Category Archives: Zelda

27 Degrees

16 Monday Apr 2018

Posted by in Campground, Travel, Vanlife, Zelda

≈ 4 Comments

27 degrees.

27 DEGREES! Yesterday, I was walking Z, bundled up in leggings and long socks and blue jeans, with a long-sleeved shirt, two hooded sweatshirts, and my windbreaker, my gloves and scarf, and white flakes were falling out of the sky on me.

It was April 15th.

I feel that’s simply crazy. I would like to speak to the weather police and report Arkansas.

However, my campground is lovely.

And I really shouldn’t complain too much about the weather, because it could have been so much worse. On Friday, when I needed to decide whether to stay at Toad Suck or if I was going, where I should go, Zelda helped make the decision for me in the strangest way. She peed on the bed. And not trivially. It soaked all the way through the memory foam mattress topper and into the couch cushions below.

It was so odd! She seemed totally oblivious to it, too, so much so that I spent about ten minutes trying to figure out where this liquid could have come from if not her bladder. But it was definitely urine and since my clothes were dry while the sheets were sopping, it had to be hers. Not that I really thought I’d wet the bed completely without noticing, but she was so… not guilty, I guess?, that at least I considered the idea.

I googled, of course, in total worry, and discovered that middle-aged female dogs who have been spayed sometimes suffer from hormone-related urinary incontinence and that if it happens again, there are drugs that might help. I’m obviously keeping my fingers crossed that it doesn’t happen again — living with an obliviously incontinent dog in a van sounds like a nightmare. If it turns into a real problem, I want tile floors, a washing machine, and a bed with one of those liquid-resistant covers. But I will cross that bridge when I come to it, and meanwhile, Friday turned into an urgent laundry day, which meant a) I was leaving Toad Suck and b) I wasn’t going too far away.

Fortunately for me, that meant I didn’t try to make it to Devil’s Den State Park, which was high on my list of places to visit. As a result, I didn’t drive straight into the tornadoes that hit Arkansas Friday afternoon. I call that the positive side of spending two hours cleaning up dog pee. 🙂

Instead, I did laundry in Conway, then headed to Tyler Bend, a national park service campground on the Buffalo River. In nice weather, Tyler Bend is probably a pretty nice place — the trails looked very appealing. But it was not nice weather. It was rain and thunderstorms and more rain and more thunderstorms. And the campground didn’t have electric hook-ups, which I probably should have realized before I stopped there. It meant I was spending $16 for a parking spot, which is fine if you’re using your outside space wisely, but pretty darn pricey to be huddled in the van, wondering if the lightning will stop long enough to walk the dog.

On Saturday, I got back on the road. I really wasn’t sure where I wanted to go, but my dad had sent some mail to a Facebook friend for me, who was about an hour away. (Thanks, Dad! And thanks, Scott, for collecting it!) We met up for a nice lunch at the Ozark Cafe in Jasper. I was the pain-in-the-ass customer for them, unfortunately — there was only one thing on the menu that I thought would be safe, a salad, and when they brought it out, they’d put a dinner roll on top of it. Ouch. My gluten reaction is so ridiculous now that even that level of cross-contamination might have made me sick for several days but they were very nice about giving me a new salad.

After lunch, I started driving. I really didn’t know where I wanted to go or what I wanted to do. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed by my options and by the challenge of choosing between them. But I was worried about the weather. Not the tornadoes, because the radar map showed that I was safely to the west of that storm system, but the weather app was saying that it would be cold and rainy. I wanted electricity. And I wanted not to need to wake up the next morning and need to move again. Somehow that added up to me just continuing to drive, until I made it to Dam Site Lake Campground, past Eureka Springs.

The view from the van door.

I haven’t checked out the bathrooms, because it is ridiculously cold. And I have to say, not all campsites are created equal at this campground: mine is quite nice, but the one below would be a challenge…

underwater picnic table

(Pretty sure they’re not actually letting people take this campsite right now.)

