Last week, Suzanne and I went camping in Oregon. Not just camping — it was an authentic vacation, which for me, means no computer. It was incredibly nice to be away from the internet and its endless onslaught of depressing news. But I called my dad this morning and was reminded that I did want to write about our trip, even if belatedly.

So our first campground was at Humbug Mountain State Park. We had two sites next to each other, which worked out okay. Next time, though, we’ll bring four chairs so we can have chairs at both sites instead of needing to shuffle them every time we wanted to switch sites. (I was cooking in Serenity, but Suzanne had the nicer site for sitting and relaxing.) The campground wasn’t perfect — it had too much traffic noise from the nearby highway for that — but it was pretty close. The best part was the easy walk to a gorgeous isolated expanse of beach.

We got to Humbug on Sunday afternoon & enjoyed the beach. On Monday, we left Serenity behind and took Suzanne’s car down to Brookings, visited the Humane Society thrift store, did some quick grocery shopping at Fred Meyer, and then had a picnic at Harris Beach State Park.

After lunch, we took a slow drive back to Humbug, stopping along the way to admire the views. We tried to go to one more beach, but it was a little bit of a hike over steep terrain — really gorgeous steep terrain — and I didn’t think Zelda could make the last twenty foot drop to the beach. Nor that I would be able to make the climb back up carrying her. It was beautiful, though.

On Tuesday, we again left the van and the trailer behind and went off exploring in Suzanne’s car. This time we went north and east, aiming for Coquille Myrtle Grove, a state natural site with a swimming hole.

At the site, a short road led to a rocky beach and a shallow river. We set up Suzanne’s cabana tent to give us some shade, ate lunch, did some wading and rock hunting, and appreciated summer. After a couple hours, more people started to arrive, including some big family groups, so we packed up and headed back to Humbug.

I believe that it was at this moment when our vacation first started to go… well, not awry, but in a different direction. Because it was hot at Coquille Myrtle Grove. Not necessarily Florida or Arizona-style hot, but definitely warmer than we’d expected it to be. Our plans, when we started, were to spend a few days on the coast and then head inland on Thursday, stopping in Bend Thursday night and then going south to the desert to hunt for sunstones, and then into the mountains, staying at a BLM campground on the weekend.

We were driving back to Humbug when I said, “I wonder how hot it’s going to be in Bend.” When we reached a town where we had cell service, we checked. Answer: too hot, at least for people traveling with dogs and without air-conditioning. We started scrambling for new campsites on the coast right away. Pro tip: the last week of August and Labor Day weekend are not times when you want to leave your reservations to chance and/or to the last minute. We found single campsites for Thursday and Friday nights, but nothing for the weekend.

We had another sorta unpleasant discovery when we got back to the campground. The entrance was blocked by emergency vehicles. Apparently, there was a wildfire over the hill, four miles away. You, oh, reader, have the benefit of two weeks of foreknowledge, so you know exactly how bad that news might have been. We, fortunately for the rest of our trip, had no such foresight. They let us into the campground and we packed up so that we could get out quickly if they started evacuating, including making plans for where we’d meet up again if we did have to run for it. But despite a restless night, the campground was still there in the morning.

Wednesday morning, we took one last walk on the foggy beach, and then headed north to our next campground.

At some point this summer, Tank was sitting in my lap, purring ferociously, as was his wont, and I promised him that someday he’d get to be an inside cat.

I was wrong.

A lump on his head turned out to be a tumor growing into his eye socket and after surgery, pills, and some experimental chemotherapy, yesterday we said goodbye. It was simultaneously the right thing to do — his breathing had gotten raspy, he’d lost so much weight, and his fur was no longer silky smooth, but rough and getting spiky — and the painful uncertainty of, “Today? Really, today?”

