Daily 3 - Three Things I'm Going to Miss

Matt and I leave for our first extended vacation tomorrow.  We'll be traveling the midwest for 10 days.  We are heading up to Iowa first for a Scrabble tournament this weekend.  After that we'll visit some family and then ride coasters in Chicago, Cedar Point, and St. Louis.

Although I'm looking forward to the trip, I will miss some things while gone:

1.  My Pets.  My cat, Lucy, is now 20 years and seems to be doing pretty well for her age.  She still has a good appetite but she likes to nibble throughout the day so I will be worried about her when I'm gone.  Fatniss Everdeen is my other cat and if you can't tell by her name, she could stand to lose some weight.  I'm not as worried about her.  Our dog Angie will be fine, but I will miss her.  We lost our dog, Mollie, back in December shortly before Christmas.  Part of our fence fell down and she got out and we never found her in spite of trips to the pound, signs, and online postings.

2.  My own bed.  It's not anything fancy, but it does have a nice memory foam topper that I love and I never quite sleep as well in hotels and other strange beds.

3.  My money.  Although we saved our tax refund and some extra money I got from being an assistant Academic Decathlon coach, we'll have to spend a bit of money for meals and especially gas!  It's going to be about 3500+ miles round trip.  Luckily we're taking my Rav 4 Hybrid but that's a lot of miles. 

Thankfully my cousin who has been staying with us for the past few months is going to take care of the animals.  We're only taking the trip since he is here at home taking care of them, otherwise,  we probably wouldn't be gone so long.  He's going through a divorce and had been living in his car for about a month when he called to tell me what was going on and asked if he could stay with us.  It has been great because he is much handier than Matt and I.  He has fixed several things for us at the house so he's earned his keep.  I couldn't afford the cost of hiring a pet sitter for 10 days so it has worked out well.