Noelle - My Trip

Helloooooo everybody!

I’m going to mix it up and bit and do one of these vloggy bloggy thingies (is that the official name?  Are we really sticking with that?  Okay.  Well then)  Anyway, I went on a trip recently, and it was just so packed with stuff and awesome that I have to tell you guys about it.

Okay, so the reason that we went down to Texas in the first place was because my cousin is getting married (she doesn’t read my blog but just in case...hi cousin!) and had her bridal shower, PLUS we’re selling our old house (we have a house in Texas, btw...did you guys know that?) so the Matherne clan migrated south to take care of painting and cleaning and such.

Alrighty so, DAY ONE:

We didn’t take an airplane flight.  Why?  Because we can travel in the Wanderer of course!  The Wanderer (which is kind of a mouthful out loud...and you just said it didn’t you.)

So...predictable

(also if you haven't seen the video I'm quoting, go check it out, it's Studio C's Sherlock parody)

Anyway, back on subject.  This is our RV, the Wanderer:

(A totally accurate representation)

So for the large majority of day one, my poor dad had to sit in the driver’s seat while mom and I mostly dozed and rocked out to bad 80s music that I have never heard and probably never will hear again in my life (at least, I hope not.  No offence to 80’s music lovers just...stay over on that side of the internet and I’ll stay over here.  K?  Cool)  Plus, there wasn’t anything particularly crazy to see, because we were driving through Oklahoma and Southern Missori.  Ever been in that area?  No?  DON’T.  At least, avoid the highways.  Because this is the scenery you’re gonna get:

IF YOU’RE LUCKY.  Every so often you’ll get a house that’s close enough to the road that it doesn’t look like a black dot on the horizon and maybe a herd of cows or something. *sigh*

Anyway, at the end of Day One, we parked at our friend’s house and celebrated my Mom's birthday with them!

The perfect little happy birthday cake they made, with lemon icing and everything (I'm not really a fan of cake, but I can appreciate it when they're well done)

hi Dad!

(my selfie taking skills are just...phenomenal)

I was pretty burnt out by 9 o'clock, despite the seven hours of sleep I got during the day time, and we generally ready to go to bed. We were sleeping in the RV, because we were only there for one night and we didn't want to burden our friends.  This wouldn’t have been an issue, except...it was winter.

So this was me at 3 a.m.:

The heater did not work.

Luckily, I could sleep for most of DAY TWO:

Which was just as jam-packed as day one, unfortunately. Remember how I mentioned that my cousin is getting married? Well, the bridal shower was on day two, and I was...the youngest there, by at least four years, emphasis on least. Probably closer to eight or nine years. The youngest girls there were in their late collage years, so you can imagine how awkward it was for me to be there.

My art skills were at an all time high when I did the graphics for this post

Plus, for those of you who know me, I'm a socially awkward sort of person who'd much rather sit in the corner, eat chocolate cookies, and draw, so...that's exactly what I did. Rude? I don't know, I did talk to people. Mostly the 60+ people, who found my artsy personality pretty amusing and spent half the party doting on me...doting? Is that a word?

(Two minutes of google research later) yeah! Doting!

I iz smart.

Anyway, my cousin really loved the gifts that Mom made for her, which was all made of wood and rustic type metal and that sort of stuff. We always joke that we have all forms of creativity covered, from Dad's cooking and wine-making, Mom's handy-dandy workmanship wood stuff (there's probably a word for it), and then there's me...and well, you know my skills. A butt ton of writing and sketching.

Cool, right?  (and yes, that is a bottle of my dad's wine)

The plant has a special significance, because aside being really, really difficult to kill (that's my kind of plant :P), it was made from cuttings from my cousin's late mother's ivy plants. Kinda sad, but really sweet at the same time. The same ivy plant is growing all over our counter space and by the windows.

(sorry for the cruddy pic, I couldn't find a better one and was too lazy to snap a pic)

Anyway, for the rest of Day Two, we travelled down to my home town (I guess you could call it that, I've only lived there for a year but it's where the majority of my paternal family is) and went out to dinner.  My two cousins (both a LOT younger than me, like, nine and seven or something like that) were pretty hyper because "Noelle's back, Noelle's back!" but I was pretty...done.  Blarg.

DAY THREE:

Things got really interesting during the week, because I still had school, but there was no internet at the house.  And yeah, I wasn't staying with my parents - they were sleeping in the RV at the house that we're selling, and I was staying at my grandmother and aunt's house, in my seven year old cousin's room (she's not really my cousin, my aunt is her grandmother, but it's too confusing to try and figure it out so we just say she's my cousin)

So for day three, the solution we came up with was for me to go to my aunt's school, where she works as a cafeteria manager person (idk).  So we get there and she takes me to the cafeteria, which doubles as their auditorium.  It's a pretty small school, mind you, and a Christian one too, so I didn't even have to turn on my music, I could just listen to TobyMac on the radio that they had playing throughout the school (pretty awesome, in my opinion)

Anyway, back on subject.  She takes me to the cafeteria, and then shows me that there's this secret space behind this curtains of the stage where there's a Christmas tree (???), some storage bins, and one random desk.  Plus there's a secret door to the music room, so I got to also listen to lots of singing children.

It really wasn't that interesting, but it was kinda cool, being like this incognito homeschooler, infiltrating the school and mooching their wifi.  :D

DAY FOUR:

After that one day, we realized that the drive in the morning was just too dang far, so my parents dropped me off at my uncle's apartment instead of the school.  That was nicer, in my opinion, because while being an incognito homeschooler was cool, being able to rock out to my own music was better. Plus, a lot of my classes directly overlapped with the school's lunch hour...and kids are loud.

*sigh* unfortunately, being away from home and my parents, paired with selling my childhood home, paired with the stress of a group project (need I say more on that subject?) led to a really embarrassing break down.

