Planning Ahead

Why is it when you have no money, everything breaks? And to top it off, everything breaks just after the warranties all expire. Convenient eh? I'll say.

First it was our fancy, shiny, barely two-year-old coffee maker. Lee and I loved that thing. It could spread the aroma of freshly brewed coffee throughout the whole house, ahhhhhhh. And it breaks just two months after its warranty expires. Next went the toaster. Sparks and mini-lightning bolts shot from its mouth as toast charred black in seconds. Nice. It managed to hold on six whole months after its warranty expired.

Seriously, if nicer kitchen equipment is going to break that quickly, we might as well go to Wal-Mart and buy cheap-o stuff. Which is just what we did. We're taking beats for when they'll break. Plus, we're planning ahead. When these new warranties are close to expiration, we'll up the fire insurance on the house. Just in case.

Speaking of planning ahead; we've got the traveling bug again. More than four weeks of vacation will be available for us, and we're already dreaming of places to go. Nothing expensive, of course, but a road trip seems doable. Maybe Idaho to visit kin up there. Maybe Yellowstone to revisit our honeymoon destination. Maybe an adventure to uncharted locations; we've always wanted to visit Olympia National Park. Wherever we pick, I just hope we can actually afford to do it.

I also hope Abby is up for it. She has already been on one road trip with us, and it was horrible. We got no sleep until the night before we went home. Hopefully she's past that now. We've kicked around the idea of a park hopping road trip. Basically, we would choose a destination, pour over maps and websites looking for neighborhood parks along our route, then pick the best course with parks sprinkled every four hours apart. Imagine! If we did it right, we'd have her exhausted enough that she'd actually sleep in strange hotel rooms and we could have an enjoyable trip.