• Roadtrips are not all they are cracked up to be
• Not eating is a very bad thing.
• Sometimes taking a break is the hardest decision to make.
• People do stupid thing when they are tired.
• You have to remember to bring the battery for the camera if you intend on taking pictures.
• Dr. Pepper is not a meal.
• Showers are lovely and should be had more often.
• Gainseville is fucking scary at 2:30 in the morning.
• Tennessee is scary all the time (although the mountains are beautiful)
• Going 55-60 on major highways pisses off everyone on the road.
• Text messaging is fun.
• Camera phones are fun.
• Sleep is a necessity, not an option.
• My husband rocks.
• My Chrome bag should not be filled with electronics because it’s damn heavy.
• Flip-flops are dangerous according to the morons at OIA. (I wasn’t even wearing fun socks)
• Playing Bejeweled makes me happy.
• I don’t have a very good singing voice.
• There are Seemores all over the country.
• Deer are very pretty, although it made me damn nervous to see them on the side of the road.
• The soap in rest-stop bathrooms lingers on your hands for hours.
• There are some polite truckers on the road, but most of them are large and fast.

I am mostly recovered. When I got home (and during some of the trip) I had full on hallucinations. It was more than a little disturbing considering that I haven’t dropped acid for almost a decade. If I hadn’t had those experiences then I know I would have freaked out. Sometimes doing drugs is a good thing. Near as I can figure it was cause by the lack of sleep, not taking my meds and a bitchin case of dehydration (Dr. Pepper is not hydration). My eyes started to get very uneven when we hit the Florida line. I had a hard time focusing and the colors of the grass and the lights really brightened up. I had a dizzy spell and realized that I was screwed.  When I laid down to go to sleep I heard and saw things. Instead of waking D up, I went onto the porch and smoked a few cloves. I shouldn’t have, but I took my meds (it was waaaay late for me to take them) and I eventually fell into a very deep sleep. The auditiory hallucinations were the worst. I heard things in the engine of D’s car, and something singing from the fan (we sleep with a small fan that blows very loudly - it drowns out the cars going 95 down our street) and music coming from the street. I checked my cell phone twice because I thought I heard it ringing, and then I thought Voodoo knocked it onto the floor. I didn’t want to bother D, so I made my bed on the couch. When I went into the living room, I watched Valentine swirl and morph into strange animals, all the while still being Val. I know this sounds more than a little wierd, hell it was kind of fucked up when it was happening, but it didn’t scare me. It annoyed me. I also recognized the feeling of post-partying again. It wasn’t coming down from the drugs that bugged me, it was the dehydration and lack of sleep. At the tail end of the trip, I felt that familiar weariness. For some reason I never attributed that feeling to those things. But now I know.  So I take from this trip some lessons learned and I plan on applying those lessons to our move out west. Most importantly - you need to rest on long hauls like those. That, and Dr. Pepper really isn’t a meal.

I’m off to nap again…. home sweet home….