It was the end of September, just after we’d celebrated Allison’s birthday in New Orleans and we were headed back north again toward Memphis, TN. Truly, we only had a few more things on our list of absolutes before we settled into our jobs in Kentucky for the end of the year. Nashville, TN, a visit with my aunt and uncle in Middleburg, VA and a stop in Raleigh, NC to hang with our newest friend T. Bean were the really important stops in our plan. All of the rest of the stops were simply “on the way”. Yogi Bear’s Jellystone Park Camp Resort in Jackson, MS was a one night stay on our way to Memphis. Notice that word resort again? They really do throw it around loosely in the RV campground world, however, this time I’ll throw Yogi a bone. It was as close to a resort as we’ve come outside of that mega-retirement community we stayed at in Phoenix – the one where everyone had a sheepskin bike seat cover. Even though we were one of just five RV’s staying there that night, they turned on the whole water park for us at the pool. It was a nice setting on a lake and their facilities were certainly up to par, but it was still Jackson, MS. Hot, humid, buggy. We rolled in, donned our swim suits and poured a couple of “to go’s” before we headed down to cool off in the water. I can remember what those one-nighters felt like, back when we were racing across the country headed to a new exciting destination. When I was a kid we used to go to Farrell’s Ice Cream Parlour for special occasions, when the soccer team won a tournament or...

Birthdays are the perfect time to reset personal order, priorities and perspective. Much like the December 31st New Years, birthdays are the personalized version. An opportunity to create a new and improved – one year older you. I enjoy time reflecting on gratitude and developing a few ideas to further enhance my existence. Sometimes as simple as a commitment to always wear my seat belt or flossing or being less defensive or eating less processed and more whole foods. It feels more genuine to make these commitments to myself on a day that celebrates me instead of an arbitrary day on the calendar (12/31). So as this year’s birthday approached, I had some soul searching to do. Although this perspective came much later in life, I still hold fondly to one I learned early on. Age is a state of mind. I’m as old as I feel, or dare I say it, as old as I look. See, mom wasn’t a fan of declaring her real age. And she probably got away with it for as long as she did because she had flawless skin for much of her life. Fibbing about her age was a thing for her, and it became very natural for me to participate in her absence of truth. We weren’t allowed to disclose her real age, so it’s no wonder I celebrated my 29th birthday multiple times. In fact I think it was several months, maybe even years into the courting of her husband Ken, before he discovered her true age. Discovered via an open wallet and her drivers license laying out in plain sight – unveiling the truth. Obviously not a problem for Ken, but I think for mom, the actual number just made her seem older than...

It’s Thanksgiving Day and Ali and I are together, just us, in Kentucky. It was 12 degrees this morning and our water system froze overnight despite our best efforts with a used electric heated hose we bought off a fellow camper, so we suffered the work morning without coffee. Amazon graciously let us out early though, because it’s a holiday and because we’re on the “Inbound” team and we’ve pretty much worked our asses off since we started in November. We were charged with stowing all the inventory that people are going to want to buy now that the Christmas shopping season has officially begun. We’ve managed to find room for over 4 million items in the last two weeks alone. And today, on the eve of Black Friday, it’s the dawning of the time of the “Pickers”. Now the Outbound team will start their mandatory 60 hours per week as they respond to all the incoming orders, and our team will slow down back to a normal 40 hours. Phew! It’s hard to be away from all the people we love on a holiday like this, especially with the anniversary of Allison’s mom’s death hitting us in the softest parts of our hearts. But as I sat across the lunch table in the cold break room, a tuna sandwich in the foreground at 10:30am and looked over it at the love of my life, I felt only gratitude. First, I threw her some puppy dog eyes and apologized for the fact that we were working on Thanksgiving. This was my idea after all. She winked at me and said, “As long as I’m with you.” I smiled my absolute biggest, broke out the dimples even, and told her how much I loved her...

