Category Archives: Travel

Walking in a cloud

01 Monday Aug 2016

Posted by in Randomness, RV, Serenity, Travel, Zelda

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Sitting in a parking lot outside the vets. Both dogs are inside, getting looked at. Poor Z was pretty frantic about being left, but B, it turns out, had a goopy ear, which inspired me to ask to have Z’s ears checked, too. And of course they’ll give her an exam, so if her stomach stuff is anything feverish, we’ll find out about it. (Given the circumstances, I’m really not worried that it’s anything more serious. Well, that’s not true. I’m worried, but only in the way that I know it’s probably not a bomb, despite my predilection for worrying about such things.)

This morning’s walk took place in something between a mist and a drizzle. I could hear the rain in the trees, but it felt like a cool damp breeze on my skin. Pretty much like walking in a cloud, I suppose, but a cloud at a temperature that felt lovely, not too warm, not too cold. I walked both dogs around the “block”, so to speak. Is it a loop in a campground? But when we got back to Serenity, Z didn’t want to go inside, so I left B and took her on something more like a hike. We walked up the road and up some more, past campers and trailers and sites more like summer homes than temporary habitations, up and up, and then found a trail through the woods that led back to the front of the campground.

It was exactly like my daydream of a week ago. Except for the bugs and the sticks that kept getting in my shoes and the drizzle. But the joy and the sense of freedom and adventure, those were exactly right.

At the entrance to the campground, we found the enclosed dog park with agility equipment inside. I took Z in and tried to get her to play on the agility equipment, the tunnel, the low fence for jumping, the ramp and slide. I always kind of thought she might love agility games. Ha. She did not understand why I would want her to take the indirect routes and wouldn’t go on a single one of the objects. I’m sure I could get her to do it if I kept her on a leash and gave her treats, but letting her run around off-leash and sniff all the corners made her happy, so I didn’t bother. Maybe later.

Family time and campground days

31 Sunday Jul 2016

Posted by in Bartleby, Personal, Pets, Randomness, RV, Serenity, Travel, Zelda

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My Saturday night was an exercise in contrasts.

It started out great. I’d had a really nice day, filled with family time. Hanging out with my niece, working on a jigsaw puzzle from my childhood. Video games with my nephew, including introducing him to World of Warcraft. Running errands with my brother. The farmer’s market, where I bought fresh kombucha and spicy radishes.

We even watched some bike racing at the Velodrome. (I mostly felt sorry for the bicyclists — it was a hot day to be dressed like they were, even without the biking really fast in circles in the sun part. bike race . )

After dinner, the whole family watched Guardians of the Galaxy. And at 10:30, my niece, sister-in-law, and I headed to Barnes & Noble for the big Harry Potter release. My niece, M, was probably one of the youngest kids there, but stayed resolutely awake. I got to sit and color with her at the Ravenclaw table while her mom waited in line.

Such a nice day.

But when I went to bed, Serenity… well, smelled. Bad. Like something had gone wrong with the black tank, where the sewage accumulates. I tossed and turned, worrying and sleepless, making plans. I’d get up, take her to a dump station. Or no, maybe a full hook-up campground would be better. I hadn’t dumped the tanks before, so I wouldn’t want to be figuring it out and maybe messing it up if I had to hurry. Still, how could it have gotten so bad, so fast? Maybe a week in the heat of summer was too much to let accumulate? But (if you’ll excuse the TMI), there wasn’t a lot in the tanks to cause a problem — I’d mostly been using the bathrooms at rest stops and campgrounds and my brother’s house. However, clearly it was enough to get bad because it was bad.

But it shouldn’t be. But it was. So was something wrong? Toss, turn, toss, turn, worry, hold my breath, try to sleep, toss, turn, worry, repeat endlessly. At 4AM, B wanted to go out. Sometime after that, maybe 5ish?, Z wanted the same. I think I finally fell asleep for a while after the sun came up, which meant I missed my chance to go to a coin show with my brother, much to my annoyance when I finally got up around 9.

