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~ Home of author Sarah Wynde

Category Archives: Personal

Seattle

12 Saturday Aug 2017

Posted by wyndes in Food, R, Serenity

≈ 6 Comments

If I was going to post a picture of the past several days (which I am not), it would be of the little park on the corner of the street. Preferably with a lot of dogs in it. Over the past few days, I’ve spent enough time there that I’m starting to actually get to know some of the neighborhood dogs. Not quite by name yet, but maybe soon.

I’m also developing familiarity with the neighborhood Pokemon players. There’s a yellow team that I’m starting to feel a deep envy for — at least four players, who play together. Every morning or so, I take over the park’s gym, turning it blue, and before too long — sometimes within the hour — they’ve taken it back. It’s fun, but Team Blue could use a little more support. Also there are a ton of Pokemon raids available in Seattle and I’m not good enough, as a solo player, to win any except the easiest. But a team of four probably wins them all. I wish my brother and nephew were here or some of my friends from Florida — we’d be collecting legendary Pokemon right and left. But I don’t think I’m going to manage to convince my friend P or any of her housemates to start playing anytime soon. Maybe I should start working on the teenage boy who lives in the front apartment.

So, yeah, I’ve been parked in my friend P’s driveway for the past several days. They have been lovely days. R and I squeezed in a trip to Value Village, our favorite Seattle thrift shop, and a showing of Spiderman on his last day in the city, before I dropped him off at the train station and waved goodbye. I’m always sad to say good-bye to him. I love how independent and mature he is — it’s fantastic to have an almost entirely self-sufficient 21-year-old — but I do miss him. And saying good-bye with no idea of when I’ll see him again is always hard.

But I got over the pain pretty quick. The next day I did useful stuff, lots of it. Email and writing and laundry and cleaning and working on plans for a new screen door. Zelda walked through the old one, breaking the strings that created the tension that kept it up. I miss it already and I’m pretty sure that no substitute I come up with is going to work nearly as well, but it was pretty fragile for life with two dogs. B used to walk right under it. I’m not surprised that it broke, really, just hoping that I can create something that will let me get airflow through that door without being too inconvenient to live with.

Anyway, after my useful stuff, I went kayaking on Lake Washington with P and J. We saw a beaver! It was much smaller than I would have expected it to be, but the tail was unmistakeable. If my phone hadn’t been buried in a dry bag, I would have tried to take a picture, but we didn’t get close enough that it would have been more than a brown and black blur in the water on a phone photo, anyway. It was sort of thrilling, though, to see an animal that I’d never seen before in the midst of such an urban setting.

That evening, there were five of us for dinner. I’ve been cooking a fair amount, but nothing too exciting. We had summer quinoa bowls one night (greens, quinoa, corn, avocado, salmon, cilantro, with a dressing of sour cream, lime, and garlic) and autumn quinoa bowls another (greens, quinoa, roasted broccoli, baked sweet potato chunks with cinnamon and ginger, spicy roasted chick peas, chicken, with a dressing of thinned hummus with extra garlic). That night, though, we had tacos: I made spicy shredded chicken in the instant pot, which basically involved dumping a couple tablespoons of chili garlic sauce and some water on top of two chicken breasts, and pressure-cooking for 15 minutes on high. Yum. On my first couple bites, I thought it was too spicy, but it was great with avocado and mango salsa, and made for excellent leftovers. If there was any left, I’d be putting it in an omelette this morning.

My big accomplishment yesterday was putting curtains up in Serenity to separate the cab from the rest of the van. I’ve been thinking about doing it for months and my one regret — as it always seems to be with things like this! — is that I didn’t do it eons ago. I bought a Maytex Smart Curtains Ultimate Light Blocker Sheridan Window Panelin white at Fred Meyer and hung it sideways, so the 50″ side goes top to bottom. That way the dogs can still easily go under it to get to the seats and their bed under the seats. Also, I can push it to the front of the seats, so my back-of-the-seat storage doesn’t get impeded by the curtain when it’s closed. But wow, sleeping last night was so cozy. I’d sort of been vaguely aware of how much light coming in through the spaces around the front window covering kept me restless, but last night I slept like a rock. I think it’s going to be helpful with the heat, too, but the weather has changed today and it’s currently gray and chilly outside, so I’ll have to wait and see on that aspect of it.

Hmm, I think I meant to write about something else, too, but I am being summoned for breakfast, so maybe next time for whatever that was. May all your Saturdays be pleasing!

Gem Mountain, Phillipsburg, Montana

30 Sunday Jul 2017

Posted by wyndes in Anxiety, Travel

≈ 2 Comments

I had such a nice morning on Friday. You saw the pictures on the last post — the sunrise that looked celestial, the granola and blueberries on the bench in the early morning sun. It felt so peaceful and pleasant, but I knew I needed to keep going.

Driving long distances is not my idea of fun. I don’t think I would make a good trucker. But there’s a point where you get into the zone and it gets easier and easier to just keep going. Suddenly two hours starts passing without notice and driving into the night is almost easier than stopping. Unfortunately, my break in Billings definitely broke me out of the zone. When I got back on the road on Thursday, I lasted barely an hour before I was thinking about stopping. And I wasn’t exactly eager to start again on Friday.

But I had a plan. Ever since Crater of Diamonds in Arkansas, I’d intended to go sapphire mining in Montana. When I googled, one of the mines was reasonably close to Highway 90. It would add maybe an hour of extra driving along a scenic highway, plus an hour at the mine, but it would be a nice break in the middle of the day and something to look forward to, helping to keep me motivated on the road. I thought I’d get there about 2, be back on the road by 3 or maybe 3:30, and then maybe make it to the Montana border before stopping for the night.

It was so nice at Spring Creek, though, that I started late. And then I took a break at a rest stop to try to get online, as well as write about the campground and answer some texts. And then there was a tiny little wrong turn that put me on the highway headed in the wrong direction… Suddenly it was 3:30 and I was pulling into Phillipsburg and realizing that I’d screwed up. My Google directions hadn’t taken me to a mine, they’d taken me to a store. A nice store, where people could rinse of jugs of gravel and hunt for sapphires, but it wasn’t what I’d been looking for. The store, however, had a sign that said, “Free camping.”

I like signs like that.

It turned out that the mine was about half an hour away, in the direction from which I’d come. Bummer. But behind the mine were campsites, first come, first served, and if there was still room, I could spend the night there. And if I got started quickly, I’d still have an hour to play at the mine.

Done.

The mine was, in fact, not much like Crater of Diamonds. Instead of sitting in the dirt and digging, you buy a bucket of gravel for $25. They give you a mesh grate, some big tweezers, and a thing like a test tube with a plastic top with a hole in it. You put some dirt in the grate, rinse it in a wooden trough of water, then dump it out on a table. Carefully, because if you’ve rinsed it right, the sapphires are sitting on top of the pile. They’re the heaviest of the rocks, so as you bounce and rock the grate in the water, they should be sinking to the bottom. One of the guys working there gave me a demo to get started and when he dumped the grate, there was a blue stone sitting right on top of the pile, exactly as advertised. It was both delightful and also sort of like winning the slot machine on your very first quarter. I did wonder whether I was going to spend the next hour feeling like a failure when I didn’t find any more.

Nope.

By the time I finished, I’d found 41 tiny sapphires. I did not once dump the dirt without finding a sapphire in it. One time I picked one out of the dirt without even rinsing it and another time I picked one out of the dirt as I was rinsing it. I’m not even sure I found all of them, because I was one of the last people there, so I was trying to hurry by the end of my bucket. Results aren’t guaranteed, of course, but they do say every bucket has some sapphires in it. Most of them aren’t worth processing (heat-treating and faceting), but people do sometimes find larger sapphires, 3 carats or more, that after processing can be worth hundreds of dollars. So there is still that element of playing the lottery, but one where you’re guaranteed to win something.

Plus, free camping!

Gem Mountain camping

Gem Mountain camping

Unfortunately, my anxiety level on Friday evening was limiting-ly high. I wanted to take a long walk with Zelda — we haven’t been getting nearly enough exercise — and I just couldn’t. Bears, rattlesnakes, strangers… I was totally scolding myself, but I was also not leaving the van. Just not.

The best I could do was about five minutes where I took the above picture. It was a beautiful moonrise, an incredible setting, and I took a minute to enjoy the crystal clear and cold air — and then the smoke from my neighbor’s campfire started me worrying about forest fires. Despite being seriously annoyed with myself, I couldn’t sleep until I had the van entirely packed up and ready to go, in case we needed to run away from fire in the middle of the night.

Sometimes I hate my brain.

On Saturday morning, though, I forced myself to walk Zelda down the road toward the mine. I wasn’t going to try to do anything challenging — no wandering into the forest or off on any trails — but I thought I’d walk along the road out to the main road and maybe along it for a while. I’d started to relax and enjoy the beautifully chilly morning when we rounded a curve in the road and a big brown thing lifted its head and looked at us.

Total jump.

A moose

Not a bear.

And then a relieved laugh.

I’ve always wondered what Zelda would do if faced with a bear and I think the moose gave me my answer: she would take her cue from me and back cautiously away. She definitely saw it and she was definitely interested, head tilted, ears up, but when she saw that I wasn’t going any closer, she followed me away from it without any protest.

