Day One

After a full, good night rest, I woke refreshed at the crack of dawn. That hour really should not exist. So I forced myself to go back to sleep (sound familiar?) and closed my eyes only to open them a quarter of an hour later... if that much longer. Tired of trying to make myself lay in bed and sleep I get up, eat breakfast (notice a routine to my mornings?) and realize I still smell like nasty airplane. gross. Walk into the bathroom to find that 1. there is no shower rod and 2. the bathtub needs to be cleaned (not because it was visibly filthy, but you just never know when the last time it was cleaned, how throughly it was cleaned, or what or who was in in last). disgusting. Thankfully we had the foresight to walk to the market the night before because we realized that there was no 1. toilet paper 2. soap 3. food (of course these things wouldn't be there... and it would probably even be super repulsive if they were. ...Actually, come to think of it there was some soap. One bottle of hand soap with the top that was so throughly caked in orange colored soap I refused to touch it let alone use any of it. My sweet smelling anti-bacterial hand sanitizer was the overwhelming choice as far as what to use to wash my hands with, thank you). So we walked to the market (like I said) and got some food, soap, cleaner -obviously!, and t.p. Loverly.

As I was saying... after breakfast I walked into the bathroom and realized that it was time for the inevitable. Time to clean the bathroom. joy. After an hour of scrubbing the tub raw it was finally usable. Then came discovery number 7: the hot water is not so hot. In fact the hot water is hardly hot at all. Wonderful. My dream come true. Taking a bath... an ice cold bath. I might as well just jump in the pool and call it good. I mean, it's essentially the same thing, right? Right. Waiting another hour for the water to get some what warm was no problem. It was after all, only 7 in the morning. I could wait all day.

Five hours later I am clean smelling and a little bit fresher looking. Well, I hoped so at least. We decided to take a walk to see what there was to see. It's about a 3 mile walk into town from where we are staying, thankfully there are bike trails and sidewalks all over town. Maybe one of my favorite things. After walking into town, walking around town (and seeing that everything was still closed because it was after all only 10 o'clock in the morning), and sitting for an hour to waste the time, we were ready for food. We sat down and enjoyed a very yummy breakfast with pancakes the size of Mars (literally, the pancakes were the size of Mars). Because we were unaware of the vast size of the pancakes when we ordered we naturally couldn't eat all four of them. So we stuffed them into an undersized white to go box from the restaurant and walked outside. Keep in mind, we have no idea when we are going to get back home. We decide that since we are already in town, and we were in dire need of a shower curtain we might as well keep walking till we get to a store that sells shower curtains (and other things would be nice too).

Fast forward ten hundred miles, and we arrive at the one and only real store (with affordable prices that is) in town: Target. I really don't think I have ever been so happy and excited to see a Target in my life, and that is saying something because I just love that store. So we walk around the store and get the essentials on our list. Of course there are so many cool things at the store, and there is a lot of food too....

The hubs says, "Let's stick to the list, let's get that first and then we'll see what we see..."

"Ok," says I and I start walking in the direction of the list items. I look to my side, and then I look behind me to see that there is no hubs to be found anywhere. "Where did he go?" I think. I turn around, walk back to where he made his declaration of sticking to the list, and find him googly eyed over some food item that is on mucho sale.

"Can we get it?!" he asks like a little boy who really wants a puppy of his very own.

"Eh, sure." Oh brother... now we are going to have even more crap to carry around. Lovely. This trend continues on for a while, I take five steps, he disappears and finds some great deal or food that we need. I guess I can't say much, I've done the same exact thing a gazillion times. The only difference is I don't usually end up getting the much needed item. I just look at it for an hour and decide I can live without it, even if it is food.

By the end of the shopping excursion to Target we have a cart full of crap, along with our leftover pancakes (as you can very well imagine that in itself would be a lot to carry). Thankfully, my wonderful hunny discovered a phone number and found a shuttle that could come pick us up from Target with our loads of crap and take us back to our summer residence. Walking ten miles with all of that would have been a little too much to bare I think.

Back at home I sink into the couch with the feeling that I have never quite felt so relieved to sit down. My feet feel broken, in fact, I think my feet are broken. Is that possible? To have broken feet? Well, I guess it is considering as how I now have two of them. Great. I will be hobbling around pathetically for the next year and a half because of this walk. I make a mental note and remind myself that I will most certainly never again walk 7 plus miles in flip flops.