And, of course, when I did get up, I discovered that the black tank was fine. One of the dogs — or maybe both of them? — had had diarrhea under the bed while I was out. Ugh. So not nice to wake up to. And made even worse by worrying about them, of course. B has been scratching himself into a scabby hairless mess and Z has been refusing to eat her kibble. I honestly think that both of them are going to love this lifestyle eventually, but at the moment, they’re both really stressed out by the change and uncertainty.

My big plan for tomorrow — one week after the house closing, the first of August, the day I had determined was going to involve lots and lots and lots of writing words — is to find a Banfield and take B to the vet. I would take Z, too, but based on my past experience with Z having digestive troubles, they’d want to keep her for observation and right now, I feel like that would be a truly terrible idea. If she’s stressed, the cure is not going to be to make her more stressed. (The first time I took her to the vet for digestive stuff — years ago, now — the vet wanted to keep her until she was eating and going normally again. After two days, they finally said, “We don’t think she’s going to eat while she’s away from you.”) So as long as she’s still enthusiastic about walking (she is!) and giving me happy smiles, I’m going to give her a few days to mellow out. The long car days weren’t good for her but the campground days are.

So yes, campground days! I stuck to my campground plan, in part to empty the tanks and in part because the house electricity in my brother’s driveway was just about enough to run the AC consistently, but not if I did anything else that took power. And it only worked if I was parked in his driveway, close enough to the house for a single cord to reach Serenity, but on a fairly steep slope. The extension cords weren’t capable of handling the load if Serenity was in the street. (I’m learning more about electricity than I ever needed to know before, including that long extension cords are not good.)

Anyway, I’m now parked in a KOA campground about twenty minutes from his house. It’s expensive, but very nice. Lots of families here — there’s mini golf and a swimming pool and a nice playground, plenty of grass and trees. The spot I’m in is huge for Serenity, with a picnic table and fire pit and big tree. We’ve gone for a couple walks, chatted with some of our neighbors, and I ate my dinner — an antipasto plate, basically, with olives, dates, prosciutto, cheese, crackers — outside at the picnic table. The best part, I think, is that Serenity is backed up to a stream. Zelda saw the stream and immediately waded right in. B saw the stream and immediately sat down and refused to move any further. So typical!

Not a dead end

29 Friday Jul 2016

Posted by in Personal, Serenity, Travel

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It’s a misty grey wet morning in Pennsylvania, the kind where the sky is a solid mass of a lukewarm gray, not stormy, not cloudy, just overcast. I had my window open last night — no air-conditioning running for the first time! — and it was lovely, but this morning I discovered water dripping in and running down the wall.

I immediately jumped to full-blown paranoia. Oh, no, water in the RV: she’ll grow mold and delaminate and the walls will fall apart and she’ll be unlivable. And then I took a deep breath and exhaled and actually looked at that wall. Water in RVs is a big concern for those aforementioned reasons, but Serenity’s a camper van, not an RV. Her walls are metal and solid plastic, like the kind they make playground equipment out of these days. She can’t possibly delaminate, because her walls aren’t made of laminate. True, if I let her cushions stay damp for days, they could grow mold, but obviously, I won’t be doing that. In other words, it’s probably not a bomb. I wish my brain did not jump so quickly to worst-case scenarios.

So I made it to my brother’s house after a ridiculously long day of driving yesterday. I really should have stopped at a campground after about eight hours but I was close enough that I stuck it out. Rainy rush hour driving through a construction zone after nine hours of driving was probably not a good idea, but we got here in the end.

