Category Archives: Randomness

Easter Sunday

16 Sunday Apr 2017

Posted by in Personal, Randomness

≈ 6 Comments

There are many nice things about my current campground (aka my dad’s driveway), but not the least of them is that there was a chocolate bunny waiting on the kitchen table for me this morning. Happy Easter!

I feel the tiniest bit of guilt that it didn’t even occur to me to send my own kid a chocolate bunny, but he probably would have been very surprised and maybe even skeptical if I had. I’m sure he wouldn’t worry that I was poisoning him, but he would definitely wonder about my inspiration: I was never much good at the candy holidays. Or rather, I was never much good at remembering the candy on the candy holidays — I’d be perfectly happy to be cooking him a nice Easter dinner, it just wouldn’t come with sugar attached.

Last night, I had dinner with my whole family, missing only my own kid. My brother and SIL and his two kids were visiting FL and my sister and her kids live here, so the ten of us went out for pizza. It was definitely a belated birthday celebrations: balloons and flowers on the table and I, at least briefly, wore a tiara celebrating my 50 years. Everyone filled up on delicious-looking pizza, except for my youngest niece and me — I don’t know what M’s inspiration was, but I knew there was gluten-free chocolate cake waiting for me. And now there’s lots of leftover chocolate cake waiting for me. 🙂

On Thursday, I went to Universal with my brother and his family. Universal has these express tickets, where you can pay extra (on an already expensive day) to shorten the lines. I’d say skip the lines, but in fact they sell so many of these passes that you’re still in line, just not for hours. But my brother got two of them for the kids, with the idea, I think, that the kids would go on all the rides together.

Good plan. Except M wanted to spend more time at Diagon Alley, so H and I took the passes and went off and rode roller coasters together. After lunch, we met up with the others at Hogsmeade, and went on the big Harry Potter ride over there. Unfortunately, H and my SIL were really not feeling well, so at 2 or so, my brother took them back to the hotel, and M and I took the express passes and played.

And played. And played some more. Twelve-year olds have a lot of energy. I can’t say that we did ALL the things, because I don’t do rides that spin, but we came as close as we could manage by about 7:30 at night. Spiderman, Hulk, the dueling dragons, all the water rides… we got completely soaking wet, ate ice cream, got a henna tattoo (for M), bought candy in Hogsmeade… had a really good, classic theme park sort of day.

Yesterday, I really deserved to sleep late. Or maybe spend all day sitting by a swimming pool. But instead my dad and I washed the van, put air in the tires, I took care of email and bills, and then I took my nephew and niece Pokemon-hunting. Poor H, who is going to remember Universal through a blur of nausea, at least got to put a Pokemon in a gym in Lake County. I hope it lasts for more than a day or two.

I still haven’t figured out the next stage of my travel plans. I’m hoping that Serenity gets her fixes sometime this week, which means I should be deciding where I’m headed next. Georgia? South Carolina? Beaches or mountains? North Carolina? There are so many places I’d like to see, but I’m still really tempted to just find someplace to sit still and write, write, write.

Hometown minutiae

13 Thursday Apr 2017

Posted by in Boring, Personal, Randomness, Yoga

≈ 4 Comments

I had weird dreams last night: the kind that are not so disconnected from the real world as to be impossible (no flying, no spaceships, no monsters) but that are mystifyingly implausible. In one of them, I was taking on the responsibility of raising the infant of a friend’s son. I woke up from that one trying to figure out how I was going to change diapers in Serenity — the actual logistics of storing diapers and wipes and clean cloths and that kind of thing, and was both relieved and a tiny bit disappointed when I woke all the way up. I’m obviously not going to be raising any children while living in a van, and I can’t imagine how I would end up being the person responsible for that specific imagined kid, but I do like babies. The other dreams are all a lot less vivid now — can’t remember a single detail — but all had that same sense of taking on impractical responsibilities that don’t belong to me. At the time, they were mysterious, but looked at in the cold light of day, it’s more obvious to me where my brain was wandering.