I also saw a green hummingbird, a chipmunk, and a pretty little dark brown squirrel. No bears and no rattlesnakes, much to my relief.

I didn’t linger, though. By about 8:30, I was on the road, not exactly making up for lost time, but definitely making progress toward my goal. It was a long day of driving, through smoky hills in Montana, into and beyond Idaho. I stopped at a scenic overlook in Washington, admired the Columbia River, and enjoyed one of my favorite parts of #vanlife — I cooked and ate sockeye salmon with basil and garlic over brown rice, with a side salad of mixed greens, radishes and avocado, with balsamic vinegar. Road food is really different when your kitchen travels with you.

I then spent the night at a Flying J, and now I’m sitting in a Safeway parking lot, drinking my morning coffee, and getting ready to get on the road. A few more hours of driving and I’ll be saying hi to R!

Year Two Begins With a Splash

27 Thursday Jul 2017

Posted by wyndes in Serenity, Travel, Vanlife

≈ 5 Comments

Yesterday, July 25th, was the one-year anniversary of the day I said good-bye to my house and hello to life on the road. It started auspiciously enough in a Walmart parking lot in Minnesota.

Yep, my first Walmart parking lot. It was fine. Better than fine, really. The night before I’d spent in a Flying J parking lot in Indiana, and although I hadn’t slept as horribly as on my very first parking lot night, it wasn’t exactly relaxing, either. At the Walmart, I was out of the way, in a quiet corner, facing a field. I put the window covers up and slept as well as I ever do. Maybe it was Minnesota, too. While I’m sure Minnesota has its problems, the Walmart was the kind of place that had a trash can at every single cart rack and no trash visible outside the cans. Go, Minnesota.

Although I’d decided I was going to try to get to Mount Rushmore, when I looked at the map I realized that if I did, I’d miss the Badlands entirely. My plan had been to dry camp, aka boondock, in a primitive campground in the Badlands for a couple of days but I hadn’t realized how far west Mount Rushmore was. But, I figured, no problem — Mount Rushmore had been waiting for a year, it could wait a couple of days more.

I started off on a relaxed drive out of Minnesota and across South Dakota. I had plenty of time, so I took it slow, pausing at rest stops, reading, writing, checking email. Unfortunately, it just kept getting hotter and hotter and hotter. At one point, my outside temperature gauge read 103, and even with the air-conditioning running full blast, my temperature monitor was sending me alerts that it was over 80 in the van. Both dogs huddled under the AC vents.

When we got to the Badlands, I paid the $20 to enter — my first national park, yay! — and drove slowly through. I’d given up on the idea of boondocking at the cool primitive (i.e., no electricity) campground. Space was probably available, but we would have been miserable. And when I drove past the campground with electricity, I gave up on it, too. It was reasonably crowded so there might not have been space, but even if there was, it was in unrelenting sun.

But it wasn’t just the sun — it was windy, with that kind of dry wind that pounds at your ears and makes you immediately want to lick your lips again and again and again. If I had been a pioneer woman in South Dakota, I would have been one of the ones driven crazy by the isolation and the wind. I would have been hallucinating monsters and terrified to leave the house in no time.

So I kept driving. I’d been reading signs for Wall Drugs all the way across South Dakota — either billboards are cheap in SD or Wall Drugs has a lot of money to spend on them. Maybe both. Anyway, it sounded fun in a seriously kitschy kind of way so instead of the Badlands, I figured I’d find a place to stay in Wall and explore the town. Except when we got there, late afternoon, it was still so hot that I would never have been willing to leave the dogs alone in the van.

New plan: back to the old plan.

Mount Rushmore!

I checked online and Mount Rushmore is open until 11, so I headed that way. Between stops to feed and walk the dogs and dinner for me, it was after 8 when I got there. It was… interesting. Smaller than I thought it would be, but also more impressive in a way. From a distance, the faces are very high up on the mountain.

Mount Rushmore through a car window

Look close. The gray hills in the distance have the faces of the presidents on them.

I thought it would be good to see it in the evening, less populated, and that it would make me feel patriotic on some level. Instead it felt a lot like I had secretly drifted into a universe where Disney had taken over America. There’s a ton of stuff around Mount Rushmore, all aimed at tourists. I could see having fun there, if I had lots of money to spend on silly things, a kid to enjoy looking at random stuff with, and didn’t have to worry about dogs/heat. As it was, though, I decided against spending $10 to park, and did a literal drive-by.

I then went back the way I came, driving about another 45 minutes, until I reached the highway and a Flying J truck-stop that I’d passed earlier. My third night in a row in a parking lot! But it was by far the worst — busy, crowded, with a casino nearby and a ton of trucks. People wandered by the van until late at night, and I was awake until after midnight, then up at 5:30.