Last night therefore was my first night camping in someone’s front yard. Well, or sidewalk, rather. This morning after I walked the dogs, I took our empty water jug up to my brother’s front door. Locked. So I went around the side of the house, unlatched the fence and found the water spigot in the back yard. Filled up my jug with water, came home and made myself some coffee. I’m not sure why that was as fun as it was: obviously, in mid-winter, if it was cold outside, it would not be entertaining to be hunting down water. But it’s not mid-winter, it’s high summer. I had to push aside branches of an apple tree with little green apples on it to get to the water, walking by beds of strawberry plants, flowering bushes, and what looked like an ocean of squash. The raspberry bushes had a few last berries on them, but mostly I missed my chance at berries this year. Next summer, I’m going to try to make it here in time for the strawberries.

I’m not much of a photographer: I don’t think of taking photos often and when I do, they’re seldom as good as they were in my head. I’m sure I could get better if I put some effort into learning more but it’s never been high on my list of things to do. The world has plenty of photographers. But as I drove away from my house for the last time, I paused to take a photo.

dead end sign in the rear view mirror

Dead end sign in the rear view mirror

There were times when I wondered if buying a house with a Dead End sign in front of it would turn out to be prophetic. I’m glad that wasn’t the case.

My first adventure

28 Thursday Jul 2016

Posted by in Travel

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I feel like I should spoil the punch line of this story right away and admit that as adventures go, this one was pretty mild. It took place mostly in my imagination. But in my imagination, it was loads of fun.

So I was at a rest stop on 95, in North Carolina, maybe the last rest stop before the border? It was around lunchtime, so early, but I was looking for a place that would be good to stop around 3. I’d walked the dogs already, enjoying the feeling of forest, the humidity in the air that felt heavier and damper than Florida humidity. It wasn’t that it was worse, but the air felt still and thick, like no afternoon thunderstorm was going to rumble through to clean it out. I liked it. Wouldn’t want to stay in it forever, because the bugs liked it, too, but it was fun to feel the sensation of being in a different climate.

But as I looked for a place to stay, I started to get vexed. I didn’t want to park overnight in a parking lot: it’s too hot and the dogs need the air-conditioning. But I also didn’t want to spend $40-50 or even more for a place that was really just a place to rest my head for a few hours.

A campground that I’d considered staying in before, Lake Gaston RV, started to seem more and more appealing. It was still in North Carolina, only 45 minutes away from the rest stop, so it meant a short day, followed by a long day tomorrow, but a quiet afternoon on a lake sounded really appealing. Decision made, I made a reservation, called up the GPS on my phone and headed out while my phone considered the options.

Lesson learned: make sure to have the directions before getting on the highway. For some reason, my phone got very confused. It wanted me to “proceed to the route.” I would have loved to, if I had any idea how. For about five minutes, at 70mph, it told me that I was 600 feet away from my route. That had to be a lie. And then it decided that I was still in Florida. It would have been a fine time to have a navigator to figure out what the heck was going on, but Zelda didn’t seem interested in taking on the job.

So I got off the highway and looked for a place to park and figure out what I was doing. Um, note to self: Serenity is taller than a Honda Civic. I drove under some trees that scraped along the top, got flustered, wound up in some mud, couldn’t get the phone to work, had cars whizzing by… Finally I used the in-system navigation built-in to Serenity. It told me to turn around. But I hadn’t used that system and didn’t really know how it worked. I tried to get an overview, but that was a list of road numbers I didn’t recognize. All I could get it to show me was the line where I currently was, not the whole map. Still, it was the best option I had at that point and I really wanted to get out of the mud I was in before I got stuck. So I made a cautious K turn, hurrying and anxious, and headed out.

For the first ten miles, the drive was lovely. It was so nice to be off the highway. 95 creates the illusion that the whole country is exactly alike: McDonald’s and Shell stations and asphalt. Sure, the billboards advertise peaches and pecans in Georgia, but mostly one mile is the same as the next. Driving along a road of fields and little brick houses was so much more interesting. Sort of slow, but that was okay. After all, I wasn’t in a hurry.

And then the line along the map that I was following had me turn. Obedient to the whims of my electronic guide, I did. Onto a dirt and gravel road that led to a tiny bridge signposted with weight warnings. What? According to the numbers, I was still 20 miles away from my destination. Could this really be the road?

