Wednesday October 23, 2024
Dear Diary,
Good morning God ☀️
- I am grateful for travels.
- I am grateful for Angel.
- I am grateful for Christopher.
- I am grateful for roads.
- I am grateful for gifts.
- I am grateful for messes to clean up.
- I am grateful for fresh squeezed juice.
Thank you. I love you!
I woke up at 6 am and made tea. Angels paternal grandma Carolyn has a plug-in tea pot like I have, which made making my tea easy. I laid on the couch and wrote my blog until Angel got up at around 7 am. She cuddled up with me on the couch and I read my blog to her. Carolyn got up and joined us in the living room as I was finishing up reading. Angel wanted waffles for breakfast and Carolyn made them for her while Angel and I read a storybook together. I read part of it and Angel read the rest. When her waffles were ready, Angel ate while I posted my blog and drank some of my smoothie that I had made a couple of days ago.
Carolyn turned on Disney+ for Angel to watch. Carolyn let me use her car to go to the store to get Little Bit some dog food since he was out. I filled up her car with gas as a thank you. She let me use her car so I wouldn’t have to drive my truck with the trailer attached. When I got back, I was going to help Carolyn organize her closet but she decided she wanted to wait. She had fallen and hurt her knee a couple of weeks ago and it was acting up. I sat watching short videos on my phone until I couldn’t stand sitting around any longer and went on a walk with Little Bit. It was a beautiful day and the temperature was perfect for walking in my summer dress. We walked through a few neighborhoods and I enjoyed looking at the houses and churches. We had been walked for an hour when suddenly I had to go to the bathroom, number 2, and it was quickly becoming urgent. I prayed to find a bathroom soon since I was a long way from Carolyn’s and I was in the middle of a neighborhood. I headed in the direction of downtown in the hope of locating a business with a public restroom. Just when I didn’t think I could hold it anymore, I came upon a park with a port-a-potty. Port-a-potty’s are usually something I avoid using unless it’s an emergency and this was an emergency. Thankfully it was a large one and had a lot of room inside. I brought Little Bit inside with me and tied his leash tight to the door handle so he couldn’t go sniffing around or lick things he shouldn’t be licking. The toilet was fairly full and I was concerned about splash-back but it was a risk I would have to take. I touched as little as possible and hovered over the toilet. There was no splash-back and there was a lot of toilet paper, which was a relief, but there was no hand sanitizer to clean my hands. Ugh. When I came bursting out of the port-a-potty I spotted a fountain in the middle of the park. I headed straight there and rinsed my hands on the falling water. Then I dipped Little Bits paws in the water since he had been standing on the floor of the port-a-potty.
Grateful that ordeal was over with, we continued our walk. We walked downtown and it was really cute. There was a thrift store that I walked through but didn’t buy anything. We stopped at a coffee shop and I ordered a matcha tea. There were several murals on the sides of buildings and I took pictures of them. I didn’t realize that the town was along Route 66 until one of the murals told me. We left downtown and walked back through neighborhoods until we reached Carolyn’s. We had walked 3 hours and it felt great. I could walk all day everyday. I love walking and looking at everything. If I could get paid to walk and write, that would be awesome.
Angel was still watching TV when I went inside. I sat on the couch and finished drinking my smoothie. Little Bit laid next to me and fell asleep immediately. He was tired from all that walking. After I rested, the TV got turned off and Angel and I did school. Angel was cranky about it at first but eventually she got into it and started having fun. We did reading and writing and even though we had taken a break from doing school for a couple of weeks, her reading still has improved a lot.
Angel became hungry and wanted a bean taco. Carolyn had a can of beans that I warmed up and we both ate a couple of tacos. I immediately regretted eating it, it sat like a log in my stomach and I wished I would have had a salad instead. Oh well.
I received a text from one of my coaching clients asking if we were still doing our appointment. I looked at the time and I was 8 minutes late on calling her. I had not been paying attention to the time. I immediately went outside and called her. She was fine with me being late since I’m usually right on time and she knew I was traveling. The coaching session went really well and we scheduled another appointment in two weeks.
When I got off the phone, Carolyn, Angel and I went to the park. Angel played on the playground equipment while Carolyn and I sat and watched her. Angel had fun climbing around and Carolyn told me all about the town. She grew up there and knows a lot of the towns history. Will Rogers was born there and the town has memorial museum for him. https://www.willrogers.com
There’s also a big mansion that has a restaurant on the bottom floor and you can do self guided tours of the upper floors. https://www.facebook.com/BelvidereMansion
Before we left the park, Angel and I played Eye Spy and that was a lot of fun. Then Carolyn took us for a drive around town until it got dark. Carolyn stopped at a neat store called Braum’s. We all got ice cream and I bought some bananas. When we got back to Carolyn’s, Angel took a bath and I made two 64oz. smoothies to drink over the next 2 days while we are traveling. Then I packed up and got things ready to go in the morning. I called my mom and my older sister to tell them my travel plans. Angel got out of the bath and was super hyper from eating chocolate ice cream. She was piling up pillows and ramming her head into them over and over. I had told Carolyn that getting Angel chocolate ice cream before bed wasn’t a good idea. Now she knew why and admitted that she was to blame 😂. She rounded up Angel and managed to get her into bed. I got settled in on the couch and fell asleep at around 9 pm. I woke up at 11:30 pm with someone shining a flashlight in the window. I got up and looked outside to see what was going on. It was Carolyn’s friend who had come over yesterday. I opened the door and he asked if we were sleeping and I said yes. He apologized and said he thought we would still be up. He left and I laid back down on the couch. I couldn’t get back to sleep so I wrote my blog and fell asleep at around 3 am.
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.