing into place a month or so ago. So right now it’s a lot of just waiting around and/or working.

Not necessarily in that order.

While drawing it up, I spent some time attempting to calculate how long we could drive each day and still maintain a happy Daphne, which has been estimated at roughly 7 hours, with an hour break in between for lunch/park playing. I also searched out hotels with indoor pools through the entirety of the trip, with the exception of one night when we’re staying with family. So hopefully this whole thing will end up being a good time for Daph.

Just in case you’d like to play Indiana Jones with us, here you go:

And there you have it.

Okay technically Day 5 does exceed my 7-hour limit, but hopefully we’ll have worked up the stamina for that leg by then. Just in case, though, we’ll be sure to have an extra long lunch in a park somewhere in the vicinity of Mt. Cobb.

After that there’s just a short hop from there up to Canaan where, at the time of this writing, it is a beautiful and clear 30° evening.

That’s not to say the next several days here in town are going to be easy ones, mind you. They’ll be filled with lots of last minute wrap-ups, puzzling out a Tetris block of luggage in the rear cargo area of the Outback, and, of course, some difficult goodbyes.

As truly wonderful as everyone has been with allowing us to camp out during the unexpectedly long waiting period between the sale of our house and our eventual egress, I think we’re all ready to move on and start this new chapter of our lives, whatever that may bring.

I know I am.

See you in a few.

Freeze Tagged

As many of you have no doubt seen, Texas had a bit of a cold snap a couple weeks ago.

And, if I’m being entirely on the level with you, these pictures were taken while that house in the background there was still quite toasty warm inside.

Alas, that was not to last…

Later, on the very same afternoon these were taken, our power went out and, suddenly, all this weather became less beautiful, and a lot less entertaining.

But we waited for a while. And then for a bit longer. And then waited some more. And then…
Nothing happened.
The power just didn’t come back on.
And that nice warm house got cooler…and cooler…and colder…and colder…

Until, when it was time for bed that night, it had dropped to the mid-40’s in the house.

Seriously, Texas?

And then, well, nothing happened some more.

The temperature continued to fall, and it eventually dropped to about 5° outside, and 40° inside, which prompted the saddest Bumble Blanket Ninja you’ve ever seen…

My aqueous humors are not finding this humorous.

Later the next afternoon, the power did return…sorta.

We were provided just enough juice to gently illuminate the lights in the house, as if every lamp had a dimmer switch that’d been set to about 30%.
But! It was enough to run the central heat for a short while.

And thus began the cycle of brownouts. We’d have power for about 90 minutes, the heater would churn along and get the inside temperature up to about 50ish, and then the power would go back out for 45 minutes. Rinse. Rime. Repeat.

This went on for the rest of the day, with each subsequent brownout becoming shorter than the one before, until, eventually, the power came on and just stayed on. Roughly 36 hours after it had originally gone out.

Unfortunately, Jen and Daph were not quite so lucky.

The electricity in Sugar Land had gone out long before ours, and it had remained out the rest of that night. The following day, after roughly 48-hours sans power, they got a quick reprieve from the local blackout and sent me the following text…

“H-h-hii D-d–da-d-d-dyyy

And Jen explained to me that it was about 37° in their house, and had been for the past day.

Oh. Hell. No.
My wife and little girl are freezing.

So I bolted from my work computer, grabbed a jacket and an extra blanket, borrowed my grandmother’s car, and was out the door in about 20 minutes with a plan to cross the frozen tundra, a.k.a. I-10 East, from Seguin to Sugar Land.

Now this trip takes about 2 hours and 15 minutes under optimal conditions. This time it took me 3 & 1/2 hours. And I’ll tell you, it looked utterly apocalyptic out there.

I lost count of how many large Texas trucks were sitting in ditches along the side of the road. (Funny thing happens on ice when there’s no weight over those back tires, guys…but I suppose you really had no way of knowing that prior to all this.)

But for me, all those nights spent slaloming down Parley’s Canyon in my Mitsubishi Toboggan Eclipse paid off, and I arrived safely both to and from Sugar Land, bringing Jen and Daph out to Seguin where a warm house awaited.

“Let’s not do that again, Daddy.”

A few days later I drove them both back to Sugar Land (they’d only brought emergency clothes with them) then tried to beat my best lap time back to Seguin on the following day.

And that, dear Bumble Readers, is how we rode out the Great Texas Winter Storm of 2021.

Now, all this being said, I understand that this weather was but a precursor to the winters that await us when we make our trek northward here in about 4 weeks. But at least there the infrastructure is prepared for such eventualities. I know I certainly will be.

And, just between us, you can be damn sure I’m not letting either of those girls out of my sight during that kind of storm ever again…

Oh, Hi.

So, it’s been almost 2 years. But, honestly, it’s not like a whole lot has really happened in that time.

Okay, just looking at those pictures of Daphne’s 4th birthday party down there, of being in a public water park, with…
**shudder**
other people.

Ugh, it’s givin’ me a case of the skeevy virus jibblies somethin’ fierce. Although it’s possible I’ve just been living in COVIDIA for too long.

