Our trip to San Antonio, Part I

Please note that this is the first of two parts. When I reached 5 1/2 pages on Microsoft Word, I decided to take a break for the day. Look for part II tomorrow.



Okay, fans. For those of you who have been stalking me non-stop since my “hold on” post, here it is…the scoop on San Antonio. Please understand that I have been writing this blog off and on all day while tending to my duties as Director of Household Affairs (as Julie so affectionately calls it!). I’m doing really well with the cooking and cleaning bit, but I am not up for this role permanently by any means. I went to the grocery store at 8 p.m. tonight because I realized I hadn’t left the house all day, yet I was dressed and ready to go somewhere. Anyway, I digress.

I will complete this blog in the order the events happened, as best as I can remember…some memories were blocked intentionally!

Thursday, June 14th: Ahhhh, it’s our 4th anniversary. I can’t believe it’s been four years. Further, I can’t believe that I am getting ready to move for the third time in those four years. I surprised Danny with a sweet card and a gift certificate on his bathroom mirror. Once he realized that he had been shown up, he rushed to send me an e-card. How sweet. Why can’t men prepare for these things a little better?

Danny spent the day at work, and I spent the day at my last technology workshop. I left the workshop with all the loot I had earned only to turn the corner and hand it all over to my principal who, in turn, had me complete my resignation form. Very depressing.

When I got home, I did a quick load of laundry and started preparing for the trip. At one point I tried to take a nap in case I needed to help Danny drive later, but no such luck. The phone rang non-stop, and I couldn’t shut off my mind.

Danny was much later getting home than we had planned. He had to retrieve the suitcases from the attic so that we could pack, and I was finished packing much sooner than he was…very unusual (should have been a sign of the many unusuals to come).

Once we were packed and ready to go, it was about 7:30 p.m. Now, you must understand that this pregnancy thing has not given me much trouble, praise the Lord, but when I get hungry, it’s like the bottom drops out of my stomach. I feel like I am going to die unless I get food immediately. So, as we were leaving the house, I demanded food (no, demanded is not a joke). Danny suggested that we get to the other side of Shreveport and eat at the Cracker Barrel. I am all for the Cracker Barrel, but I just didn’t think I could make the 15 minute drive without being sick. Instead, we stopped at the little Café USA restaurant that is right down the road.

I have always enjoyed Café USA, especially because their mashed potatoes are so fabulous. I decided to try their roast beef with mashed potatoes and green beans. First of all, it took eight eternities to get our food. I actually had Danny steal some crackers from the waitress stand just to hold me over. And, once we got our food, mine was completely unappetizing…not good when you’re pregnant and starving. The roast beef was like that thicker sandwich meat, and it was so incredibly salty that I could feel my blood pressure rising by the second. When the waitress got around to checking on us, I asked her to bring me a piece of chicken fried steak. In the mean time, I ate all my potatoes and green beans and couldn’t eat but a few bites of the steak. Again, this was only the beginning of the trip.

We finally hit the road at about 8:30 p.m., and it was raining. Those of you who know me well, know that I am not a good passenger as it is. In the rain, I am a hundred times worse. Well, as we headed west, the rain turned into a severe thunderstorm complete with thunder, lightening, and limited sight. I was in a total panic, and Danny was not happy with me. We were having to drive about 40 mph on I-20 just to be able to see a little bit. It was terrible. It also slowed us down when we were already way behind.

The weather continued this way for a couple of hours until we made it to Tyler, TX, one exit away from where we needed to go. At that point, the traffic completely stopped. I don’t mean that people were putting on their breaks. I mean the truckers were turning off their trucks and people were turning down their lights just to the little yellow parking lights. We couldn’t believe it. I kept trying to get Danny to roll down the window and ask the trucker next to us if his radio had given any indication of what was going on, but Danny is not much into friendly conversation with strangers and I couldn’t get over there to ask myself.

Finally, we moved up enough to be able to ride on the shoulder to get off the highway on the correct exit. We rode smaller roads the rest of the way to Waco, TX where we stopped for the night at 1:30 a.m. When we went into the hotel to register, the receptionist was calling for the security guard because their supervising manager had just called and had her hotel robbed. Obviously, the lady could see my face go pale, and she explained that the robbed hotel was in Austin, not Waco. I felt a little better then.

Danny and I settled in for some rest, and that was the last decent night of sleep I had for the rest of the weekend.

Friday, June 15th: Because of our late night and stressful trip, Danny and I slept in until about 9 a.m. We got up and dressed enough to go to the hotel lobby for breakfast. While we were eating, we saw that the weather reports were no better for the day ahead. I was thinking bad words in my head because I could feel the cardiac arrest coming on.

We hurried to get dressed and out the door to beat some of the rain. We did okay with the rain because it was at least daylight, which made a huge difference. I just turned on my iPod and sang at the top of my lungs the rest of the way. Excellent stress relief…terrible for my husband’s ears.