As we drove home from the vet, the car feeling that much emptier, we talked about his next life. I said maybe he’d like to come back as a dog, because he had the friendliness of a dog. He loved laps, he loved to be petted. In better days, if you sat down anywhere outside, it would only take a few minutes before he would come strolling through the garden or yard to leap up onto your lap.

This, of course, was challenging for me, since I’m allergic, but he was impossible to resist. Partly that was because he was so very lovely — his purr rumbled through his whole body, and his fur was a glossy, silky softness — but it was also his pure predatory energy. He conveyed, wordlessly, his ownership of the yard and all laps within it, and his willingness to defend that ownership with his extremely sharp claws and fangs. That, of course, was why the inside cats hated him and refused to let him share their home, but it probably got him more lap time than he might otherwise have gotten. For a feral cat, he was awfully fond of human beings.

In the car, though, Suzanne said Tank would consider coming back as a dog to be a downgrade, and we agreed he didn’t deserve that. If anything, he deserves an upgrade, so I hope that somewhere today, a kitten is being born into a loving home with people who will adore him and let him spend every single night of his life in a comfortable, warm, inside bed. And every day of his life in a garden.

Good-bye, Tank. You were a most excellent cat.

There’s a sign on the front porch, Eggs $4, that Suzanne flips to reveal or hide, depending on how the chickens have been laying or how many neighbors have been by recently. Or even how many eggs I’ve been eating.

The other day, a stranger stopped Suzanne and asked, and yes, there were eggs available, so she and Suzanne had a pleasant exchange at the gate. I was cooking dinner at the time and could overhear them. When S came into the kitchen to grab the eggs, I said, “Tell her she can only have the eggs if she’s willing to take some tomatoes, too.”

I have been using tomatoes at almost every meal, cooking them in everything. We’ve had seafood soup with tomatoes (extremely delicious); tomatoes topped with pesto and goat cheese and broiled (also delicious); caprese salad (of course, delicious); tomatoes in salad; pasta with tomatoes; pizza with tomatoes (gluten-free, of course)… I’ve done all the things I can think of to do with tomatoes, and yet the tomatoes keep coming.

This is not the worst problem to have, of course. It did just occur to me, though — for the first time — to wonder what Suzanne would be doing with her tomatoes if I weren’t in her kitchen, using them up as fast as I can. I’m pretty sure a lot more of them would be becoming chicken food. I wonder if that makes the chickens sad?

At the beginning of 2020, I decided that instead of having resolutions, I would have focus words, specifically: learn, create, and appreciate. If I could have predicted 2020, I might have chosen words more like survive, tolerate, and “resist the urge to go on a murderous rampage that ends with a lot of dead anti-maskers and you spending the rest of your life in prison.” But I did not, and believe it or not, despite everything, I have continued trying to focus on my focus words.

They’ve meant different things to me over the course of the year. I think I acknowledged my appreciation of clean water a lot more often in March than I do today, and I know my first month after moving into Serendipity included appreciation of my comfortable bed every single evening. Now I mostly take it for granted. Comfortable bed, yay!

Initially, I think I defined “learn” as, “read a chapter of a non-fiction, educational book, designed to help me become better at my self-publishing career.” That’s evolved over the course of the past eight months, to include reading a blog post that teaches me something, doing a video lesson on Udemy, or practicing a new skill. In the same way, “create” started out by meaning “write some fiction words,” and it’s evolved into “do something that feels creative,” whether that’s writing, drawing, graphic design, or even cooking. One day last week, for example, “learn” was reading about bread pudding, and “create” was inventing my own bread pudding recipe, for a savory bread pudding that used sourdough bread, manchego cheese, chicken broth, and sausage with mushroom and smoked gouda. (It was delicious; I probably should have written it down at the time, because I doubt I could ever create it the same way again.)

