Monday, January 19, 2009 was my official birthday. However, since I celebrated it with Joseph and my parents the day before I kept forgetting. All day I got calls from friends wishing me a Happy Birthday and every time I got confused thinking my birthday was over. Until I realized what day it was. Apparently this happens when you get older...or so I'm told.
I started out at 6:00 a.m. to head home. Not surprising Tau immediately jumped in the car and was ready to go. Kali took one look at the car and headed back inside. The piggies did not give a shit and just wanted to be left alone. I was surprised at the amount of traffic on the freeway at 6 in the morning and a bank holiday. But we made good time getting out of town.
On my way west I got to thinking about Tau and his incident the night before. As much as I hated to do it, I made him walk through my parents living room so that he would not harbor fears in the future. This is a must with the Dog Whisperer, if you do not immediately counter the bad incident with a positive incident they will be afraid in the future. This was exactly what I had been doing, I was afraid to go places that before #3 I loved such as; San Antonio because I now hard bad feelings to associate with it. I had to take the advice of the Dog Whisperer and squash those bad feelings once and for all. So I decided to drive through San Antonio instead of around it. But, by the time I got there I did not want to get stuck in their morning rush hour so I did my usual trip around it.
As we drove West we stopped at the usual places for walks and pee breaks, but something happened that I was totally unprepared for. As I was driving west I had to pee so bad that I just got off and the next exit and went into a convenience store. When I got out and got back into the car and started to head out again I realized I had stopped in Sonora, Texas. I never stop here for two reasons 1) there is nothing there and 2) it is where #3 and I met for the first time around my birthday in 2000. We spent the weekend there so there were lots of memories around that town. As I was getting on the freeway I was facing their cemetery and the guides gently said "You know what you need to do." I will explain in another post what I had to do because it is a bit detailed.
I did what I needed to do and headed out again. But, I was getting bored with the same old drive so once again, I got out my trusty map and changed my course. I did not want to get too far off the beaten track because I was really ready to get home. So I took a different road out of Fort Stockton and went through some really nice little towns like Kermit and Monohans. I did have to cross over to hit 285 so head north. I don't know what road I took but it was great, it was a two lane country road with no one else on it. It curved and twisted and was a great drive. I discovered that south of Carlsbad is New Mexico Salt and Minerals which has a solar saltworks. Whatever that is. But I was really cool to see the big lake. I would not have known this if I did not take a different way home.
So the rest of the trip was pretty much the same as it always is. I got home about 8:30 that night. All was well in the Cribbs casa, the dogs were thrilled to be home, the piggies were thrilled to be back on their table and the hamster did not seem to know anything happened, except for Sasha and she had a bit of abandonment issues with me not being there everyday. However, she is fine now and back to her usual untrusting yet cute self.