So, um, hi!
How are you? How’s things?
Good, good…
Us?
Well, I’d love to tell you that things with us are status quo, that our little lives are virtually identical to when I left you all, back in the heady, innocent days of the spring of 2019. That our family is the bedrock upon which you may all anchor your sense of normalcy… But that wouldn’t be true. (And if you’re looking to me as a tether to reality, God help you.)

No. We’re in some serious flux right now. Deep flux. Things are pretty fluxxed up. Might even say we’ve nearly hit our capacity for flux.

We…

I…

No, there is too much, Let me sum up… In the past 30 days we’ve:

  • Sold our house
  • Sold both our cars
  • Sent most of our worldly belongings rattling across the country in the back of a large tractor trailer
  • Moved in temporarily with our respective parents
  • Purchased a Subaru Outback that appears to be on automotive Paxil, and only starts when it feels up to it,
  • Jen has left her job
  • We short-term rented an AirBnB in occupied Canada Canaan, VT for 3 months, beginning in April
  • We’ve had our first round of COVID shots
  • And are in the process of finding a small amount of New England acreage upon which to begin a new homestead-y existence.

Yeah, I know. You should go back and read all that again. It’s been a busy 2021 for us so far.

“I’m pretty sure there used to be a couch right about here,”

Anyway, as a result of just how fluxxing weird things have gotten of late, it made sense to try and to keep this thing updated a little more. In case some of you might like to hear about what we’re doing, where we’re going (we’re not even sure of that yet), and generally follow along in what will undoubtedly be a cornucopia of comedic errors that would make Voltaire roll his eyes.

I can’t promise how often I’m going to be able to post just yet. But I am going to make a good faith effort to, at the very least, document a little of these adventures for posterity.

So let’s get back to Bumblin’.

j.s.

Dear Daphne – 4 Years

We celebrated your fourth birthday on Saturday.

Technically, your birthday was on Sunday, but we decided to rent a couple cabanas at Schlitterbahn, a water park down in Galveston, and it was easier if we did so on Saturday.

Daddy took a little siesta in the hammock…

While you swam for hours…

You rode bravely down a couple waterslides, and then played a rousing game of “Just How Much Sand Can I Fit into My Swim Diaper?”

We took a lap around the Lazy River too.

And your poor father is still feeling the effects of all that sun radiating down atop his defenseless melon.

Everyone had a really fantastic time, and I think you had the best time of all.

Which is a sign of a birthday party working as intended.

Another entirely different development that’s happened of late is that I have, on rare occasions, had to become “The Bad Guy.”

Take, for example, last night. During dinner.

You decided that you were done with your food, signed “finished!” and summarily left the table. All these things were fine.
However, you still had a mouthful of chicken nugget when you did them.

Your mother and I tried to calmly explain that you simply cannot go play with a wad of processed chicken in your mouth, yet you refused to listen to our sage advice. Instead, you careened around the living room, wielding your new sit n’ bounce ball like a morning star versus a vile and evil ice dragon Jib.

And so, playtime had to be interrupted, and Dad had to come over to remind you that Daphne does not run Bartertown.

At this point, anything that might’ve been recognizable as “food” had dissolved into an slurry that you’d tucked into your lower lip like a wad of orange chewing tobacco.

And yet, you refused to relinquish this, your chicken chaw.

And so..Dad had to go get it.

It took several attempts, because you were being rather unhelpful throughout the process. Eventually I had to pin your hands and hold your face still while I scooped it out with my finger, a process that you and I both found equally disquieting.

Your response to this was to simply cry, and cry some more, and then cry even louder… But then, you reached your tiny arms around my neck, and hugged me in an effort to get me to stop.

And that little maneuver shattered your daddy’s heart into a million pieces.

Maybe we can work on a Bartertown triumvirate…

You’ve started full days at school this week, and it’s actually worked out pretty well so far. (Granted, it’s only day 3…but we’re hopeful.)

It gives your teachers more time to work on that whole potty training thing, gives you some extra time to play (you’re really enjoying a little thing called “recess”), and it gives mommy enough time to be able to leave work and pick you up from school.

And you’ve been doing fantastically well during these longer days, earning nearly all “+”s on your daily progress reports. (Except for puzzles; you hate doing puzzles.) Your mommy and I are very proud of what a smart and kindly little girl you are, and your teachers absolutely adore you. Hopefully you’ll always love going to school in the years ahead.

Years.

Four years…

It’s hard to believe that this is only our fourth ride around the sun since D-Day. Time is indeed a strange, wibbly-wobbly thing.

The lives that we lived before you became our little girl seem foreign, very far away, and strangely quiet (despite how “busy” and “stressed” we thought we were back then). And yet, it was not nearly long enough ago that you fit so perfectly into the crook of my arm.

I’m trying everything I can think of to be mindful during every amazingly lucky day that I get to be your daddy, and yet you’re still growing up way too fast.

I love you more than you’ll ever know, my little girl.

-Daddy-