Monday, November 8, 2010

Madness to Mañana

All the hustle, bustle and noise has quite done my quiet man in. He's been blasted by a motor biker rally in Galveston, and nailed by noise while we dined at an elegant, but boisterous Italian restaurant. Latin love songs weren't his forte; neither were the swirling conversations attempting to outdo the music. And the traffic in Houston really drove him to distraction, where he says the GPS had a nervous breakdown trying to navigate seven lanes of traffic on either side of the freeways. At this point, I'm sure he feels like Dorothy in Oz, but without ToTo. I won't be surprised if I hear him chanting in his sleep, "There's no place like home." I don't think it was the GPS having the breakdown.

On our first day here, Richard really wanted to see the sights, especially the International Funeral Museum. He was unable to talk any of our friends into joining us for this excursion, which is how we ended up in Galveston. On our way out of town, we detoured to see a couple of friends who moved to Houston from New Orleans. Even though they highly recommend seeing this unusual sight, they admitted to never having been and not wanting to go. Once we got down to the wire, Richard was more anxious to get out of Houston than to see the sights.

Having lived in Coker Creek for most of five years, Houston really has been like being on another planet, or maybe a space station. Everything whizzes by at warp speed. Talk about a wildly swinging pendulum, one extreme to the other. Coker Creek is a bit too slow for me in winter, but in Texas everything is a bit too super-sized for our comfort.

We're on to New Orleans and the Gulf Coast of Mississippi to re-acclimate to a slower speed in life. There's a lot of Latin influence in that area, including the mañana variety. We'll reset our emotional thermostats with a series of siestas before heading back to the holler.