This morning I went to yoga with my dad. If I had dreamed that ten years ago, it would have been mystifyingly implausible. If I had dreamed it two years ago, it would have been surreally unlikely. As it was, it was very fun. I haven’t been able to do real yoga at all while living in Serenity. I have about twenty different video classes saved on an iPad, but it’s too small inside to even do a good stretch, and outside… well, there’s uneven ground, dirt, heat, bugs, observers — a bunch of things that have disinclined me to make that choice. Going to a class reminded me of how much I love it, though, and how great it feels. The instructor suggested putting my mat on a picnic table and doing it there and I really ought to try that. Observers to be ignored, of course.

Right now I’m parked in my dad’s driveway, one of my favorite camping spots, looking forward to a quiet day today and a busy day tomorrow. The last few days have been busy-busy, with lots of stuff that realistically I could have done any time but somehow I saved until I was back in central Florida. Example: after more than eight months, I finally went to Bed, Bath & Beyond and bought small bins that fit inside the medicine chest. When I opened up the medicine chest this morning, nothing fell out on me. It was so exciting! Why I didn’t do this somewhere along the way, I can’t say. Some tasks still feel like things you should do at home and central Florida still feels like home. I wonder how long that feeling will last?

I also bought a new garlic press. When I still had a house, I had three garlic presses, and I decided I didn’t need them when I was getting rid of things. It’s the one kitchen item that I have regularly looked for, not found, and — with regret — remembered that I thought I didn’t need. I thought I might have kept one in the storage unit, so I looked when I was cleaning it out on Saturday, but nope, I truly did get rid of all three of them. I’m going to have to make something with garlic really soon to try the new one out. Maybe salad dressing for dinner tonight.

I’m not sure how much longer I’m going to be in central Florida. I’d hoped I’d be able to head north next Monday, but Serenity still needs some warranty work done. The sink in the bathroom is broken (again — 3rd time) and the heated tank system is falling off. So I’m busy making fun local plans for next week — Pokemon hunting with a friend one night, visiting another friend at her childhood home for a couple days, lunch with a third friend — but also trying to decide what makes sense for the three weeks between the time the van might feasibly be repaired and when I need to be back in Florida.

Three weeks feels like forever — that would have been a great stretch of vacation for me ten years ago, certainly sufficient to have any kind of adventure, up to and including driving to the Grand Canyon and back again! — and not nearly long enough. What I really wish is that I could find a place that I love to settle down and finish Grace. But I suspect I could easily spend three weeks just trying to find such a place. If it weren’t so hot here, I’d just stay in Florida. And maybe I’ll do that anyway, but I’m having to run the AC for the dogs most of the time, which is not my favorite thing. Decisions, decisions!

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Mount Dora

05 Wednesday Apr 2017

Posted by in Boring, Personal, Randomness

≈ 11 Comments

sunrise at Mount Trimble Park

The word breathtaking is a cliche, but the sunrise was so lovely this morning that I only realized I was holding my breath when I started to run out of air. I suspect it wasn’t me finally breathing that made the heron fly away — at the same time Zelda pulled the leash out of my hand and rustled through the leaves — but I was sad to see it go. Then it settled on an overhead branch and annoyed a squirrel, making me laugh. A day that starts with incredible beauty and laughter probably has no place to go but down, but I’m going to be more optimistic than that.

This is my birthday week — I turn 50 on Friday! — so I’m being really nice to myself. Or trying, anyway. I decided to give myself a present every day. Socks on Sunday. On Monday, I got my “Nevertheless She Persisted” t-shirt from Elizabeth Warren’s campaign, which I decided counted. Yesterday, I set out to buy hair ties — yes, I’m not being elaborate in my gifts to myself — but my dad bought me a gluten-free butter pecan cupcake, so that was my present instead. Today, I don’t know. I’m really hoping to get some writing done, but… well, I guess that’s how I’m not being nice to myself. I’ve been really beating myself up about not getting more done over the past few days, like that’s ever done me any good at all. But I am going to endeavor to find some way of being nice to myself today. Maybe it’ll be the hair ties.