I hadn’t intended to go hours and hours out of my way. The original map I’d been looking at had made it look as if the campground was about twenty minutes off the highway. I was already twenty minutes away from the highway.

But I drove onto the gravel road. It was exactly like you’d think it would be — bumpy and dirty and kicking up a cloud of dust as I puttered along at about ten miles per hour.

And suddenly I knew where I was — in the beginning of a romance novel. When the photographer or journalist or whatever she is — not quite TSTL, but maybe borderline — follows bad directions and winds up on the farm owned by the good-looking curmudgeon with the heart of gold that she mistakes for a hired hand. Except, no blizzard. Really, to be a good romance novel, I would need to be destined to get trapped on the ranch and that means blizzard. No blizzard, no romance.

Okay, so maybe I was in a thriller. I follow the wrong road and see something mysterious. Mostly I was seeing lots and lots and lots of green leaves, I was clearly in the middle of nowhere, but maybe I’d see two suspicious men exchanging an envelope. And one of them would look vaguely familiar. They’d see me, too, and then I’d be in danger. They’d know they had to stop me from revealing their meeting. And ha, innocent old me, not only am I driving a distinctive vehicle, I put a name on it. All they’d have to do is hunt for the van named Serenity. (Have I shown you a picture of the name yet? For some reason, none of the pictures ever turn out, but I will do that soon, I promise.) Strange men would start following me, a car with heavily tinted windows would try to force me off the road. Except seriously, there was nothing on this road and no other people but me. And wouldn’t the suspicious men meet in a less innocuous place? Or maybe at night?

So maybe I was in a horror movie. The forest had a great vibe for that — beautiful, innocent, flourishing. What darkness might it be hiding? I’d be trapped on the road, lost, and I’d go up to the spooky house, the one with the porch that creaked as if someone was walking on it when no one was there. And then… yeah, no. We did not have enough characters for a horror movie. Plus, dogs. Who would write a horror movie with dogs in it? B would not be a good horror movie victim — he’s just too pitiful, especially right now when he’s been chewing off his fur. And Zelda might be a good character in a horror movie — she’d be the dog barking furiously at nothing — but I would never ignore her if she were barking furiously. I’d pay attention. We’d leave. End of movie in the first act.

That left… murder mystery. And sadly, the only way that storyline made sense was if I was the victim. The innocent shower taker at the Bates Motel; the empty van still running, abandoned in a field; the body washed up on a beach. The story would open with me, but then jump to the world-weary detective, burned out on the job but determined to solve this one last case, the greatest of their career.

And then the gravel road came to an end and I was back on a normal road, pretty much highway-ish, wandering through a small town, and eventually deposited neatly at the front of a very nice campground. There’s a pool, a gorgeous lake, loads of people, a tiny restaurant that looks out on the lake and serves food I can’t eat; golf carts and pine trees and red-clay dirt that thrills me because it’s not Florida dirt, not New York dirt, not Californian dirt. Not, in other words, dirt that I know.

Adventure over. But it was so fun while it lasted! Even though yes, what really happened was just that I got a little lost, it felt like a blissful twenty minutes of imagination churning.

I made up for my lack of true adventure by braving my kitchen tonight for the first real time. I’ve eaten plenty of cold food — my usual salads and roll-ups and plates of fruit and veggies — but it’s been too hot to think turning on a heat source made sense. But tonight I used both burners of the stove and made brown rice noodles, topped with a sauce of sautéed onion, garlic, black olives, green olives, salmon, avocado and arugula. It reminded me very much of when I was first learning to cook, about 16 years ago, and experimented with all sorts of strange pasta sauces. It would have been better if I’d added some chili garlic sauce, but I already ate my nightshades for the week. Still, it was entirely edible. And my stove worked the way it was supposed to, plus the hot water heater worked the way it’s supposed to. Yay! I like having my adventures be imaginary, not technical.

