It’s about a 7 hour drive from here.
Where he lives, that is.
It’s a small town. Not necessarily in its population, but its culture. The kind of town where men, regardless of their age, still hold the door for ladies, tip their hat and say, “Ma’am.”
And you know where men tip their hats for ladies, they also wave when you pass them on the open road. If you haven’t seen it, you haven’t driven seven hours to see someone. It’s a friendly nod and typically a two-fingered wave while the other three fingers still hold the steering wheel. :-)
It’s a town where you feel millions of miles away from the rest of the world. Where places like London and Mumbai seem like dreamlands.
Instead, destinations like Wagon Mound and Texico are just a couple hours away.
It’s definitely a long drive to the middle of nowhere. I don’t know if you’ve ever been. But I have. Several times.
If you haven’t caught on yet through the vague Tweets and Facebook posts, my sweet boyfriend and I live almost 500 miles apart. We’ve been together for over three years now and a new military assignment has taken him to New Mexico. The Land of Enchantment. <Insert thick sarcasm here.>
So there we were having dinner at the nicest restaurant in town. (Chili’s.) We had just spent the day working on his new house – a bit of a fixer-upper if you will. Picture this: my hair in a bun, pants rolled up, rubber gloves, even the medical-lookin’ mask on my face that keeps you from inhaling chemicals and germs. I had just finished scrubbing the heck out of the bathroom (which was followed the scrubbing of his kitchen cabinets, windows, and floors). When I was done, I rounded the corner and headed down the hall to where he was doing some surgery on an electrical outlet. He looked up at me and laughed at my mask. I held my rubber-gloved hands away from my clothes so not to drip and smirked at him through my mask, “You’re taking me out to a nice dinner tonight, right?”
So there we were at our nice dinner at Chili’s that evening. We were waiting on our meals and holding hands across the table. Making eyes at each other. And I? I was blushing. You know… It’s the way everyone acts at Chili’s. And that’s when he started thanking me for my hard work. For time spent driving down to see him. How I’m such a great teammate.
“Thank you for coming all the way out here to this little town of 32,001 to see this ‘ol goober.”
I smiled and and assured him “goober” was the furthest thing from my mind and then asked, “Thirty two thousand and ONE?”
“Yeah,” he nodded. “And one. I’m here.”
:-)
That’s my man.
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So tell me, I’ve got another 500 mile road trip coming up and I’m dying to know what are your favorite road trip songs? I need to refresh my list! Which, if you’re interested, you can see my favorite playlist and download it from here.
** Leave a comment with your favorite song and we’ll be drawing an iTunes gift card for one lucky participant.
