Marie:  I forgot my camera.

Tabitha: I forgot the charger for my camera.

Stacy:  I forgot the license plate game board

Stacy:  I forgot my visor

Stacy:  I forgot sunscreen

Stacy:  I forgot swim diapers

John:  I forgot all the printouts of safe places to eat

And just in case I wasn’t already in the running as the winner…

Stacy:  I forgot my wedding band.

Really…

Actually – it stopped being funny midday Saturday.  I’m not some novice traveler.  I can pack in my sleep.  I’ve got my go-to Florida Packing List down to a science and can tell you our minute-by-minute, meal-by-meal, outfit-by-outfit plan from every trip for the last one-and-a-half decades!  “I’ve got this.”

Road Trip 2015 – I’m a big loser.

Details… I missed so many details.  Sure, I made sure we booked hotels that accommodated our party of 8 in such a way that I wouldn’t have to tiptoe around with a flash light to make my early A.M. hot Dark Chocolate Sensation.  But then I packed the hot chocolate that requires MILK, not water.  Oh – and the instant coffee packets I picked up to make it My Way… left them at home.

I’m not being funny.  I’m not being melodramatic.  I blew this.  I sincerely enjoy traveling and all the planning and prep that go with it normally enhance my experience.  This trip… I just keep being reminded of all the ways I didn’t measure up. 

The worst part (so far!) is that both Stewart and Marie have written projects they wanted me to proof-read.  I’ve been putting them off and told them I’d read them whilst I had all that down time in the van on our road trip.  Friday, Stewart put his screenplay, “The Monster Among Us,” and Marie’s book, “The Return of the Jaminns,” on my new laptop.

You know – the one I NEVER INSTALLED OFFICE ON!

So – instead I am typing another blog entry.  (Into the now user-interface-less Windows Live Writer that I will have to cut and paste into Blogger into the hotel room.  If I remember to bring my mouse in from the van.)

At least we slept well?

Okay – I’ll type a blog about the hotel.  It rocked.

Ecclesiastes 7:8
Better is the end of a thing than its beginning, and the patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit.