Give me GPS or give me death. Okay, maybe not ‘death’ but close to it. I am hopelessly addicted to ‘gypsy’, my navigation in my car. I find myself punching in ‘home’ when I’m heading home from WalMart. (1 mile away) I program my daughter’s friends addresses into it so I don’t have to actually use my memory for anything other than how much cocoa to put in my hot water for a good cup of ‘cho.’  I criticize my kids for being lazy, but…maybe I am too? nah….

I am currently residing at “Pemberly” in Showlow. I am at a writer’s retreat, attempting to finish my long awaited, anxiously anticipate, never to be duplicated, book. Yes, I’m writing a book. Remember that?  I’ve been making some mighty fine progress too. I’m not sure if it is the mountain air (went for a walk), the 29 other creative brains at work here, or the fact that it is dead quiet all day, but something is working for me. The only distraction I really have is pee. It seems that since I am on the second floor, my bladder has height anxiety and does all it can to get me down those stairs at least twice an hour.  Yes, I am counting that as my workout for the day.

This place is really beautiful. Lots of natural wood, tall ceilings, and a kitchen I’d think about trading my right arm for. Of course, it wouldn’t be much use to me without my right arm so….nevermind. I would love to bring my family up here for a retreat. I just wonder what we would do. Sure, we could hike around a bit, look at nature, and play pool upstairs, but I think the most activity would be gathering around the olympic size fire pit in the family room, or the 60 inch tv in the ‘other’ family room. What can I say? My family is a bunch of movie geeks. Take us out in the wilderness and we will bring our generator so we can watch movies under the stars.

When the kids were younger, we rented an RV for ten days and did the Trail of the Giants in California. We saw redwood trees that we could  have driven our van through. They were amazing and beautiful! It was a great trip with lots of memorable moments: standing inside a tree (Brad and all the kids at the same time), going in the crooked house, the chandelier tree, and watching Gone with the Wind and the Simpsons when we stopped for the night. I look back now and think….why did we choose those movies? I’m pretty sure Mae is to blame for GWTW, but the Simpsons? I guess we were trying really hard to keep balance in the force. We didn’t want to overwhelm our kids with too much wholesome nature so we diluted it with some commercialized crappy cartoons.

Ah, good times….they are what you make of them. Cause I said so.

Photo credit: http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_P-Yh5Xlnl2w/TSvnmX7UFYI/AAAAAAAAA9s/kZWjWD_7sos/s1600/gone-with-the-wind-vivien-leigh.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.themovieadvocate.com/2011/01/gone-with-wind.html&h=1099&w=1500&sz=197&tbnid=_ivw3zKD-IrF_M:&tbnh=87&tbnw=119&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dimages%2Bof%2Bgone%2Bwith%2Bthe%2Bwind%26tbm%3Disch%26tbo%3Du&zoom=1&q=images+of+gone+with+the+wind&usg=__EBSWBwQEK89oKaMp7uqjWxHiPAo=&docid=wNPoRpRfWzXm_M&sa=X&ei=fOTrT63GCuPo2AWpjayfCw&ved=0CFwQ9QEwBg&dur=547