But we are literally camped on a little island in the middle of a beautiful lake. It is approximately 700 steps to do a full loop of the campground, so our exercise is going to be walking in circles. Cold circles. But the view from the windows can’t be beat.

The wisdom of a feather

29 Thursday Mar 2018

Posted by in Campground, Randomness, Serenity, Zelda

≈ 5 Comments

I started counting the number of birds I could see from my window — like, right outside the window, fifteen feet away — and then something startled them and they swooped away and I realized that all the things I thought were dark leaves on the ground were actually small birds. I’m going to say — 200? 300? Not a countable number, that’s for sure. Sadly, they’ve now all moved on, but that’s probably a good thing for my productivity, since I find watching a flock of birds to be surprisingly compelling.

The last time I was in Arkansas, I got the very last space at an absolutely packed campground, Lake Catherine State Park. It was lovely, but it was spring break and it was crowded. Since this is Easter weekend, I decided that this time I’d be a little more proactive and I made a reservation at Lake Chicot State Park for five nights, taking me safely through Easter.

Ha.

I’m going to say that last year, lots of Arkansians looked at the weather, decided it was a glorious time to go camping, and headed for the park. It was a glorious time to go camping. This year, those same Arkansians looked at the weather and decided it was a fine time to hunker down in their houses. It so is.

The campground is pretty close to deserted and also pretty close to drowned. The puddles are like lakes. The lake is not overflowing its banks, fortunately, but there are a lot of semi-underwater trees. Even Zelda, who doesn’t usually mind getting wet, stood at the open door of the van this morning and then decided against her walk.

Fortunately, my deserted rainy underwater campground is also very green and pretty. Loads of trees, all in early-spring mode instead of tail-end of winter mode. Light green leaves and life bursting out all over the place. So I’m not finding it spooky, I’m finding it charming. I’m helped just a little in this by the fact that I checked out the bathrooms this morning and they are terrific. I might have to take a shower every day just because the bathrooms are so clean and nice and new.

I’m slightly less enthusiastic about the fact that even though I paid for a full hook-up site — not a thing I do very often, so in the nature of a pleasant luxury for a holiday weekend — the separate pieces (water, electric, sewer) are positioned poorly for Serenity. Technically I have all three, but I have to choose which one I want to be connected to at any given moment. My hose isn’t long enough to reach from the water outlet to the van intake while the power is plugged into both the van and the power outlet, and ditto the sewer. So it goes, I guess. At least I have access to all three if I need them.

And I’m feeling pretty fortunate on at least one of those three. When I got here yesterday, I couldn’t get the electricity to work. I called the campground host, who sent someone down to take a look, but it was raining and he couldn’t figure it out. They moved me to a different site, and then a third site, so it started to look like the problem was Serenity, not the campground. I was not so happy. I can live without power for a while if I have propane, but because I expected to have power, I hadn’t refilled the propane tank. Frustration!

And then, for no reason I could see, the electricity started working. Based on the symptoms, the smart people in the Travato Owners FB group suspect that I might have a problem with my Automatic Transfer Switch — maybe a loose connection? — but it’s working now, so I’m just counting my blessings and hoping for the best.

blue jay and cardinal feathers

Speaking of blessings, did you know that it is illegal to own most bird feathers? It still feels magical to find them, though, especially when they are truly beautiful. It would never have occurred to me that picking up a feather could be a crime, but after I’d picked up the above, I was remembering the park ethos — take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but footprints — and so I left them behind. Well, first I googled to find out whether something in nature would use leftover bird feathers — was I leaving them behind to simply decay and rot? — and that’s how I found out that feather possession is a crime. They probably will simply decay and rot, but I’m glad I got to appreciate them first.

Along the way, I stumbled across all the many spiritual meanings of blue jay feathers. I suspect the spiritual meaning of feathers is sort of a choose-your-own adventure spirituality, because wow, people sure have found a lot of deep significance in some poor bird having a misadventure. But I was pretty amused by one site that told me the meaning was to “Choose a couple of the many projects on your plate and complete them.” How perfect is that?

Time to listen to the wisdom of the feather!

