Visiting Friends, Sleeping in a Parking Lot
Nov. 23rd, 2025 07:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerThanksgiving triplog #3
Millersville, MD · Sat, 22 Nov 2025. 3pm.
At the moment I'm sitting in my rental car, parked in front of a Goodwill store, and I've just woken up from a nap. 😳 Yeah, it's been a rough day so far after coming off of a red-eye flight this morning.
From where we ate breakfast in a Wawa parking lot this morning we drove 10-15 minutes east to visit our friends Christie and John. Christie is a friend of Hawk's from college. She and John married in 2012. I think the last time I saw either of them was at their wedding 13½ years ago. 😳 But it was great to see them again. And they welcomed us into their house at 8am, which fit well with our post-red-eye schedule.
We chatted amiably at their dining room table for a few hours. For Hawk some of it was reminiscing on old times at college— but fortunately not too much of that, as that was mostly before my time and entirely before John's. Mostly we chatted about life in general, the current state of the country, and the joys and tribulation of buying a house— since they'd just bought theirs earlier this year. They've both lost significant weight recently, and they look great. Their son joined us for part of the conversation after he woke up. He's in 5th grade, so about 11 years old.
We went out for lunch together at a local sushi restaurant. Well, "we" minus Christie and John's son. He stayed home because he hates sushi. And yes, he's old enough to stay home by himself. Christie and John both work in local government, Christie in law enforcement, so they've checked the laws on leaving a child unsupervised at home. The law says that's okay at age 10. That surprised me because the way most parents I know nowadays act, you'd think it's a crime to leave a child home alone until age 18. Yay for parents who teach their kids age-appropriate independence and maintain even a sliver of time separate from parenting 24/7.
Ah, but here I am talking about good parenting after Hawk and I have just slept in our car a thrift store parking lot. 🤣 Lack of sleep was hitting me hard after lunch. I got just 1 hour last night on the red-eye flight. Hawk wanted to visit the thrift store across the street from the restaurant. "And you can take a nap there," she added.
It sounded kind of ridiculous when she said it... if for no other reason than because napping in a car has virtually never worked for me. But I was extremely tired. I knew I at least needed to try, because I was fading so hard that driving more than a few miles would be dangerous. So after she went into the store, I leaned my seat back, wrapped my sweater over my torso like a blanket, and... dozed off within 5 minutes. 😴
Sometime during my nap Hawk came back out of the store and joined me. We slept together— in separate seats but both in the car in the Goodwill store's parking lot, I mean— until 3. And now we're waking up and stretching and getting ready to drive to visit another set of friends for the evening.
Millersville, MD · Sat, 22 Nov 2025. 3pm.
At the moment I'm sitting in my rental car, parked in front of a Goodwill store, and I've just woken up from a nap. 😳 Yeah, it's been a rough day so far after coming off of a red-eye flight this morning.
From where we ate breakfast in a Wawa parking lot this morning we drove 10-15 minutes east to visit our friends Christie and John. Christie is a friend of Hawk's from college. She and John married in 2012. I think the last time I saw either of them was at their wedding 13½ years ago. 😳 But it was great to see them again. And they welcomed us into their house at 8am, which fit well with our post-red-eye schedule.
We chatted amiably at their dining room table for a few hours. For Hawk some of it was reminiscing on old times at college— but fortunately not too much of that, as that was mostly before my time and entirely before John's. Mostly we chatted about life in general, the current state of the country, and the joys and tribulation of buying a house— since they'd just bought theirs earlier this year. They've both lost significant weight recently, and they look great. Their son joined us for part of the conversation after he woke up. He's in 5th grade, so about 11 years old.
We went out for lunch together at a local sushi restaurant. Well, "we" minus Christie and John's son. He stayed home because he hates sushi. And yes, he's old enough to stay home by himself. Christie and John both work in local government, Christie in law enforcement, so they've checked the laws on leaving a child unsupervised at home. The law says that's okay at age 10. That surprised me because the way most parents I know nowadays act, you'd think it's a crime to leave a child home alone until age 18. Yay for parents who teach their kids age-appropriate independence and maintain even a sliver of time separate from parenting 24/7.
Ah, but here I am talking about good parenting after Hawk and I have just slept in our car a thrift store parking lot. 🤣 Lack of sleep was hitting me hard after lunch. I got just 1 hour last night on the red-eye flight. Hawk wanted to visit the thrift store across the street from the restaurant. "And you can take a nap there," she added.
It sounded kind of ridiculous when she said it... if for no other reason than because napping in a car has virtually never worked for me. But I was extremely tired. I knew I at least needed to try, because I was fading so hard that driving more than a few miles would be dangerous. So after she went into the store, I leaned my seat back, wrapped my sweater over my torso like a blanket, and... dozed off within 5 minutes. 😴
Sometime during my nap Hawk came back out of the store and joined me. We slept together— in separate seats but both in the car in the Goodwill store's parking lot, I mean— until 3. And now we're waking up and stretching and getting ready to drive to visit another set of friends for the evening.
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