I did manage to add an email subscription field to the blog. Right there, over on the left hand side, above the mailing list subscription, you can enter your email address if you’d like to get email notifications of new posts. Personally, I would hate that. An RSS reader, like feedly, lets you subscribe to lots of blogs and read them at your convenience instead of having notifications pile up in your inbox. But I’ve been informed by relatives and people who try to follow posts on Facebook that I could make it easier for them to find new posts if they could subscribe, so subscribe away. I do warn you, though: I am not going to feel guilty for cluttering up your email by writing multiple posts in a week if I have lots of things I want to write about. On your own heads be it!

In other boring business things, I’m going to start adding Amazon affiliate links to the bottom of my posts. If you start your shopping at Amazon by clicking on an affiliate link, I’ll get a percentage of whatever you buy for the next few hours. The items don’t have to be related to anything on my site or my posts. So if you read a post of mine and think, hmm, maybe I should buy some hair ties, and go to Amazon and while you’re shopping there, stumble across a really good deal on a $600 vacuum cleaner and buy that, Amazon might give me $6. That would be nice for me and more to the point, it would make my blog a much better tax deduction. Yes, I did my taxes yesterday. No, I probably shouldn’t have done my taxes during a week when I was trying to be kind to myself. So it goes.

I’m actually not at all down about turning 50, although this post does sort of sound like I am. My brother (aka Best Brother Ever) has given me a fantastic birthday present, which I will collect in May; R is visiting me this weekend so I get to spend time with him; and honestly, everyone should turn 50 feeling so good about how they’re spending their life. I think I’m just frustrated today that I have too many things I want to do and not enough time to do them. And I’ve wasted too much time on things that don’t really matter, like, why, oh, why, are the two Subscribe buttons different sizes and how can I make them be the same size? Answer: no idea, no idea, and I could have spent three hours writing a book instead of trying to figure it out.

I think I will go bake some more granola, walk the dogs again, admire the incredible beauty of the park I’m in (Trimble Park, Mount Dora), and then try to settle in to writing some good words on Grace. Because at the end of the day, those things will make it a very good day.

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Lake Catherine State Park, Arkansas

19 Sunday Mar 2017

Posted by in Campground, Grace, Randomness, Serenity, Travel

≈ 3 Comments

I’m sitting outside, computer in my lap, both dogs roaming around in the piles of dead leaves around me. The sun is shining, there’s a cool breeze off the lake blowing wisps of hair into my face, the birds are incredibly noisy, and I am feeling supremely content. The only improvement in my mood would be if I could write myself through this stupid scene in Grace. Actually, the major improvement in my mood would be if I could finish Grace and move to some other project, but enough said about that.

Yesterday, I left Oklahoma reasonably early and took the scenic drive to Arkansas. The first part was by far the most exciting: the road that my GPS took me down—well, up, really—was a logging road. Dirt and gravel, narrow and steep. It was ten minutes of thinking, “Oh, shit, what happens if I run into someone else on this road?” And then I did run into someone else, two someone elses, in fact!

Fortunately, I was on the side that could tuck into the hill, so I pulled over as far as I could without winding up crunched and they passed by on the scarier side, waving at me as they did. But the adrenaline and the excitement and the… the sheer FUN of the uncertainty was great. I was so worried that the road was going to come to an abrupt end and I would have to figure out how to turn around or how to back all the way down. Backing all the way down would have been disastrous. And then when it let me out onto this itty-bitty two-lane road, which turned out to be the scenic highway, I was so pleased. I stopped at a bunch of scenic vistas and took pictures of clouds. Look, more clouds!

Clouds on the Talimena scenic highwayI had just enough glimpses beyond the clouds that it was obvious that it was a really, really pretty road. In better weather. Someday, I will try again.

Arkansas, meanwhile, has been delightful. I emerged from the clouds into sunshine and spring, just as I’d hoped. For a lot of the drive, the woods alongside the road were simultaneously autumn and spring — lots of trees that hadn’t lost their orange and red leaves from fall yet, interspersed with pink plum trees. (I think plum trees.) But very lovely.

Because I needed dog food, I wound up coming all the way down to Hot Springs, and then beyond to Lake Catherine State Park. (Zelda will consistently eat Fresh Pet and their website lets me know where I can find it locally, but it’s not always available within a 50 mile range. I couldn’t find it in Oklahoma or my first stop in Arkansas, Mena, so I kept driving until I did.) The park had one campsite available, because of a cancellation, and it was available for four days, so I took it. And here I sit, ridiculously cheerful.

It’s the sun, I think. Well, and also, the campground is packed with happy families having fun camping, which is enjoyable to listen to. There’s water (surprise, a lake at the Lake Catherine park!), and trails, and people with boats, and kids on bikes and skateboards and it feels like… Spring? Vacation? Joy. It feels like joy.

Last night, I sat in Serenity watching other people’s flickering campfires and smelling wood smoke and appreciating the bare branches of trees against the dark sky with its sprinkling of stars. This morning, the sunrise was golden-orange against the same dark branches. I couldn’t find gluten-free granola in any of my most recent stores, so I’m baking some of my own and the van smells delicious, of coconut oil and baked oats and cinnamon. I’ve got a Verizon signal, but no T-mobile, so my internet is very limited, but I will still be able to talk to R today. The previous campers left behind a rawhide chew, so Z is having a very good time burying it in the leaves, then moving it to another spot and burying it again. All these little random pieces, they add up to happiness.

And now I have to open up Grace and ruin my mood. *sigh. But I’m going to give it one hour, timed, and then I’m going to do other things: a hike, maybe; dragging out the kayak, maybe; making myself some delicious lunch, maybe. Maybe all three!

Surprised by beauty

16 Thursday Feb 2017

Posted by in Personal, Randomness, Travel

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

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I woke up this morning and thought, okay, it’s time to move. It’s my 6th day here, making this just about my longest stay in a state park. I’ve visited the little beach around the corner a few times every day, and I’ve walked along the road toward the front of the park every morning. I was getting tired of it. Yesterday was cold and grey and I turned back when I started to feel raindrops, so I was decidedly unenthusiastic about doing the same walk one more time.

An hour later, I was in love with Galveston again.

It’s sunny.

And it’s so beautiful.

This morning instead of walking all the way toward the front of the park, we turned off on a road that we’d been on once before. But after we hit our normal walk length, the point where I would usually decide it was time to turn around, we kept going. I found a trail that led into the park and we took it and walked out into the grasses.

It was a half mile loop, so nothing too long, but it included a stand to climb up, so you could look out over the expanse and a bridge over one of the shallow inlets. I feel like inlet is the wrong word, but I don’t think it was a river. This area of the park (the bay side) is the coastal wetlands, so I think the water ebbs and flows through all of the land, and the shallower areas stay wet. But maybe it was a river. It was water. With lots of white birds stalking around and floating in it.

I didn’t take any pictures that remotely do it justice—the sun was too bright, the birds too far away. Plus, of course, photos can’t capture the air, the smells, the sounds. But the picture at the top is the closest I could come. Pretty sure those are snowy egrets. Absolutely sure that they were beautiful. On the other side of the bridge, there were dozens of birds, but they all turned into dark spots against the rising sun. They were beautiful, too.

Right now I’m sitting in Serenity with the screen door open. B is on the floor, in the sunny patch by the door. A little while ago, a starling was sitting on the picnic table squawking at him. Starlings definitely squawk. There’s a little tree—maybe even a tall shrub—outside my window, and a bird that I’m going to guess is a common yellowthroat (why, yes, I did download a bird ID app, why do you ask?) is flitting back and forth around it. Not building a nest, but it’s got a branch that it keeps revisiting. And I am pretty sure that a hawk of some sort, probably red-tailed, just glided by.

