As Robert Burns 224 year old poem "To A Mouse on Turning Her Up in Her Nest, With a A Plough" suggests, the best laid schemes of Mice and Men often go awry. While my disappointment and tragedy are not as terrible as those of John Steinbeck's Lennie Small and George Milton's, I am none the less a bit disconsolate about the dashing of our vacation plans on the rocks of industry.
Jenni and I were to be driving down to Florida in the convertible next week to visit with my parents and spend the greater part of Mother's Day with my beloved mother, and then add three or four days of vacation visitation with our daughter Meredith further down on the Atlantic side. The dates were requested and approved at both places of employment, the plans began to take form in our minds. In Florida, time was requested by the daughter at her end. Weeks go by and a problem comes knocking on vacation's door. Anthem is making changes and Jenni is involved. There will be a ten day training session and it falls inconveniently enough on the week I can not change, and Jenni cannot leave. The only thing I can do is go it alone.
I plan on coming home from work next Saturday and going to be, if I can sleep until 12 or so I will get as much or more sleep than I normally do. This would put me south of Nashville at sunrise, and at my parent's house around 2:00PM on Mother's Day. I plan on spending the most of next day in Old Town on the Suwanee River as well, and then the 5 hour drive to Port St. Lucie for three days and nights and part of a fourth then back to Old Town for a night and the 13 hour drive back home. I will be alone with my iPod, my camera gear, my GPS with Arnold S. giving directions, and my thoughts. Yep my dangerous mind will be unfettered, I'm going to buy a mini-digital recorder to comment into as I travel the lonely roads of Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama and Florida. Maybe I'll come back through Georgia, but it is a long, boring drive through that tall state.
Chuck Pace ©2009 
|