48 Hours Home

(Before I forget - I posted a few more pictures!)

I have been home now for just over 48 hours and must confess that it has taken me this long to get my "home legs" back underneath me.   I was so tired on Tuesday night that I just didn't have the energy to write much of anything but did want to let anyone who has been following know that I made it home safely.  It was no small task on Tuesday as we hit a snowstorm in Wyoming (my two least favorite words in combination: snowstorm and Wyoming!) which slowed our pace considerably and made me wonder there for a while if I would make it home Tuesday or not, but we did - just a few hours later than we thought.  We left a little later than we had originally planned as we decided to wait and hit the New Belgium Brewing Company gift shop when it opened at 10 a.m.  Couldn't be that close and not at least get some merchandise, even if the tours weren't until the afternoon!

Monday in Ft. Collins, CO was nice.  Brad and I went for a run, then did some sightseeing.  While New Belgium was closed on Mondays, we did manage to hit a few other breweries - Ft. Collins Brewing Company, did a tour at O'Dell Brewing and then did the Brewmaster's tour at the Anheuser Busch plant there.  It was a really nice tour - two hours, that took you behind the scenes that the mainstream tour does.  Got to go right into the brewing area, the lab, the bottling area and even got to pet the Clydesdale horses!!   That alone was worth the cost!  Amazing horses (see photo to right!).   Had a wonderful dinner and just some nice quiet time together on my last night away.

So now that I have been home, I am patiently (or not so patiently!) waiting for all of the great revelations that are supposed to come to me upon my return, but alas they have not appeared.   I think that was the hardest part about yesterday....... sort of like the day after Christmas when you realize that it's over and what was it really all about and was it worth the build up.  This was a huge trip in so many ways for me and I think I was expecting that something huge was going to happen when I got home, but lo and behold it was just another day.   And I must admit that it was a day that left me feeling a bit lost.  How could it be that I was home and yet felt so disoriented?  How could I sit here thinking it was all easier when I was on the road?

I think I was looking too hard.  I have spent the greater part of a month - or more - looking so hard inside myself that it just intensified yesterday.  Until I realized last night that it really was just another day in my life and that tomorrow would be another day after that.  That even though I went out searching for whatever it was that I felt like I needed to find .... it wasn't like it was that simple.  Life is a process.  It's never really complete and all of the questions are ever really answered, but I have to be content with being headed in the right direction.   And I am.   By the time I went to bed last night, I knew that this is where I wanted to be, that Brad and the boys mean everything to me, that my life is good and that I am so, so thankful that I got this opportunity.   Even if the owner's manual that came with this trip ended with "... to be continued..."

There are so many things that happened to me along the way that there were days I didn't feel like I could write them all, so here are some of the things that I have left out and have been thinking about.  It started with the first weekend when we got to Indianapolis.  It was Homecoming weekend with lots of festivities going on and one was a contest for who had traveled the furthest.  Brad and I won!  The honor alone would have been enough, but nope .... we got some loot and an actual ribbon!   We got a mug, some pens, notepads, letter opener, a Butler Football t-shirt and best of all, a digital photo frame!  Serendipity!   Guess I know where I will be displaying all of my Gratitude Tour photos now!

The generosity of friends was also amazing.  I got several t-shirts from people I saw, at least three books, homemade gifts, food everywhere I went, lots of beer (again, do we need to talk?!) and to those who REALLY know me well, they provided me with red licorice for the road!   Thanks Wren and Mom!!   By the time I reached home, I felt like I had little bits of all of you in the car with me!

I am blessed that the worst thing that happened to me was losing a pair of sunglasses.  I didn't hit any animals, my windshield didn't crack from all of the rocks those semi trucks tossed my way, no flat tires, no car trouble and other than that last day, really no bad weather.  It really put it all in perspective when the night I got home, Matt actually hit a deer a few blocks from my house when he had come over to see me after work.   Fortunately he is fine, but nothing like a wake-up call.

I loved the karma of this trip.   A friend whose garage door opener was not working right until I visited (I did nothing to it but she swears it works fine now!); the gigantic antique light bulb I bought (trust me, it's cool!), only to get home to my own house and discover 6 light bulbs that had burned out while I was gone!  Or the chance happenings of places I stopped being some of the most profound and memorable. And best of all was the last night in Ft. Collins, when we were looking through a little shop on main street and Brad found a plaque and showed it to me that said;

"Some people try to turn back their odometers. 
Not me, I want people to know why I look this way. 
I've traveled a long way, and some of the roads weren't paved."

