What a week. We took a short road trip and spent a few days in Palm Springs, Ca. It was lovely and all but the drive… Oh! Have you ever traveled with a pet that does not like to travel?

The Otter Pup, who is normally a complete couch potato, is a nervous Nellie when she leaves the house. She works herself up into such a state! It makes all of us crazy. It’s not the first time that we’ve taken her to Palm Springs either. We have relatives there and the last time we went, she seemed to do better in the car. This time though, she was all over the place and so nervous. But on the flip side, once there, she seemed to handle the change in environment better than she did the first time. Needless to say, her routine was off so she never slept which meant that “I” never slept. Plus, I didn’t trust her to be good in the house so I was constantly walking her to avoid any accidents. I mean really, no one wants to clean up poo while on vacation so yeah, I took her for extra walks. In that regard, she did very well.

However, because I never got to fully relax, I never did hit “vacation mode” which translates to no photos. I think I snapped one photo which turned out to be a dud because some twit stood right behind my family while I was taking the shot. Every time after that I’d position myself to take a photo and then the pup would get to sniffing and then out the door I’d go to ward off disaster. Plus, The Boy is still grounded so I was sort of grouchy. I guess you can tell that from this post, huh? It was still quite nice to get away though. I just wish I had a few more days to really relax. It took the pup the entire four days to be somewhat normal.

In between the pup antics and everything else going on, I was reading The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle for #winditup2013. I actually brought an entire bag of books with me but once you start a Murakami, it’s sort of hard to read other books at the same time. You find yourself totally immersed in his world and that was the case this past week. Of those that have weighed in, nearly everyone has said that it’s a lot easier to read than they thought it would be. The book is broken into three books and so many of you have zipped through book one even though I gave everyone two weeks for each book. That’s okay though. The guidelines I gave are just guidelines. Read at your own pace. Whatever works for you, certainly works for me. Now I sound like Toru. If you want to read some of the comments, just go to Twitter and search for #winditup2013. If you don’t use Twitter and want to say something, add a comment to this post. I read every comment. I will say this, I am enjoying it quite a bit. I’ve loved many of his books but this one seems to really click with me.

Today, I am back at work and the kids are back in school and I am sure the Otter Pup (Chloe) is at home, sleeping the week off.