Memories

15 Monday Oct 2018

Posted by wyndes in Bartleby, Grief, Personal, Randomness

After several days inside my brother’s house, I moved back out to the van last night. My cozy tiny house is feeling very tiny this morning. And it’s astonishing how quickly I started taking hot water for granted. I began to wash my cutting board this morning without thinking and then remembered, right, the water pump is not on, so no water. And I could turn the water pump on with the push of a button, but the water wouldn’t be hot, because I didn’t turn the water heater on. Ah, yes, life in a van.

But I’m happy to be back in my van, even if it is feeling more than cozy (read: cramped and inconvenient), because it is also feeling homey and peaceful.

I read some sad news on Facebook, that bastion of unwelcome tidings, a few days ago. Honestly, I’ve started to dread looking at FB — it feels like a magnet for misery, at least in my feed. My immediate response was to pick up my phone and make a call, but my secondary response has been to spend a lot of time browsing my own history. Photographs and journals and blog posts, some lovely reminders of times past.

Flowers in Arcata

It made me resolved to take more pictures of human beings, though. I have lots of sunrises, lots of flowers, lots of scenery, and lots and lots of dog pictures.

My dogs looking cute together.

But not very many people pictures.

I don’t think I need them, exactly — I have the memories and sometimes I have the stories. This one is one of my favorites, but I do wish I’d written out the “But you have to wear a mask” part, because the memory makes me smile, but the details are lost. That’s okay, though, I still have the smile.

I dreamed last week that Bartleby’s new owner needed to give B back to me, because his circumstances had changed and he couldn’t take care of B anymore. He passed him over to me and B was matted and skinny, really skinny, and I felt horrible because obviously somehow I’d given B to people who neglected him. But then I was so happy to have him back! He snuggled into my arms and I promised him an immediate bath with a long blow-dry afterwards (he loved the blow-dryer) and plenty of food.

Then I woke up.

In a way it was a great dream, but it ruined my day. I told Suzanne during our phone call that death felt like that to me, in general, like every day you have to keep waking up into a reality that’s just not the one you wanted to wake up in. And there’s no way to make the universe take you back to the reality you had yesterday.

But that’s the nature of time, anyway. One of the stories that I remembered this weekend — no record of it except my own memory — was when Suzanne and Greg and R and I went out to Chinese food in Oakland when R was about two, maybe three. Greg walked with R, pointing out various things in the windows, and… well, conversing with him. Lots of adults aren’t really capable of having conversations with a toddler. They talk at the toddler, but they’re not about the listening so much. Greg listened to R, answered his questions, had a real discussion with him, and then told me my kid was amazing. Toddler R was amazing, and even though I am lucky enough to have Adult R in my life, I do sometimes miss Toddler R. But Greg was amazing, too, and I’m going to miss him.

Goodbye, senormoment. I wish you’d had the time to organize those photos.

Best of February 2018

02 Friday Mar 2018

Posted by wyndes in Bartleby, Best of

≈ 2 Comments

Foggy water scene

My friend A asked me last week whether I’d had a dry day yet. I looked at her, a little puzzled, and she said, “Tears?” Ah. The answer was “No.” Losing a dog is unlike any loss I’ve ever had. I think I do fine when I’m with other people — I have no trouble making conversation, going places, interacting — but when I’m alone in the van… it’s just very quiet without Bartleby.

Which makes writing a “best of” post a little problematic. I want to remember all the good things during the month: conversations with friends, nice driveways, a fantastic summer roll dinner with C & co., writing with J & A, visiting R in Sarasota and eating dinner outside with Z sleeping under the table, lovely Valentine’s Day yellow roses that made me smile…

But the honest truth is that I spent a lot of February 2018 feeling overwhelmed with sad. The best part about it is that it’s over.

Making plans

20 Tuesday Feb 2018

Posted by wyndes in Bartleby, Campground, Randomness

≈ 8 Comments

I was feeling gloriously happy this morning — the medical escalator came to a screeching halt yesterday, and I was ever so ready to get off and get moving! — and then I got an email from my doctor’s office with a new appointment for March 13th. Three weeks away! sigh But I am not going to fuss about it. It is what it is. I did consider calling and canceling — I’m not sure why that appointment needs to be in person, except for the general medical need to follow-up face-to-face when firm cautions are involved — but I’m not going to worry about it.