Of course we bought it and while I don't know exactly where, it will be displayed prominently in my home! 


I loved the people that I came across - both those that were known and unknown before the trip.  I can't help but wonder if Diane from that first night ever made it to Omaha to see her daughter that weekend and almost wished I could stop in North Platte and ask her!  I hope the young ladies at the women's shelter in St. Louis can stay on track and can only hope that a little bit of love I felt when I got to hold those babies seeped through and will carry them on for a while if things get tough.   To all of my old school friends, it was so wonderful to get to reconnect with you all and I am so glad I did that part of the trip - to try to perhaps tie the past with the present.  It is amazing that the things that bond you when you are young can still be there when you are older and you can pick up where you left off.  The one I was the most "worried" about was the reconnection with my grade school friend, Susan, in Lincoln.   I knew we were going to get along just fine when she called me that day as I was driving there and told me about dinner plans and told me that she "just wanted to make sure I didn't eat another damn McRib or something along the way"!!    It was only solidified the next day when we were making our plans for the day and I told her I was going to go get ready and she told me not to "go all Prom Queen on me or anything"!!!  God I loved that comment!   Little did she know all I had packed for the month was jeans and sweats!!   What's 38 years between friends?!

And while I loved my husband before this trip ever started, I loved him all the more during it and after it ended.  It never ceased to amaze me how everywhere we went, old ladies seemed to love him and engage him in conversation!  I loved how he started the conversation with Diane that first night, how by simply talking to our waitress at the bar at the team hotel in Des Moines that last weekend that we discovered that our elderly hostess had actually moved from Green Bay, where she served meals the Green Bay Packers back in their heyday!   Or the fact that on our way home as we stopped to gas up the truck before heading out of Hastings, Nebraska that I walked in to the station, only to find him chatting with the cashier about the local volleyball scores that he had seen on the local television news the night before!  He is an amazing man (with an amazing memory, I must say, if he really did remember those high school volleyball scores!) and I am so thankful that he has chosen me to share his life with.

And while I have never tried to embarrass him or make him uncomfortable in any way (and I hope this doesn't do it either!), I must admit that one of the most touching e-mails I got from him while we were apart was the morning that I woke to find a message from him, in which he confessed to writing his first haiku poem since 8th grade and he wrote it for me.   I loved that day and had a smile on my face the whole day as we both seemed to write all of our messages that day in haiku.   Those are the things I will remember and hope for again, amidst my everyday life.

It's not been the easiest of years for me.   Some things I have shared with you and others are mine to shoulder alone.   I think we are all a bit like that.   We share what we choose but there is typically so much more beneath the surface.  So now it's time to get on with it - to stop thinking so much about myself and get back to the business of living life.  I do realize that I have chosen to take a rather personal trip in a very public way, but I think for me, that was part of this process........ to try to live a genuine life, to put it all out there, to put a voice to my thoughts, my fears and my hopes. And hopefully I haven't scared too many of you away (but then again I guess you wouldn't be reading this if I did!)   I have always loved to write so I guess in one sense my hope was that I am not just speaking for myself but for anyone else who feels the way I do and just didn't know how to say it.

And to anyone who has read what I have to say to this point ..... thank you so much for caring and taking the time to do so.   A friend commented yesterday that they didn't write much to me while I was away because they figured I had tons of responses each day.  I didn't.   I had a few here and there - a few who consistently let me know they had read what I wrote and that it touched something in them, a few others who wrote once or twice.   And while I didn't do this to make anyone feel like they needed to write me back, I would love to hear for any and all of you - to find out what you thought of my blog, the design, what I wrote, anything that you found particularly touching, and I guess just what it meant to you.  If you don't want to respond here, you can write me at connieposs15@gmail.com and let me know privately.  I am just trying to figure it out in case I decide to do a Gratitude Tour 2011, since Jeff is coming back for another season of football and if I should do this again!

So I am not sure if this is the last posting I will do, but let's assume so, unless I have some grand revelation in the coming days.  I have so enjoyed picking a song each day and just hate the fact that there were so many great songs I never got a chance to use!  (2011?!).   But for my last song of the day, I am going to choose "For Everyman" by Jackson Browne.  I think if you listen to the lyrics, it describes a lot of what this is all about.   And it's only fitting that I choose Jackson Browne as the very first concert I ever went to was with Brad and it was Jackson Browne in Kansas City!

....... until next time ........