[Author’s Note: I wrote the following in September, but this was my first chance to post it. It’s been a challenging, transitional year, but I’m back in the saddle!]
“The optimist says the glass is half full. The pessimist says the glass is half empty. The engineer says the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.” — author unknown
My husband is always an engineer. Sometimes, he is also a pessimist. It can be quite a challenge for an optimist like me to convince a pessimistic engineer to look at the bright side. His favorite phrases are, “That’ll never work,” “they won’t show up,” “they’re going to overcharge me,” and “it’s going to rain the day of our cookout.” I reach deep inside myself to muster the energy to counter these chronic “Eeyore” statements. “It will be fine,” I tell him. “Think positive,” I plead. All my enthusiasm and bubbliness rarely has any affect on him.
I have to say, however, when it comes to raining on our cookout, or anything else we have planned, I often fall into a less than optimistic mode myself. We do seem to have bad luck with weather on days we most hope for the sun to shine.
There were the three days of torrential rain for a Disney World trip with our young girls. The locals told us they had never seen rain like this during that particular season. Another Disney trip we experienced record cold weather — 30 degrees! Even Donald Duck’s beak had a little frost.
In 2004, I searched far and wide for a B & B with a pool for our summer vacation in the English countryside. I never even put so much as my big toe in the pool water due to the unlikely rain and cold to befall that community that year. I easily recall the year we took a lovely mother-daughter get away in Plymouth, Massachusetts. I could barely tolerate the cold rain soaking me while touring the Mayflower, though it did help me to empathize with the original passengers who endured months of inclement weather on the rickety barge. It was later in the day when the management decided it was prudent to evacuate our side of the hotel due to “unusually high tides and freezing rain” for mid-May.
Oh the places we have been trapped and the airports where we have been stuck thanks to the rare, unusual, and non-typical blizzards, wind, hurricanes and other prominent weather phenomenon to find its way to our long-planned excursions.
When our daughter, Robin, and her fiancé, John, chose October 29th (anniversary of Connecticut’s infamous “Snowtober, 2011 and Hurricane Sandy, 2012”) as the date for their wedding, I confidently declared to the bride and groom-to-be, “What are the chances of another bad storm on that date?” Shame on me for even uttering those words, I thought to myself as I waded through the reception hall’s parking lot wearing my expensive gold shoes. Tropical storm “Phillipe” made his appearance in time for the big day with the heaviest of rain pouring down during the vows.
After 37 years living in the same home in Connecticut, we made the difficult decision to relocate near Robin and John in Raleigh, North Carolina. It’s been a stressful and exhausting year of cleaning out, packing up, and saying goodbye to long held and cherished friends. There have also been numerous trips back and forth between states as we made the transition of buying and selling homes.
Needless to say, our poor Delta Flyer remained stationary through the summer waiting for us to take her out. At long last, we decided it was time for a little glamping trip.
As we have dear friends who live in the eastern part of North Carolina, it seemed like a good plan for our first outing of the year to not trek terribly far. This would be a great opportunity to visit friends as well as explore the coast of the state we now call home.
Because it had been a year since our last RV trip, it felt like we were starting anew. The
Delta Flyer was empty of even the basics. I printed out all my lists and did all the necessary shopping. Then I loaded up clothes, toiletries, food, and more. My Fitbit calculator logged easily over 10,000 steps a day for several days in a row as I ticked off the items on my lists and walked them out to our camper. I was quickly reminded of how much more I needed an RV vacation after getting ready for it.
In the weeks leading up to and all the while I was preparing, somewhere in the background was the noise of our TV with meteorologists and newscasters speaking of doom and gloom all related to a possible, impending hurricane — “DORIAN” — but it was headed to Florida NOT North Carolina. “How sad for Florida,” I said to Ted. There I go again — SPEAKING!
As everyone knows now, Hurricane Dorian, what must have been the slowest moving hurricane ever, took a northern turn and made landfall on North Carolina’s Outer Banks on the day we had planned to drive down the coast to visit an aquarium and have lunch overlooking the ocean waves. It was not to be. We canceled our trip.
With a stocked-full RV, we defied pessimism and hit the road in a westerly direction instead. Ted found a beautiful campground, Bear Den (www.bear-den.com) in Spruce Pine. It wasn’t the adventure-filled, partying with friends we had planned. It was a peace-filled and restful break in the serene Blue Ridge Mountains. In the midst of our rest, we realized, this was just what we needed after such a stressful and hectic year. Perhaps it was the result of God’s mysterious ways.
Our next trip is in Orlando, Florida, for our first RV experience in Disney World. What’s this new storm the Weather Channel keeps yapping about? Hurricane Karen? (https://sewwritetopray.wordpress.com/2015/11/22/her-name-is-karen/) I think we’re good.
Stay tuned . . .