Tuesday we’re going to our place in the U.P. It won’t be a pleasure trip. We were notified by a neighbor up there that our two big trees have come down and are blocking our driveway and our TV antenna came down over the winter. We need to get up there and make sure everything is ok. It’ll be our only visit this year. The wild raspberries should be ready for picking.

Tonight I bought airline tickets on Expedia for June 2nd, 2009. It’s almost a year from know but I know I’ll want to visit my mother in Florida then.

I had been watching for the date to come up because you can’t book ahead more than about 11 months out. I was able to get reasonably priced seats by booking ahead, but I almost made a big mistake.

With my mother’s health I feel it’s necessary to buy flight insurance. Afterall I may not have her in a year.

When I was booking the flights, I was trying to run a huge up-load on my computer. It was using all my computer’s resources, and a couple of times my screen froze so I had to refresh the page. When I completed the booking, I thought I had included the travel insurance but I hadn’t.

I didn’t realize it until I was reviewing the confirmation. I quickly called Expedia, but they said they couldn’t do anything. I was stuck. It wasn’t until I mentioned that I had JUST booked the flights that the service agent said he’d be able to cancel the reservation and re-book it with no fee. What a relief.

I guess I’m just superstitious enough to feel if I buy the insurance, hopefully I won’t need to use it because my mother will be fine. (It’s like when you bring an umbrella, it never rains, but if you don’t bring it, you’re bound to get wet.)

This trip is becoming routine for me. I flew down there until from early to mid-June. Now I’m planning to go back on in a month (August 26-September 9th). I will only be there for 16 days. I’m anxious to get down there and see Mom. September 11th, John and I will take off to drive down and stay until the end of October. We’ll be home in Michigan until the end of January. We’ll drive back down on January 26 or 27 and stay until mid-April.

Between now my next flight on August 26th, our schedule is really full! Tomorrow we’ll enjoy a family dinner in Owosso. We’ll be up north from Tuesday until Friday. We have two friends’ birthday party next Saturday (the 2nd) plus John performs that night. We go on a camping/performing weekend with our music club for Gladwin’s Carriage Days August 6-10. Another friend has a birthday party on August 16th. On the 17th we’ll have a family reunion. On August 20th, we’ll move to the Midland Fairgrounds for the Midland Dulcimer Festival. That night, we’ll have a concert at Haithco and we’ll be busy with the festival until the 24th. I leave to fly back to Florida on the 26th. Whew!

Hectic as it is, I love our life.