Most often in the past few months, though, “learn” has meant learning to use graphics software. It’s a task that’s incredibly easy to get overwhelmed by. There’s so much to learn, so much one can do. I have to remind myself sometimes that my ultimate goal isn’t to become a great artist, but to be able to make covers for my own stories. And in that respect, I’m really quite pleased with yesterday’s labors:

I did another cover last week, which I then used for a short story in my Scribbles section (found at Sunset,) but this one is for the story I’ve been working on for the last couple months. It’s nowhere close to finished and that might not be its real title, but I’m very pleased with its pretty cover. And also with all the learning that went into that cover — it uses masking and blend modes and glyphs and overlays, and lots and lots of layers.

So many times over the past six months, I’ve felt ready to give up. The frustration, the feeling like I’m spinning my wheels, the “why bother?” has all gotten to me. But today I appreciate my persistence.

Last night, I was washing the dishes and for some reason, I started thinking about the movie Groundhog Day. I’d just finished eating a delicious dinner of spicy rice and chicken with avocado, tomato, and green onions, topped with melted mozzarella cheese. I’d shared it with Suzanne, of course, and we’d eaten on the patio, in our rocking chairs, with the sun still shining on us. I think maybe I felt the fog start to come in — that first hint of cool evening air — but something had inspired me to get up and start cleaning. 

I was enjoying the process, though. Warm running water still delights me, even though I’m beginning  to take it for granted. Showering without strategizing is starting to feel normal. (Strategizing: Do I have enough water? Have I heated the water? If I’m showing in a campground, will it be clean? Do I have everything I need? Did I remember flip-flops for the shower floor?) 

But back to yesterday, I’m washing the dishes and thinking about Groundhog Day, and it occurs that me that if I had to be living in Groundhog Day, the day that I was currently experiencing would have been exactly the right day. 

It wasn’t a perfect day. I read too much of the news for that, and I played a little too much solitaire, and I thought about He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Thought-About several times. But my day included writing that entertained me (including hitting my 1000 word per day goal, yay!); some texting with friends; a drawing lesson about perspective, and some time spent drawing; a walk with the dogs, some yoga including an actual video lesson; a trip to the cupcake store (masked and socially distanced) to pick up the gluten-free cupcakes I’d ordered last week; two nice meals with Suzanne on the patio; beautiful flowers to admire, some laughter and sunshine, and plenty of gratitude. 

If every day was just like that, I wouldn’t complain. I even flossed my teeth. 

Yesterday was a completely fantastic and glorious day at the beach, except that at the end my beloved old dog tried to kill herself, which was… yeah. She totally freaked me out.

I’ve always liked that specific beach (Clam Beach) because I thought she could go off leash safely there. The canine dementia means she no longer responds to voice commands — not at all. She simply doesn’t understand language anymore. She still understands her hand signals, though, so mostly it’s not a big deal. I have to get her attention before I can tell her to do something, but she’s still very responsive.

Anyway, Clam Beach is huge with plenty of room to roam and good lines of sight. Also, she’s an old dog. When she’s off leash, she wanders around and maybe does a little bit of running now and then, but she moseys, she doesn’t run. I generally put her back on leash when we start to head for the parking lot, which is down a long sandy path.

Yesterday when we started back, she ran ahead of me. And then she just kept running. All the way down the path, into the parking lot, through the parking lot… and still she kept going. I didn’t start running after her until she was maybe twenty feet away from the parking lot, but then I was chasing her as fast as I could, screaming her name, as she ran out the parking lot, across the road, and then — thank God — hit the fence between the road and the highway and started running the wrong way down the fence. Or the right way, rather, because instead of turning right where she could have run straight up the exit and onto the highway, she turned left and ran down the road. She was at least ten car lengths ahead of me when she finally slowed down and started to look around with a, “huh, what am I doing here?” posture.

I squatted down in the middle of the road and waited. She finally looked back and saw me. She cocked her head to one side in that Jack Russell terrier way and I signaled her to come. She immediately started loping back to me. When she got to me, I snapped her leash on and informed her that she was now grounded for life. Then I realized that I actually probably could ground her for life, given that I’ve been expecting us to run out of time for years now. Literal years. She hasn’t run like that since the pit bull attack in the summer of 2018. I guess that means she’s recovered from that nightmare.