Being angry

17 Saturday Mar 2018

Posted by in Personal, Zelda

≈ 14 Comments

I expressed my anger today. I was surprised at myself — I am someone who rarely admits to being angry, even when I am. I try to talk myself out of it, I tell myself it’s not justified, I look for the other person’s point-of-view… but this time, I was just too pissed off to not say something. I suppose that might be because it was on my son’s behalf, not my own, but still, it was unusual for me.

A few years ago, I did some intense therapy workshops where we did “anger exercises.” I was not good at them. Like, seriously, terrible. I mostly just cried. Completely incapable of defending myself with anger, even when it was justified. And even with this — I’m so angry that my hands are shaking, but I also feel like, oh, I shouldn’t have said anything, I should be more understanding, blah-blah-blah. But I think the therapist at my anger workshop would probably be patting me on the back and saying “good job.” Since she’s not here, I will do it myself. Good job, me!

The details: his paternal grandmother died this week. They were close; he’d spent a lot of time visiting her one-on-one. I would say that she was the grandparent that he knew best and certainly the one that he spent the most time with. His father and uncles scheduled her memorial service for two months away — on the weekend of his college graduation! This is a kid who was diagnosed as profoundly learning disabled at 8, who was maybe never going to learn to read because his disability was so severe. His college graduation is an achievement, a triumph. And they care so little about it, about him, that they plan her memorial service for the same time. Yeah, I’m angry.

When I started to write this post, I was actually going to write about how the nature noises of my campground — many nature noises! — have changed to neighbor noises with the weekend. Loads of people on spring breaks, I think. Lots and lots of little kids. I liked the nature noises, but I like watching all the kids on their bikes, too. This morning, when I took Zelda out for her walk, it was also the time when moms of toddlers take the toddlers out so everyone else can get some sleep. Toddlers can have southern accents. That should have been obvious, but wow, a toddler with a southern accent is adorable.

I’d intended to go for a good walk. I brought the camera and even the water bottle for the dog, so that we could hike for miles. But Zelda refused. It was both funny and charming. She sat down, head cocked, ears up, indicating quite clearly that she was not walking the way I was headed. I think the boardwalk probably has fewer interesting smells for her, since it’s above the wetlands and less used, but she was determined that what we were doing instead was wandering around the campground and letting her smell every interesting post. There are many posts. It was a slow walk. Not at all what I’d had in mind, but the toddlers made up for it.

Lost in Illinois

22 Sunday Oct 2017

Posted by in Campground, Travel, Zelda

≈ 5 Comments

Serenity surrounded by trees

I’m losing track of states and places and park names. Fortunately, my photo app had no such problem. It told me that I was currently in Wayne Fitzgerrell State Park in Barren, Illinois. I didn’t believe it: who names a town ‘Barren’? Doesn’t that seem like it’s just asking for people to be depressed about living there? So I double-checked with my phone and my phone thinks that I’m in Benton, Illinois.

So, yes, not only am I losing track of where I am, my phone and my photos app are equally confused. To make matters even more perplexing, if you search for Barren, Illinois in Apple Maps, it shows you Benton, Illinois.

I finally went to wikipedia, which let me know that Benton and Barren are neighboring townships. Barren has a population of 496 and Benton has a population of 8972. I seriously think that Barren should consider changing their name: it just doesn’t sell the place. On the other hand, maybe it’s an accurate description? But I would guess not, because whether I’m currently located in Benton or Barren (and it’s anyone’s guess, really), this is a very pretty area. And at least I’ve figured out that I’m in Illinois.

The reason that I wasn’t so sure is because when I left Missouri, I intended to do laundry, go grocery shopping, and then drive across Illinois and across Indiana and into Kentucky, which was where I wanted to stop for a few days. But I got off to a late start and then everything took longer than I wanted it to and then, most critically, the rest stop on the highway was closed, and B really needed to go. My choice was to drive another hour to the next rest stop with a whimpering dog at my feet, get off the highway and find a reasonable parking lot with a nice verge of grass, or just say the hell with it and find the nearest campground. I went with the latter.