And now I’m listening to the rain on the roof. Loads of rumbling thunder, but it feels quite peaceful inside. I have no internet so can’t post this story at the moment, but maybe tomorrow when I’m in the midst of my long trek north. At the moment, I feel like I could stay in this campground forever, but maybe tomorrow’s campground will be just as pleasant.

Bass Lake, Dillon, South Carolina

26 Tuesday Jul 2016

Posted by in Bartleby, Serenity, Travel

≈ 6 Comments

376 miles today. I do not intend to do days like this often. I kept passing places that sounded intriguing and wanting to stop: historical sites and parks, beaches and artisan stores. But I just kept driving by. It is NOT the point of my adventurous life to always be moving. Well, sort of it is, but not moving without stopping at the cool stuff along the way. Once I get to Pennsylvania and unload the things that are making life in Serenity a little too complicated — she’s not really sized for carrying Christmas ornaments, china, and a large-screen television — I’m going to be slowing way down. When I see something that sounds fun, I will stop.

Not, however, when it’s a restaurant. What is it about road trips that makes unhealthy food seem so appealing? I wanted waffles today. And pancakes. McDonald’s french fries. Fried chicken. BBQ. Every time I saw a sign for restaurant I’d never heard of, I wanted to stop and check it out, and every time I saw a sign for fast food that I once liked and haven’t eaten in years, I also wanted to stop. I wasn’t even hungry most of the time. For breakfast, I had gluten-free rice Chex with fresh blueberries and coconut milk. For lunch, I had prosciutto-wrapped dates and cherries. And for dinner, I had turkey slices rolled up with peach-honey mustard, avocado, and arugula inside, with sliced radishes as a side. How could McDonald’s compare? And yet…

One of the reasons that I drove so far today was that it is seriously hot. I thought about stopping earlier in the day, but with the van moving, both of the dogs were in the front seat area, AC blasting on them, as the back got hotter and hotter. I knew if we stopped in the heat of the day, the AC would be hard-pressed to keep up. It can drop the temp about 20 degrees, I think, less if she’s sitting in full sun. So with the temp breaking 100, stopping earlier would have meant sitting inside an 80 degree van, at best, or staying outside in the heat. I could have done it and Z probably would have been fine, but poor B does not love the heat.

I accidentally gave B a full Benadryl tonight. I don’t know what I was thinking — over-tired, I guess — but I stuck the whole pill in the peanut butter and handed it to him and only thought, “Oh, wait, I usually cut it in half,” when it was already in his mouth. Not like I could get it back at that point, but I was filled with maternal anxiety. Not about whether it would be bad for him — a double-dose of Benadryl’s not going to kill him — but about whether his reaction would be stoned dog or hyper dog. Either was possible. I am feeling exceedingly fortunate that his eyes are glazed and his head nodding. I’m not exactly in the mood to entertain a bouncy ball of enthusiasm although it would be sort of fun to see B have crazy energy. It’s not his usual style. I should probably drag him out for a last walk before he completely crashes, though.

And then maybe I’ll start planning tomorrow’s journey. The question will be: zoom through North Carolina and well into Virginia, or take it easy and stop early? Except VA, it turns out, is only 3 hours away, and that seems like a pretty short day. But maybe that’s what I’m ready for. Decisions, decisions!

St Augustine!

26 Tuesday Jul 2016

Posted by in Serenity, Travel

≈ 8 Comments

But I don’t have any cool pictures because I haven’t done anything at all. Except pull off the highway, find myself an RV park (St. Johns RV) and after a reasonably brief time of getting settled, crash onto an unkempt bed and go to sleep. I didn’t even hook up the water and the sewer, despite having paid for the full service. But I was surprisingly tired.

Well, maybe not surprisingly. I think I predicted more than once that the moment everything was done I was going to sleep for three days. It’s been a busy three months and an intense last few weeks. I did have time for one last swim yesterday, and a lovely lunch with my dad, but when we returned to the house the buyer was there for the inspection and from then on, it was a whirlwind.