When I woke up, I just got behind the wheel and started driving, thinking that we’d do the morning routine — clean clothes, coffee, dog walks, food — at the first rest stop. Reasonable plan, except somehow — sleepiness, I assume — I missed the first rest stop and it wasn’t until after 8 that we finally reached one. Poor Z had been staring at me earnestly, the way she tells me that it’s time to go for a walk, for about forty minutes by then.

And the bathroom floor was sopping wet. I had a fleeting second of wondering if a dog had given up on me but it was clean water. Clean water, unfortunately, coming from behind the toilet. Yeah, a pipe broke. I then spent all day — the first day of Year Two — trying to deal with it.

If it wasn’t so damn hot and if I hadn’t been driving all day and into the night for the past couple of days and if I hadn’t slept in parking lots for three nights in a row, I think I’d be dealing with it a lot worse than I am. I think I’d have the energy to be really pissed off about how many things have gone wrong with this tiny house on wheels and how Winnebago’s approved repair place wants $150 just for agreeing to see it, plus $175/hour to work on it. I feel like fury and frustration are reasonable responses, but I’m just not feeling them. It’s tedious, but it is what it is.

On the other hand, if I weren’t so tired, maybe I’d be making better choices for how to deal with it, too. But it definitely feels like Year Two has started with a whimper, not a bang. Or maybe that should be a splash and a sinking feeling? At any rate, before I discovered the water, I drove out of South Dakota, through a tiny (beautiful!) corner of Wyoming, and into Montana, so I am now hanging out in yet another parking lot, this one in Billings, Montana, hoping to fix some broken plumbing before moving on, and wishing T-Mobile had coverage in Montana, which apparently it does not.

Updated: no internet, so couldn’t post, and it is now Thursday morning. I’m still feeling fine about the plumbing problem, maybe better than fine. It’s annoying, but it is what it is. I found a place in Billings able to take a look at it this afternoon, so it might be resolved soon, and if not, I’ll use bottled water. The lovely Facebook Travato Owners group has given me lots of advice and help about trying to fix it myself, but it feels ambitious to try to remove the toilet on my own. In 90+ degree heat. In a random parking lot. Yeah, not optimistic about that. But hey, at least the leak sprays water into a room with a drain in the floor. And a plastic floor, too. It could be worse!

Serenity’s First Year in Numbers

21 Friday Jul 2017

Posted by wyndes in Boring, Randomness, Serenity, Travel

≈ 5 Comments

In 18 states and two territories (one American and one British), I stayed in 73 different places:

    25 state parks
    13 driveways
    12 Thousand Trails campgrounds
    4 independent campgrounds
    4 Passport America campgrounds
    2 KOA campgrounds
    2 Army Corps of Engineers campgrounds
    2 parking lots
    2 hotels
    2 houses
    1 Lower Colorado River Authority Park
    1 USDA Forest Service campground
    1 county park
    1 Harvest Hosts site
    … and one sailboat

I definitely got my money’s worth from my Thousand Trails membership. I think my total spent is currently about $550 for about 80 days, so roughly $7/night. But I’m not going to be renewing it when it expires next year: those campgrounds seem like good places for families with small kids and people who are looking for stable bases for extended periods, but that’s not how I want to travel or live.

My KOA membership was not worth the money. Again, great for families with kids and I definitely enjoyed my really nice showers at the KOA in Bellefonte, PA, but I don’t need the amenities they offer and even with the reduced membership rate, they were some of the most expensive places I stayed.

My one night at a Harvest Host site was lovely and I remember it fondly. But I don’t tend to want to drop in to places for a single night. If that changes in the future, I might think about trying out Harvest Hosts again, but for the moment, I’ll let that membership lapse.

Passport America costs around $45/year and I bought a three-year membership, so I’ve got plenty of time for it to pay off. In fact, the park at which I’m currently staying is both a state park and a Passport America park, and I saved $14 on an upcoming night’s stay because of my PA membership, so yay. But I’ve got a pretty long way to go before that membership pays for itself and two of the parks on the PA list were among my least favorite of the places I’ve stayed so I don’t seek out the PA parks. I should check out more of them, though, because it’s a nice discount when the park is okay.

Generally speaking, the only worthwhile memberships for me were the state parks. I’ve got a Texas State Park pass and a Georgia State Park pass and they were very much worth the money, might even be more so, since I’ve got months left on both. Live and learn, right?