Seriously, though, the campgrounds are beginning to all blend together. One after another, a different day, a different set of trees. Sometimes water, sometimes not. Sometimes starry skies, sometimes cloudy mornings. I’m going to have to start coming up with some distinctive event for each campground or they’re all just going to be a blur in my memory. In this campground, the distinctive event would definitely be Zelda, bolting through the screen door to chase away an entire herd of deer. She stopped before she went into the woods with them, but I scolded her anyway. I’m trying to convince the dogs to pretend that my screen is actually a door, but they’re just not buying it.

And if I ever come back here, I’m definitely going to try to get campsite #79. It’s spectacularly positioned, set off at the end of a cul-de-sac, with no neighbors, and an amazing lake view. The campground has lots of nice spots, though. I picked mine because there was no one else on this cul-de-sac, but before the night was over, every other spot filled up. But there’s tons of space around the sites, so even though it is definitely technically crowded — almost every site is full, at least in the portion of the campground where I have wandered — it doesn’t feel too crowded.

I suspect during the week it will empty out, too. When I wandered around with Z this afternoon, I could see that almost everyone was leaving on the 22nd. It’s probably going to be really nice and very peaceful here on the 23rd. But I won’t be here to see it, because I’m moving on, too, aiming for Kentucky and then West Virginia and then, within the week, PA. It feels like going home, and I’m looking forward to getting there!

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.

Grace Lake

23 Wednesday Aug 2017

Posted by 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?

Kolomoki Mounds State Park, Georgia

30 Thursday Mar 2017

Posted by in Campground, Grace, Zelda

≈ 12 Comments

Sunrise over the water at Kolomoki State Park Those of you with a good grip on geography may reasonably ask: if I was in Alabama on my way to Florida, what am I now doing in Georgia? For once, it was not because I got lost.

But I realized Monday evening that Zelda had an ear infection. Sometimes, a good dog owner will notice her dog shaking her head or scratching at her ear, holding one ear oddly, maybe acting lethargic, maybe even a squishy sound coming from the ear, and think, “Hmm, I wonder if my dog has an ear infection.” I’m obviously dense as a rock when it comes to being a dog mom, because I missed all those clues and didn’t figure it out until black goop was oozing out of her ear. As the vet tech said on Tuesday, “That is a serious ear infection.” Yes, I’m a little mad at myself.

At any rate, from Gunter Hill (which is near Montgomery, Alabama) on Tuesday morning, I called the nearest Banfield. They couldn’t see her until 4, so I called the next nearest Banfield. They could get us in at 2:30 and were conveniently about two and a half hours away, so off I headed to Dothan, Alabama. Once there, I ran useful errands — grocery store, propane refill, purchase of ant traps and mouse traps*, delicious shrimp salad lunch in a parking lot — and then we went to the vet. $170 later, Zelda has some mega, high-tech antibiotic in her ears, and we needed a campground.

Kolomoki Mounds State Park was about an hour away, not quite in the right direction, but not totally in the wrong direction, so here we came. There were other options, of course, but it was already late in the day and I didn’t much want to chance having to keep driving while I looked for a place. Kolomoki had availability online and it sounded… educational. I thought it would be good for me as I headed back home after two months on the road to actually have done something tourist-appropriate.

Serendipity strikes again: Kolomoki is crazy pretty. The description talked about the historic mounds, but the campground proper is on a lovely lake. I have not just a view of the water, but easy access to get the kayak into the water. The campground itself is tiny — maybe 30 sites — and peaceful. I’ve seen cardinals and blue jays flying around and the bird noise is steady music. Plus, there are two little free lending libraries — one for kids, one for adults! How could I not adore it?