I’ve realized a couple things about my next couple of months, anyway. The first is that without B, I don’t have such an imperative need to get out of Florida. He was miserable when it was too hot. Even without the congestive heart failure, he was a pudgy little guy with a thick coat of black fur, and the heat was hard on him. Even in 70 degree weather, he’d be panting. Zelda — white dog, thinner coat, skinny and energetic — doesn’t mind the heat nearly as much. And one of the big issues about the heat was that I needed to be able to leave B in the van while I walked Zelda, so I always needed to be able to have the AC running. That’s no longer a problem. I wish it was. I’d much rather be worrying about B and trying to make him comfortable than living without him. But again, it is what it is.

The second thing isn’t a realization as much as it is a hard look at my timeline: I need to be back in Florida in the middle of May for R’s graduation. That gives me two months. And I don’t want to spend them driving. Long driving days are exhausting and time-consuming. There are places I wanted to go — I’d rather be spending spring in the northeast than the south — but I don’t want to be rushing around, spending hours on the road and worrying about getting to my destinations on a schedule that doesn’t give me enough time to enjoy them (and to write a book along the way!)

So my current plan, such as it is, is to relax and enjoy the south. I’ll have a few more weeks in Florida and then I’ll do some exploring in Georgia and maybe South Carolina, maybe even back to Arkansas, and then I’ll swing back into Florida for the first part of May. And then May 20th or so, I will head north, taking my time about it.

And after a stressful couple of weeks, I am relaxing and enjoying my day today. I’m in Lake Griffin State Park, which is a place I’ve stayed before, but I like it more every time I’m here, I think. It’s a small park, close enough to a busy road that you never stop hearing road noise, but I don’t mind that. This morning I took Zelda on a walk down a path that we’ve never gone on before, because of warnings about mud. I could hear the traffic, but being surrounded by nature, breathing fresh air, seeing greenery and giant palmettos and pretty yellow flowers scattered across dead brown leaves on the ground felt magical. Like I’d discovered a primeval swamp in the backyard of a strip mall. And then we reached a place on the trail where the mud was thick and black and goopy and Zelda decided she wanted no part of it. She dragged me back the way we came. Now I’m sitting in the van, windows open, listening to traffic but also birds and breezes in the leaves and a far distant barking dog, and watching a yellow butterfly. It’s a beautiful day for writing many words. Here’s hoping lots of them are on Grace!

Last night’s sliver of moon

I would rather not

17 Saturday Feb 2018

Posted by wyndes in Bartleby, Personal

≈ 6 Comments

About eighteen or nineteen years ago, the director of Rory’s preschool caught me on the day they distributed school pictures, and as I opened the envelope, said, sort of apologetically, a little anxiously, “I hope you don’t mind his picture, it’s sort of… well, it’s not really… we usually try… but…”

And I interrupted her with my mouth dropping open, clutching the photos to my chest, and saying, “Oh, it’s so him! I love it!” He looked both disheveled and mildly exasperated, with his hand against his head, like he was just about to roll his eyes and tell the photographer what he thought about the whole business.

Oh, I bet I have the picture on my computer. Yep, it was this one:

It was so him. And the director knew it, too, so she gave me a big smile and we admired it together and discussed what a fantastic photo it was and also probably a little of what a fantastic kid he was, because that was one of our favorite topics of discussion. Well, one of my favorite topics of discussion, and she was usually willing to join in.

I was reminded of this story today, because I picked up B’s ashes, and… well, some background first.

When B showed up in my backyard, I called him Mystery Dog. For a while, it looked like that would become his name but it never felt quite right. My nephew suggested Bartlebee, after a character in a book he was reading, which in turn reminded me of a Melville short story, “Bartleby the Scrivener.”

I didn’t remember the story all that well, but I knew the character came and stayed. And that he had a line, his response to all requests, which I thought was, “I would rather not.” (It’s actually “I would prefer not to” but I’ve had it wrong all along.) Mystery Dog promptly became Bartleby. It fit so well. When B was dying, the vet asked about his name and I told her that story. And, of course, she also heard everything else I said to him as he was going. So I hope she knew how much I would love this:

“I would rather not”

When I saw it, I burst into tears. But they weren’t bad tears, and I will treasure it. Not the ashes, which I will scatter somewhere appropriate, because carrying ashes around indefinitely feels unhealthily obsessive to me, but definitely the box and always the reminder.

