Category Archives: Personal

Prairie Dog State Park, Norton, Kansas

06 Friday Oct 2017

Posted by in Campground, Grace, Personal, Zelda

≈ 5 Comments

I have not yet seen a prairie dog.

I did see some wild turkeys this morning, plus a cute bunny, and a great many birds. I guess turkeys count as birds, too, but yesterday I drove by an enormous flock of blackbirds, at least some of them red wing blackbirds, and that experience was very different from spotting some wandering turkeys. Very, very cool, however. I wish I could have taken pictures or, better yet, videos. Seeing hundreds of blackbirds all lift off the ground in unison, some of them flashing their red wing tips, then come back to land is pretty spectacular.

Yesterday was not my favorite day ever, though. I left Trinidad Lake and drove to Colorado Springs, where I did laundry, and then I just drove and drove and drove. Ever since the Grand Canyon, I’ve felt super wary about exercising too much at altitude. I had a lovely one mile hike at Trinidad Lake — seriously beautiful and it felt great to be outside and doing — but then my stomach started getting unsure of itself again. Grr… Since I’m headed east anyway, I decided that rather than spending a few more days at altitude, I would just find myself some lower ground. But I really did not enjoy my long driving day with an uneasy stomach.

Fortunately, I like Prairie Dog State Park quite a lot. It’s close to empty and beautifully peaceful. The day is gray and rainy, but reasonably warm, in the 60s, so I am making lamb stew in my instant pot, watching the lake, and considering cups of tea. It’s that kind of day, that kind of place. Cozy and peaceful. Pretty, with trees and plains and fields, but not in a dramatic way at all. Even the trees are very gently changing color — the leaves are yellowing, but not dramatically.

view from the van window with Zelda curled up underneath

Lake view on a gray day, with a dog quite happy to curl up and nap.

My big ambition for the day, now that I have written a blog post and made stew, is to get through my current chapter of Grace.

Favorite line of the day (so far): Grace set the pen down and gave him a Look. Her brothers and sister would have winced and apologized immediately, but her father didn’t even have the decency to look abashed.

Votes on keeping the capital L in Look? Editor-me hates it, but writer-me thinks it is essential as is.

Bluewater Lake State Park, Bluewater, New Mexico

28 Thursday Sep 2017

Posted by in Anxiety, Campground, Personal, Randomness

≈ 1 Comment

Yesterday, I followed a rather circuitous route to this park, which resulted in me once again turning a three hour drive into a five hour drive. How do I manage to do that so often?

In this case, I followed the wrong gps. It turns out that Bluewater State Park has two sides to it and two campgrounds: one is entirely primitive, meaning no power or water, and the other is a more typical campground with some hookups and more paved sites. I went to the primitive side first, not on purpose.

I did think about staying there once I was there. It was really remote and I would have been alone by the side of a lake, which could have been thrilling. Except it was raining. Sort of a lot, or at least it felt like a lot. And I didn’t want my thrill to be something like “got stuck in wet dirt and couldn’t get out” or “got caught in a flash flood and drowned.” Sometimes anxiety is irrational and sometimes it’s sensible. It felt like sensible anxiety to me, to head to the more developed side of the park, and be on top of a hill.

a portion of a double rainbow

Rainbows over Serenity

Along the way, I passed a Walmart and thought, “Oh, I really need to go there.” And then I thought, “What for?” and kept driving. I was trying to save the contents of my freezer, so I basically cooked everything in it while I was in Homolovi Ruins. I made shrimp fried rice with mushrooms and pea pods; shrimp scampi over gluten-free pasta; two sous vide chicken breasts; sous vide steak; and blueberry, apricot, and apple crisp. The latter was the best I could do for the fruit that had frozen then defrosted. I’ve got enough food cooked for another two, maybe three full days.

Answer: for water, drat it. I got to Bluewater Lake and a sign on the gate said “no drinkable water.” Alas, I did not replenish my water supply, so I’ll be moving on today. And I suspect that my one night stay at this park is not enough for it to be memorable. Ten years from now, the above picture will be the only image I’ve got. But a double rainbow — even if only partial — is special enough to be worth something in the memory banks, I hope.

It would also be memorable, of course, if I’d seen the wild horses that are known to frequent the park. It was one of the reasons that I wanted to come here. I’d love to sit in the van and write and watch wild horses right outside the window. Wouldn’t that be cool? But the only evidence of wild horses I’ve seen is the copious quantities of manure that Zelda has been very excited to step in. Yuck. Fortunately, she hasn’t tried rolling in it, but I think I’m just as happy to move on before she does.

