Thursday/Friday, Julyl 1/2
12:30 AM

It doesn't seem fair, somehow, that after leaving the car dealership at around 11:30 (three hours after I had planned to set out), and going home to pack the car that I was unable to pack last night, I should go down into my basement to unplug the dehumidifier and find the basement flooded.
It was not a huge flood -- just enough to soak some cardboard boxes near the dehumidifier and to threaten electrocution from the extension cord lying in the water.
I chose not to deal with it -- just threw several rolls of paper towels in the water, unplugged the cords, packed the car and left. I wasn't even in Georgia yet and was choosing to "think about that tomorrow."
Following Michael's directions (he is my younger brother who knows how to get to places), I drove to a plot of land near Toccoa, Georgia. which has been in our family for many, many years. In the 1920s and 1930s the land was pasture and soy bean fields, and cotton grew there. I imagine that it was a sort of Depression-era compound, with several family members owning houses within shouting distance of one another. All the houses (except one very delapidated one) are gone now.
To reach the land I drove through Toccoa, turned onto Highway 17 and from there to Highway 106. Between two small country churches I turned down an overgrown lane and drove back to The Property -- now grown over with weeds, scrub pine (is that the correct term?), and especially blackberry bushes. I saw at least 6,498,278 blackberries today.
I am not fond of blackberries, but these are small and very sweet and turned my fingers purple as I picked 479 of them to give to my friend, Valerie, at whose Rome, Georgia home I am staying tonight. Val is an old friend -- a strong woman who survived an almost-fatal car accident in December. When I forget that I, too, am a strong woman, she reminds me.

When I arrived at Val's about 7:30 PM, I jumped out of the car, shoved the container of berries at her, and shouted, "Quick! Point me to a shower!" I had found a tick in my hair as I drove from Toccoa to Rome, and for many miles I imagined that his family and friends were attaching themselves to my skin under my perspiration-soaked jeans and tank-top. I had an almost uncontrollable urge to pull over to the shoulder of Highway 365 and disrobe, but I didn't.
I caught the wayward tick and wrapped him in a tissue and closed him up in a cup of salsa, lid tight. I must remember not to dip tortilla chips in that cup tomorrow.
I have no doubt that tonight, out in my car parked in Val's garage, there are angry, disease-bearing ticks waiting for me in the folds of the carseats, under the mats, between the pages of my road maps, in the bag of chocolate-covered almonds I had planned to eat on the drive to Scottsboro, Alabama in the morning. But it seems foolish to fret about that at 1:36 AM. "I'll think about that tomorrow."