Life without B… well, I’m getting used to it. Slowly. It’s strange to discover how much he dictated our schedule and routine. More than once, I’ve forgotten to feed Z her dinner until quite late, because she doesn’t remind me. B usually spent the half hour from 5 to 5:30 staring at me intently, trying to psychically convey how nice it would be if I got up and got him his dinner right away. He was a very precise timekeeper in general. At 11, it was time to be outside. At 3:30, time for a chicken strip. And he needed to be lifted on and off the bed, so was often my motivation for getting up and moving. Without him… well, my life is easier, I suppose, but so much emptier. He was a very big presence for such a little dog.

In other news, I’m still hanging out in Florida. I’m caught in what a friend described as a medical escalator, where one thing leads to another thing leads to another thing. At this point, I am very much hoping that the last step on the escalator will be a doctor’s appointment in early March. Google actually managed to reassure me today, when I finally gave in to the impulse to do some research, so that was nice. Doesn’t usually work that way!

And I am definitely counting my blessings. Yesterday I sat in a waiting room with my dad for an almost absurdly long time — I think he probably wound up in there for about four hours. And the television was playing infomercials! Hell. Except a young couple in the waiting room had time pressures. And also, they were young, which, in context, probably meant they were not there for routine care. And, of course, when a doctor is running hours behind schedule for a minor procedure, it’s probably because someone else’s minor procedure has turned major. All in all, it reminded me of how very lucky I am, to be reasonably healthy, to have such a flexible life, to have people who love me taking care of me.

Bartleby

06 Tuesday Feb 2018

Posted by wyndes in Bartleby, Grief

≈ 10 Comments

I hate the euphemisms — put down, put to sleep, even euthanize. The reality was, I would have stayed forever with his warm head cuddled against my shoulder, stroking his soft fur, whispering love into his goofy ears. But he was slowly suffocating, fighting the fluid that was filling his lungs and heart, and I couldn’t bring myself to be so cruel. So I let him go. Helped him go.

When the vet was injecting him with the sedative, I was stroking him and telling him what a good dog he was and then I stopped myself and I told him the truth. “Actually, B,” I said, “You peed in places you shouldn’t, and sometimes you snapped and snarled at people, and you were very stubborn about refusing to learn any commands, even the easy ones. So I’m not sure I can say you were a good dog exactly. But you were very good at loving me.” I think that’s probably the only skill a good dog really needs.

Today is the sixth anniversary of my friend Michelle’s death. As his gasping breaths finally slowed down, I told him to find Michelle and take her to a beach. I would like to think that they are there right now, and that B’s knees don’t hurt and he doesn’t get tired after three minutes of running and he isn’t scared to play with toys and sticks. And if he wants to go swimming, that she has a warm towel waiting for him.

I will miss him so. I already do.

The beginning of a roll in the sand…

A too familiar parking lot

05 Monday Feb 2018

Posted by wyndes in Bartleby

≈ 6 Comments

I called the vet at 7:07 AM this morning and much to my surprise, someone answered. Remarkably cheerfully, too, considering how early it was. He gave me — well, not quite an appointment. But the information that the vet would be in at 9.

By 9:05, maybe even a little earlier, they had Bartleby in the back on oxygen and an IV. Oxygen is remarkably expensive considering how readily available you’d think it would be. By 9:15, they’d upped the time that they thought he’d need to be on it from an hour (billed in 15-minute increments) to an open-ended “let’s see how it goes,” also adding a slew of other charges to his bill. I don’t even care.

I really thought I was going to be all grown-up and responsible about the economics of having a dying dog and an uncertain income, but nope. If they said, “It’s going to cost $1000 and give him another month of good life,” I’d hand them my credit card without another word. Emphasis on the good life, though. Another month where he struggles to breathe and turns away from his food will break my heart on an hourly basis.

And, of course, they really can’t know what that $1000 would buy and neither can I. But two days ago, B was still wagging his tail and kissing my face, and last night, he was willing to gobble down some chicken even if his regular food didn’t interest him, so today, it’s oxygen and x-rays and medication and whatever $$s it takes to give me a chance of some more snuggles and tail wags.

The other day I looked up the difference between worry and fear. It sounds like something I should know, right? It sounds like the difference ought to be obvious. But I wasn’t sure it was. Because I’m not worried — I already know the outcome, how can I worry about something that is inevitable? — but I am afraid. Afraid that I will make the wrong choices, that he will suffer more than he should or live less than he should. The internet let me know that fear is involuntary, but worry is a choice. So I am choosing not to worry, to trust that I will make the right decisions, that I will know what to do when the time comes. But I am still afraid.