Worst day of the past 14 months…

24 Sunday Sep 2017

Posted by in Personal, Randomness, Travel, Vanlife

≈ 9 Comments

Today has been, without a doubt, without even a close contender, the worst day of my journey so far. I’m not sure I even want to write about it, because I don’t feel well enough yet to feel like it’s over. But I’m safely camped at a nice campground, staying here for two nights, plugged into electricity, and it’s only 4PM, so maybe I should just be counting my blessings instead of mourning my misery.

I woke up in the night to stomach pain. Indigestive-type stomach pain. At first it wasn’t so bad, I wondered what I’d eaten. But it got steadily worse and worse until I was tossing and turning and trying to figure out how I could possibly have given myself food poisoning. I was going down the list of every food I’d eaten, trying to think how it could have been contaminated. Was the pesto too old? Did I not wash the radishes well enough? Was the water in my tank — which I don’t drink but did use to wash the vegetables — contaminated somehow?

At various points through my entirely sleepless night, I wondered whether I could be having a heart attack, whether I was dehydrated, whether it was my gall bladder, whether I had a kidney stone, whether I needed an emergency room, whether I should be calling a ranger for help. I checked my own medicine cabinet for something, anything, that would relieve some of the pain and found, unsurprisingly, nothing.

The dogs were, of course, as restless as I was. My squirming around trying to find something like a comfortable position kept them on the move, trying to get back into their own formerly comfortable positions. Eventually B wanted to go out — still dark and temperatures in the 20s. I didn’t even care. I was awake anyway and thought maybe the cold air would help. It didn’t.

Then, of course, Z wanted to go for her walk. Really wanted it. We’d had a terrific walk yesterday and she loved the cold weather. She was bouncy and energetic and all ready for morning to begin. I eventually wound up literally snarling at her, because I was face-down, knees to chest, some sort of modified child’s pose, trying my best to breathe, and she kept sticking her nose under my arms and trying to lick my face. But even the sweetest dog understands a snarl; after that she curled up on the dog bed and watched me attentively, trying to decide what I was doing and if I was ever going to take her for a walk.

Answer: no. I wasn’t sure I had walking in me.

But I did let her out on a tie-out, while I tried to decide what to do. I was pretty sure at that point that I had food poisoning. I didn’t know how I could have food poisoning and it was obvious that I was just going to have to throw away everything in my fridge because I had no idea what had gone bad, but what else could it be? And there’s no cure for food poisoning. You ride it out and stay hydrated. Not fun, but it’d be over eventually. Unfortunately, my reservation at the North Rim was over and the campground was completely full, so I needed to move on. But there were other campgrounds nearby — maybe one of them would have room.

I did one thing at a time. One item put away, one job done, punctuated with sitting on the floor and rocking. It hurt. It really, seriously, fucking hurt. It felt like my intestines were tying themselves in knots. Not to be too graphic, but my system had completely cleaned itself out except for copious amounts of gas. Ridiculous amounts of gas. I could have won a belching contest against a world contender, but it only ever alleviated the pain for a moment or two.

And then I realized — yesterday, my bag of gluten-free crackers had inflated. It was really strange. I had to pop it to open it. And the top popped off my plastic container of balsamic vinegar as if expelled by an invisible force. Gas, in other words.

Could I have altitude sickness? In what is not irony, because it is not funny, I’d worried about R facing altitude sickness when he went to Colorado, but it had never even occurred to me that I might get it. Was the Grand Canyon even high enough to get altitude sickness?

Unfortunately, I had no internet and no cell service to find out. Also unfortunately, my generator refused to start when I’d tried to use it to make coffee the previous day and my computer was totally out of charge. But if my problem was altitude sickness, then finding the nearest campground wasn’t going to be useful: I needed to get to a lower elevation.

I started driving. After an hour, I stopped and took a nap, because yes, the pain eased off some. Not entirely. I feel like someone punched me in the stomach a bunch of times and food is unfortunately still not an option. (I tried. Bad idea.)

And then I kept driving. Because the generator wasn’t working, I didn’t want to stop until I’d found a place with electric hook-ups, so I could charge the computer. And I definitely wanted a place with some decent cell reception so I could look up generator repair & altitude sickness & elevations of my projected destinations. And I also kind of really wanted a pharmacy to get something, anything, that might help me feel better. Plus, I was having a caffeine withdrawal headache, which only added to my misery.