In a lot of ways, I’m still getting used to living in Serenity. I’m still finding ways to make life easier, things to change. I bought $20 of tupperware a few weeks ago and threw out all the random pieces of tupperware I had, so that now my tupperware all stacks. It felt so wasteful and it sounds so trivial, but wow, what a lovely difference to not have leftover dishes falling on my head when I open the cupboard. On the same extravagant day, I bought liquid soap and threw away my bar soap and its holder. Bar soap is just not worth the effort; it gets too messy. I’ve finally figured out where it’s best to keep my toothbrush, at least for now. (Inside a cup, in the medicine cabinet.) I think I’m even finally getting the hang of washing dishes in a single sink while using the least possible amount of water.

But one of the trickiest things to figure out is how long to spend in any one place. Traveling too fast is so disruptive that I get no writing done. Traveling too slow and the van starts to feel like a trap. But I think I may have mixed up traveling too slow with staying in the wrong places. Two weeks in a campground where my view is other people’s sewer lines and our morning walks are along rows of trailers may be very, very different from two weeks in a place where six days in I can still be surprised by beauty.

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.

Unforgettable Alabama

28 Saturday Jan 2017

Posted by in Campground, Randomness, Travel

≈ 4 Comments

Yesterday, while I was driving, I was trying to count the number of states I’ve visited in my life. You’d think that would be easy. It’s basically a yes, no question, after all. Have I been to California? Yes, I have. Have I been to Alaska? No, I haven’t. Nothing complicated about that, right?

But there are states I’m uncertain about. Like, for example, Indiana. Have I been to Indiana? Hmm… I’d definitely driven through it. And after much thought, I started to remember my visits to Indiana. I picked blueberries there with Michelle, her son and R; I saw friends in Bloomington once and I think ate lunch with them; I picked up my brother at college there, I think, on a road trip from Chicago to PA; and maybe, maybe I went on a business trip there once. But I’m not sure about the business trip and without that, I might never have spent the night in Indiana.

And there’s Missouri: once, when I was visiting Michelle in Kentucky, we drove into Missouri to look at fossils. I’m quite sure that afternoon is my only experience of Missouri. Does that count?

Then there’s New Hampshire. I’ve definitely been through it, multiple times on the way to other places. This summer, I got out of the van and tried to get propane in New Hampshire. That counts, doesn’t it? Or Iowa — I distinctly remember thinking that the McDonald’s bathroom in Iowa was the cleanest fast food restaurant bathroom I had ever seen and that the employees were cumulatively the blondest fast food workers I’d ever seen, but I don’t think I did much in Iowa apart from the McDonald’s stop.

And then there’s Delaware. Driven through it, definitely. Gotten out of the car… um, maybe? Ohio, same deal. Mississippi, ditto.

Kansas, I remember vividly. I was on a road trip with my mom, visiting my sister in Nebraska. I was driving, my mom napping in the passenger seat next to me, and when we drove into Kansas I woke her up to say, “Um, Kansas? Is that really on the way to Nebraska?” I’d made a wrong turn about two hours earlier and never realized. Ouch. But  the rest stop where we turned around is the sum total of my experience of Kansas. Does that count?

And if it does, then we get to the airport states: Colorado and Minnesota. It’s hard for me to believe that I haven’t been to Colorado, because I could almost describe the shops in the Denver airport, I’ve spent so much time there. (Long spokes with long moving sidewalks, weird center circle, tiny tucked away shops, good bookstore, nice wine bar, confusing the first few times — very important to get your bearings before you start walking, lest you wind up at the wrong end of the spokes!). But I’ve never set foot in the state outside the airport. I’m less familiar with the Minneapolis airport, but I’ve definitely had a layover or two or three there.

At the end of all that uncertainty, I wound up with three lists. Yes, no, and maybe.