Every day, I start my morning with gratitudes and end my evening with appreciations. I don’t like them to be negative. Happiness comes from focusing on the good, not on the “well, it could be worse, I guess.” But last night I had to appreciate that my dog hadn’t died horribly, and this morning I was grateful for the very same thing. Also for her current state of health, which is completely mystifying, obviously poses unforeseen risks, but really quite lovely. If you had told me even yesterday morning that Zelda would run so far and so fast that I couldn’t keep up with her, I would have smiled and maybe given a half-hearted chuckle. As if! But life is strange and we are so, so lucky.

While we were at the beach, I was singing to myself, in the way one does on a glorious, isolated beach, and I started singing a half-remembered song from the musical Alice in Wonderland, in which I played Alice when I was in 4th or 5th grade. The specific lines that came back to me were, “I give myself very good advice, but I very seldom follow it.” It made me think about my eight-year-old self and wonder what advice she would give me if she could meet the me of now. A lot of people seem to feel like they are the same person that they were as children, but I don’t feel that way at all. Eight-year-old Me had a blithe confidence that Now Me lacks. (This is not me being mean to Now Me, incidentally: I’m not wallowing in regrets about my life or anything.)

Later in the day, I was reading Banish Your Inner Critic, which finally made it to the top of my TBR pile, and reached an exercise about creating an imaginary Creative Coach. A person — real, historical, fictional, whatever — visualized with all the senses, to replace the Inner Critic that shuts us down. Someone who will be warmly encouraging. My Inner Critic is not actually mean to me very often — she doesn’t say “you’re a lousy person” or that kind of thing — but she very often says things like, “that line is terrible, you’re making no sense, no one will understand that, totally clunky,” and so on. She’s a harsh critic, not of my person, but of my writing. Anyway, I considered a few options for my Creative Coach, but it didn’t take long before I remembered my 8-year-old self. I think if my 8-year-old self could give me advice, it would be exactly the kind of creative coaching advice I need. The very least of what she would give me is gushing approval of the story I’m writing now, which rational me keeps thinking is never going to sell and is probably pointless to keep writing. But my 8-year-old self likes it a lot and I think, today at least, I am going to listen to her.

Saturday marked the four year anniversary of van life for me. In contrast to the one year anniversary of van life, where I noted every campground, analyzed my expenses, and considered what I’d learned, I came very close to forgetting the date entirely this year. In fact, I had to look it up to be sure. Was it the 25th or the 28th? It was the 25th: a Monday, when I signed the papers letting go of my beloved house and moved on into the unknown.

I realized the date while camping, which seems appropriate. Suzanne had a three day weekend, so we made reservations at Dillon Creek, a National Forest campground in the Klamath National Forest. I drove up on Thursday, with Zelda, and S joined me Friday morning. The campground was terrific — nicely isolated sites surrounded by trees, with a fast-running river providing a lovely soundtrack. On Thursday night, I was essentially alone there — there were a couple tents down the road, but no one in sight. I fell asleep watching the stars beyond the trees out of the window. (Then I woke up a few dozen times because of the realities of temperature control in the van: first it was too hot, then too cold, then too hot, etc. I’m out of practice at sleeping through minor discomfort.)

We had a peaceful day on Friday that included a couple walks, some wading in the river, but an awful lot of sitting in our camp chairs reading. It was really hot, in the 90s, I think. I totally neglected everything I’ve learned about living in the van in hot weather — didn’t cover the windows, didn’t pull the curtain to close off the cab, didn’t open the back door and run the fan in the bathroom — and the van was suffocating. When I went in to make dinner, it was close to unbearable. I was just throwing together things for cold quinoa bowls but within a minute I was drenched with sweat. Outside, however, there were hornets that were unreasonably attracted to the food, and mosquitoes. So, so, so many mosquitoes. I went for the big-time bug spray — I will take ALL the deet, thank you very much — and still wound up needing to cover up with leggings and socks and a hoodie for comfort. Guess what? Leggings and socks and a hoodie aren’t that comfortable when it’s 90+ degrees.