Exhausted, aching, nauseous, I kept driving and driving. Watching the odometer. One mile at a time, that’s all I needed to do. And then another mile. And then another. I kept checking my cell phone as I drove for a Verizon signal that didn’t show up. I hate the No Service message. I get it less often with Verizon than I do with T-Mobile, but it’s still awful.

It was the longest drive through pretty scenery ever.

I wound up driving straight past Flagstaff — at 6900 feet, I could tell from how much it hurt that I wouldn’t be sleeping there. I’m now at Homolovi Ruins State Park and it’s still a little too high. At 4900 feet, it’s exactly where elevation sickness can start. I think I’d probably be better off a few hundred feet lower. But there’s electricity and a cool breeze and hot showers and I was seriously wiped out. I just couldn’t keep driving.

I still feel worried about eating any of my food — maybe this is food poisoning? — but I’m pretty sure from the way my body responded to the hills and valleys during the drive that nope, it’s altitude sickness. It really, really sucks. I thought altitude sickness was a headache, but wikipedia assures me that nausea and “excessive flatulation” can go along with the headache.

And you know, I know I should count my blessings: the worst day of my journey did not include an emergency room, a morgue, the police… it could have been so much worse. But it still sucks and I still feel miserable and I really wish someone would miraculously show up and deliver some soup and painkillers.

On the good news front, though, the Winnebago Travato Facebook Owners and Wannabees Group totally came through for me on the generator. Turns out the generator also suffers from altitude sickness, which is fine, because I am never going near a mountain again. (Probably not true. Probably a situational exaggeration. But I’ve definitely lost all my Colorado enthusiasm for now. Maybe I’ll be taking the southern route back east.) Ten minutes of reading old posts and I found exact instructions for how to get it going again. (Thanks again, Jake!)

I really want to write more about the Grand Canyon, but there is a bee buzzing around the van. Seriously, universe? Seriously? But I am going to go help it find freedom or else mercilessly slay it, ideally without getting stung. And maybe tomorrow I’ll try to write some more.

North Rim, Grand Canyon

24 Sunday Sep 2017

Posted by in Campground, Grace, Grief, Mom

≈ 1 Comment

Grand Canyon from a distance at sunrise

The Grand Canyon looking grand.

From before this adventure even began, the Grand Canyon was my destination. I wanted to scatter the last of my mom’s ashes here. It felt like a way of honoring her memory, of thanking her for how much she encouraged me to be adventurous and to take risks.

This morning, Zelda and I took a 1.5 mile hike from the North Rim Campground, which is set in a pine forest, to the Grand Canyon Lodge, which overlooks the canyon. I sat on a bench there, Zelda enthusiastically appreciating all the miscellany of smells (in other words, being a totally non-peaceful pain) and admired the view and remembered my mom.

R gave me a candle for Christmas two years ago that said, “Home is where my Mom is.” Then he told me he hadn’t noticed what it said before he bought it and he just liked the smell. Ha.

I reread A Gift of Ghostsyesterday. I was looking up something specific — oh, my initial description of Max. I wanted to be sure that I got it right in Grace. But I wound up re-reading the whole thing. It was odd timing, I guess, because Zane’s scene at the end, where he knows he has to let go of his mom, knows he has to say good-bye… well, maybe that’s what brought up all these feelings of mine today.

But I really didn’t expect the Grand Canyon to inspire so much emotion on my part. I pictured — well, a crowded scenic overlook. Lots of tourists. Dry, sandy air. A big hole in the ground. Instead, I got a quiet bench, total solitude, the sun rising in the east, storm clouds overhead, a deep chill in the air, a happy dog, a fantastic view, and an unexpectedly intense burst of grief.

In all of my dozens of versions of Grace, I have never managed to write the ending. I know what I think happens. The path there changes, but the ending never has. But every time I get close, I go back and start from the beginning again. I want to say that maybe that means it’s time to work on a new ending, one that doesn’t involve letting go, but every time I consider that choice, it feels wrong to me.

Letting go and moving on, those are right things. Those are good things. But I need to make room for the reality that letting go doesn’t mean not grieving. Letting go doesn’t change the pain of the loss. It just acknowledges the pain, accepts it. Maybe even embraces it. I think maybe Grace needs to cry. A lot. (Not the story, the character.) I think maybe a huge part of my Grace problem is that Grace cannot get to her happy ending without really, truly facing her grief and sorrow and loss, which was never part of my plan. Huh. Well… I guess I should be working on Grace right now.