And very, very sad.

In 90% of my pictures of B, he is sleeping adorably. This morning, they all just looked a little too… peaceful.

Grace Lake

23 Wednesday Aug 2017

Posted by wyndes in Bartleby, Food, Randomness, Travel, Vanlife, Zelda

≈ 1 Comment

So we were walking along, climbing a hill, on our way to a trail that would lead us to a place called Grace Lake, which I wanted to go to purely because it was going to amuse me to write about visiting Grace Lake instead of writing Grace. I was planning the blog post in my head, about how even though I’m being a terrible writer, I’m having lots of fun experiences.

We’d just seen the eclipse and even though we weren’t in totality, it was pretty damn cool. It hadn’t gotten dark, but the light had definitely changed and there’d been a noticeable drop in temperature. But it was warming up already and the sun was beautifully golden. Nothing like an eclipse for making one appreciate sunshine. There was no real path to where we were going, so we were making our way along rocky ground, through scrubby bushes.

Blueberry bushes, in fact.

I’d gotten out in front with the dogs (three of them, all off-leash), probably because they didn’t care about blueberries and I, having spent hours already this summer picking blueberries, wasn’t all that excited about discovering the random leftover ripe berry on bushes that were mostly over for the season.

I turned and looked back. It was so incredibly beautiful — the mountains, the clear sky, the pine trees — that I pulled out my phone and took the above picture.

And then Reino (in the red shirt in said photo) straightened up. In an absolutely casual voice, he said, “Bear.”

I waited for him to continue the sentence. Bare what?

And then I followed his gaze, out across the hill in the other direction.

Oh. Right. Bear.

No, no, I mean, BEAR!

I did not take a picture. It didn’t even occur to me until later, actually.

Instead, I dropped to a crouch and put a hand on Zelda’s collar. She, of course, was right next to me. I held out a hand for Bartleby, who, upon the indication that a treat might be in store, promptly joined me. He wasn’t overly put-out by the fact that instead of giving him a treat, I grabbed his collar, too.

And then I realized that I didn’t have their leashes. I’d been carrying B up the hill before I set him down to take a picture, so P had my bag with their leashes inside.

So I waited. It felt like a very long time before P made it up the hill to me, but I’m sure it was about a minute. I think we were all torn between wanting to watch the bear and wanting to get the hell out of its way. If it had been going in another direction, we probably would have stood there and admired it, just like we’d been admiring the eclipse. An incredible feat of nature, right? But since it was trundling toward us, or rather toward the blueberry bushes that we were standing among, getting out of its way seemed like a very good idea.

It wasn’t until we were moving away that I realized I was maybe a little scared. I didn’t feel scared, but I know you’re supposed to make noise when you’re around a bear — they don’t want to run into us anymore than we want to run into them. And with three people and three dogs, there was no way a bear would approach us if it realized we were there. All we needed to do was make sure it was as aware of us as we were of it and our encounter would get no closer.

In other words, we needed to sing.

But I could not think of a single song lyric. Seriously, not a one. No Christmas melodies, no hymns, no pop ear worms, nothing. I had nothing. Total adrenaline brain fog.

Fortunately, my singing was not required. But we never did make it to Grace Lake.

Other things I want to remember:

Last Saturday, I met up with some internet friends and played games. (Betrayal At House On The Hill and Fluxx, specifically). It was very fun. I had the occasional moment of thinking that I really didn’t know the people I was with, but actually it felt like I’d known them forever, that I was a casual friend who lived around the corner and dropped in for games all the time, instead of being a real-life stranger.

On Sunday, we drove up to Stevens Pass. P is volunteering at Stevens Lodge this week, basically a hostel-like place for Pacific Crest Trail hikers to stay. It’s the first time it’s been open in the summer — usually it’s a ski lodge — so she didn’t really expect anyone to show up. Reino and I came up to keep her company and watch the eclipse. But some hikers did show up, so we got to meet some people hiking the trail, which was cool. I don’t really understand the desire, personally. But it’s always fun to talk to people who are in the midst of an adventure.