On my yes-list: the entire east coast, except for New Hampshire and Delaware, the west coast, the southwest, the south, and a big weird chunk of the middle.

On my no-list: Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Michigan, and Alaska.

On my maybe-list: Indiana, Delaware, New Hampshire, Colorado, Minnesota, Ohio, Mississippi, Alabama, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri.

Except–and we finally get to the point of this post!–Alabama has now securely moved to my yes-list. And it will never, ever be an Indiana where I have to struggle to remember if and whether I’ve ever visited, because I won’t forget it. Ever.

I’m staying on Dauphin Island, at the Dauphin Island Campground. This morning, I walked Zelda through the Audubon bird sanctuary and down to the beach. It’s cold! Forty-some degrees this morning, so okay, not cold to northerners, but quite cold to me. While we were on the beach, I saw a flash of black in the water, then another, then realized I was watching porpoises feeding. I have about twenty pictures of ocean, some of which show a tiny glimpse of black, enough to prove that there was a black-finned creature under a vast grey expanse of ocean — but instead… the sunrise. It was magical.

Dauphin Island, Alabama sunrise

The campground… isn’t a state park. I would love to understand why the independent campgrounds seem to have so much more of a problem with litter. The first thing I did when I stepped out onto my campsite was pick up some receipts, a bottle cap, and a candy wrapper and throw them into the trash.

But location, location, location. Steps away from Serenity’s door is a path into the bird sanctuary that leads to the beach where Z and I were absolutely alone — apart from the birds and porpoises and whatever fish they were mutually eating — this morning.

Paradise, in other words.

Unexpected restaurants

09 Monday Jan 2017

Posted by in Food, Randomness, Restaurants, Reviews

≈ 1 Comment

My weekend took an unexpected turn, but turned out really quite nice. Because of flight problems, I wound up bringing my brother up to my dad’s place, so that he could fly out of a central Florida airport instead of Fort Lauderdale. Even though he flew out a day later, he probably wound up getting home earlier and he definitely wound up getting home with a lot less hassle than he would have otherwise. And it was really nice to get to spend time with my dad and my brother and — although way too short — my son! Yay! R came home from his adventures and came out to breakfast with us on Sunday and it was so nice to share a meal with my favorite people.

On our last night in Fort Lauderdale, I got my brother to take me to an Argentinian steakhouse, Las Pampas Grill. I had the arugula, endive and blue cheese salad, which was terrific. Not at all the fancy restaurant type salad where you get six leaves of arugula and a sprinkle of blue cheese, it was a solid salad with a scoop of a soft blue cheese, very yummy. And then we shared the meat platter, which included blood sausage and sweetbreads. My brother gave me a look when I suggested it — the look that said, “What have you done with the sister I grew up with, the one who ate nothing but white foods?” — but joined in agreeably. I liked the blood sausage a lot, definitely a different taste, but a good taste and a good texture. And that makes a week with three new foods!

The next evening, up in Mount Dora, I was off doing things — checking my email or turning my laundry — and returned to the kitchen to discover that I had been nominated to figure out dinner for us. I was surprised. I’m by far the most adventurous eater in my family (with the possible exception of my son), and I would have thought dragging my brother to two different restaurants in two days would have had him making sure I wasn’t in control of his food on the third day, but no, he was up for it.

I wound up picking a Japanese hibachi restaurant right near the house that my dad and stepmom had never tried. It was great — I had sushi and they had the rice, noodles, vegetables and meat cooked on the grill — and the cook put on a terrific show. I wanted to ask him if he’d sharpened the edges of his spatula, but then I decided that it was a dumb question, because obviously he had — he could slice an onion without hesitation using it. He could also break an egg, by balancing it on the spatula, tossing it up and catching it on the edge — I was extremely impressed. We needed a kid with us to be more awed, but for a little neighborhood strip mall place, very unprepossessing from the outside, it was a good show. And I should find the name again so I can give them a Trip Advisor review, but I’ll have to do that later, because today is a packed day and I need to get to it.