I can’t believe I haven’t stayed in a single national park — what kind of camper am I??? — but they’re typically more restrictive about dogs than state parks, and I’ve really quite enjoyed discovering the state parks. Still, that might be a goal for Year Two. 🙂

I budgeted $900/month for campground charges, figuring an average of $30/night. If I stayed at KOAs and independent campgrounds or even some of the more expensive state parks, I’d be breaking that budget on a regular basis. As it is, however, my blend of campgrounds and driveways kept me under budget every month. The closest I came was $826 in April, from paying for my two week stay at Cedar Key in May.

I budgeted $400/month for gas and fuel (propane, too) and I came in under budget on that, as well. My grocery budget, though… yeah, not so good. Eating the way I eat — heavy on vegetables and protein, almost non-existent on breads, pasta, grains — is not cheap. Now that I can’t buy in bulk and store leftovers in my freezer, I’m spending more on food than I want to.

The dogs were also way over budget. No surprise, there, but ouch. Having two aging dogs is not the kind of thing where you want to look at the dollars. Even hiding some of their food costs in my grocery budget, I spent over $300/month on the dogs. I’d budgeted $90. Yep, the dogs cost $10/day.

Health insurance and care, internet, auto and RV insurance, the storage unit, taxes… none of those were surprising numbers to me, although they do add up. Life in the van is definitely less expensive than it was in my house, but I really had hoped I’d have a book or two released by now, though, so that’s not so good.

But there, another goal for Year Two — publish books! And visit national parks. And continue spending ridiculous amounts of money on the dogs, because really, the only way that number goes down is bad, so the positive side of breaking my budget on pet care is definitely that I have two dogs that I adore still and that’s good news.

Speaking of which, I am out of dog food, so need to make a run to a grocery store, unfortunately half an hour away. Time to get going!

Bald Eagle State Park

16 Sunday Jul 2017

Posted by wyndes in Campground, Personal

≈ 2 Comments

Bald Eagle state park lake view

Sunrise over the lake

I spent one night at Bald Eagle State Park, and I would happily have stayed there longer. Good walks, good sites, and a great feel to it. It feels very Californian of me to say that it just had good energy, but it did. The campground was almost full, but it didn’t feel crowded, it felt happy. I could smell the smoke from people’s campfires at dawn, because people were really camping there. It wasn’t a parking lot, it was a vacation.

I did very little there: rolled in around 3PM on a day hot enough that I needed to run the AC for the dogs, so I took a couple nice low-energy walks in late afternoon and evening, then a longer walk at dawn the next morning, worked on Grace, then headed out by 10AM to visit my aunt and uncle.

My aunt and I had a nice day wandering around State College, visiting the ArtsFest and the BookFest and the arboretum. (Best part: the arboretum, it’s the perfect time of year to admire plants, and I should have taken more pictures!) I’ll be here in their driveway for a couple of days, with ambitious plans to bake granola, see how my Amazon Prime Day toy works, and keep working on Grace. And, of course, have fun spending time with relatives I don’t see nearly often enough!

Black Moshannon State Park

14 Friday Jul 2017

Posted by wyndes in Anxiety, Campground, Grace

≈ 5 Comments

Black Moshannon State Park

An ocean of ferns

Bugs.

Allergies.

Rain.

No internet or cell connection, except for fleeting moments of a moving Verizon signal that disappears almost immediately.

No water at the campsite.

Ten miles up a steep and winding road, away from grocery stores and other conveniences.

At $31/night, not cheap. In fact, by my standards, reasonably expensive.

And did I mention the bugs? Not just mosquitoes and ticks, but these incredibly annoying buzzing flies that dive bomb my head, seeming to try to get into my ears. I told myself I was being unduly paranoid, that it was just the way they fly, but after multiple unpleasant walks, really, I think they’re trying to get into my ears. They are madly annoying!

Speaking of paranoia, based mostly on the posted signs, I’ve been worried about four things here.

In order of probability:

    1) Poison ivy
    2) Lyme disease
    3) Someone scolding me for walking my dog in the wrong place
    4) Encountering a black bear

In order of danger/potential damage:

    1) Lyme disease
    2) Encountering a black bear
    3) Poison ivy
    4) Someone scolding me for walking my dog in the wrong place

In order of how much I’ve worried:

    1) Someone scolding me for walking my dog in the wrong place
    … tied for a distant 2nd, poison ivy, Lyme disease, black bears.

Seriously, sometimes my brain annoys me. I suppose it’s good that I’m not obsessing on black bears, but the posted pet rules say there are off-limit areas for pets. The only one I’ve seen is the playground. On every walk, between trying to wave off bugs and cover my ears, I’ve wondered whether I’ve missed a sign and some ranger is going to appear out of nowhere and tell me I shouldn’t be where I am. And if one did? So what! It’s not like it would result in days of itching or emergency room visits or a life-changing, debilitating illness. And yet… I worry anyway. What a waste of energy.