Meanwhile, the North Rim campground — more forest than I expected, quite spacious, lots of people in appropriate winter attire, seriously cold. And my generator has decided not to work, which does not make me happy. Also I am almost out of propane. No internet, too! So today is going to include a search for propane, a scenic drive, and — given the current lack of electricity — probably not actually much more writing. Oh, well. I bought coffee at the general store, because of my own lack of propane and non-functional generator and they give free refills all day, so maybe I’ll drink lots of coffee and knit. And think more about Grace’s grief.

On fear

17 Sunday Sep 2017

Posted by in Anxiety, Campground, Personal

≈ 1 Comment

Yesterday, I did not pick up several hitchhikers.

Quite recently I told a friend the story of the last hitchhiker I ever picked up, about eighteen years ago, and how he was the last hitchhiker I would ever pick up. It’s a longish story, but the short version is that I spent the ride letting him believe increasingly elaborate lies, because he made me seriously nervous. I dropped him off and drove away feeling incredibly lucky that I hadn’t wound up a statistic, disappeared, probably dead.

Now I feel like I should tell the whole story — why I’d picked him up, what the lies were — but it would take too long and it’s not really relevant. The point is that I’ve picked up several hitchhikers in my life, but I was resolved never to do so again. And I’ve seen a lot of hitchhikers on my way south. Oregon, in particular, had quite a few, none of whom fazed me in the least to drive by. I suspect that your average unshaven guy in dirty khaki does not expect a solo woman to stop for him. Indeed, would be quite surprised if I did.

But the first hitchhiker I did not pick up yesterday was not your average unshaven guy in khaki. He did have a beard, but also a bicycle that he was walking. He was older, gray-haired, and from his gear, camping. Probably on a long bike trip, and I’m going to guess that something had gone wrong, maybe with his bike, because he was trudging along, head down. I actually drove by him twice, because I took a wrong turn and had to backtrack, and the second time, he, clearly impulsively, stuck out his thumb. I kept driving.

For the next several miles, I alternated between feeling guilty and scolding myself for feeling guilty. I felt guilty because I think he probably needed help and I think I probably could have helped him. On the other hand, he was only three or four miles away from a town, and although traffic was scarce, there were definitely other people who would drive by. It wasn’t the middle of the desert. And I certainly didn’t owe him a ride. Plus, I really don’t want to wind up playing a starring role in a cautionary tale about hitchhikers.

But eventually, I started thinking about fear. Rational fear, irrational fear. Fear that stops me, fear that I face.

When I was in Seattle, P described me as bad-ass to one of her friends. I demurred. Nope, not me. I am actually quite cowardly. I tell myself scary stories all the time. I worry about everything — flat tires, getting lost, coyotes, alligators, bears, corrupt policemen, propane explosions, the end of the world — seriously, everything. If it is possible to worry about something, I guarantee I have worried about it. Mice carrying hanta virus, stepping on HIV-infected needles, falling off a cliff… I have it covered.

That said, I am trying, really hard, to live a life where I don’t let those things stop me. Yesterday, driving south, I stopped at a scenic vista overlooking Mono Lake. I admired the view, then used the internet to post a blog post, check my email, read some news, and look for a place to spend the night. I was driving along 395 and there were plenty of places, but I didn’t know how far I wanted to go, where I wanted to stop, what I wanted to do. Eventually, I kept going. A couple hours later, I stopped again. Decisions, decisions.

There was this place: Fossil Falls. A Bureau of Land Management campground. It sounded interesting. But also, maybe, remote. Isolated. Potentially… well, scary. I decided that I would drive through it and check it out. See what it was like. And if I didn’t like it, I would just keep driving. Maybe spend the night in a Walmart parking lot in Barstow. It’s funny that parking lots have become not-scary — I still remember how freaked out I was my first night in a parking lot, back in West Virginia, but that was a long time ago.

So Fossil Falls. Well, a picture is worth a thousand words, right?

camper van against desert background

Serenity, looking very, very alone.

desert landscape

That little gray spot, barely visible, is Serenity.