It’s a busy, busy week for me — I think it’ll be my last full week in Central Florida, so I am definitely trying to pack a lot into it. But I have to keep reminding myself that getting stressed out about my choices is silly. I’ve got plenty of time to do all the things. Starting right now! Happy Monday!!

Fort Lauderdale

06 Friday Jan 2017

Posted by in Campground, Florida, Randomness, Restaurants

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Updated to add: Needless to say (I hope), this happy vacation post was written and posted before people started getting murdered at the Fort Lauderdale airport. I knew something was happening when we were down at the convention center and cars with sirens started appearing out of nowhere, all with sirens blaring. I wish it had been the bad traffic accident I expected it to be. 

I feel some sort of dreadful American normalcy about this, and I really hate feeling this way. My mood definitely soured, but my brain went straight to the practicalities of how long the airport would be closed, how many flights were going to be delayed or cancelled, whether my brother is going to miss his son’s birthday (most likely) and his daughter’s spelling bee (hopefully not). As if a mass shooting was just another weather problem. As if someone wasn’t going to have to be mopping up the blood before anyone can use that airport again. Just another tragedy of the week. But if it had been yesterday, or tomorrow, it might have been my family’s tragedy, too. It makes me sad on so many levels. 

*****

I apologize (symbolic, at best) to all of the campgrounds I have called parking lots in the past. I did not know parking lots until I reached Fort Lauderdale’s Sunshine Holiday Resort.

I am squeezed in between two big trailers in a spot so small and tight that my neighbor came out to help me back in, mostly, I think, because he didn’t want to lose his slide to my incompetence. The water didn’t work — the spigot had “seized,” according to my brother, and I’m writing that down just because I really like the use of the word. Unfortunately, all of our tugging and struggling with the faucet handle weakened the pipe just enough that it fell apart and began spraying water out after dark, so there was a plumber working next to the camper until 11PM. The sewer outlet doesn’t have a cover on it; it’s an open hole in the ground and I keep worrying that a dog is going to step in it and break a leg. Not that I’m letting the dogs out by themselves — it’s just pavement, so it’s not like they can sit in the grass and enjoy the sun. Although there is a tree behind me, fortunately, and possibly I’m parked backwards — the power outlet and the sewer are on opposite sides of the site, instead of on the same side, and apparently you’re just supposed to run either your cord or your hose underneath your camper. The key to the gate didn’t work last night, so we were stuck outside for a while. And I’d feel better about all of this if this wasn’t the most expensive campground I’ve ever stayed at. Ouch.

Still, I’m pretty cheerful about it all. It feels like an adventure. Mostly, I suspect, because the air feels tropical and it is a gorgeous day. It’s a different kind of “too warm” than central Florida. It’s beach warm, and I like it. It feels like vacation in the air.

It sounds like city, though. I can hear traffic constantly, lots of it. And it smells like Mexican food. Refried beans and rice, maybe? Chilis? Or maybe that’s me. Nope, it’s definitely coming in the window on the cool breeze. It’s making me hungry, it smells so good.

We ate at a Salvadoran restaurant last night, the top-rated restaurant in Trip Advisor for this area, El Guanaco. I ate the Salvadoran combo: a chicken tamale, a sweet corn tamale, a loroco  pupusa (like a super-thick quesadilla stuffed with cheese and a Salvadoran flower), fried yuca, Salvadorian cream and cheese, pickled cabbage, red sauce, and spicy salsa verde. It was all delicious and (I really, really hope) didn’t include any gluten. I was pretty wary about the yuca, only took one little nibble, because even though the waitress said it wasn’t battered, it sure looked battered. But I guess I’ll know in a couple of days. It was good enough that I might call it worth it anyway: I particularly liked the sweet corn tamale, topped with cream and green sauce, plus, of course, the joy of eating a food that I’d never heard of, i.e. the loroco  pupusa (which spellcheck adamantly insists are not words.)