I will say about the mosquitoes that although they were bad, they were nothing compared to the mosquitoes at Mabel Lake in Minnesota or even probably the bugs at Buccaneer State Park in Mississippi, and there were definitely fewer of them than on the hike we went on in the rain forest in Belize… but they still weren’t fun.

I was not, however, the first person to say, “So… camping when it’s too hot to do anything is not so appealing. It’s probably nicer at home.” I didn’t argue, though. We had a nice Friday of quiet camping, S got to try out her trailer Friday night, and by mid-day Saturday — my actual four-year anniversary of life in Serenity — we were packed up and heading home.

I spent Sunday finishing some painting in Serendipity: the cabinet, the bathroom door, the missed spots on the shelves. As I finally put the paint and brushes that had been sitting on my bathroom floor since early June into the storage shed, I admitted the truth to myself: I am no longer a full-time van lifer. My pandemic resting place has turned into a home. I don’t live in a van anymore, I live in an adorable tiny house in the middle of a garden. Lucky, lucky me!

I’m not quite sure what this means for my blogging. I didn’t actually start out as a travel blogger, so does it matter if I’m not on the road anymore? Maybe not for my own purposes — my blog has always been mostly for me, a way of saving my own memories. But I suspect I’m going to fall into only blogging when I feel like I have something to write about, which probably means not blogging very often, and definitely means acknowledging that I’ve abandoned my old routine of blogging every Monday or Tuesday and Friday. So it goes. Life is change, right? For me, it’s not a bad change.

Last week, Suzanne and I took a quick trip up to Eugene, Oregon to pick up the teardrop trailer she’d ordered last year after discovering the delights of camping with a real bed and a real roof on our road trip to Idaho. The planning for the trip kept us busier than expected in the first week of July — her car needed a hitch and then the electrical system developed problems, so I spent part of a couple days hanging out at car places. It felt like there were a host of uncertainties as we headed out: Would the hitch be the right height? Had the electrical system repair solved the problem? Would places be open along the way or closed because of the virus? How hard would it be to figure out towing? Etc., etc.

And our trip did not get off to the best possible start. We left early, just after 6AM, and had been in the car for no more than ten minutes when I realized that Zelda had poop stuck to her butt and that she’d managed to smear it on my jeans, my shirt, my jacket, and the seat belt. Our entire canister of wet wipes later (minus one, saved for a future emergency), I still vaguely smelled like dog crap. And at our first stop — in Crescent City for coffee and a quick beach visit for the dogs — we discovered that the coffee shop & bakery Suzanne loved was gone, permanently, and that Riley had thrown up. Profusely.

It was a most excellent trip.

And actually I’m not kidding at all. We had a great time. The weather was mostly beautiful, the company was excellent, and serendipity was on our side. My favorite example: because of the various uncertainties, Suzanne kept it simple and made a reservation at a La Quinta in Eugene. When we got there in the late afternoon, between the challenges of parking a trailer in a crowded parking lot and Riley being sick, it was clear that we were not going out again. That was okay; we’d brought food with us just in case. But while Suzanne was busy with the trailer, I was browsing Trip Advisor, and it turned out that their #1 restaurant in Eugene, Sabai Cafe, was moderately priced, cautious about the virus, offered gluten-free options, and was half a mile away from the hotel. And it totally deserved its #1 ranking: Suzanne picked up takeout for us while I stayed with the dogs and the food was fantastic.