Little free lending libraries at Kolomoki State ParkEven the bathrooms look nice — I will definitely be taking a shower in the actual bathroom, instead of Serenity. Brief digression on bathrooms: Serenity is fine for so-called Navy showers. Get wet, stop the water, soap up, turn the water back on, and rinse off. If I try to condition my hair, though, chances are I will either run out of hot water or fill up the gray tank faster than is convenient. I’ve done it occasionally when I’ve got a full hook-up, i.e. can dump the gray tank without having to move the van, but mostly showers in Serenity are brief. So at every campground, I check out the bathrooms. At probably about 50% — not being a fan of dead bugs, dirt, mold, or icky shower curtains — I decide I’m content with Serenity showers. Sometimes that depends on how much my hair feels like straw or how desperate I am for a real shower — I can remember being pretty dubious at Palmetto State Park in Texas, where the bathrooms were quite run-down, but I really wanted a real shower.  They had absolutely fantastic hot water and water pressure, so you know, you never know what you’re going to get. Anyway, bathrooms here = nice enough to use without reservation. And that digression was not so brief, but whatever.

Last night I got the grill out and grilled chicken-apple sausage, and ate it with a salad of mixed greens, apple, cucumber, radish, black olive and shitake mushrooms. I think it’s the first time I’ve tried shitake mushrooms — they were on sale — and yum. So much of that earthy mushroom flavor. I’ve got more, so I may try to make that mushroom sauce again today and put it over brown rice. It’s definitely not weather for cooking inside the van, though. It might have hit 90 yesterday. Plenty warm enough for kayaking, not so great for using the stove or oven.

I’m not sure about the temperature because the internet here is impossible. No T-Mobile signal at all, and one bar on Verizon. I may or may not be posting this while I’m actually still at Kolomoki, depending on whether I can get Verizon to let me use data. Some people might find that a drawback… I am not so sure. I’m definitely starting to notice that my happiest campgrounds are the ones where internet is barely an option.

*Ant traps and mouse traps: Gunter Hill was ant city and by the time I left there, the van was filled with ants. Seriously, dozens, maybe even hundreds of them. I killed them as rapidly as I could but they came in faster than I could kill them. Fortunately I lived in northern California long enough that ants — at least that kind — do not freak me out. Although I was fairly grossed out to discover probably thirty of them crawling around the toilet when I went to use it. Ick! I seriously doubt that they had time to take up housekeeping, but I bought traps anyway.

On the mice, I finally gave in and bought glue traps. I think I’ve gotten rid of the mice, but the paranoia has been keeping me awake. So I set out the glue traps Tuesday night and nothing’s been caught in them. I will give them one more night then toss them with great relief. And a plan to use Fresh Cab mouse repellent absolutely regularly. I can live with the smell of Christmas much better than with the rustlings of mice in the cupboards.

In other news, Grace continues to make progress. Sophia is again being a determined little pain of a character but, I think, maybe, just possibly, I have found an ending that I can get to. (Yes, I’ve found endings before. This one might actually work, though.) If I’m right, it’s still about 20,000 words away and this will be the longest book I’ve written by a mile. I like short books personally, but I’m tired of fighting with this one, so a long book it will be. Either way, this morning I was running down my checklist of characters who need proper endings (eight of them — so many, too many!) and I realized that for the first time, I actually know what happens to each and every one of them and that was a remarkably satisfying feeling. So back to Grace I go.

Galveston Beach

07 Tuesday Mar 2017

Posted by in Grace, Personal, Travel, Zelda

≈ 4 Comments

Beach and shells

Dead things

It’s a measure of my mood yesterday that I walked along the beach thinking about how beaches are really just big cemeteries. Sand? Just the decayed and crumbled skeletons of sea creatures. Shells? Leftover body parts. Dying jellyfish? Well, you know, dying jellyfish.

I was sort of glad that I’d already read online that there’s no point in trying to save the jellyfish because otherwise I might have felt I should try. But a) they might sting you and b) the conditions that caused them to wash up on shore still exist, so they’ll be back onshore soon even if you do manage to get them into the ocean, so no point. And c) there were far too many of them. I know if I’d managed to save one that it might have appreciated it, but I would have felt overwhelmed by the futility. And probably stung, too.

