It's only Friday?

The short version of the past three days:
Monday: went to bed at 7 p.m., got up at 11; showered and left for the meet-up location
Tuesday: pulled onto the road in a 14-foot U-Haul around 1:30 a.m.; drove 1200 miles and arrived at a friend's house at 11 p.m. and crashed into an air mattress
Wednesday: called to make sure they still wanted our stuff at the same drop-off, drove 20 minutes, emptied the truck (3 women and a dolly) in about an hour, cooled off and drank some water, prayed with Veronica--the woman staffing the Houston Food Pantry, who is an angel; back on the road by 12 noon or so; stopped in Joplin, MO, at a Microtel at 11 p.m.
Thursday: up and out of the hotel by 9, back to Kate's house at 7:30; took the U-Haul back, dropped her at her house and was home by 9 at which point I went directly to run a bath and then fell into bed by 10:30.

Today, I'm right back into things: haircut at 9, allergy shot at 10:45, picked up new glasses at 11:30, grocery shopped; home by 12:30; emptied scary food into garbage (last week's leftovers), watched CNN to catch up on what's going on around the Gulf Coast. Now I'm trying to catch up on my blog reading. Sheez, people, stop writing so much! :-)

Overall impressions:

• NOT ONE rude person, not even the cop. I'll detail that story some other time. No weirdos at the truck stops, no nastiness on the road from other drivers. A. Maz. Ing.
• Oklahoma roads suck. The whole state is...weird. At least, that's what Kate said, and I can't deny that when the first official sign we saw along the Interstate after "Welcome to Oklahoma" was "Do Not Drive Into Smoke." Any idea what that meant?
• Missouri is Knife Country. Who knew?
• Dallas and Houston are not as close as they look on the map, and Dallas isn't as close to the border of OK as it looks
• Armed guards outside a strip mall, which also has a security fence? Well, yeah, but they were sitting in lawn chairs and pretty much not very scary
• There are LOTS fewer bugs in the south now that they've all been squished onto the front of our truck
• The area around the highways in downtown St. Louis is really, really due for some urban renewal
• We achieved a B+ score on the state of the restrooms at gas stations. The two Beyond Flunking grades spoiled it (one in OK, of course...I'll discuss that later too...and I don't remember the other one but the quote from Kate was: "This place has showers too. If this is the condition of the bathroom, would you take a shower here?" and I won't quickly forget the sight of a woman wearing ONE white surgical/food prep glove covered in ..grease? ..KY jelly? whatever entering that ladies room in front of me)
• Women can do anything, including unloading a truck in 95-degree-plus heat and 100% humidity, and driving for 22 straight hours. We didn't have one disagreement. Not one. Pretty shocking.

The food banks in Houston are depleting and Veronica says this isn't going away for a lo-o-o-ong time. She had just given out food to a middle-class family staying in a nearby hotel: they're out of money for food (and probably the hotel), so they came to this site for food for the day.

Quote(s) of the day: "Lack of money is no obstacle. Lack of an idea is an obstacle." --Ken Hakuta

And I couldn't agree more.