Definitely remote. Definitely isolated. Definitely, well, scary. At least if you’re me and not the kind of camper who loves remote wilderness and doesn’t worry about serial killers and rabid coyotes. I felt like I could see forever and not see any other human thing. Just mountains and desert. When the sun set, I couldn’t see a single light created by a human being except for the ones that I’d brought with me.

This morning, B decided he had to go out at 5AM. I complained bitterly, but I got up. It was still dark, but with a sliver of crescent moon and the morning star. It was chilly, but not cold, so I made myself some coffee — instant, because I didn’t want to turn the generator on to run the electric coffeemaker — and sat outside on the van’s step to watch the sunrise. When it got light enough, I took Zelda for a walk, and we went and saw the falls. Fossil Falls because the water is centuries gone, but once upon a time, a river flowed through the volcanic rock. When we got back, I set up my chair and worked on my screen door while the sun got higher in the sky and it started to get warm.

a crescent moon

A sliver of crescent moon against the sky


I am so glad that I didn’t let fear stop me from staying here.

Which doesn’t mean I’m going to start picking up random hitchhikers willy-nilly. It’s not irrational to be careful about letting strangers into my home. But I’m not going to let fear drive my decisions, either. “Once upon a time, something bad might have happened but didn’t,” should not become a hard-and-fast rule for how I live my life. Neither should, “I heard a scary story about something bad that happened to someone else.”

But now, onward! I’ve got more driving to do, and somewhere along the way today, it would be a lovely thing to find a place with a shower. But hey, it’s been a while since I posted one of these, but if you have any Amazon shopping to do, starting here might earn me an affiliate fee, which would be nice for me. If you’re already supporting a charity through your Amazon purchases, use your own link, though — I don’t want my pennies to take away from someone who needs them more!

May your days be filled with boredom

09 Saturday Sep 2017

Posted by in Anxiety, Personal

≈ 2 Comments

Yesterday, I organized S’s pins (the sewing type, not jewelry) by color, in a rainbow of blue, yellow, green, red, white, silver, black. By this, I knew that I was feeling just a wee bit anxious. It was interesting to feel my tension drop as I did it — it was almost like meditating in the sense of peace that came over me as the pins found their proper places.

Of course, Logical Me knows that pins do not have to be organized by color and that the proper place for a pin is anywhere it can be found again, and where it’s not going to inadvertently wind up impaling a hand or a foot or a paw. But at the same time, it was soothing to impose order on the pins. Especially in a world where I can’t impose order on the weather.

Not that there’s anything wrong with the weather where I am. It’s actually been really nice — grey and foggy and cool, with invigorating breezes, just the temperature where a jacket and socks are cozy. But I’ve been worrying about Irma.

Or more to the point, I’m worrying about R. And the rest of my family and friends in Florida, but mostly R. He didn’t evacuate, which is… fine? He’s an adult, making the best choices he can, and I can understand why staying put seemed like the sensible decision. It’s not like he’s living in the Florida Keys or even in Miami, where staying put would have been crazy.

But he is on the coast.

And as of Friday night, Irma appears to be swinging in the direction of his coast.

These lines, from weather.com — “Recent trends in computer models and resulting forecast from the National Hurricane Center suggest Irma will now track a bit farther west. This does not reduce the threat to eastern Florida, but it could drastically increase the threat to the west coast of Florida if this trend continues.” — are not the kind of thing that gladdens a maternal heart.

Logical Me knows that there’s nothing I can do and really no point in hitting refresh on weather.com over and over again. The storm is going to hit when it hits and where it hits. Illogical Me is… anxious. And wishing for more pins to sort.

Instead, I shall go to sleep. And in the morning, I’ll visit the farmer’s market, buy some vegetables, cook something delicious, enjoy the company of my friends, and take a lot of deep breaths.

But to all of my Florida friends and readers — stay safe, stay dry, and may all your Irma stories be really, really boring!

One of Pam’s daughter’s prized possessions: a hall pass, given to R by his high school science teacher during the year he lived in Seattle. On the other side is a more formal pass. Apparently he was allowed to wander the hallways at will. S has kept the pass for the day she might be able to use it, too. It survived the room purge!

Arcata

05 Tuesday Sep 2017

Posted by in Personal, Randomness, Travel

≈ 4 Comments

In my vague mental plan, I was going to spend some time exploring Oregon this fall. Two things happened to change that plan: 1) Oregon, like far too much of the west, started burning down and 2) my friend Suzanne, who lives in northern CA, had a week off in early September.