On the other hand, look — gorgeous beach! Beautiful dying jellyfish in iridescent greens and blues. Big shells — the brown one was the biggest shell I’d ever found on a beach, and the white one was probably second. And the weather’s been crap — I swear, Texas might be the wettest state I have ever spent time in — but the sun came out twice, once at sunset last night, and then this morning for about an hour, just long enough for Zelda and I to have a really nice walk. It’s gone now and might not be back while I’m here, but at least I got to appreciate the sunny ocean for a little while.

My mood has been shaded by the mice. I’m not even sure I can explain how oppressive I find it to be living with something I’m trying to kill. Or to find mouse turds scattered across my kitchen counter. To not know whether mice are running across my bed while I’m sleeping. To never know when I open a cabinet whether there’ll be a mouse inside. To wonder whether my congestion is allergies or the first symptoms of a virus that might kill or bankrupt me. I know, total over-reaction. But Serenity is such a small space. It’s not like sharing hundreds of square feet with rodents. I’ve lived in houses with rats before and it hasn’t bothered me this much. I wonder how much the extremely high-pitched whine of the ultrasonic repeller, just at the edge of my hearing, is getting to me? Maybe a lot. But I’m not ready to give up on them, since the mice appear to be laughing at my traps.

I’ve also been probably out of proportion upset by the loss of Zelda’s duck. For ten years — literally, ten years, since the Christmas when she was not quite two — she’s had one toy that she loves. Every night, she licks it for a while before going to sleep. When people came over to visit, she would find her duck and bring it to them. One year we went on vacation in my dad’s RV and didn’t bring the duck. Every night she searched for it, then stared at me plaintively, asking for my help. We were both so glad to get home to it. It was battered and worn and gross, the fur licked off in places. But it was her lovey.

And it’s gone.

I have no idea how. I imagine a horde of mice carrying it away in revenge for the murder of their leader, but that’s pretty unlikely. I did laundry, so maybe it got caught up in the clothes? But how would I not have seen it in the laundry room? Most likely, I suppose, is that Zelda carried it outside at our last campsite and I didn’t notice. I called the campground — not that anyone would ever have turned it in to a lost-and-found, it would have looked like trash. The guy on the phone was super nice about it and promised to look, but he didn’t call back, so I’m sure he didn’t find it. I am not surprised. But oh, watching Zelda roam the camper, trying to find her duck, just breaks my heart. I feel like such a bad mom. I keep coming up with implausible places that I haven’t checked — like, maybe I put it in the microwave when I was stuffing all the food the mice might want in there. No, I didn’t. A) Why would I? and b) there’s not even enough room for the food in there. Maybe she carried it outside at this campground and it’s under the van! No, it’s not.

It’s stupid, I know. In a world where desperate refugees are trying to keep their children warm, worrying about a dog’s lovey is just ridiculously privileged. But she doesn’t understand why it’s gone and why I won’t find it for her and I… well, I am really sad about it. I understand, I suppose, that I’m projecting all my fears of losing Zelda, that anticipated pain, into her experience of loss now, but intellectualizing the emotion isn’t helping me feel better about it.

On Matagorda Bay, this weekend, we were on the beach when it started to rain. Zelda was off-leash and she started to run. She disappeared into the dunes and I had a long minute of thinking of all the possible things that could happen if she didn’t stop running — would she get lost? Would she run out into the road and get hit by a car? Would she step on a snake? And then she popped out again, cocking her head to the side, like she was saying, “Mom? Could you hurry it up here? We’re getting WET!” I hope that if she could choose, she would choose our adventures of the past seven, going on eight, months over keeping her duck safe at home. And I can’t know if she would, but I know that I would, and that does help me feel better.

Time to write more Grace. Akira’s finally coming home. I have never gotten farther than this part — this is where I’ve turned back and started over again from the beginning several times — so it’ll be interesting to see what today brings. *fingers crossed for new words,  not self-doubt.

 

Matagorda Bay Nature Park

20 Monday Feb 2017

Posted by in Campground, Zelda

≈ 4 Comments

beach sunrise through clouds

I sang while walking Zelda yesterday morning.

