I arrived home from Houston on Monday afternoon and I was so thrilled to be back where everything is familiar, where I recognize the smell of everything and where hot is actually not as *hot* compared to the humidity of a Texas Summer.

While I was away I was not feeling particularly communicative. I couldn’t think straight, actually. And whenever I tried to speak about how I was feeling it was rather hard for me not to cry.

This happens to me, sometimes. Especially if I am away from home.

And then I got in my rental car (which, as usual, smells a little funny; like faint cigarettes and some kind of upholstery cleaner) and took a 3 hour drive to Austin. Not only have I always heard cool things about this city, but my friend Rachael lives there now and her baby girl is now about 1 month old, so it seemed the perfect thing to do to get my mind off what was troubling me.

On the drive there, I talked to people on the phone as I whizzed past lots of beautiful open land and lush, green trees. And talk about a beautiful sky – the big Texas sky’ll break your heart with beauty.

Rachael, baby Delilah and I went to lunch at Shady Grove, where I ate a huge Chili-dog. It was so wonderful to see Rachael as a Mama. It made my heart sing when Rachael said “I just don’t ever stop thinking about her. I don’t even know what I thought about before…” Delilah is precious and Rachael is simply radiant.

On the drive back to Houston, I took my time to stop and take some pictures along the way. I tried hard to drive with the windows down, and no air conditioning, so that my hair could blow and I could let the good smell of the earth clear my head, except for the sound of hot air blowing and classic rock blaring on the radio. But Texas is a different kind of hot, so every so often I had to roll up the windows and cool off for a few minutes.

Something about that drive quieted my mind. The overwhelming sense of stress was still there, but somehow, it seemed more manageable after allowing myself to “get away” all by myself with only the open road ahead of me.

Click right here to see the photos of my journey.