The park is actually beautiful. The campground is thoroughly forested, the kind of place where you can easily envision black bears and other wildlife happily roaming. A short walk away, there’s a dark lake with a sandy beach and a swimming area marked with buoys. Kayak rentals are $12/hour, $10 if you pay cash. On my first day here, I thought it would be a great place to bring my niece next summer, but then the bugs started attacking and I thought better of it. But I do think in a different mood or in a different time of year, I’d like this place a lot more. Maybe just a better bug repellent would do it.

And the campsites are nice — flat, graveled, spacious, with trees separating one from the next. Mid-week, even in July, it’s pretty empty. I can see another camper from my spot, but just one. I’ve got no next-door or across-the-road neighbors. Clean showers, with lots of hot water and great water pressure.

But the best part of it, for me, has been hours spent seriously working on Grace. Rainy days + unpleasant walks + no internet = plenty of time spent staring at the computer screen. I haven’t yet admitted to you, oh darling readers, that at the end of June I went back to the beginning and started over, (I know, I know), but I have a solid first three chapters on this fresh start now. I’ve also written probably several thousand words that I won’t be using, but they answer questions and fix the plot holes that have nagged at me for years. It feels like progress and even if it’s not really progress, it feels like satisfying work. Yes, someday I’d like all this work to actually produce a product that will earn me some money, but it feels good to be immersed in the story anyway.

And now back to it!

Duck, North Carolina

07 Friday Jul 2017

Posted by wyndes in Food, Personal, Travel

≈ 6 Comments

I’ve been meaning to blog every day this week. In fact, I think I’ve started a post every morning! But something always gets in the way and the something is always really nice. That’s because I’m currently on a family vacation in Duck, North Carolina, with my brother, SIL, niece, nephew, and SIL’s aunt and uncle. My SIL’s sister is supposed to be here, too, but she hasn’t made it yet. Maybe later today. Plus, my stepsister and her family live nearby, and my dad and stepmom are staying with them, so I’m being very sociable.

beach with bird

The house we’re staying at is easy walking distance to a very nice beach and equally easy walking distance to an extremely cute town with a great boardwalk. It has a swimming pool, plus three sides with sometimes-sunny balconies. I’ve got about a zillion pictures of gorgeous beach skies that I could post, plus almost as many appealing food photos. Well, okay, maybe not a zillion food photos.

And if you’re not interested in food, you can probably skip the rest of this post! I’ve been doing the cooking, which has, of course, been very fun for me. I was going to just write about my favorite meal, but then I couldn’t decide which one it was. But for my own future reference, here’s what we ate:

On our first night, I grilled chicken marinated in yogurt and garlic and honey, and served it with quinoa mixed with goat cheese and green onion. We also had a raw veggie tray that included red, yellow, and orange peppers, radishes, broccoli, carrots, pea pods, and cherry tomatoes.

On our second night, we had flank steak, corn-on-the-cob, roasted potatoes, and green salad. I also made two appetizers: quinoa cheese puffs, served with sour cream; and caprese skewers, i.e. a cherry tomato, basil, and mozzarella on a toothpick, topped with a balsamic reduction.

On the 4th of July, we went to my stepsister’s house for burgers and hot dogs. I brought a chick pea salad with cherry tomatoes, parsley, and a honey vinaigrette; a quinoa salad with red onion, black beans, corn, cilantro, and a yogurt-based dressing; deviled eggs; and some more of the caprese skewers. Oh, and a blueberry-covered goat cheese, with gluten-free crackers.

On Wednesday, we ate grilled pork chops with a garlic-mint-salt rub; roasted potatoes; salad of mixed greens, tomato, cucumber, and goat cheese with a balsamic fig vinaigrette; and the leftover quinoa and chickpea salads. Appetizer of crackers, goat cheese, and fig spread.

Thursday night, we had make-your-own tacos with possible fillings of shredded chicken cooked with salsa, flank steak, grilled pork, black beans, red onions, guacamole, salsa, lettuce, tomatoes, green onions, cilantro, sour cream, and shredded cheese. Oh, and I made a salad of tomatoes, mozzarella and a reduction of the balsamic fig vinaigrette. And I made a tray of nachos, too. That was meant to be an appetizer, but it didn’t really work out that way.

tacos

Today I’ll be making some vegan chili and some gluten-free cornbread and we’ll finish off some of the salads. And I think maybe I’ll make the quinoa cheese puffs again, although we’re out of shredded cheese. But I’d like some shredded cheese for the chili, so I guess I’m headed off to the store.