Yep, singing in public. Loudly, too. Except it wasn’t really public. We were on a completely deserted beach, ocean pounding away, with the sun peeking out from behind clouds, with that sort of celestial rays of light thing happening. Singing felt totally appropriate. I should probably learn either a few more songs or the actual lyrics of “Joy to the World” if I intend to continue singing while walking the dog, though, because my singing involved a fair amount of “something, something, something,” lyrics.

When I first got to this campground, on Friday, I’d been driving in the rain for a while and I was feeling… well, tired of rain. After having lived in Florida and California for most of the past 25 years, I sort of forgot that in some places rain just goes on and on and on. Not that I would have expected Texas to be one of those places, but hey, live and learn.

And the campground is very much one of the rows of RVs’ places. Nice spaces, with plenty of room between sites, concrete picnic tables at every site, and smooth large driveways, but what I can see out of my windows–front, back, both sides–is another camper. It’s not cozy. Combine that with the rain and I was less than enthusiastic.

But this is absolutely another location, location, location place. Sure, it’s a (very nice) parking lot, but it borders the southern end of the Colorado River and miles and miles of true ocean beach. Sitting in the camper is not so interesting, but walking is amazing.

There’s an incredibly long jetty made of metal grating that goes out over the water. At the end, you can feel the spray, hear the crashing waves, and look down at the water, probably at least ten feet below. It’s exhilarating in the way the ocean can be, like you’re breathing pure freedom. (Zelda, however, hated it, so I won’t be going on it again. I’m not sure whether it was the feel of the metal under her paws or the distance to the ground that she could see below her, but she was walking very, very slowly.)

The beach has lots of shells, so there’s some fun beachcombing activity, but best of all, when I asked the campground host about letting dogs off leash, she shrugged, and said, “Sure, no one cares.” Yay! Zelda had no interest in chasing sticks or running around madly, which didn’t surprise me although it made me a little sad, but she’s enjoyed the freedom to roam and I’ve enjoyed watching her.

Funnily enough, I’ve been more worried about traffic on the beach than other dogs. Cars and trucks drive on the beach here! It’s so strange to me–I have literally never been to a beach where anyone other than a ranger or lifeguard was allowed in a vehicle on the sand. Seeing people drive onto the beach with their pickup trucks and then set up for the day with chairs and blankets and fishing poles has been novel. Yesterday, one truck got really, truly stuck, however, so I’m not sure I’m going to be driving Serenity on the beach anytime soon.

Lots of people are fishing. I haven’t chatted with anyone who’s caught anything, but apparently steelhead trout, whiting, and redfish are all possibilities. And, of course, there are loads of birds. Lots of terns. The campground host gave me a nifty brochure of local birds and there are several different types of terns. I could maybe differentiate between them if I had binoculars, but I think figuring out the difference between a tern and a gull is probably sufficient for me. At least until I get binoculars or a telephoto lens for my phone.

The nature center is nice, too. It’s small, very focused on this specific area, but some fun displays for kids. Lots of hands-on stuff.

It continues to rain, though. This morning I haven’t even walked Zelda, because the rain has been so steady. But I turned the heater on in the van and I’m trying to pretend that I’m in a cozy nest, instead of feeling like I’m camping in the rain. I have/am discovering, though, the dilemma of accumulating wet things when you’re camping in the rain. There’s no way for anything to get dry, short of me finding a laundromat. And everything is starting to feel damp. I need some sunshine!

Of course, tomorrow’s weather report says sun, but I leave here tomorrow. And the campground I’m headed to, while an island, does not apparently have good beaches. So this might be my last sandy day for a while. I like sand, but wet sand is really not my favorite thing. And I feel like I’m starting to whine, so I’ll stop. Overall, though, I would come back to this campground, but I’m not actually planning on doing so. Next winter, maybe?

