Preparing to launch in Tucson

We had an amazing weeklong visit with Gordon's family in LA filling ourselves with laughs, In and Out burger, lots of hugs, fresh pomegranates and persimmons from the garden, some LA traffic, puzzling and the Golden Bachelor.

It was time to hop in Falkor ( the van ) and head over to Tucson where it would be parked for two weeks to visit Megan's mom and do a house sit for a 1.5 yr old terrier mixed named Ruby.

We found this sit on Trustedhousesitters.com that is 2 weeks with our own place and a lovely outdoor pool while Ruby's owner travels back east.

It's an easy breezy 4 miles to Megan's Moms place with some lovely dog parks in between, where we were greeted with an amazing lobster supper.

Then lots of time to lounge poolside in the perfect temperature in Tucson in November while Gordon is finishing out his last week of work and Megan is getting all the errands done between her new favorite habit of cold plunges in this 57 degree pool.

From this lazy boy reclining couch (that charges your phone too!) Megan is working down the crazy leavingthecountryforanunknownamountoftime to do list.  Although it might be hard to ever leave this couch with perks like that.

We went to Costco yesterday and it felt like we are just going on a camping trip...we had to tell ourselves no less than 10 times 'no that won't fit in the van.'   Megan almost bought tortillas and had to slap herself 'you're going to the land of fresh tortillas and you want to buy processed packaged Mission ones?'

It's gonna take a bit to get the consumerism out of us.  And we're looking forward to not pushing that giant cart out of the store but just carrying fresh what we need from a local market.  But until then we definitely needed a handheld blender right?  Ha, guess we can only move on from mad consumerism ever so slowly.  

All the little things we are trying to think about -  ice cube trays that fit in our tiny freezer, an inflatable dog bed, a dash cam (we read it can be a deterrent when getting pulled over even if it doesn't work), insurance, oil changes, planning our route, figuring out our cell phones, getting copies of everything, back ups of licenses, and do we have enough of Megan's favorite night cream??  How many pairs of shoes can Megan bring?  (hint: 5ish because slippers don’t count as shoes)

In 9 days we'll cross that border, and while it feels a smidge frantic right now, to quote my friend Lisa, "You're young.  You're in love.  You've got a cool dog.  Go for the gusto!"