I know the wildfires are sort of making the news, but at least in my window on the world, they seem to be overshadowed by politics and floods. And they’re not completely out of the norm: although 2017 is winning for number of fires, 2015 is still in the lead on acreage burned. Both years are statistically significantly higher than average, though, and more to the point, if you’re living in the smoke, the air quality is miserable. I can’t imagine how people with asthma are coping. It’s been years since I even owned an inhaler, but I felt the urge to reach for one through my entire drive through Oregon.

So instead of wandering around Oregon, I drove straight through, with a single, largely sleepless, night at a rest stop, notable only because it was my first ever night at a rest stop and my first chance to discover that rest stops are not very peaceful places to try to spend the night. It might be my last night at a rest stop, too.

I got to Arcata on Friday night. It was nothing like I expected. I knew it was a small town. I knew it was remote. I knew it was foggy a lot of the time, with year-round temperatures in the 50s and 60s. And I guess all of those things are true, but apart from the remote — yes, it was difficult to get to — it was still not what I expected.

It’s actually cute as anything, and not so small. Two bookstores, three movie theaters, multiple grocery stores and sushi restaurants, art galleries and housewares stores and furniture stores… I guess small is relative, but when I think of small, I picture southern small, where a single road has a gas station, a Dollar General, and a donut shop, and that’s considered a town. By that standard, Arcata is a city. But really, it’s the perfect small town from the “quirky town” trope. I saw the town square on Saturday morning, when I was walking Zelda, and immediately thought, “Stars Hollow, I am in Stars Hollow!”

On Saturday, S had to work, so I had a mostly quiet day — much needed after my long drives of the previous two days — hanging out at her house. At lunchtime, though, we met up at the local farmer’s market, held on the aforementioned town square, where I bought some corn & artichokes. But it was insanely hot. I say that as a Floridian. Insanely hot. I’d been promised cool weather and fog: instead I got bright sun, 97 degree temps, and smoke-filled air. The heat broke records, not just for the day but for the entire time temperatures have been measured here. I was very happy to get back to the relative cool of her house, where all the dogs (her two, my two) lay around and panted, while G (S’s husband) and I, sat on our computers, every once in a while saying, “Wow, it’s hot.”

The next morning, we went to the beach with all the dogs. It was glorious. Hot enough that shorts were fine, but with a cool breeze. The dogs were allowed off-leash and three of them ran around like puppies, while even B managed a good long walk and a lot of sniffing at interesting smells. Z chased sticks and splashed into the water and smiled happy dog smiles. Once they were tired out, S and I went to a local fish market and picked up some fresh rockfish, then stopped at a local artisan’s market and admired art and had interesting conversations about the age of some beautiful polished stones turned into jewelry. One green stone, kambaba jasper, was, according to the seller, 3 billion year old fossilized algae from Africa, and a purple stone was charoite from Russia. (Yep, I’m writing that down so that I remember it later.) That evening, instead of having our rockfish, we wound up going out for sushi.

Yesterday, I made us breakfast in the morning, of sautéed carrots, beets, bacon, and sweet potato (previously cooked sous vide, so quick to sauté), over arugula, topped with a soft-boiled egg and some fresh parsley and cilantro. It was heavy on the beets, but really pretty good. I still haven’t mastered sous vide eggs, though. Then we went to the redwoods and wandered up a trail for a while.

four dogs on a trail

The pack in the redwoods

Our walk was pretty short, because the hills were a little much for B. I probably should have left him at home. I wound up carrying him, but an uphill hike carrying a wiggly dog was a little much for me, too. Next we went looking for wild blackberries, and found plenty. We came back to the house, went down the street to a “block party” fundraiser, ate some delicious albacore for lunch, put some bids in on the silent auction, ate dessert — a gluten-free apple muffin for me — and then came back to the house and got to work.

First, we baked. I made blackberry crisp and Suzanne made blackberry calzone (pie without the pie pan). Next, I prepped baked artichokes with onion, lemon, mint, and olives, one of my favorite recipes from The Zuni Cafe Cookbook.

After that, we seriously got to work. S and G have a storage shed in the back of their house and I think my Seattle efforts inspired S. The shed was (is) stuffed to the ceiling with boxes and bags and furniture and miscellaneous objects of more-or-less emotional significance. We started pulling things out, piling them up in the yard, trying to sort them, with the aim of turning the storage shed into more usable space by emptying out some room. By the end of the day, we’d definitely made the space more accessible, but since neither S nor G really want to get rid of anything, I think the shed will be staying pretty full. But at least they can get to the boxes if they want them now.

a shed with open floor space

Usable enough that the dog approved.