Eventually, I was on the highway, Serenity and I headed north, and two things were happening. First, my brain wasn’t letting go of house worries. I kept trying to convince myself that it was finally my chance to think about writing, nothing whatever to do except concentrate on how I’m getting Grace out of this boring scene that she’s in, but my brain just would not unlock. And second, I could feel myself getting driven to reach PA. I passed a place I’d thought about stopping in — Flager Beach, where there’s a campground that sounded nice — and I was tired, my back was sore, I was hungry… but I just kept going. As if I was going to make it to PA in the next two hours. Given that my destination is 800 miles away and that there’s no reason for me to get there before Thursday, I knew I was being stupid. Well, or rather High Persistent, which is one of my character traits that’s always been both a blessing and a curse. Another fifteen miles down the road, I pulled over in a rest stop, found myself a new place to stay, called ahead, and here I find myself.

It’s nothing special: your basic field with concrete pads. But there are some trees and a nice long walk for the dogs. Both of them refused to come back into Serenity this morning after their walk, so I got a chance to try out their new tie-outs. Z promptly wound herself around the tree. Ha. It’ll take practice, I expect for both of them, since they’ve never been tied up before.

Still, it’s getting pretty hot already — not quite 9, and it’s 86 degrees inside Serenity — so it’s probably time to close Serenity up, get the AC on, and get back on the road. I don’t wish I was staying because Serenity is filled with clutter that I’m taking to my brother’s house and the feeling of chaos stresses me out, but I am definitely looking forward to the day where my goal isn’t to get on the road, but to enjoy where I am. Soon!

The big day

25 Monday Jul 2016

Posted by in House, Personal, RV, Serenity, Travel

≈ 5 Comments

Yesterday was a perfect day. Not just a nice day, not just a good day, but an authentically perfect day.

I’d been dreading it for weeks. My last full day in my house, my last moment to say good-bye. I expected loneliness and sorrow, regret and probably some worry about the future. Instead, I puttered around, moving stuff from one place to another. I went for a walk with a friend, cleaned and swam, saw another friend, ran some errands. Spent half an hour on the phone with R, made a snack sort of lunch, swam some more. Cleaned some more, went out and saw some other friends, made dinner in Serenity — a salad of mixed greens, turkey chunks, pecans, and dried apricots, with a balsamic and peach honey mustard vinaigrette.

And at about 9, when I was tired and ready to sleep, instead I went back into the house and out to the swimming pool and lit the torches and swam by firelight under a starry sky. It was lovely, so beautiful as I floated in the still water, watching the colors of the flames against the backdrop of the green leafy bamboo. The sweet olive tree was even blooming a little again, making the whole backyard smell tropical. It was as magical as I could have imagined, maybe even more so.

The only not quite perfect thing about the day was that poor Zelda was so tired from staying two inches away from me while I wandered around that when I swam she didn’t play with her ball. Instead she slept, as if she was grateful for the chance to get some rest while I was contained. She, of course, doesn’t know that it’s going to be her last chance to play in a pool for a while.

But even that’s okay. I’ve been fighting to keep her ears healthy — drops every morning, cleaning them every day — but I’m pretty sure that I’ve failed and that she’s working on infections, maybe in both. It would be impossible to keep her out of the pool if we were home, but her ears will have a chance to stay dry when we’re on the road. And if I decide in a few days that this is an infection that needs more than Zymox, I can find a Banfield on the road and use her wellness plan to see a vet pretty much anywhere.

And today — well, today’s the big day. I shouldn’t be writing a blog post, I should be finishing cleaning out the house, making last decisions about all the things left inside, dragging the trash out to the curb. Maybe scrubbing the kitchen floor — I did a fairly half-hearted job yesterday. Definitely finishing emptying the fridge and cleaning it out. Checking the laundry situation, maybe making a last run to Goodwill. Oh, and cleaning my bathroom.