Every day has been busy. I’ve gone to the beach every day, most often with Zelda, but once with both dogs, and once entirely sans dogs, which was fun because I got to actually go swimming and the water was perfect. There was a parade on the 4th, live music last night, outings for ice cream more than once. I’ve wandered around the town with my brother, my father, and my SIL, all on separate occasions. I’ve floated in the pool, and I’ve also played in the pool. My nephew and I were having float races yesterday, including one where we were each holding a dog and I laughed so hard I almost fell into the water. Lots of walking, lots of water, lots of sun, lots of cooking, lots of family. Not a lot of time for blogging or writing, but that’s okay — next week I’ll be back at it!

This week has been golden, glorious summer. And now it’s time to go swim!

Happy Birthday, Serenity

29 Thursday Jun 2017

Posted by wyndes in Personal, RV, Serenity, Travel, Vanlife

≈ 6 Comments

A Winnebago Travato

Serenity at the garden house

Technically, of course, the van’s birthday must be a couple months ago. She would have been built in Iowa, shipped to Florida, and she sat on the dealer’s lot for at least a couple of weeks before I signed the papers. But one year ago today was the day she came home with me.

Of course, pretty much the very next day, I brought her straight back to the dealer and said, “Um, I don’t think water is supposed to pour in through the roof when it rains,” but that’s neither here nor there.

It would still be close to another month before I closed on my house and started traveling, but here’s what I’ve learned in my first year of #vanlife.

1) Temperature control is a perpetual challenge. It easily gets about ten degrees hotter inside the van than it is outside, which is lovely when it’s 60 degrees outside and not fun at all when it’s 80 degrees outside. I’ve learned some tricks — always put the window covers up and the shades down, close the bathroom doors when the AC is on — but long-term, I also need to invest in some curtains to close off the cab and some USB fans to improve air flow. And I need to plan my travels better so I can avoid places/times where the heat is dangerous for the dogs.

2) Campgrounds are dirty. The dogs don’t care. I do. I’m getting better at acceptance, but clean sheets have become a luxurious treat.

3) I don’t need much stuff, but the stuff I do own grows to fill the available room. It feels like a continual process of pruning. I did expect by this time that all the vintage china I was traveling with would have broken and I’d be needing new dishes, but not so much. I think I broke one plate and a bowl, and I definitely gave away a few dishes to empty out the cupboards, but the china has worked out otherwise. I like it very much.

4) I also expected that my eating habits would change, but I didn’t know how. It turns out that I eat a lot of cold, fairly simple food — roast beef rolled up with arugula, turkey topped with artichoke spread, that kind of thing. Also, a lot more eggs. But the longer I live in the van, the less limited I feel about what I can cook. I’m not sure I could do a Thanksgiving dinner — it would have to be a pretty small turkey, and the scheduling involved in serving all the food hot would be tough to pull off — but short of that, I could probably cook some serious meals. If I wasn’t worried about heating up the van, that is.

5) Time flies by when you’re living in a van. I really can’t believe it’s been a year. I thought back then that by now I might have figured out where I want to live and be ready to settle down somewhere — a year sounds like plenty of time to be living on the road, doesn’t it? — but I’m nowhere close. I’ve enjoyed my month of mostly sitting still, but I’m looking forward to many more of my cautious adventures.

I guess I don’t have any particularly profound insights. A few more: birds are cool and worth watching; I like sunrises better than sunsets; grocery stores are pretty much the same across the country; and I should stop waiting to do things (like put up curtains) with the idea that I’ll do them when I get “home” because I am home.

Okay, one insight (still not terribly profound, I expect): a year ago, I plunged into the unknown. I was excited and I was scared. I scurried around with lists and to-do items and schedules and structure to try to cope with the vast looming uncertainties. I avoided thinking too far ahead even as I contemplated destinations like the Grand Canyon and Mount Rushmore. I was sure that there would be good parts and bad parts, and I tried not to focus too much on the possibility of the bad parts. In fact, when I made the decision, I wrote, “But ten years from now, I want to look back and think, “Wow, you might have been crazy, but you sure were brave.”

I wasn’t crazy. This journey, this life, this year has been amazing. It’s not always comfortable and it’s not always easy and yes, stuff has gone wrong and there have been some bad days along the way, but the good has so outweighed the bad.

My aunt sent me a quote this week with a note that said, “This is you.” The quote was from Howard Thurman, who wrote: Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and go out and do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.

Yes.

I didn’t know a year ago that that’s what I was doing, and that this journey would be as much about celebrating my breakfast every morning and walking three miles a day as it would be about visiting national parks — well, actually more about the former, since I have yet to set foot in a single national park, ha — but yes. Letting go of my house and my stuff and my routine has been like waking up to a life of wonder and appreciation.

It wasn’t the best decision of my life (which is an honor forever and always reserved to my response when faced with an unplanned, terribly-timed pregnancy), but it comes really, really close.

