my life has literally gone to the birds

Well, greetings from the aviary.

Did anyone else ever look around one day and realize you're in charge of five birds? 

No? 

Just me?

My mom is a teacher, and she has two classroom parakeets.  I'm taking care of them this week for her, so the two parakeets plus our three chickens mean there are currently five fowl depending on us.

Which in my opinion, is five too many.  

I had a meeting today at my company's home office, which is 100 miles away.  I arrived at Enterprise promptly at 7:30 to pick up my rental car, and they upgraded me to a brand new Jeep Cherokee Trailhawk.  It was dark gray with black wheels which is my dream car color combo, and the Trailhawk, as the name suggests, is very sporty and rugged.  Which are two qualities I do not personally possess, but enjoy in a vehicle.  

Never know when you might need to ford a creek.

Anyway, I plugged the office address into my GPS.  It normally takes 1 hour and 40 minutes door to door, so imagine my surprise when my GPS said it would take THREE HOURS.  I turned on the traffic report and it turns out there had been an accident on the turnpike in the middle of the night, and the whole highway was closed for miles.

I decided to just get started and see what happened, and things went fine at first.  Eventually I got to the area near the accident and had to exit.  My GPS told me to turn right and follow that road for 5 miles through a little central Pennsylvania town called Plowville.

Even though it was out of my way, it was quite enjoyable to drive down the county road while the world woke up on either side.  It was a tiny little farming town, with beautiful barns and pastures and rolling hills.  There was a little main drag with a busy diner and a church and a market and a post office.  It looked like the setting for a Hallmark movie.

As I was making a mental note to myself to look up houses in this town on Zillow when I got home, it occurred to me that I may have been driving more than five miles.  I have a terrible sense of distance and direction, but sure enough when I glanced at my GPS, all I saw was the swirling circle of uncertainty and the word REROUTING.

Apparently Plowville has a lot of lovely perks, but good cell service is not necessarily one of them.  

I knew that the general direction I needed to head was west, so I fought my natural instinct, which was to turn left (because in my head left = west), and kept driving until I saw a sign that actually said the word WEST.  

Eventually, I made it to the office, by way of Plowville and Blue Ball, Pennsylvania.

Cross that off my bucket list.

My next work trip is coming up and I'm going to DENVER, COLORADO.  The farthest west I have been is Detroit, so this is a big deal.  I asked Matt if he thought I'd be able to see the mountains from Denver.  He said, "Yes, because Denver is IN the mountains.  It is called the Mile High City."

Well. I thought it was called the Mile High City because of their lax marijuana laws.

But I'm also the girl who thinks north is straight ahead and west is to my left, so take my knowledge of geography with a grain of salt.

Matt will be in charge of the parakeets for a few days while I'm gone, which I think will be fine since tonight when we were in the kitchen, I thought I heard the parakeets chirping.  Their birdcage is downstairs, so the chirping sounded way too close.  For a brief second I wondered if they had flown the coop  birdcage, but I quickly realized Matt was in the living room playing clips of birds chirping on Youtube, and imitating them himself.

I'll be in Denver for four days, which is longer than my normal trips, but I won't have to worry about Matt being lonely.

He will be able to communicate with the parakeets.

*Linking up with Cup of Tea for High Five for Friday.*