A couple of months ago, my husband, Jeff, recruited me to go with him to help staff his booth at a marketing conference in Dallas. We made arrangements. My parents, who live in North Carolina, agreed to spend six days with the boys. We booked hotel rooms, registered for the conference and signed up as an exhibitor. We talked about flying, but since we had so much stuff to take for the booth the shipping cost seemed ridiculous, so we would drive. Plus, the idea of a road trip seemed like an adventure and reminded me of the last time we got to spend this much time alone together – our honeymoon, when we traveled throughout Big Sky country. So, yesterday at 7:04am we hopped in the fully load SUV and began our blissfully kid-less adventure, driving 1213 miles southwest, from Cleveland Ohio, to Dallas Texas. 
While it feels like an adventure, it is not a vacation. This is work - something that seems mildly thrilling and oddly unfamiliar to me (I mean, seriously, it wasn’t that long ago that I was working, outside of the home, and regularly attending conferences). Yesterday, during our 13 hour drive, my husband (who works in a small family printing business) schooled me about the marketing products that we will have available at our booth and shared information about the people who will be in attendance. Although, I should note, he neglected to mention that Joan Rivers was the keynote speaker, until this morning, when he mentioned it in an off-handed manner – seriously? I should have known about this weeks ago! Currently, we have just entered in Texas and only have a couple more hours until we get to Dallas. Later today, I will be schlepping supplies, posters, banners, displays, forms, and various other items for our booth into the conference center, and tonight I will be hobnobbing at a dessert reception with other exhibitors (and maybe even Joan Rivers???!!). From Thursday – Sunday, the conference will be in full swing, starting each day at crack of dawn and going well into the late evening. It should be…fun?Oh…I am going to be SO out of my element.
So for the next few days, I plan to post about my kid-less adventure and my temporary return to a “real” job. It should be interesting...