I suspect that today is both going to fly by and have long moments where it feels like it’s dragging, but at 2PM, I will sign the papers. One set of dreams will come to an end, but another will begin. I have no idea where I’m going to be spending the night, whether I’ll still be in Florida or have made it to Georgia or South Carolina. For that matter, I have no idea where I’ll be tomorrow night either. How fun!

Peaceful mornings

23 Saturday Jul 2016

Posted by in Personal, RV, Serenity, Travel

≈ 2 Comments

I slept in the house last night, but this morning I decided to have my first meal in Serenity. I brought my coconut milk, my gluten-free cereal and a nectarine out to the driveway and made myself a cup of coffee while I sliced up the nectarine. I sat on the edge of the van, the sliding door open, coffee on the floor next to me, bowl of cereal in my hand, adoring dogs at my feet.

A bird was flitting in and out of my crepe myrtle tree, which is in full, gorgeous pink bloom, and the sky was the pure blue of early morning with some wispy white clouds floating by. I took a deep breath and thought about how a peaceful morning just sets the tone for the whole day.

And then a dog walked by and Zelda went berserk and I grabbed for her (brand-new) tie-out cord, throwing my cereal into the air. Before we were through, I had nectarine and coconut milk and soggy rice chex in my coffee and on the floor and even on the comforter on the bed next to the door. Yeah, that happened.

I didn’t let either dog lick up the coconut milk and cereal, and I growled at Zelda as I cleaned up the mess. Literally, a low rumble of annoyance.

But now I’m sitting on the bed in Serenity, trying out my new mobile internet solution. I’ve been finalizing one room at a time in the house. My bathroom and bedroom are almost done–cabinets and medicine closet bare, dresser drawers empty. My living room is done, the family room, guest bedroom, Rory’s bedroom and guest bathroom are all complete. Most of my fridge is in Serenity — and the online wisdom that the small fridge is surprisingly big seems to have been accurate, I’ve gotten a lot in there already with plenty of room for more.

If I was really motivated, I could get everything I need out of the house within the next hour, take a load of stuff to the storage unit, and be living in Serenity by noon. But there’s the slight problem of no water supply, plus I do still intend to take as much advantage of the pool as I can in the next two days.

And I don’t feel done. I’ve still got a lot to do in the next couple of days, including the always really boring deep-cleaning done for the benefit of the next inhabitant. Something about scrubbing floors when I know I’m not going to be the one messing them up again makes me clean more sullenly. Still, I’ve got a definite glow of joy going as I sit here. This is going to be so much fun!

To-do lists

02 Monday May 2016

Posted by in Bartleby, House, Swimming, Zelda

≈ 4 Comments

I looked at my to-do list and with the exception of one ridiculous item — finish writing this damn book — it is very close to being completed. Most of the items on it are either things that I am waiting on someone else to do or things that are optional. For example, wash all the windows. Well, that’s a nice idea, because clean windows look good. But if I don’t get around to washing all the windows and someone doesn’t buy the house because the windows weren’t clean, they probably weren’t someone who needed a thirty-year old house anyway.

Yesterday’s chores included buying six bags of mulch and spreading it on my front garden; organizing books and items in the garage and taking a load of books to the library donation spot; going to Lowe’s and buying lightbulbs for the overhead kitchen lights, then dragging out the big ladder to change the two that were burned out; scrubbing my bathtub to within an inch of its life (it’s still doesn’t look spotless, but it never will); and much playing and splashing with the dogs.

The last part was fun. It was a beautiful first day of May and the water was perfect. B, I think, finally really likes swimming as long as I’m close to him. He’s like a toddler in the water, running around all excited on the edge, then super-cautious about how he puts his paws in, then always checking back to make sure he hasn’t gotten too far away from safety. And Z, of course, loves the pool and playing with her basketball.

2016-04-26 13.06.13

It definitely gave me pangs about giving it up. I had the gloomy thought of “I will never find another house that I love as much as this one.” French doors to the patio, high ceilings, my window seat, my kitchen cabinets… and then I thought, yes, this is true, I will never again have to be responsible for yard work or worry about termites. Leaks I will have to worry about — apparently, water is the big problem for RVs and getting a leak is both eventually inevitable and the problem that you have to watch out for. Yes, I’ve been doing lots of reading about RVs.