The next day, we took the coastal route home, 101. It was a perfect day for it. Foggy in the morning, burning off to blue skies & sunshine in the afternoon. We stopped at Fred Meyers for snacks, The Exploding Whale Memorial Park in Florence for a dog break, Clausen Oysters in Glasgow for an outside lunch, Gold Beach for a glorious beach walk, and the Trees of Mystery for a bathroom break.

We wore our masks, stayed generally away from people, and practiced good distancing, but it was lovely to get out and go somewhere. Lots of driving, obviously, but beautiful territory. We’re planning now for a longer trip, to include camping, at the end of August, pandemic-willing.

Unfortunately, the next few days were not so much fun. On Friday, Riley had a 4PM vet appointment but I called Suzanne at work sometime after 11 and said, “I need you to come home now, he can’t wait.” He was panting hard, lips drawn back, not willing to stand. I would have taken him without waiting, but I’m not strong enough to pick up fifty pounds of limp dog and he wasn’t moving. We spent a good chunk of the afternoon waiting in the parking lot at the vet’s office (pandemic rules), finally heading home while he was getting x-rays.

On the way home, we splurged on one last road trip luxury and bought some cooked crab for dinner. Yum. Except on my first bite, I thought, “Hmm, that’s a strong taste, is this okay?” Each successive bite was fine, so I relaxed. Until about midnight, when I got extremely, mercilessly ill. I will spare you the details, but as those who know me well know, my immune system is rather over-protective, so I’ve had a lot of practice with food poisoning. I mostly shrug off a bad night. This one… not so much. Suffice to say, I will not be forgetting it anytime soon.

Fortunately, Riley and I are both doing better now. He’s going to have an ultrasound in a couple days, to see if the vet can find a cause for his misery, but some painkillers and a couple days of relaxation have him almost back to normal. (He might have thrown out his back, which apparently dogs can do.) And I’m not back to eating normally yet, but I will be soon, I’m sure.

In other rather nice fortunate news, Zelda’s on a serious upswing. A mystifying serious upswing. She’s eating — she’s even eaten dog food!; she’s active; she’s communicating, ie this morning she stared at me until I gave in and took her for a walk; she’s engaged and curious… I have no idea why or how, but I love it so, so, so much. I realize it’s just a moment in time, that her long, slow decline will continue, and I absolutely do love my foggy, sweet, confused, slow dog just as much as my alert, aware, curious dog, but it is so absurdly nice to have her back for a few days. We went to the beach early Sunday morning and she actually considered trying to play frisbee with the big dogs. She decided to explore the beach some more instead, but even the interest was unusual. I’m grateful to be given this gift of extra time with her!

The last time I did a “Best of the month” post was March. April & May… yes, apparently, they happened. Maybe it felt like the wrong time to be writing about what was good? Mostly the months passed in a pandemic blur, I think, so picking out one good day from a succession of similarly strange days just felt impossible.

In a way, the same is true for June 2020. I did have one overnight in the van, at a KOA in Willets, but it was a utilitarian trip in which the highlight was not being stranded on a mountain for the rest of my life. (Suzanne later put the odds at 40% that we were going to be walking down the hill and looking for help, which was actually way too high — I’ve been in worse situations, although none quite so scary. Getting stuck in the dirt involves more adrenaline when you’re on the side of a mountain. But it was definitely not Peak Fun.)

On the other hand, the month definitely included good moments (as did April and May, actually.) This was one of them:

The backstory to this is long and painful and hurts my heart, so I’m not going to share all of it. But in the past few weeks, there have been times when the only food Zelda has been willing to eat is food that I have pre-chewed for her and if you think that’s gross… well, at least I’m not the one who’s eating the food. It’s gross for her, but for me it’s just spitting food out into my hand. 🙂

Anyway, at the exact moment of this picture, the plate on the floor holds wild-caught sockeye salmon which Zelda is scorning, and the spoon holds fancy chicken dog food that Z loved a few months ago but will not deign to taste now. And Suzanne is pretending to eat so that Zelda might be willing to try a bite.