So, yeah, Happy Birthday, Serenity! May we celebrate many more together.

The garden house

26 Monday Jun 2017

Posted by wyndes in Anxiety, Writing

≈ 6 Comments

Still at the garden house, still writing, still frustrated with Noah. I pulled out all the chapters from his point-of-view and read them in order, trying to decide whether his characterization works to lead him to the actions that he simply will not take in the chapter I’m trying to write. They don’t, not quite, and I found lots of things to change, so I’m working on some revisions. But it feels like progress, so that’s good, even if it’s still not finalizing a first draft.

I had an enormously complicated dream last night, the kind with lots of characters, lots of confusing activity, and all the feels. Mostly it felt stressful and worrying, not quite a nightmare, but closing in on one. Toward the end of the dream, I had to choose the right pair of shoes from a pile of them, all impractical. I knew I had to find a pair that fit right, that would be comfortable for lots of walking as we escaped from whatever disaster we were escaping from, but I had to hurry. So I grabbed a pair, hoping for the best, and headed toward the place where I was meeting the people I would try to escape with. On the way, I passed through a ballroom, crowded with boxes and bags and piles of luggage. There was a guy there, dressed like a workman. He had a Jamaican accent and gold teeth and he said to me, with a bright smile, “Those shoes are made for dancing.” I said, “Is that an invitation?” He said, “Of course,” and held out his arms, so I stepped into them and danced with him. For the first moment, I was stiff and tense, and then I relaxed and let him whirl me around the room, closing my eyes and trusting that he wouldn’t let me stumble or trip. He didn’t. It felt like floating.

When I woke up, I was smiling. I am pretty sure the message from my subconscious is to stop worrying about getting the right shoes (i.e., making exactly the right choices) and to relax and dance. Good job, subconscious. It has definitely made for a lovelier Monday morning.

Bedroom with sloped ceiling

My imaginary future bedroom

Just one of the reasons why I would have to write a lot of successful books before my imaginary future bedroom could become mine.

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Frances Slocum Redux

23 Friday Jun 2017

Posted by wyndes in Grace, Movies, Personal, Randomness, Rant

≈ 2 Comments

I’m watching the rain out the window right now, trying to motivate myself to be productive. So far it’s not working. Watching rain is nicely hypnotic, but it makes me feel more like sleeping than writing. And unfortunately, I did a really, really stupid thing this week — I read A Lonely Magic.

I try not to be mean to myself, but every time I stare at my Grace file now, the mean words start running through my head. I need Noah to get to work. He’s got things to do. Instead, my imagination wants to play in Sia Mara. Worse, I want to go back and fix things in ALM, instead of writing the next book! Sigh.

When I wasn’t trying to write, I had a really nice week. It included video game time with my nephew — I’m a little obsessed with a game called SkyForge right now; camping and kayaking with my niece; and much berry picking with my brother. We’ve hit the stage of the summer where the berries are getting ripe faster than they can be eaten. If I had a bigger freezer, I’d be filling it with an easy summer’s worth of berries. As it is, I did look at the blueberries on my counter last night and think, “nope, no more berries.” Not sure that’s ever happened to me with blueberries before. Fortunately, my blueberry ennui wore off by morning.

Camping with my niece was lovely. We spent two nights up at Frances Slocum State Park, which is a park I visited last summer, including a stop at the cemetery where a few dozen of our ancestors, including some of her great-great-great-grandparents, are buried. There’s something inherently romantic, I think, in the idea of great-great-great-grandparents, but I had a weird little moment of shock when I realized that my niece is entirely a child of the 21st century. The 20th century is just as much history to her as the 19th. So obvious, I know, but still…

Frances Slocum State Park

Most of our “camping” time was really more like cozy, hanging-out-in-a-tiny-house time. We read our books, we played on our iPads, and we watched movies* — not exactly the campfire – tent – backpack scenario. But we did go for a nice walk, and we kayaked, and she came home with eleven or possibly twelve bug bites, so it was close enough to camping.

But this is not really close enough to writing, so time for me to get back to the real words. If I stare at my file for long enough, Noah is bound to do something, right?

*I must add a teeny-tiny vent about Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them: Spoilers Ahead.

WTF? Obviously, it’s not the first time JK Rowling has written about abused children, but the ending left me… horrified. And then creeped out. Yay, happy bakery, but what the hell happens to the little girl left traumatized and cowering under a desk? I think my niece was disappointed by my response — she likes the movie — but I told her that sometimes being a mom gets in the way of appreciating movies where children are treated badly. And that one — just ugh. Despite my spoiler warning, I’m reluctant to say exactly what happens, but suffice to say I disapproved. Vehemently.

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