Day 155, 156 and 157

Rain on my parade . . . learning to live with life’s BIG decisions

Like a scene out of a movie, I have written these lines only to erase them and start again.  I have done this over a dozen times and still can’t seem to collect myself.  As a sweet diversion from the philosophical musings that have kept me prisoner over the past few weeks, I am going to keep this one on the lighter side with a simple description of our life over the past couple of days.  With family in town it is easy to fill your head with doubts and thoughts of home.  We no longer battle this disease as often as we used to, but it is always there in the back of your mind.  Have we made the right decision in moving half way around the world to chase some crazy dream?  The answer is yes, and I have my reasons which I will divulge in a future post.  The ease with which I am able to answer this question, which has plagued us for the past week or so, was not easily won, but in the end became apparent to me over these last two days.  Again, I will get to that in time . . . maybe tomorrow.

With the Jack Butler hotel open for business and its occupancy sign currently darkened, we find ourselves switching back into tourist mode to entertain the troops.  This is a touch more challenging as we have had to re-vamp some of our outings given that one of our guests is but 9 years of age.  France for a youngster is . . . well, a drag.  What makes it a wonderful cultural awakening for us adults, makes for yawns and vacant stares from the younger set.  The sights seem boring and the adventurous food selections seem less to their liking.  To make matters worse, we are on the (hopefully) tail end of a two week rain fest that has kept the skies grey and the weather unseasonably cold.  This has kept us from many outdoor activities that the kids enjoy and made for a slow visit thus far.  The weather promises to improve and we have an ace or two in the hole that should brighten our young visitor's eyes a bit.

As for the wife and I, we have taken the opportunity to avail ourselves of a little time away from the youngsters.  Grandma has not seen her pups in many months, so she could use time time alone with them to strengthen their bond.  So too is true for the wife and I.  Based upon the weather, we decided to take a short overnighter to soothe our parental souls.  This, unfortunately, proved to be a complete disaster.  With a complete ready, fire, aim attitude, we packed a bag and hit the road with no certain destination.  We headed north east and with old fashioned paper map in hand, plotted a course.  What we had hoped would be a picturesque back country drive through rolling hills proved to be something a bit less than spectacular.  We had in essence closed our eyes and pointed at the map to pick our ultimate destination.  That too was somewhat less than on par with our expectations.  The town we ended up in was an absolute pit with no personality and little in the way of tourist trade.  We were bound for a romantic evening, so we thought at the very least we could find a reasonable hotel and find a decent place to eat.  We decided to stash the old paper map back in the glove box and resort to the modern age of technology to help us out of this jam that we had found ourselves in.  Unfortunately, try as we might, we couldn't Google our way anything within striking distance that wouldn't be something akin to a night at the HoJo and an all you can eater at the local Denny's.  With our spirits low, we turned the old Renault South and headed back toward home.  With my tale between my legs I began the two hour drive home and found myself feeling in need of some refreshments.  We pulled into a gas station and filled up on Coca Cola and Snickers.  Might be the only thing we got to eat for the evening, so I let me wife pick the menu.  Pretty romantic fella, ain't I?

Rejuvenated by a gut full of Caffeine, we decided that we wouldn't let the evening beat us and decided that even though it was in our own backyard, we would stop at a nice hotel in the town where my wife works and have dinner at a restaurant we had been intending to try.  The hotel is quite nice and has WiFi, which is why I am able to post this entry.  That's right, our romantic evening has ended with a round of dueling laptops while sipping red wine from hotel coffee cups.  Before I call this disaster of a romantic getaway finished, I must let you know about dinner.  The restaurant of choice was a chain and promised to have a decent steak.  This is something very hard to come by here, so we were optimistic that this culinary experience might turn things around.  Unfortunately, it was more of the same.  Mine was edible, but the wife's was as tough as the sole of my shoe but with a bit less flavor.  Again, being the romantic, I switched with her and gave my jaw the workout of a lifetime while she enjoyed my moderately less disgusting slab of Charolais.  The fries sucked, we didn't get our Entre, and my whiskey and coke was something closer to a Whiskey flavored Shasta.  What's more, the decor was a dog vomit mix of old west and Las Vegas glam.  They set was complete with a photo of tractor-trailers that had murals painted on the sides like the "Snowman" from the Smokey and the Bandit films.  The only feature that kept tears from streaming down our weary cheeks was that the beverage menu included the King of Beers.

Now back at the hotel, the scene has been set for an early bedtime.  Guts festering with malted hops and semi-cooked beef type product, we are coming to grips with the fact that we drove roughly 5 hours to end up at a hotel not more then 20 minutes from our own home and will likely not make it through the night without having to have our stomach's pumped.  So much for romantic getaways!  Talk to you all again soon, presuming I survive till morning.  R.