We did well from Waco to Austin, but in Austin we hit traffic. It wasn’t just a little traffic. It was downtown Atlanta traffic squished in to only two lanes. TWO LANES through the state’s capital city. Danny was not happy and would be more than willing to tell you all about it.

After we survived the Austin mess, we were getting hungry and Danny spotted a Weinerschnitzel sign. Hallelujah!! I hadn’t had Weinerschnitzel since we lived in New Mexico, and I was so excited. I briefly thought about how I shouldn’t eat hot dogs while I’m pregnant, but quickly resolved that Baby Watson is the toughest kid I know and would love some chili cheese dogs for lunch. It was delicious and, sadly, the highlight of my trip.

After our extraordinary lunch, we drove on to San Antonio. By this time, it was mid-afternoon, and I had already scheduled to meet with a real estate person at some point in the day. I was getting a little antsy about our slow travel.

As we neared San Antonio, I noted the flat farm land and abundance of cows. I always loved the flatness of New Mexico because you could see for miles and miles. Same here. So far, so good. Then, I realized that the highways in the San Antonio area were made by complete lunatics, which sent me into another state of passenger panic. I vowed, at that moment, to avoid those highways at all costs while living there.

When we finally arrived at the front gates of Randolph AFB, I was fairly impressed. The planes are smaller there because their primary mission is to train pilots to fly, but their headquarters building is no small place. It looks like a Muslim mosque, and they refer to it as the Taj Mahal. We later discovered that that is where the base level legal office resides (there are three legal offices on that base—talk about one too many lawyers!).

The Taj

We wound our way around the base, literally, because it is set up in circles and found Danny’s office. This is the one picture I wish I had remembered to take, but I was caught up in preparing to meet a bunch of bigwigs. His building is quite beautiful, architecturally, and it was originally the base hospital. It is the fanciest Air Force law office I have ever seen. I was immediately aware of what a huge professional step up this is for Danny’s career.

We began touring through the building meeting his future coworkers. They were all very, very kind. He will work with several civilian attorneys who are contracted out to work in that legal office (you’ll have to have Danny explain how all that works), which will be new for him. He’s only worked with a couple of civilian attorneys at Holloman, so this will be interesting. In addition to those guys, there are tons of active duty folks who are much higher ranking than Capt Watson. I used to think that being a Captain was pretty impressive…not so much anymore. I’ve never seen so many Majors, Lt Colonels, and Colonels in one place in my life. Not to mention that the base is saturated with Generals. I feel bad for the Airmen who aren’t officers because they must feel like tadpoles in the river. Several even made comments about how lucky a Captain is to be assigned such a “coosh” job at such an early point in his career. I just know they’re going to try to eat him alive. Thank God Danny is such a nice guy. He’s difficult to be mean to, so maybe he’ll avoid some of the more severe jousting.

After the long, very long, introductory tour, we went to meet our real estate lady, Holly. She was so fabulous to us. Believe it or not, she is pregnant, too, and she is due one day before me…so cool! She had three houses for us to look at, so we headed out with hopeful hearts.

When we entered the first neighborhood, I wanted to cry. I have never, not even in metro-Atlanta where houses are built on top of one another and look exactly the same, seen such boxy, ugly houses. They, literally, are squares. They had zero shape and zero character. All of the southern lady charm I have could not make those houses look any more than horrible. But, this was only the first impression.

At the first house, Holly explained that there were people still living there but that they should have been told that we were coming. Nope. The lady who answered the door was NOT happy to see us. I can understand why. She had three children running around the house, all of whom were under the age of six. The youngest was in nothing but a diaper. I wish I could have photographed the inside of this house. Filth is an understatement. The lady tried to explain that they were moving and she was sorry for the mess. Hah! It looked like noone had bothered to sweep or vacuum the floors in two years. I am not exaggerating…ask Danny. I looked through the place as quickly as I could in hopes of a quick getaway. Even Holly was mortified. We were not off to a very good start.

The second house was in the same neighborhood, which was less than encouraging. It did not have tenants, so it was cleaner, at least. However, it was more of the same ugliness and way more house than we could ever need. One thing I learned this weekend was that anything over 2000 square feet is just too much house for Danny and I right now. I wouldn’t have enough furniture to make it look like a home.

We dismissed the second house and proceeded to the third. It was in a golf course community which turned me on because I could envision myself among the swanky at the pool and tennis courts! Just kidding—I’m not frilly enough for that mess. The house we saw was very nice, but still too much house for our needs. And, too expensive.

We told Holly that we appreciated her efforts but hoped for a more established neighborhood with a smaller sized house that was a reasonable price. We had no idea how much we were asking for…

To be continued…

One of the chapels on RAFB. I thought it was so pretty.