January 2017

31 Tuesday Jan 2017

Posted by in Alabama, Food, Randomness, Travel, Zelda

≈ 4 Comments

Sunrise on Dauphin Island

Sunrise on Dauphin Island

A month ago, I wanted to write an end-of-2016 post: a reflection back on my year, calling out the high points, and maybe acknowledging a couple of the lows, too. I started it, then scrapped the whole idea. The year was too long. It included too much. I would have had to write for days and even then, I’d miss things. I decided, though, that in 2017, I’d write a post at the end of every month, reflecting back on the high points, on the moments I wanted to remember. I even put it into my calendar.

The alarm went off a few minutes ago: Write a best of the month post now. Okay, self, following orders: The best of the month is right now, right here.

I like that in a month. 🙂 I like that in a life, actually, to have the very best moment be the moment that you’re in.

I did have a lot of other nice moments in January, all of which can be summed up as “spent time with friends and family, mostly eating.” I’ve blogged about a lot of that already–sushi with R, new foods with my brother–but interesting pizza with C, grilled pork chops with J, and then E & A, & dinner with my writer’s group (where the food was utterly forgettable but the companions were wonderful) all fall into that category, too. All of the rest of January has fallen under the shadow of the Audubon Bird Sanctuary, though.

Today is my fifth day here and every day I’ve roamed through more of the sanctuary, exploring new and different trails. The birds are incredible. It reminds me of the aviaries in Disney’s Animal Kingdom, birds everywhere, flitting back and forth across the path in front of me, sitting in trees, standing or floating in the water, lined up on the rocks, swooping across the sky…

And the noises! Dozens of different sounds, tweets and chirps and trills and taps. Honestly, it feels like living inside a video game. Some of their calls sound like words to me — there’s one that says, “Secrets, Se-crets,” and another that says, “Here! Here, here, here!”

I could see the Disney connection and the video game as a sad commentary on my life. Why do the real sounds of nature make me think of unreal things? But yesterday I found the front entrance to the sanctuary and it turns out that this is recognized as one of the top four locations in the entire United States for bird viewing. So yes, the number of birds here is sort of unreal, if spectacular. And this isn’t even the season for them! Their peaks are during spring and fall migrations, not mid-winter.

I’ve mostly abandoned my attempts to photograph them, though. Yesterday, I was on the beach at sunrise, trying to take a photo of one of the birds lifting off from the water. The birds were dark against the rising sun, so graceful, so magical, and there were so many of them. The sound of the waves was like the heartbeat of the world, punctuated by the cries of the birds. It was still, barely a breeze, and cold enough that I was bundled up, wearing my scarf and gloves and coat, but not so cold that I was uncomfortable. And Zelda was bouncing around like a puppy.

But I couldn’t get a bird in a photo at all — they were too far away to be anything more than dark spots — and Zelda’s tugging at her leash kept bumping my phone so my photos were blurry, anyway. Fortunately, I realized I was feeling frustrated and annoyed, and that trying to save the memory was getting in the way of enjoying the sunrise and appreciating being on the beach with my dog. Not a good plan, so I stopped trying. I did take a few shots, today, though —  more in the “lift the phone, click, see what you get later” mode, while I kept walking — which is where the top image comes from. My new photography plan is to not put any effort into getting the perfect shot, just take a bunch and hope to get lucky.

Unrelated (except in that I want to remember this) I made a gluten-free meatloaf using finely-chopped sauteed mushrooms instead of bread crumbs, but otherwise following a typical meatloaf recipe (egg, mustard, salt, herbs, onion, garlic) and it was delicious. I ate it once with roasted cauliflower and once with mashed white sweet potatoes, and will definitely be making it again.

I also made rice noodles, mixed with green onion, cilantro, mushroom, chopped-up hard-boiled egg, lime juice, and a little hot sauce, and it was not bad for a meal using the dregs of the cupboard. I meant to stop at a grocery store on my way here last Friday and I didn’t get around to it. I haven’t left the campground since, so it’s a good thing I’m headed out tomorrow. The freezer is empty and the protein sources are getting… oh, wait, I’ve got canned chicken and canned fish. Eh, I’m good for a few more days. But I’m still heading out tomorrow. Alabama has been spectacular, but I am looking forward to discovering Mississippi, as more than just a drive-through state.