Thursday October 24, 2024
Dear Diary,
Good morning God,
- I am grateful for grandmas.
- I am grateful for people.
- I am grateful for parks.
- I am grateful for walks.
- I am grateful for life.
- I am grateful for adventures.
Thank you. I love you!
I woke up at 6 am. I had been woken up in the night at 11 pm by Carolyn’s friend. I had attempted to go back to sleep at 3 am but had laid there another hour before finally drifting off. So when I wrote up at 6 am, I officially had 4 hours of interrupted sleep. I wasn’t sure how far I would get driving without needing a nap but I was awake and wanted to get on the road. Today was going to be my longest day of driving.
I packed up the coolers with our food from the fridge and put the last of our stuff in the truck. I woke Angel up and we hearted (headed) out. Carolyn hadn’t woken up and I had let her sleep. I would call her later to tell her thank you for letting us come visit. About a half hour into the drive Carolyn called and asked why I didn’t wake her up because she had wanted to give us a hug goodbye. I told her I wanted to let her sleep and thanked her for everything, she thanked me too and asked us to come see her next time we travel to Texas. Yes, we will definitely do that. She told us to have a safe trip and we hung up.
I drove all through the day for 13.5 hours, without a nap. I’m not sure how I did it on such a small amount of sleep but somehow I’m able to drive long distances easily. We stopped every couple of hours to top off the gas tank and use the bathroom. There’s a gas station called Casey’s that sells cold pressed juice and I kept buying those and drank them throughout the day. Angel watched movies on her DVD player, played educational games on her phone and played with her toys. I had fun interacting with her while she played with her toys. She has a dinosaur named Drinky that kept getting in trouble by eating things in the truck he wasn’t supposed to be eating. I would interject telling him to be a good dinosaur or saying Drinky! Not again! Angel would laugh and laugh and then have Drinky do something else he wasn’t supposed to be doing so that I would get after him.
I listened to an audiobook that was a thriller mystery called Little Secrets and it was 11.5 hours long. Mystery books help me stay awake and this book was no exception even though I had solved the mystery 3/4 of the way through.
We drove into 5 states. We started out in Oklahoma and drove into Kansas, then Nebraska. It’s 5 miles out of the way to go into Colorado at the northeast corner of the state and I drove there in order to add another state to my count. Lastly we drove into Wyoming. It was just starting to get dark by then. I was going to stop in Cheyenne but continued on to Laramie since I was still going strong. I found a Travelodge and a Super 8 hotel side by side and they were both $100 for the night. The Super 8 looked to be cleaner so I chose it. We got in our room and it was clean-ish. I sprayed the bedding and the floor down with permethrin. Ever since getting scabies…several times, I have a thing about making sure there are no mites or bed bugs or fleas or lice or any sort of parasite where I will be sleeping and I have a spray bottle of permethrin in my truck at all times. I wouldn’t call myself a germaphobe because I have no fear of supposedly contagious “germs” from people being sick. I rarely get sick and believe our thoughts and diets create sickness more than germs. Let’s say that I am a “parasite-aphobe”, which is also a mental construct but I’m not taking any chances 🤣. It was a good thing I did spray everything down because the first thing Angel did was crawl around all over the floor and then roll all over the beds. Ugh.
I got Angel in the bath and did a quick rinse off for myself. Then I got rid of any little lights in the room. I unplugged the TV to get rid of the red light. The microwave and digital clock got turned around to face the wall since they were plugged in behind the dresser. I like the room to be completely dark. Years ago I read about a study done on artificial lights and how it affects our sleep. The study showed that even the smallest artificial light has a significant impact on our quality of sleep and can also affect our health in other ways. I noticed a difference on how well rested I felt when I tried it. Now I’m a fan of sleeping without any lights. Here’s a short article about artificial lights and sleep: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/04/01/1089997121/light-disrupts-sleep
Satisfied that the room was completely dark, we went straight to bed and fell asleep at 8:30 pm listening to a sleep meditation. Tomorrow we have a 6 hour drive to my son Shawn’s near Salt Lake City. On the way we are stopping at Saratoga Hobo Hot Springs.
Thank you for reading my blog and being a part of my life. I appreciate you.
Love, Victoria
P.S. this blog post is inspired by the Holy Spirit.