The launch.

The oldest son is on his way back to Mississippi.  He planned to leave this morning at 6:00 am, but due to circumstances that always happen when you have plans like that, he left around 7:00 am.  I don't know if he packed everything.  I guess we may be mailing him some of his things later on.  I made him a mini-pantry with some of the things he'll need for the recipes I gathered for him and got him some snacks for the road.  It's a long trip.  I always am a little nervous when he's driving it.  He has promised to call me every time he gets gas, so that will help.

I didn't have the world's best night's sleep.  My son had asked me to get up and make him coffee, so of course I did.  I woke up naturally at 3:30 and thought, hey, while I'm up, I'll make the coffee.  He's going to get up at 5:00.  So, I made the coffee and laid back down in the living room so I could be aware when he was leaving and say goodbye and all that mom stuff, like drive carefully and all that.  So then my husband got up at 4:00 to go to work and he was working on getting the GPS ready for my son.  That made some odd binging noises and woke me up.  Then, as my husband was leaving for work at 5:00 he woke my son up.

I was awake, ocasionally dosing off while he was packing.  Some time during that time, my younger son's alarm clock went off and I had to get up and turn it off, because youngest son didn't budge.  Also during this time, Max decided he needed to go out and I had to do that.  Then, when the boy was ready to leave, I was able to say all my things.  Call me every time you stop for gas.  If you feel sleepy, pull over and stop at a rest stop.  You know.  All of that stuff.

He went out to the car.  I got up and went to bed.  A few minutes later, he came back in.  There was something in the car's cigarette lighter that he couldn't get out and he needed to plug in the GPS.  So we worked about 15 minutes getting a knob of some sort out of the cigarette lighter.  (We suspect youngest son!)  Duct tape was what finally worked for this extraction.   I thought he was leaving, went back inside and went back to bed.  A few minutes later, he's coming in the back door.  He'd forgotten something.  Then I thought he left again and then I hear knocking at the front door.  He'd decided to come back in and change pants because the ones he had on wouldn't be comfortable to drive in and he'd locked his keys in the house.

Finally, at 7:00 he left.  It's 10:00 a.m. now and he hasn't knocked on the door in a while, so I guess he's on his way.  I hope he calls soon and tells me he is in Nashville or someplace like that and the rest of his day goes really, really well.

Update:  He just called from Tennessee and the GPS had quit working.  While I was googling the directions so he could write them down, he found another cigarette lighter thingy in the car and the GPS was working again.  

Another update:  He made it.  He's moving things in.  Whew.