Well, that’s what he called it. My husband thought I should tell who I am. But what do I care if I tell who I am? No one but my husband reads this since I moved it, and he knows who I am.

So, in case you care, I am Reactuate’s wife.

My husband says that the boys and I are addicted to the web. While I am willing to admit that for the boys, I stand my ground and shout NO to the accusation when it is placed against me.

However, it might be true. It’s where I get my news and see what is going on in the world. Yes, I know it is skewed, but it’s skewed in a direction which I am interested in. Yes, sometimes I have to do fact-checks, even on reliable folks. That’s okay, too. I’ve been known to say something stupid/wrong sometimes.

I’ve spent the last three hours, pretty much, surfing the net.

In my defense, I only spent 20 minutes doing it yesterday and I’d been mostly without the net for over a week at that point.

Written 11/20/04

As I begin to write this, I am sitting at an Exxon station in La Grange, Texas. My family and I are on our second vacation which doesn�t consist entirely of visiting family. We borrowed my folks RV and we are going to Austin, where we used to live, to visit friends.

My folks bought the RV, which actually isn�t too big. It�s about two feet wider than a big pickup and about three feet longer. It will sleep two reasonably well. (The problem with that is that there are four of us. We�re hoping the boys will be able to sleep inside our friend�s house. Obviously it�s plenty for my folks.) They took it on a trip of the MidWest/Western US this fall. They went to Nebraska, South Dakota, Wyoming. They visited the Black Mountains, Jackson Hole, and Mt. Rushmore. Then they went to Yellowstone and stayed there a few days. Then they traveled down to Flagstaff, AZ and went to the Grand Canyon. They�ve been many times, because my mom grew up in Flagstaff and that�s where my dad went to college. But this time they went to the opposite side. They loved it because it was much less commercial than the one they normally visit. After that they went to Phoenix where my mom�s best friend lives. Mom stayed there for two weeks and Dad flew home. Mom hired her best friend�s son to drive her back to Texas. Then Mom and Dad showed him around Texas some, taking him to Galveston and San Antonio, before putting him on a plane back home.

My folks had planned to go to the East Coast this fall, too, but they didn�t manage it. Too many health problems. They�ve been home trying to get well. Hopefully they�ll be well by Christmas because we are all supposed to be out in North Carolina for Christmas. One of my sisters and my only brother both live with their spouses just outside of Durham. My brother said that if Mom and Dad can�t get out, that he�ll fly to Texas to visit. But we�ve already got plane tickets to NC, so we�ll be out there whether he is or not. One of my best friends has moved to NC, to Charlotte, and I�m hoping to borrow my sister�s car and get out there to see her. She said she�d meet me half way, so I won�t get to see the family, but maybe we could have a fun day antiquing or something.

We�re going to be in Austin for three days. Tonight we�re having dinner with friends my husband Ron met through work. They�re a fun couple. They have three kids, much younger than ours. Then we�re going to another friend�s house to park the RV. Her eldest was born on the same day as my youngest and they were best friends when we lived in Austin. They�ve grown very different since then, but they still enjoy each other�s company. Tomorrow we�re going to our old church, Hope Chapel. We are really looking forward to that. In the four years we�ve been in our new area we haven�t been able to find a church as good. We�ve settled down at one for the duration, but it�s nowhere near the best church we�ve ever been to. Our favorite restaurant in Austin is Chuy�s, but we have those in Houston now, too, and we generally go once a week, even though the nearest one is 45 minutes from our house. We�re mostly just going to visit friends. Since we lived in Austin four and a half years, we have a lot of friends there.

The hardest part of moving from anywhere is usually leaving your friends. My move from Austin was a little easier because my two best friends moved soon after I did. One moved the next week, so I knew she was going. The other found out six months later that she was moving. One�s in NC, as I said. The other is in Dallas. But she�ll be in Austin this weekend and I�ll see her at church tomorrow and meet her for lunch on Monday.

