A Hurried, Harried "Happy Holidays!"

The first thought in my head this morning was, "It should be illegal for someone to drive after getting 4 hours of sleep the night before." And by "4 hours," what I really mean is, at best, 2-and-a-half because my collection of pillows and blankets has gotten so large that every time I want to so much as move my foot in the middle of the night, I have to practically get out of bed first. This could be remedied by getting rid of some of the pillows and blankets, but then, I'd have to face the fact that my biggest problem doesn't stem from external forms of padding, but rather internal forms of padding and that's a thought that I'm just not ready to accept yet.

Last night, we packed up kit, kaboodle, and canine and bundled a distressing number of boxes, bags, and one very large kennel into the poor, sweet Matrix. The Matrix, for its part, saw us coming with our mountain of luggage and almost handed in a letter of resignation. I would like to take this opportunity to point out the fact that among all those bags? Mine is THE SMALLEST ONE. The other 45 or so belong to McMoose and The Dog. Although I do have to admit that I'm taking several pillows and blankets because (a) the car is packed so full that the passenger seat no longer reclines, which makes it very difficult to get in a good nap, and (b) McMoose is driving the majority of the way, which means he gets to set the temperature in the car and he has been known to drive around with A/C blaring in the middle of December because his hands feel warm.

All that, just to say that we'll be leaving for Mississippi in about 30 minutes here (although past experience suggests that those 3o minutes are going to turn to 75 at a startling rate). And THAT was just to say that posting here will be probably be non-existent for the next two weeks. So Merry Christmas and Happy New Year's and see ya in 2009!