Today’s goals: finish the damn book. But that brings me back to my original thoughts on writing — that goal never moves, because I’ve made it too overwhelming. I need to make it a series of smaller goals. So today’s goal: finish the scene I’m in, write the next one, figure out what happens in the one after that. And, at least temporarily, let go of worrying about the house and the RV and the future and all the things that are driving me away from the story, and concentrate on Grace.

Ironically, I thought my trip to Sarasota on Friday would be really great plotting time to finalize the order of these last scenes and maybe get some real words imagined but I spent most of it daydreaming about Fen. She’s having such great adventures in my head. I seriously am so looking forward to getting back to writing about her. First, though, Grace. And even before that, a Monday morning, a dog walk, some healthy breakfast, and so on. The fingers are warmed up and ready to go!

Swimming and yoga

31 Saturday Oct 2015

Posted by in Grief, Mom, Randomness, Swimming, Yoga

≈ 2 Comments

It’s probably global warming and I should probably feel bad about the damage we’re doing to the planet and how we’re all going to die in droughts and super-storms in the next hundred years — actually I do feel bad about that — but it doesn’t prevent me from appreciating the fact that yesterday was such a lovely day that I stuck my feet in the pool. And the water was cool, but not so cold I couldn’t at least put my bathing suit on and maybe go in a little deeper. And once partway in, it was so nice to have the sun on my shoulders and so fun to have the dogs running around happily, that yeah, I really went swimming. Head under, laps back and forth, aimless floating, the whole thing. It was amazingly nice and not really cold at all. October 30th — it’s the latest I’ve gone swimming by probably at least a month. And so worth it. A couple times I’ve tried off-season swimming and it’s been a brisk dip, a refreshing chill, scurry to dry off, kind of thing, but this was not that. This was glorious appreciation of golden warmth and luxurious floating.

In the evening, I was out and — long story short, because I don’t have a lot of time — I was upset and sad, and I realized that I was wearing yoga-appropriate clothes and that 7PM yoga would start in about twenty minutes. So I went to evening yoga.

I cried. I cried so much that I had to get up and get a cloth to wipe my face because I was going to start choking on my snot. Many tears. It felt so incredibly healthy. Lisa, the yoga teacher that I personally think has a direct and two-way line to God in her head (or maybe her heart?), warned us at the beginning of class that it was Friday and sometimes the music on Friday was a little freaky, and then class started. The first song in reminded me of something from the Internet, specifically one of the “Where the Hell is Matt?” videos. I think it might have been Trip the Light, but I could be wrong about that. But I was not really listening, it was background music, and I was stretching and trying to be in the moment.

But the next song was one that slowly made me think of my mom. I didn’t recognize it at first, but it started getting more and more of my attention, until I realized that it was Judy Collins and that my mom used to play it on the piano. I probably hadn’t heard it since then. And then I heard a few more of the words and realized it was Rainbow Connection. My mom and rainbows have a profound connection to me and to have that song, playing at that moment, when I was that mood, after that week… the tears started gushing.

Stretch, stretch, more yoga, and then the song was John Mayer with “Daughters” and eventually Led Zeppelin and “Stairway to Heaven.” I swear it felt my mother wrote the playlist to tell me she was with me and that I wasn’t alone. And yes, I’m all weepy again, but it isn’t bad crying. It was music that made me feel not just less alone, but loved.

Writing yesterday — well, I broke 1K in total words, but story words was probably closer to 900 total. But it was good work and a good day, and today will be even better. Much fun stuff is happening in my story. I have a character, Sophia, who is just taking over in really unexpected ways. She was supposed to be just a crying girl, but apparently she’s quite stubborn now that she’s stopped crying.

Goal for today: words. Lots of them!