Written 11/25/04

We come here for days and spend about four hours with my grandparents-in-law. They’re great people in their late 80s. Pappa Wiley will be 88 in February. He’s a reader. He also likes to get on forums and email folks who are interested in a certain kind of Christianity. Of course, like most people, he is sure he is right. I don’t argue with him anymore. I just listen. I used to think he wanted to argue, but he doesn’t. He wants to inform you and for you to be persuaded. So, I listen and I don’t offer any alternatives for whatever he’s saying. He’s an incredible man, though, with a coherent belief system that he lives by conscientiously. He was born before the Depression, but into a poor family where the Depression had been around for years before it hit the rest of the world.

Yesterday his nephew came to town and talked with them while we were still there visiting. Pappa was telling Joe about trying to build a boat and how he found a bunch of pieces of wood, but he still needed a big piece for the middle. He found one: his sister-in-law May’s dough board. He took it and hooked the boat together with old wire he’d found. He said he paddled across the river and that was the last he ever saw of May’s dough board. What he didn’t tell us was how he got back across the river. He did tell us he never confessed to the confiscation of May’s board.

Grama Willene will turn 86 next month. She was telling me family stories. You know, I always wanted to have a big extended family, but mine doesn’t keep in touch much. We had a reunion two years ago and had cousins much removed come and tell pieces of family history I think I would rather not have known. I guess part of the way you get those family stories is by making the effort to keep up with your extended family. I can barely keep up with my siblings.

Written 11/24/04

My in-laws live in Arkansas, the Northwest corner, up by Fayetteville. That’s where we are this Thanksgiving holiday. My in-laws grew up in Springdale, which is where the grandparents-in-law still live. Well, my father-in-law’s parents are still here. My mother-in-law’s parents are both dead now, but she was the baby in her family. Her sister still lives here and never left. My in-laws, however, left when they were young and moved to Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Texas.

My mother-in-law has been an invalid since I have known her. She has a really bad back and has had so many surgeries, they should have put a zipper in. In the last few years she and her sister, who recently retired because of a disability, have been making blankets for the people who can’t get out of their houses from their church. I think they’ve made one for everyone. Now my grandmother-in-law is also a semi-invalid. An old ankle injury required two surgeries this year and the first one was extreme enough that she ended up in a wheelchair for four months. She really needs a second knee replacement, which she was supposed to have in February, but now she is a bit afraid of the surgery, because of the ankle stuff.

Normally when we get here in late Thanksgiving, the hilly mountains here are covered in brown leafless trees. This year, however, there are banks of flame colored somethings. I think they’re the beginnings of trees, but they’re small like bushes. Then there are orange and scarlet and gold trees. The Bradford pear trees are gorgeous and were a favorite when people began planting trees in the area to replace trees that were cut for either houses or farms. There are lots of them around and they range from green through red and then a dark purply color. It’s beautiful. There was a gorgeous picture in yesterday’s paper. I hope I remember to cut it out.

When we got here, the boys were thrilled to be here. Because the neighbor’s wi-fi reaches to Grampa’s living room. They sat in the living room for hours working on their computer stuff. But then, at nine, for some reason the wi-fi quit working. It didn’t start again the next day. The boys were sad. Grampa called Charlie, next door, and left a message asking him to turn it back on. It was broken, though. So he couldn’t turn it back on. Drats. We went to Starbucks, but they don’t have wi-fi either. There’s a family community center that has it, but they’re closed for the holidays, too. They won’t be open till Friday.

We are all sitting in my in-laws’ living room watching Emeril on the Food channel. This one is a USO type show somewhere. He’s in a hangar cooking and fixing a Thanksgiving Day meal for 2,000 servicemen. They’re not all Air Force. Some are Navy, Marines, and Coast Guard. It’s at McGuire AFB. This must be in New Jersey because Miss New Jersey, Vanessa Baker, just served the biscuit “leftovers” to the head of the base. She was wearing a long sparkly dress and looked good. (Well, duh. She is Miss New Jersey.)