This morning, S and I headed off to the beach again, bright and early. We were on our way home by 9, so I think we probably got there around 8. It was a different beach, but even more wonderful — big and wide and empty and just a little foggy. I think a lot of people think of beaches as places to go to sit in the sun, but I’m never really interested in sitting on a beach, nor do I much want to go into the ocean. I like watching the waves and taking long walks. On this beach, we could have walked forever if we’d left B at home. He was a trouper, though. He probably walked a solid mile, which is a long, long way for a small dog in congestive heart failure.

Since then, I have been writing and S has been working on her storage shed. But I am about to finish this blog post and drag her away, so that we can go visit the nearest big town, aka Eureka. Yes, Eureka. I seriously hope there’s a nice town sign that I can take a picture of myself by, because it amuses me to no end that I am so close to a town named like one so dear to my heart.

In one final note, I’m really surprised by how much I like Arcata. It wasn’t actually on my list of places that I was thinking about for possible future long-term living, but it has not only joined that list, it’s jumped pretty close to the top. I could see living here. Not in S’s driveway, which sees/hears foot traffic all night long, and not in S’s storage shed, despite its resemblance to a cute tiny house, but it’s a lovely small town. However, that’s a thought for some time far in the future. For today, I should get back to writing Grace, so I can do some more playing later!

My future career

30 Wednesday Aug 2017

Posted by in Personal

≈ 4 Comments

After I re-organized her kitchen, my friend Pam offered to pay me to help her daughter (S) with her room. I wasn’t so sure about being paid — free parking space, laundry facilities, use of the shower & occasional meals worked for me — but I said sure, I’d be happy to help S. Then I took a closer look at her room.

messy room

a messy closet

Not even sure if she could get to her closet, much less use it.

It wasn’t the messiest room I’d ever seen, but it was pretty impressive. Some of the chaos was stuff that her mom had moved into her room after cleaning the living room while S was away at camp, so she hadn’t been living in it like that, but it wasn’t a one-day sort of mess. It was the type of mess that was going to require an even bigger mess in transition.

So last week, while S was still away, I tackled the first part of the job: organizing stuff.

a messy bed, piled high

Everything soft went onto the bed.

stuff to be sorted

Stuff to be sorted in boxes and piled high.

I wound up with boxes of stuff that I thought should probably get thrown away — lots of plastic stuff, even more old school books, worn out art supplies, and so on. Also stuff that I thought was probably ready to be donated — anything that a 14-year old had probably outgrown, from clothes to toys. Everything else was sorted: books, art supplies, stuffed animals, dolls, clothes, hats, jewelry, scarves, head bands, knick-knacks, electronics, games, photos, miscellaneous stuff.

When S got home, on Monday, we got to work. We tackled one corner at a time, one set of stuff at a time. We set aside a plastic crate for nostalgia items — things she wanted to keep but didn’t need to have out. Then we looked at and considered every object in her room: did she need it, did she want it, did it bring her joy, was she ready to let go of it? If she was keeping it, where did it belong? Where would she look for it when she needed it?

A neat book case

Books, art supplies, a few knick knacks in a new corner of the room. Yes, the books are in alphabetical order.

A reasonably neat closet.

The half of the closet that can’t be seen is full of boxes for an eventual garage sale, but this half has shoes and outside gear, including bags, organized by type.

A clear dresser top

This side of the room wound up looking a little barren, but I’m sure it’s a transitory state. The white shelving unit will eventually go, when she gets a new bed.

An empty floor.

Zelda, admiring the empty floor space. Well, probably not really. She might be wondering where the cushions went.

This is not actually my future career. I think I’m probably too allergic to dust to make a life out of clearing out rooms. But it was very fun and very satisfying!

Seattle Update

17 Thursday Aug 2017

Posted by in Personal, Soup

≈ 8 Comments

People keep making suggestions about other jobs for me to be doing. The Best Brother Ever thinks I should become a personal chef for someone who has a lot of food restrictions and can’t handle the challenge of eating within them. My friend E thinks I should be packaging my granola and selling it for ridiculous prices. (Someday I am going to do a cost analysis on my granola — I suspect it’s not any cheaper than the ones that companies do sell for ridiculous prices, because I put a lot of good ingredients in it. But it is tasty.)