In other random news, I’m still struggling with my email. I thought I had downloaded my folders: nope! I’m trying not to worry about losing five years worth of email — how often does one go back and look at old emails, anyway? But I definitely have a churning uneasiness about what important things might have gone poof and whether I’m being rude to anyone who sent me email in the two or three days that seem to have been lost to the ether. So it goes, I guess, and I’m going to try not to dwell on that. Today I get to hang out with my brother and explore some of Fort Lauderdale, so off I go to do just that!

My bed of roses

29 Thursday Dec 2016

Posted by in Randomness, RV, Serenity, Travel

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I have no data — I’m even out of data on my phone! — so I can’t look up the origin of that phrase I’m using as a title. But I’m coming back to it in a minute.

Night before last, my fan went crazy. I bet that’s the kind of description that drives mechanics crazy, too, but believe me, it is an apt description. When the craziness settled out, it was beeping. Beep. Five second pause. Beep. Five second pause. Beep.

The five seconds is a weird number. It is just long enough that there was no way to turn the beep into background noise. No possible way to ignore the noise, convince myself that it was cicadas or a crazy bird, no way to fall asleep between beeps and not wake up for the next one. Five seconds is maddening.

By 6AM, I was at my RV dealers (getting sent away by the security guard) and by 7:45AM, I was back at my RV dealers, plaintively begging for help. I didn’t have an appointment, of course, and they don’t generally take walk-ins, but they said they’d try to take a look and at least figure out how to cut power to the fan and shut it up.

While I sat on a couch in their show floor, dogs beside me, desperately wishing for sleep, I catalogued Serenity’s problems. There was the leaky air-conditioner that let so much water in the first night that the beds got soaked. The window that once opened wouldn’t close. The screens that weren’t properly placed in their tracks. The propane tank that wouldn’t fill. The thermostat that didn’t measure the temperature correctly. The sticky drawer latch that led to the facing of the drawer pulling off, exposing bare nails. The sink latch that jammed, had to be replaced, promptly broke again, and while I waited for my service appointment to get it fixed a second time, let the sink bounce around enough that the hinges broke, leaving the sink dangling half off the wall. The dead awning which fortunately died while closed. And then, of course, the fan going crazy.

All that in the first six months of ownership.

I was filled with gloom and doom. After the air-conditioning and until the fan, none of the problems had been major livability issues, but what next?

And then I took a deep breath and began re-cataloging. The air-conditioner was fixed. I don’t open the window that’s hard to close. I got the screens into their tracks and yes, it was a pain, but they work fine now. The propane tank’s sensor reset once the tank was empty and now I know to tell the guy filling it to go very slowly. The thermostat was user error, albeit based on unclear instructions, but still, no longer a problem. The drawer had been repaired. The sink was scheduled for repair. The awning was scheduled for repair. The only real problem was the fan.

And I went to Vermont. I watched the sunrise over farm fields and mountains, and waded in a mountain stream with the dogs. I sat next to the ocean and wrote. I wandered around the cutest little Massachusetts town at dawn. I’ve seen owls and coyotes and manatees. I’ve visited relatives and friends, gotten to have real time with people that I hadn’t seen in years. Sat around the table with my dad and stepmom on Christmas Eve eating chocolate cake.

The service guy came back. He told me they’d pulled the fan out and ordered a new part for it, but wouldn’t be able to get it fixed until the part came in, some time in the next couple of weeks, but that they’d stopped the noise. Oh, and that they’d fixed the sink and the awning. I hugged him.

Beds of roses do have thorns. I’m not excited about how many things have gone wrong with Serenity and I’m definitely not looking forward to whatever goes wrong next. But the last thing I have to do in Florida now (depending on when the part for the fan comes in) is a vet appointment on the 10th of January, which means that in less than two weeks, I can be heading west. And just thinking about that makes me want to bounce with excitement. Or you know, roll around on my bed of roses, hoping none of the thorns draw blood.