Am I the only one that hates crying in front of other people?  I mean, I can't be, but I just hate admitting that, oh yeah, I do have emotions and sometimes it's too much for me to handle maturely.  I don't know why, because we all have times like that, and we all need help.

I dunno where I was going with this.  *shrug*

Anyway...

DAY FIVE AND SIX:

Not much interesting stuff happened on these days.  Go to my uncle's place, do school, go to my house, talk with parents, go home, chill for a bit, eat dinner with parents, then go to bed and watch nature documentaries till midnight.  That is, nature, as in bigfoot and alien shows.  I...was pretty bored, but I hate not having back ground noise when I'm writing or art-ing.

And I did A LOT of art-ing.  I took that 300 Drawing Prompt journal I mentioned, and I'm so glad I did, because I went to town on that poor journal.  During the nine days that I was away from home, I drew 38 out of the 93 drawings I have.  Thirty eight!  Needless to say, I'm really glad I brought it.

Here's just one (well, actually, two) of the drawings I did:

I did this on the drive back.  Pretty cool, huh?  Like I said, I love combining the prompts. This was  "A lit candle" and a "hourglass"  WHY NOT BOTH

DAY SEVEN:

Believe it or not, there was another reason that we went down to Texas, in case prepping the house for sale and my cousin's bridal shower wasn't enough.  We also went down to visit Waco, where we're thinking about retiring.  On Day Seven (a.k.a. Friday), while I did my last bits of school work for the week, my parents and grandmother went down to visit, and then...

DAY EIGHT:

Muahahaha!  I'm free, I'm free!!  I finally got to go out and do stuff...at least...after two hours of dozing on the trip down.  Luckily, the scenery on the way there was a bit more interesting than the trip to Texas, scattered with strange little towns and interesting signs.  There was one that said 'Hollywood' (huh, all this time, I thought it was in California', and at one point I'm pretty sure I saw a white stag (it was on a farm that my parents confirmed had a zebra on it, so it's not that far of a stretch)

For fans of the HGTV show 'Fixer Upper', well... you probably saw the word "Waco" and started yelling SHIPLAP!!  DEMO DAY!!  CHIPCHIPCHIP!!!!  (at least, something along those lines)  And yes, I mean that Waco.

We spent the majority of the day driving around to look at property.  Well, I say we, because I only got out of the car for two of the eight or nine places we went to.  I slept or drew in my 300 Prompts journal (I even brought it on this mini-trip!)

Lots...

and lots...

of properties...

I mean, there's only so much cedar you can look at before it all starts to look the same, so for a break, we drove back to the central city, which was pretty dang awesome in my opinion.  Not too big (this ain't Dallas or Ft. Worth), but not too small (it's not a tiny backwater town).  We went to this funky breakfast-all-day place for lunch, which was jam-packed with college students, because there's a pretty nice, semi-large college right in the middle of town.

(The biggest building in town)
(yeah.  That's their skyscraper)

We also went to a really cool ice cream place that made their own ice cream and cones.  Their ingredients were all from Texas, but I can't for the life of me remember what it was called.  Agh!  Well, if you ever visit Waco, try to track it down.  It's fairly near what all the Fixer Upper fans are thinking about right now: the Silos.

Yes, we saw them.  We drove past it really slowly, but it was just so dang busy that we didn't have time to try and make our way inside.  It looked really cool though, and the people in line were all chatting with each other and stuff.  Friendly folk are my favorite kind of people ^.^

Anyway, after a few more hours of looking at property and such, we drove back to my home town and had dinner with my whole family - including my oldest uncle, who, like the rest of my family, is loud and deaf and a bit too friendly.  However, it was nice to say hi to him, since he lives out of town and doesn't stop by very often.

DAY NINE:

Our work was complete, and it was finally time to head home.  After sneaking out of the house leaving at 6 a.m., we headed out on our estimated 14 hour drive.  (I spent eight of those hours sleeping, so I can't really complain)  I got even more drawing done, which was pretty cool, and since I was awake more during this time, I could actually take in everything along the way.  We saw several, ahem, unusual churches, including but not limited to:

• New Delivery Baptist Church of Christ Our Lord Worship Center (what a mouthful)
• Top Hand Cowboy Church (???)
• Highway to Heaven Biker Church (????)

We also saw a sign advertising Daniel Stark Industries (my parents didn't get why I was laughing so much, but I expect my RMS readers get it).  We drove past the town of Eulogy, where I can only imagine they have a terrible ghost problem, and we even saw a UFO (I wish I had snapped a picture, it was this cardboard cut out with Christmas lights on it.  Really made you do a double take)  We even saw a billboard saying 'U.S. for sale, call Bill or Hilary' (among several other, much more offensive posters supporting Trump/insulting Hilary)

So yeah, Day Nine was pretty awesome.  The drive turned out to be only 13 hours, and we only missed about half the super bowl (not that I cared that much, I was neither here nor there on this year's game).  As we unpacked, the only commercial that caught my eye was the Stranger Things trailer.

And by caught my eye is I heard that really funky music that they always play, screamed, literally dropped whatever I was holding at the time (there was nothing breakable, don't worry), and ran across the house, while my parents watched the commercial like, 'why is our daughter so interested in this she hates terrifying stuff'.

STRANGER THINGS, GUYS.

Agh.

AGH.

AGH.

AGH!!!

Alright.  I'm done.  Really, I promise.

And on that happy note, I should probably wrap up this crazy long post about my trip.  I hope you enjoyed, and I promise next week won't be so long, rambling, and boring.  :)  Thanks for reading!  Cya next time!!

P.S.

Next week will be a bit...messy.  And will have something to do with the Barton theory.  If you get it well...I'm proud of you.