And my friend P now says I should become a home organizer, traveling around and helping people de-clutter their houses. That’s because I spent the last three days working on her kitchen. I wish I had taken before photos, so that a before-and-after would make sense, but when I first got here, she had no available counter space on which to work. I don’t think I complained too loudly, but I muttered, and eventually I did wistfully say, “I wish I could organize your kitchen.”

To which she replied, “Knock yourself out.”

In my defense, I then asked several times if she was serious. Did she really want someone else going through her stuff? Deciding on the right places for useful things? Pushing her to get rid of the stuff she never used?

Patiently, she answered, “Yes, yes, yes.”

So I did. Her dishes are now stored above her dish rack, so that you can put them away without taking a single step. Her pantry items (formerly stored on a bookcase outside the kitchen) are now in what used to be the dish cupboard; snacks on the bottom shelf, soups and pasta on the next, rices and grains on the third. Her spices (formerly stored in a drawer in living room) are now alphabetized and in an angled double row on an open shelf next to the stove. The tea cups she uses are on the bottom shelf on the sink side, also an open shelf; the cups her guests most often use are stored within reach on the third shelf. The teas are in order — chai, ginger and herb, black — on the second shelf.

Eventually I stopped asking as I moved items to the “to be donated” pile in the living room. We all have those things: the inefficient jars for storing baking staples; the cute plastic dishes for little kids; the hand-me-down second or third crockpot; the fondue pots. She had three of the latter — she’s keeping the mid-size one, letting the other two go.

Or the chipped dishes that have been around forever, the glass jars that might come in handy someday, the abundance of plastic leftover dishes that somehow seem to multiply in the drawers. She still has an abundance of plastic dishes, but only enough to fit neatly into two drawers and she’s going to have to start her glass jar collection anew. The chipped dishes will happen on their own, of course.

I’m not entirely done. I left a pile of stuff on a small table needing to be sorted and one counter was still topped with many glass bottles needing to be recycled last night. But I’m pretty close. And P, whose kitchen was cluttered and overflowing with stuff, now has several entirely empty cupboards that she can start filling.

P tells me I could make a lot of money at it, but I don’t think I actually want to start cleaning out people’s houses for money. Maybe this is just the Floridian in me, but I suspect the jobs would mostly be getting rid of stuff after someone had died and that would be seriously depressing as a way of life. But it was highly satisfying few days.

And it gave me a new piece of my travel plans — I’m not sure what the next week or so will bring, whether I’m going to drive south into the path of the total eclipse coverage, whether I’m finally going to connect with my other WA friends — but at some point after the 28th, I’ll be back here in Seattle. I’m going to tackle P’s teenage daughter’s bedroom once she gets home from her summer vacation with her dad, and I am quite looking forward to it.

In other news, I’m getting a little obsessed with insta-pot soups. The combination of an insta-pot and an immersion blender make vegetable soups trivially easy. Last night I was feeling awful — either a gluten reaction, a mold reaction, or the beginning of a cold — but I threw some onion, carrots, curry spices and chicken broth into the insta-pot and hit the soup button, then when it beeped, added some coconut milk and blended. I wish I’d had some leftover rice, but since I didn’t, I topped some gluten-free bread with butter, a little minced garlic, parmesan cheese, and cilantro, toasted it, cut it into crouton-ish sized pieces and dropped it into the soup. It was delicious. Oh, I added some salt at the end, too.

Given that I felt terrible (and still do, alas), it was a lovely, low-effort meal. I will be eating leftovers for lunch. Maybe with some left-over quinoa instead of toast. If I’d remembered the quinoa yesterday, I would have used it then. Carrot, curry and quinoa soup — doesn’t that sound fancy? It was really just the only non-nightshade vegetable available to me, and I felt too lousy to go to the store.

And that’s a terrible note to end on, but I do have to get to the store today and I can tell already that it’s going to be a very low-energy day. Simple goals: a shower, the store, some more time spent staring at Grace, wondering what Noah’s motivations are. And the dogs, of course, will want to be walked. Huh, I’m feeling tired already. Maybe I’ll start with a little more coffee.

Oh, but since I have no photos — how about a link to an incredibly adorable set of baby photos? Kyla, who comments here sometimes, had her baby last week, and he is gorgeous. If you get a chance, stop by, say “aw,” and wish her well!