Before the hikers showed up, I was wondering if I could make eggs Benedict in the hostel-style kitchen. Many, many years ago, it was the thing that I wanted to make — the reason I wanted to learn to cook. I spent several months trying, with some moderate successes, but eventually decided it was just too much of a pain. Hollandaise sauce is hard to get right, and poaching eggs is a pain, and the timing of getting a warm toasted English muffin, plus the sauce, plus Canadian bacon, plus the egg, all right at the same time — it was just too challenging. But I’d brought some gluten-free English muffins at a store in Seattle and I was… well, just wondering whether I could get it right now.

Answer: eh, not exactly. My Hollandaise was a little thick, because I didn’t have enough butter, and my eggs kept rolling off the muffins, which I think means they were not quite done enough. And I didn’t have Canadian bacon, so I used prosciutto. Also the gluten-free English muffins were terrible, so bad that I threw away the leftovers. And I dropped one egg on the floor (literally) and destroyed another one, so that it was more like an egg drop soup egg instead of a poached egg.

But! If you want an appreciative audience for non-successful cooking experiments, you should definitely find some PCT hikers. One was a vegetarian so he got spinach with his muffin and egg and hollandaise, and another was gluten-free and very tolerant about the horribleness of the English muffins. Both were perfectly happy with my rather messy Eggs Benedict.

And it was close enough to good that I’m definitely going to keep trying. The Hollandaise is a bit of a problem — how often do I really want to make something that requires an entire stick of butter? It’s not like I want to use eight tablespoons of sauce. But maybe I can figure out how to make it and freeze it.

And this has turned into a very random blog post, downright disjointed, but I am posting it anyway and then getting on with my day. I feel like I have much to do and not nearly enough hours in the day. Today’s plan includes another sous vide experiment, some room organizing, an attempt at a new screen door — possibly very simplified, because my complicated screen door plans have not been working at all, and yes, some time on Grace. Oh, and also publishing a short story. I made a cover for it yesterday and I’m posting it to Amazon today. Hmm, that’s what they call burying the lede. But yeah, I’ll write more about that when it’s actually available. 🙂

How did it get to be Wednesday already?

Brazos Bend

04 Saturday Mar 2017

Posted by wyndes in Bartleby, Campground, RV, Travel

≈ 7 Comments

I spent one night at Brazos Bend. I’m starting to believe that one night is not enough for any park, but it’s especially not enough for one as big as Brazos Bend. So many trails there! So many things to see! An observatory and a windmill and multiple lakes. I’m not even sure what I might have missed. Well, except for the alligators–based on the warnings, I should definitely have seen some alligator activity there, but our one morning there was cold so there was no sign of them. I don’t actually mind that, ha.

We did see vultures. Lots and lots of vultures. Zelda and I actually startled about a dozen of them while we were out walking. They’d been hidden in the brush and I hadn’t noticed them, but we were so close that the sound of their wings beating the air as they leaped into flight was incredibly loud, like a motor suddenly starting right next to you. I ducked, heart abruptly racing. Zelda was totally nonchalant, of course, but vultures are quite big when you’re only a few feet away from them.

The above plants were really loud, too. The wind blowing through them was a steady rustle, like… I don’t know what. Maybe I don’t have a comparison. They sort of sounded papery, but loud papery–like dozens of people all reading newspapers at once, making no other sounds, no clearing of breath or shifting weight, just shuffling their papers around. I’m not musical enough to be sure, but I bet there’s some musical instrument that could replicate the sound. It was so loud and steady that I’m fairly sure I’d never heard anything like it before, though.

Traveling like this is really making me feel incredibly ignorant. About so many things! Musical instruments at the moment, but birds, of course. Plant life. I have no idea what the above plants are, or the names of any of the wildflowers I’ve been admiring. The stars are an almost complete mystery, after I’ve found Orion’s Belt and hunted for the Little Dipper.

Then there’s geography. Having moved on from Brazos Bend (and back to Matagorda Bay), I’m currently sitting on the banks of the Colorado River. In Texas. This was completely mystifying to me until I finally googled and discovered that Texas’ Colorado River is not the same river as the Colorado River that runs through the Grand Canyon. (And, random new fact, Colorado means “red” in Spanish. I had no idea.)

And the proper way to murder mice. At this point, I’ve captured and released one, killed another, and spent about $45 in anti-mice devices. I have ultrasonic repellers plugged into three different outlets, traps baited with “mouse attractor” in two locations, peppermint oil sprayed along the floor, dryer sheets in the drawers, and the whole van smells like Christmas from the FreshCab mouse repellent in the kitchen. Seriously, I feel like I should be putting up lights and baking cookies. Meanwhile, there were still little mouse droppings on the kitchen counter this morning, so my unwelcome guests have not been sufficiently repelled yet. I haven’t braced myself to do the glue traps yet. They seem so unkind. But that’s next, I guess.

