DO YOU KNOW THE WAY TO PORTLAND

Sorry, that song lyric does work much better with San Jose.

I have just finalized the flight and car reservations to go honor my mother-in-law's 80th birthday, and I feel slightly nauseous. Not seeing my mother-in-law - I really do love her - but just the costs involved. And I KNOW KNOW KNOW that the same costs to go to Hawaii would not bother me in the LEAST.

Yuck, now my stomach feels even worse. Comparing my husband's home town, which is a small farming community in Oregon that most Oregonians believe is in Idaho, to the islands of Hawaii...

It isn't going to be that terrible - it's just sharing sleeping quarters with (once again) someone who snores loud enough to register on the seismographs in California, staying in a 80+ year old unpainted wooden house that would be burned to the ground by one match and with no air-conditioning in late June, the six-hour plus drive from and back TO Portland, and once again being in a community where EVERYone knows EVERYthing about me (small town gossip)....

Last time I was there, I had my daughter and grandson to distract me, and an excellent excuse to stay in a HOTEL.

One bright spot is that a dear friend of mine who has been living in the (honest) Democratic Republic of the Congo for the past five plus years will (hopefully) by then be living in a small town in Washington about three hours north. What, an excuse to ESCAPE for at least one day? YES (arm pumping movement that my granddaughter seems to be adopted also).

Wish me luck, people.