OK – we’ll make this quick, cause it was really just another day doing a typically touristy thing. It was fun, but and handful of photos will do it plenty of justice. We began our visit to Atlanta with a meet up with Doug and his wife for lunch at the Varsity Drive-In. The folks behind the counter literally yell “what’ll ya have” to take your order. It was interesting for sure. Reminiscent of Dick’s Last Resort, where the stick is rude service – an interesting experience for sure. The downtown Atlanta location is on more than two acres and can accommodate 600 cars and over 800 people inside. On days when the Georgia Tech Yellowjackets are playing a home game, over 30,000 people visit The Varsity. Two miles of hot dogs, a ton of onions, 2500 pounds of potatoes, 5000 fried pies and 300 gallons of chili are made from scratch daily. Plenty of people were there and seemed happy, but having not eaten fast food or really visited a chain restaurant in 8 months, we were unimpressed. We shared a pair of tiny hot dogs and looked forward to eating Kim’s left-over delicious sandwiches for dinner later. Back in 1997, Doug and Allison met as neighbors while living in SF (the first time around). Soon thereafter Doug left his corporate job to become a nomad and travel across the globe collecting stamps in his passport. Sound familiar? He kept an online journal before it was called blogging and eventually met his future wife Luca in Brazil. Allison was all too excited to receive that wedding invitation and off to Carnival she went to see how Brazilian’s celebrated. Through the years, Doug and Allison kept in touch and have managed a few visits...

Dear Readers – my sincerest apologies for the long gap in the blog. It’s been over two weeks since our last entry, but you see, life has changed. The pendulum has Swung, with a capital “S”. We’ve come from the far right reaches of surplus freedom, where every day was ours to fill with play, exploration and indulgence. We knowingly boarded our soft, smooshy bodies onto that pendulum and rode it hard to the left, toward Kentucky, like two drunk girls auditioning to be Tarzan babes. Only our pendulum turned out to be more wrecking ball than the fancy, gold, tick-tock kind you find in clocks. It stopped just short of the brick wall called Amazon, but Ali and I, victims of momentum, kept flying and we’re still trying to rub the brick pattern off our faces. As I laid in bed earlier this morning, cataloging each sore muscle, rating them on the scale of “a little stretching will take care of that” to “holy hell that hurts”, I decided to get up and spend some time remembering those good ‘ol freedom days. I got up at 3:30am, an hour earlier than we usually rise to get ready for work. I know that sounds awful, but when you go to bed at 8:45pm it’s really no big deal. I got seven, solid hours of sleep because we sleep like dead people on work days. There’s a little squirming in the beginning to get all the sore bits into a comfortable place, but then it’s off the cliff to z-land. I promise we’ll work diligently during the sparing times we’re not in the warehouse to catch the blog up quickly to Kentucky and our grueling jobs at Amazon. There are plenty of details to share...

In the south, “might could” is a valid way of presenting an option. As in: You might could run over to the Walmart and get you a little space heater, darlin. As if inflection and the already implied openness in the word “could” isn’t quite enough, some southerners throw in the word “might”. Maybe it’s for added politeness. Southerners are nothing, if not polite. I just love being called darlin all the time, I really do. Anyway, my “might could do” needed to turn into can do, should do, want to! That’s what I was looking for in that week of time with my family and the B&B Conference, some UMPH behind my thoughts and desires about running a Bed and Breakfast as our next career. Allison already had plenty of umph. She’s been carrying this dream for a long time. But since we’d spent 99% of our trip thus far being super-tourists, flitting from place to place, there really hadn’t been a lot of time spent on career-thoughts. Our “chasing what’s next” had been relegated to a month or two in the future, we were sorta neglecting our longer-term path. It was time for us darlins to put it in park for a while. We rolled up to the gate of my parents’ neighborhood in Hendersonville, North Carolina on Monday, September 9 where they were waiting on the other side to lead us up to our special camp spot. We had unhooked the car so that we could race the RV through the security gate more nimbly. We did fine that day at the construction gate because it’s wider and meant for large trucks to pass through. The Sunday we came back from the conference we had to use the regular visitor gate...