I’m in London This Week

Coming to you this week from scenic London, Ohio. An old friend of ours is getting married and asked Diana to perform the ceremony, so here we are.

Where did you think I was?

What do I need to travel for five days? Far too much, actually. The picture is just my insulin supplies. I’m probably overdoing it a bit, because I’m taking an extra site change and cartridge. I should only need to change sites twice, but I’ll be 900 miles away from my stuff, so a spare is a good idea. I’m also taking more insulin than I’ll need for the same reason. I’ll need to do a sensor change as well, so I really need to have the Skin-tac because that’s the only way I can keep the sensor in place for ten days. Dexcom will send you overpatches for free but I’ve never gotten around to ordering any. I really should do something about that. There’s also my CPAP and my meds. Oh, and clothes.

Like I said last week, I’m not the primary driver for this trip, and it’s the first time that’s happened. We’re not even taking my car. I’m literally just along for the ride. That’s an odd feeling. Makes me wonder how my dad felt the first time I did most of the driving.

I thought I was going to get away with not driving at all. Diana and I started out riding with Youngest and Middle Daughters in Youngest’s car, and after a little over an hour, she decided she needed a break. In her defense, we’d left at like 0615. But I only drove for a couple of hours. Switched cars later in the day too, because Grandson wanted to ride in “Bro’s car.” He took to calling Youngest “Bro” about a year ago, and it’s really pretty cute.

After all these recent years of being able to drive much longer between stops because of larger bladders, it was something of a flashback to have a toddler along on the trip. We weren’t stopping every hour, but we were definitely making more pit stops than we had in recent years. We made it to London in about 14 hours, got checked in, and hit the pool. We got special dispensation from the front desk clerk to stay a little later, because we didn’t arrive until about 9:45 and the pool closed at 10. She let us stay until 10:30.

I’ll admit to missing Ohio a little bit more than I thought I would. We’ve got a lot of friends up here and even though we stay in touch on social media, it’s not the same as seeing them in person. Then again, we don’t spend that much time with our Oklahoma friends either, it seems.

Ink

For a while now, most of the kids have been talking about sibling tattoos. Warms my heart, that. Most of the designs are some combination of numbers, like II:VII or 1:8 or something like that. I think what they settled on though was a series of eight dots, with their respective dot a little larger/darker than the others.

I’ve been contemplating several tattoos for a while. I want one to represent my military service since there’s been something of a family tradition. That will likely be a series of dog-tag chains. The first will have my dad’s initials or name. Hanging from that chain will be a tag with my initials or name and hanging from that one will one with Number Two Son’s initials. I may or may not have a tag for my brother hanging from my dad’s chain.

I’ve also wanted one to honor the kids, and I’ve gone back and forth with that one between colored boxes and circles and such. I think I’m going to do the gender symbols in a line across the back of my neck.

Then beneath the appropriate symbols, I can drop in symbols for the grandchildren. I was going to put their birth year inside the box or circle, and I might still do that with the symbols. We’ll see.

The other one I want to do is a cover of my existing tattoo. I got it in like 1987 in (West) Germany during my Army days. My roommate was getting a coverup done, and I saw this one on the wall and really liked it. During my religious days, I was sort of uncomfortable with the unintended symbolism it could represent to some people. Most importantly though, it didn’t mean anything to me. It was just a cool drawing. I don’t hate it, but I don’t like it now nearly as much as I did 35 years ago. It still looks good, which is a testament to the guy in Würzburg who did the work.

But like I said, I’ve wanted to do something different to it, and it hit me Wednesday morning in the shower. I’m a writer, and I’m into fountain pens. I think a good artist could turn this into a pretty cool fountain pen image. It’ll take some work and some time and some money, but it’s something I really want to do.

The kids were planning on doing their ink on the Ohio trip, both because most of them would be there, and because Oklahoma doesn’t allow minors to get tattoos (Youngest is still a minor). Turns out the shops they were looking at were booking 3-5 weeks out, so it looks like that’s not happening for a while. There was talk about a weekend trip to Arkansas in November, but Middle Daughter and I are going to be up to our elbows with Nutcracker rehearsals at that point, so now they’re talking about January. I joked when they got the news that the delay would give us more time to convince their mother to get the same one I’m getting.

Writing

How did I write on the road?

I took my writing laptop, but even with power-saving options cranked way up, the battery only lasts six or so hours. That turned out to be about four-and-a-half more hours than I lasted. I got 700 words in, but I conked out several times and napped away a good portion of the drive. I was able to knock out a few hundred words on Friday while everyone else was visiting a few places, too.

I had other options if I needed them. I took a notebook and several pens along to be able to do things the old-fashioned way. I’ve been able to get a lot of writing done that way in the past, including most of Sad Girl and a good chunk or Discoveries.

I carry a digital voice recorder and I’ve got Dragon Naturally Speaking with voice-to-text on the big machine, so that’s an option, though recording that way isn’t as easy for me as it might be for others. I found I don’t like not being able to easily review what I’d just “written.”

Dictating to Google Docs was another possibility, too. I used that as a way to test dictation before I dropped the money on Dragon and it was a useful tool. The systems are a little different though as far as punctuation, but I can work around that. Then it’s just a matter of copying and pasting into the main Word document when I get to my destination.

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