Trace Atkins is there to sing. He’s the Country Western singer who sings that song about “every light in the house is on.” My mom-in-law said, “CW is always depressing.” But I don’t think so. Sometimes it is, but sometimes it’s encouraging. It’s like that song “Live Like You Were Dying.” It says, “I went skydiving. I went Rocky Mountain climbing. I went 2 point 7 seconds on a bull named Fu Manchu.” It basically encourages you to make the most of the time you have and do what you were putting off. I appreciate that. I love that Randy Travis song about “I’m going to love you forever. Forever and ever amen. As long as old men sit and talk about the weather, as long as old women sit and talk about old men.”

Emeril made a smoked turkey jambalaya. Then he made sweet potato and bacon biscuits. Right now he’s making a dessert, with sponge cake, vanilla pudding, chocolate sauce, confectioners sugar, and some big heaps of frosting or whipped cream. It’s making me hungry and I’ve already eaten. Apparently this is Boston crème pie. Or some form of it. My mom-in-law says it’s not. Some guys are there from Fort Dix, too. It’s over now. He cooked for the whole 2000 guys. “A special thanks to all of you in the military. You make us proud to be Americans.”

Amen to that one.

Written 11/22/04

I am here in the hill country of Texas visiting friends and having a family vacation. It has been raining the whole time we have been here. But this morning it is not just raining. The streets are flooding and there is a tornado watch. Since we’re in an RV, the lightest kind of trailer there is, that was a bit of a negative. However, so far there haven’t been any tornadoes where we are. Hopefully there won’t be either. The ditches though, I think they call them arroyos around here, are overly full. If someone fell in one of those, they would drown. The current is incredibly swift. I hope the rain calms down before they actually flood out onto the streets.

I am quietly sitting on the bed in the RV. My boys are in the back sitting quietly as well. The reason for all this quietly sitting is that my husband is on the phone right now having an interview for a job. This is his third interview with this company. But this interview is the technical interview, where the head computer programmer guy talks to Ron to find out if Ron actually knows anything about programming. Since he’s been doing it for eleven years, I would think they could figure that out just from the resume, but apparently not. I hope this interview goes well. He’s not very happy at his present job. His boss has recently taken to cussing the guys out. Well, the interview was very short. It doesn’t look like the technical guy thinks they need another programmer. So it probably won’t work out. Don’t know why they’re trying to hire someone if the tech guy doesn’t want him. He’s going to be the new guy’s boss, if there is a new guy.

An RV is fun, because you have plenty of space and you have an on board toilet and you can lay down in a regular sized bed while the thing is moving. But it’s also a pain because you plan to stay in it, not with someone, and then you can’t just go back to their house to hang out. So you sit in a parking lot at a mall and run the generator. It’s also a bit disconcerting when you want to go to the bathroom, because the door opens, but you can’t sit on the pot and close the door. So there you are showing off to God and everybody. I’m glad my folks got an RV. Now we can use it! It is fun to travel in. Makes staying at Grama’s a lot more flexible cause we can go sleep in it instead of sleeping with our teenage sons in one room.

We are going to our regular hang out, the bookstore. The problem with going there for me is I always have too many books I want to buy. My eldest tends to read them there. He doesn’t re-read books, so once he’s read it, he’s done. I think that I will want to re-read them if they’re good, so I buy them. That’s probably why we have ten bookshelves in our house full of books.

The bookstore was fun. I found a book I wanted to buy, but I wasn’t watching the time. My husband had to call and tell me we were going to be late to our next appointment. So I didn’t have time to purchase the book. We actually made it to our appointment with five minutes to spare. I had forgotten how much smaller Austin is than Houston. Plus, when we lived here, we did most things on the north side, so when we go visiting, that’s where we do that too.