It's 11:00 p.m. and this morning seems like ages ago.  We got up at 4:00 a.m. and headed from our Denver hotel to the airport.  Here we are with our discreet luggage.  No one will ever peg us as tourists with these puppies.

Actually I'm hoping that we will draw so much attention with them that all the creepers will want to leave us alone.  So far it's worked.  The creepers have completely isolated us.  Not sure they're the only ones though.

We arrived in Houston at around 10:00 a.m. Texas time and hopped on a shuttle for Galveston.  They dropped us at our hotel around noon and we realized we were hungry and stranded without a room because check in wasn't until 3:00.  We had nothing to fear though because this is the south and they do what they can to take care of you.  (My kids were thrilled the first time they heard the concierge say "ya'll".  She didn't have much of a southern accent but when she said "ya'll" they felt they were really getting a taste of southern culture.) They immediately pulled some strings and found us a room then called down a driver to take us wherever we wanted to go.  He was thrilled to do it because he said otherwise he'd be back at the hotel folding towels.  He seemed a little disappointed that we didn't want him to take us back to Houston to dine.  When we told him we wanted somewhere  close, he recommended a hamburger place right across from the ocean so we took him up on it.

Then we crossed the street and went to the beach so that the kids could get their "feet wet".  Any seasoned parent knows that once you tell a kid it's okay to get their feet wet you have basically given them permission to dive in the water with all their clothes on.  So that's what they did.

And all was well with the world until they unwittingly started drifting eastward...

... and we heard a whistle blow.  That's when we turned around to see a girl in true Pamela Anderson fashion take off her shirt, grab her rescue tube and go running out to sea.  

Thanks for the rescue, tan, blonde, bikini lifeguard girl.  We promise to pay better attention to signs from now on.

We took that as a sign that it was time to call our driver and tell him, "ya'll come back and get us now, ya hear?"  We headed back to the hotel but not until after the driver gave us an unsolicited tour of the town including a drive by of his own house.  He also obliged us with a quick stop at Walmart to buy eye patches for pirate night on the ship.  He really did not want to go back to the hotel.  I will miss having a driver.  And I think he will miss being one.

The End

We are past the most difficult part of our trip!  Leaving.  To say that leaving on vacation with kids is an enormous chore is definitely an understatement.  SO much to do.  The kids missed the last week of school and, true to their charter school's style, were expected to make up all the work that they will be missing.  I'm proud of them for being so diligent in getting everything done.  Packing is especially difficult for me because once I've gone through my entire list, crammed everything into my luggage and breathed a big sigh of relief, I still have 4 suitcases to go through that belong to adolescents who don't necessarily have the same ideas about what is important to bring on an exodus.  John hasn't quite gotten out of manager at engineering firm mode. He mostly spent the last week figuring out last minute logistics and coming up with inventions to make our trip more user friendly. But now it is over and I'm hoping that it will be the only part of our trip that I am not sad to have over.  Goodbye house.  Goodbye Captain the dog.  Goodbye neighbors and friends.  We will miss you.  Thanks for holding down the fort!

Prologue

Recently I was perusing the internet trying to diagnose a phobia that I have when I came across this website: http://phobialist.com/

It is a fascinating website that contains a list of almost every kind of phobia you can imagine. I say almost because one that comes to mind that didn't make the cut is fear of outhouses. That's because I am at a soccer game where the only facilities they have are outhouses and I think I have a fear of them. Here are just a few samples of phobias that did make the cut:

Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia- Fear of the number 666.
Francophobia- Fear of France or French culture.
Lutraphobia- Fear of otters.
Metrophobia- Fear or hatred of poetry.
Octophobia - Fear of the figure 8.
Papaphobia- Fear of the Pope.
Papyrophobia- Fear of paper.
Xanthophobia- Fear of the color yellow or the word yellow.
Geniophobia- Fear of chins.

It is not for me to judge people's disorders and decide which ones are worthy of their own actual names. I'm sure all these phobias are legitimate or they wouldn't be on the internet. Am I right? I can say that I would not be a good counselor if you came to me with one of these issues. The only counsel I could possibly think to give would be to be a man and suck it up. That does not speak well for me but it is true. In fact, maybe I just invented a new phobia. Fear of helping people with stupid phobias. Minoring in psychology seems to really be paying off now.

These next phobias that made the cut shouldn't be on the list at all because to me it's actually more of a disorder if a person doesn't have them:

Taphephobia Taphophobia- Fear of being buried alive or of cemeteries.
Ballistophobia- Fear of missiles or bullets.
Bogyphobia- Fear of bogeys or the bogeyman.
Defecaloesiophobia- Fear of painful bowel movements.
Demonophobia or Daemonophobia- Fear of demons.
Hadephobia- Fear of hell.
Nucleomituphobia- Fear of nuclear weapons.
Phagophobia- Fear of swallowing or of eating or of being eaten. (Mostly the being eaten part on this one)

My absolute favorite phobia: Hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia- Fear of long words.

I did encounter one fear that I didn't realize I had until I saw it: Scriptophobia- Fear of writing in public. Though this isn't the phobia to which I referred above, I probably have it because I hate when people read over my shoulder when I'm writing. In fact, since I started writing this I have observed that every time someone walks near me I quickly close the laptop as though I were a Russian spy or a hermit trying to conceal some deep dark secret. I thought I was being silly but now I feel validated. I know, I know. I should be a man and suck it up.

Sadly, after all those fears I read through (about 65 under the letter A alone) I could not find the phobia for which I sought. Maybe it's not really a thing. I'll let the reader decide. I have a fear of going back and reading my own journals. That includes blogs. All of my high school and junior high journals have been thrown in the garbage. I've neglected to post and also deleted some of my blog posts. If you go back and read some of them you might think to yourself, "I wonder why she didn't delete this one." That's probably my phobia talking though. One thing I have held onto, however, is my mission journal. Not because I wouldn't like to throw it out but because it seems like a sacrilegious thing to do. It has been tucked safely away in our crawl space for no one to read until I am dead. That is, I thought it was. Until John got up in church one day and told the whole congregation that he'd come across my mission journal and had been reading it. I guess he knows me well enough that he revealed the secret in the safest place possible. To his credit, he didn't make fun of anything that I wrote. In fact he was very praising and told me it was the best book he's ever read. (I know. He was REALLY trying to get out of trouble.) He even cajoled me into reading a page or two. Although I did it with one eye shut. So, in light of his positive reinforcement and the fact that we are about to embark on a 6 week journey, I have decided to start up my blog again. After all, the best way to get over a fear is to face it head on. That's one reason I started a blog in the first place. We'll see how long I last before anxiety gets the better of me.