five days will see the janaszek/hemphill clan on the road to denver. that’s right, i said denver…colorado. twenty-four hours of driving bliss or hell. only five days remaining until we find out which one it will be for us. i’m on the fence right now–half of me (mostly my brain) says it’s going to be hell, and we need to get to our destination as quickly as possible; the other half of me (mostly my heart) says it’s going to be bliss, and we should be leisurely and see as much as we can on our way out there. i’m sure it will be somewhere in the middle.

we’ve got the thule box for the car, and seb has a new sleeping bag which he sleeps in all the time–day and night (i don’t care–it’s good practice!). last week, we tried putting the boys together in their room to sleep, hoping to break them in before this trip to not wake each other up. that didn’t work–or my nerves were just overly taxed and i didn’t deal with it well–so now we just hope to suddenly all sleep in the same room together. i’ve begun to madly download music (mostly from a blog called ((sm))all ages–thanks!) so i can create amazing cds. memories of a road trip are made sweeter by the music you listen to in the car. everytime i hear johnny cash or neil diamond or john denver (and many others) i see snapshots of the american landscape rushing by the car window from trips my family took when i was a kid. i see myself learning how to tie my blue and white sneakers in the backend of the station wagon we called “bluebell” in colorado, and then later crying over a young deer we hit somewhere in idaho. separate trips. separate years. but all my memories are tied together by music. my kids are a little young yet to be making memories like that, but hopefully they will at least have happy feelings conjured up when they listen to the music.

now it’s time for me to sign off and begin the cleaning frenzy. if the house isn’t clean while we are here, it may as well be clean while we’re gone, you know. i think this completely irrational cleaning thing is left over nostalgia for raod trips taken long ago.

Posted on August 28th, 2006