Sleeeeeepy

You know you're in need of a nap when you're halfway through making a blog post and you fall asleep.

My mom's on her way out from the Los Angeles area (here being the great midwestern metropolitan area of Kansas City) via the road with her husband. My younger brother and I took an identical route via LA-LV-DEN-KC a couple of months ago, when there was still snow up at the Eisenhower Tunnel between Dillion and Denver. I took that route with a smallish Ford Focus - let's just say that I don't see it being a whole 'lotta fun manuvering a 30 foot long 5th wheel RV(towed by a coupling in the bed of the truck instead of via a hitch all the way in the back) through the same interstates.

Last I heard at about 1pm CT, she was in Fruita, CO, which is some 1-2 hours west of Grand Junction. It's at least 4 hours from GJ to Denver, and from Denver to KC (which I'm becoming increasingly familiar with) is about 8 or so - at my driving speeds ;-) Guess I won't be seeing her tonight!

I guess some things I should mention about my Mom:

She's a very sweet, kind Mom, almost to a fault. I remember arguing with her about her teaching work screwing her over - dumping the hardest, most difficult, and most disabled special needs kids on her without giving the required minimum support necessary to serve them. We're talking about fifteen 3-5year olds with multiple severe disabilities, combinations of autism, deafness, mentally challenged, mood disorders, and vision impairment. And she was expected to teach these kinds with maybe one or two assistants? Each kid requires a full time caretaker, not one woman with a special ed master's degree! But my mom did her best, hopefully getting some minds molded and on the right track.

She's all set to travel the US after she retires - which may be when she's 80 or 90, because of the craziness in CA right now - where she'll trek around in a comfortable RV, setting up shop at various KOAs while seeing landmarks and family.

But most challenging is that she's been in charge of raising me, mostly without the benefit of a good male role model in my life. While my Dad was kinda/sorta around, I didn't get along with her current husband, and so not only was she raising 3 boys mostly by herself, she had to deal with me being deaf and my younger brother showing signs of additional needs as well.

I guess if I had to pick someone in my family who I was closest to, it'd be my Mom. I'm looking forward to seeing her here, and hopefully she'll have a good time.