Living at the Speed of Light

This time of year always flies by, for almost everyone. Always. This year, for me, it is dragging along at half-speed. And yet, so much is going on that you'd think it would be flying by even faster. But, no, it's crawling by.

Thanksgiving is next week. My sister will be coming in on Tuesday for a bit of a holiday and to spend time with our mother. It will be such a break for me. I mean, I'll still stop in every day for an hour or two and visit. But, for about 4 days in a row, I'll won't be spending entire days at the rehab center with my mother. Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday will be particularly relaxing because I don't have baby duty on those days either.

So, looking forward to that shortly.

In the meantime, however, rapidly developing events will have my older daughter moving to the New Orleans area and taking the 6 year old with her. Saturday night.

Although it has been wonderful having my whole family together here, and I will certainly miss them, I am finding this an exciting development. And there is Skype, after all.

While I have been enjoying Las Vegas this time around more than I have ever done before, I know that this is a fairly temporary situation, probably about a year, tops. And one of the places I've kind of been hoping to go back to and explore is New Orleans.

Although I've flown and driven in and out of the city many times in the last several years, I haven't actually spent any time there outside of the airport area. I was most conveniently situated to do so over the past year, but I wasn't in any frame of mind to enjoy that type of outing during that time. Now that I am, I'm all the way across the country.

Still, there are plans to bring my mother back to Louisiana in the Spring to visit her family. I'm hoping to take that opportunity to spend a little time checking out New Orleans while I'm there. I've spent virtually no time there since Katrina and I'm very curious to see how it's coming along. If possible, I may even take a quick trip at Christmas.

In any case, what I'm finding most exciting is that this is the beginning of our family exodus. When I left for Florida last year, I'd hoped that the girls would follow, one by one. Well, it didn't happen and here I am again. That's okay, since I'm enjoying Las Vegas again. Except for a few years the last time I lived here, I'd always enjoyed this city, even when - especially when - it was a much smaller place. So it was very sad for me to have hated living here for a few years. I'm glad I've found pleasure in being here again, because it's always been one of my favorite places. It's so much different to be a resident here, than a visitor.

Still, a year or so should do me here. And I probably won't be ready to go back to Florida. So maybe New Orleans could be an option.

My younger daughter has been trying to convince her significant other to move out of the city, and he's been opposed to beach locations because the sun has not been kind to him. But New Orleans might be tempting enough to do the trick.

So it's possible that the three of us could end up in the same city again in the not too distant future, and New Orleans would be a very interesting city to revisit. We've lived there a few times before, but not since early 2003, so I guess we're about due for another look.

And it's a few hours flying time closer to where I'd like to travel. So there's that.

HOWEVER

I'm still doing my best to appreciate where I am and what I'm doing and staying fully focused in the present. And I will continue to do so.

But this is a very welcome development.