It so totally warms my heart. It is a seriously good friend who will both spoon-feed your dog and pretend to eat in order to encourage her to do the same.

But that is not what makes it the best of the month. No, what makes it a highlight is that about two minutes later, Zelda — being Zelda, being a dog — having said, “Ground beef? Eh, really just not in the mood. Chicken? That’s for dogs. I don’t eat that. Sockeye salmon? Well, a bite, maybe. No, no more, thank you.” — turned around, found a piece of dirt on the floor and said, “Oh, yum, delicious,” and gobbled it down.

WTH? Suzanne and I both laughed in disbelief. And then laughed some more, because WTH, Dog?!?

June 2020, a weird month. But one that I was fortunate enough to share with Zelda and Suzanne, which made it a very good month in so many ways.

Yesterday morning, I woke up in my extremely comfortable, extremely cozy bed, underneath my cotton quilt (which is precisely the type of blanket that I like), with sun shining through my skylight, and I thought, “I have a skylight. And a tiny house. And hot running water, and comfortable pillows, and a snoring dog and a garden… I think I might be a character in a fairy tale.”

And then I woke up all the rest of the way and thought, “Fairy tale? Which one?” I don’t know the answer to that, but not Hansel and Gretel. Maybe a Robin McKinley book.

I told Suzanne I wanted roses for the strip of garden plot that exists between the patio and Serendipity’s wall. In another odd moment of serendipity, a house down the street is being knocked down to be replaced by some ugly apartment building. It had a huge, beautiful rose bush that was going to be destroyed, so we wandered down there and asked the guys doing construction if we could take it. They said sure. Unfortunately, huge, beautiful rose bushes are rather hard to dig up. But Suzanne took a bunch of clippings and they’re now sprouting leaves in a glass on the kitchen sink. Someday my tiny house will also have roses.

Meanwhile, it has lavender.

I am trying to remember if I have ever hung artwork in my bathroom before. That’s fairly high-level nesting. This painting was on a shelf in Greg’s office, half buried under some other frames, quite dusty. I stumbled across it when I was organizing & promptly carried it off to Suzanne and asked if I could have it. It seriously looks like something I could have bought specifically to match the colors of Serendipity — shades of blue and teal — which is sort of surprising since those aren’t colors Suzanne has anywhere. I suppose that explains why it wasn’t hanging, but I like it very much.

And then there’s the shower curtain: Suzanne’s electric kettle died so we were in Target a few weeks ago and I walked by this shower curtain, then stopped and looked at it. It’s the exact colors of the paint in Serendipity, from the Edgewood Gray dots at the top to the Jamestown Blue and Wedgewood Gray. Irresistible, so yes, my bathroom now looks like an interior decorator got her hands on it. I didn’t buy the shampoo to match; it’s just a coincidence that my shampoo is lavender and blue.

Of course, it would be an interior decorator who lives in Humboldt. I hung a coat rack on the wall behind the door, and loaded it up with all my layers, plus my towel. I only turn on that heater when I’m taking or about to take a shower, but it is so nice to step out of the shower to a warm towel. So cozy!

Related: Suzanne told me I’d really want curtains for the front window, heavy ones, that would keep it warmer when it gets cold. I was not willing to spend money on curtains, so she offered me a pair that she was no longer using. I had my doubts, but once I hung them, I loved them.

I didn’t think the purple would look good with the blue, but I also have purple scarves & purple coats hung on the walls, plus the quilt has purple flowers to go with the blue, so yeah, purple curtains. Serendipitous.

What a domestic post. But yes, I’m in a very domestic mood. I’m still sad on a daily basis that my son grew up to be a person I don’t know, still struggling not to let the state of the world drag me into despair, still worrying and then trying to remember to breathe & let go. Practicing happiness has honestly never been harder. But I love my tiny house more every day. Roses and lavender and serendipity — I know how fortunate I am!