I’m a carnivore, so I really shouldn’t feel guilty about killing mice. I eat cows and pigs and chickens and fish, the death of a mouse should be trivial. But I really hate this. It makes me simultaneously sad and jumpy, paranoid that every sound is a mouse getting near my bed and that every sniffle is the first symptom of a mouse-born virus.

And Bartleby is so allergic to springtime that he is chewing himself raw, which is frustrating both of us. Me, as I try to stop him from chewing, and him, as he tries to soothe his own itching. That reminds me, though, that I have anti-itch shampoo for him–new goal for today, give the dog a bath!

Re-posting

14 Saturday Jan 2017

Posted by wyndes in Bartleby, Personal, Pets

≈ 2 Comments

Someday I will actually have my site working again. Today might even be the day. Why not think positive, right?

Reposting from Thursday, to see if this works:

Highs and Lows

It’s been a weird week. I started this post by saying that it had been a rough week, but then I thought back and realized that my week has had some really lovely things in it to counterbalance the roughness and perhaps I should focus on those.

B’s test results showed that his heart is enlarged and he is in the early stages of congestive heart failure. Before the vet appointment, I did my best to not dwell on the possibilities, to not prepare myself for bad news, which is totally unlike me. Turns out, hearing bad news is actually not any harder if you haven’t spent two weeks focusing on preparing for the bad news and in fact, might be easier. And in the long run, I’m no worse off now for not having spent two weeks dreading what I would hear and then hearing it.

But I’m still sad, of course. Everyone with a dog knows that our time with them is not going to be long enough, could never be long enough, but that doesn’t make it easier to find out that the time is going to be measured in months, not years. On the other hand, I now have heard a couple stories from people whose dogs did live years, so I’m not going to think too bleakly. We’re living one day at a time and today, B is a happy, cheerful, entertaining companion who is not suffering at all, just has a good excuse for his extreme laziness.

It was still a low to have gotten that news. But the high that balanced it was my nephew, seeing me, saying immediately, “I’m sorry,” and giving me a hug. Twenty-one years old and such a sweetheart, so kind. And my brother checking in three times during the long day of waiting for news, knowing I was worried and worrying with me. And my son, getting to hear his voice on the phone, when he told me how sorry he was, and and all the friends who called and texted and commented on Facebook and sent messages. I never felt alone in my sadness. I felt lucky to have so many people who were sad for and with me.

Of course, now I’m all tearful again, but that’s okay.

Another low–and high–was helping my dad help my sister move. I’ll skip the details on the low part, it’s not entirely my story and probably more personal than appropriate for semi-public consumption, but I feel/felt a remarkable amount of anger and frustration around the circumstances. I managed not to say anything totally unforgivable, (in my opinion, anyway) but I sure thought some unforgivable things. And you know how it goes with anger: when you’re furious, you wind up carrying it around with you, ruminating on it, brain going in circles of nastiness. It’s been tough to let go of those hostile feelings and it’s really darkened my days to be feeling them.

But within that, I got to spend some really nice time with my dad and stepmom, who are both such terrific and wonderful people. I feel incredibly lucky to have them in my life. My stepmom should probably be nominated for sainthood. My dad is so, so fortunate to have found her. And on two evenings this week, I got to escape to spend time with friends — the kind of friends who once upon a time, several years ago, were acquaintances with a single common interest, but who have become people I hope to have in my life forever, truly for the rest of my days.

For a long time in adulthood, it seemed impossible to make real friends — people through work drifted away when the work was done, people through school (either the kids or my own) never became more than friendly acquaintances, neighbors always stayed casual. And maybe that was all me, but it felt like it was part of adulthood, too, that everyone was having the same problem. But there are people in my life now who are like… ha, like characters in a Maeve Binchy novel. Unexpected friends. And I got to spend time with them this week, which really helped balance out the stress of the other stuff that I was going through.

Tomorrow it’s back to the vet, then this weekend I’m headed to Sarasota for a couple of days, which will include taking care of forms and financial aid paperwork. Next week, it’s back to central Florida to do some final van stuff, I hope–an oil change, tire rotation, and finally getting the fan fixed. And then… then!… finally adventures begin!

Highs and lows

12 Thursday Jan 2017