Would You Like Cheese With Your Whine?

I'm quite delighted with myself right now. The bags are packed. The dog is having a week long sleepover with the people that own his parents. Brent's taking a long soak in the tub with a book and some pain pills (I'm really quite worried about how he's going to get through this next week). And me? Why, thank you for asking! I'm in front of the computer, nibbling on cheese and wine. OK... so it's really Martinelli's - straight from the bottle, but it's a finally chilled bottle. A bottle hand-carried from all the way in the dark recesses of the local Costco, no less! And the cheese is pre-packaged deli sliced Muenster. And instead of classical music, I'm streaming alternative music from Pandora.com. But AT SOME LEVEL, this seems like a sad little version of a very lonely, non-alcoholic, bulk prepared wine-tasting club and I'm (at least) amused.


In a way, this moment is everything Haiti is NOT. I have power - my kids don't have power every night. They only get it every other evening. I have prepackaged unessentials at my fingertips (and chilled at that). I'm in my own space, in a safe place, on a quiet street. No one's ever been kidnapped in my neighborhood. You don't need government approval to come visit me (or to leave comments - come on, people!) We can get in our air conditioned car and drive anywhere or nowhere at a whim.


My friend, Alisha adopted a little boy from Haiti. She said the driver they had in Haiti told them that his family was fortunate enough to have a car at home, but they hadn't driven it in about 6 months because it needed a new battery. If you have to choose between a battery and food, you pick food. If you have to choose between gasoline at $6 a gallon and most anything else....

We won't have internet access in Haiti, and we'll only have emergency cell phone access. We are taking our camera and I'm taking a book to jot thoughts. We return late at night on the 15th and we have the 16th off of work to recover. The plan, at this point, is that I'll start posting about the trip with pictures of the kids, and us and the kids, and Haiti and the kids, and the kids with the other kids, and the pool and the kids... on the 16th.

We know we're going with the prayers and thoughts of many people. For that, we thank you.

Thank you for loving us and for loving Lexi and Nathan. We'll do our best to convey that to them.

T-12 hours and counting.....