Dear Rachel - 8.29.10

Dear Rachel,

This will probably all be stale by the time it reaches you.  It may also be less than legible.  But I thought you might appreciate something in your mail box, other than junk mail, bank statements or bills.  Email and texts are speedier but letters (even on stupidly small pieces of paper) are more satisfying.

We just crossed the Missouri River into Nebraska and have 270 miles to go to North Platte.  It's 4:35 pm in Denver and 5:35 pm in Chicago.  I don't know what time it is here.

We're listening to Bob Woodward's book, Plan of Attack.  It's a bit ironic listening to how the Iraq war started, now that Obama is pulling out the combat troops.  It's a bit, no, a lot, frustrating listening to all the speculation about WMDs, now that we know the truth.  At one point, they discussed a speech Bush made at a West Point commencement and I wondered how may of that day's graduates went on to die in Iraq for those phantom WMDs.

We've discovered that either our gas tank isn't as big or the RAV doesn't get as good gas mileage as the Forester.  Papa says he can get to Aspen on three tanks of gas and it's going to take us three tanks to get to North Platte.

Pen died.  I have refills but not here.  Now I'm writing with a pen from the Emerson Resort & Spa.  Is that the place we went for Aunt Leah's birthday?  Did I tell you that her Kindle finally shipped on Friday?  I wonders if she already has one.

I feel like I'm a bad mom 'cause I'm not terribly emotional about you going to college.  Everybody keeps asking me, implying that I should be.  No one's asking Steve.  I am going to miss you.  I know you'll miss me too but you'll be moving on, finding new people, making new connections, doing things with new friends.  I'm going back to my life, only it'll be missing a huge piece, a person with whom I did a lot.  But it's as it should be.  You're supposed to be moving forward, finding your future.  I know it's scary right now because it's all so new but I'm so excited for you.  I'm also very proud of your determination to stay positive.  You know my philosophy about creating your own reality.  If you maintain a positive attitude, you'll get repaid with positivity.

I wish I had my lap desk with me.  Maybe this would be more legible . . .

My plan is to keep a copy to post to my blog once you receive this (don't want to ruin the surprise).  So once you get this, let me know and I'll post a copy you can actually read.  I might edit it a bit depending on what I end up writing to you so you'll still have to try to make all of this out.

I know it seems unfair that we're talking about getting a TV now that you're gone but it's kinda because you're gone.  We think it might be really quiet in the house now.  We have visions of sitting in the house starring at each other.  We haven't decided but I did look to see where Costco and Sam's Club in Denver are in case we decided to stop on the way home to buy a TV.  We talked about how we would rearrange the living room to accommodate a TV.  As I write this, it occurs to me that we could turn your room into a TV room.  Hmmm.  Maybe not.  It might be too close to our bedroom and too loud.

It'll be interesting to see if this week ends up being a good thing, I mean, in terms of having a week before classes start.  It seems like it would have been disastrous for someone really homesick.  I'm glad you're in a more positive place.

Papa's going to mail your pillow cases and shams to you.  I guess they'll put slips in your box when you get packages.  I kinda wish you had your own box.  I liked opening my box and knowing that everything in it was for me.

I've already read your blog.  I pulled it up on my phone while we were still in Iowa.  I liked it.  Boy, we packed a lot in, the car and the week.  Literally and figuratively.  More stuff to go in Grandma and Papa's crawl space next summer.  I told Papa I'd try to get some of my stuff out of there but we didn't get to it.  I vaguely recall going up there once since we moved to Colorado and not finding too much that belonged to me.  But I could be making that up.

Hmmm.  I just looked up to see that the speed limit is 75 but Steve is going 68 . . .  I'll probably edit this part out when I post it.

Well, according to the GPS, we have 206 more miles.  It's 5:28 pm and we'll get there at 8:24 pm.  Still a long way to go.

I asked Steve earlier what he was feeling about this transition.  He said it's a mixture of sadness about how much we're going to miss you and excitement about all the new experiences you're going to have.  For me, it's both of those plus a small measure of relief that I won't have to engage in the balancing act between the two of you as much any more.  You two have been doing so much better but running interference still took a lot of energy.  I'm thinking it'll be easier now that you're in different states.  :-P

Well, that's frustrating.  We listened to the first 3.5 of 6 discs of the book and then it started getting really static-y.  I messed with all the levels to no avail but when we put music on (using the iPod), the sound is fine so at least it's not the speakers.  I'm guessing we'll never listen to the rest of that book . . . I'll have to try a different one later to see if it happens with any other audio book.

Love, Mommie :-)