poo, Beth, and boundaries

A lot of outdoorsfolk say to watch the animals for how to behave in the woods. There’s an eccentric and controversial long-distance hiking guru named Ray Jardine who even feels we ought to poo as they do, whether we are indoors at the toilet or out. We should sit down, poo as much as we can, and immediately get back up. If we sit for hours at the pot, we train our bowels to excrete their contents leisurely. But over time, he is convinced, we can retrain our bowels to do their business and be done with it, just like the animals, and that this is actually healthier. But pooing is a rabbit trail; the point is watching animals.

I remembered that little Rayism this morning while I watched from the window as Beth made her rounds. She looked into a tire rut for muddy water, her favorite flavor. She meandered through the leaves, sniffing at one in particular, side-hilled down the embankment to the creek, and side-hilled back up. All along the border of the property she went, seeing what's new since yesterday, what's old.

She was a live picture of the concept of visiting your life’s borders, taking stock of yourself, seeing what’s new and what's old. This is something that can only be done in stillness, non-rushedly, even if there is commotion all around. Traffic buzzed by, cars and big trucks on the road, planes overhead. And Beth, apparently unaffected by these things, kept sniffing and looking. I want to sniff and look more too!

Sniffing out the borders is something big to me about now, because Jason and I are in a holding pattern, not making any sudden movements, and it's a good time to take stock. A lot has been on our collective mind. I will blog about it soon, but in a different entry or it'd be way too long.

Great Falls Park with Brie

We spent Thursday with our niece, Brie, at Great Falls Park since she was out of school. She is very interested in Biology, so Jason had a hoot discussing animal behavior, bird tail shapes, and tree types with her. If things got too technical for me, I simply sang, "High on a hill was a lonely goatherd. Lay ee odl lay ee odl lay hee hoo. Loud was the voice of the lonely goatherd. Lay ee odl lay ee odl-oo." - you know! From the goat puppet show on The Sound of Music! Brie brought up that song since we were on the Billy Goat Trail. And an appropriately named trail it was, with much rock hopping.

It was a stunning evening, finished up with an equally stunning supper of locally-made icecream. That brings up an interesting point. If anybody out there likes white chocolate, please. I am truly interested in why you do. I cannot taste much of anything when I eat it, which is why I usually don't. Does white chocolate have a taste? It's more just sweet waxiness, isn't it?

a few Christmas time pics

Ocean City / Steve & Darla

We went to Ocean City, Maryland last weekend and walked along the Atlantic coast. Here are some of our mini treasures. Aren't they cute all together? Even though in their days of living they might've fought each other.

We also walked along the boardwalk. Here's Jason, spending $5 at a game center to very bravely win us 37 tickets. With those 37 tickets, we were able to purchase 45 cents worth of goodies, including a harmonica, two erasers, and a green string. People might not be surprised by this - I have to say I actually was - but the harmonica did not work. It had a bunch of holes like usual but only played three tones. The picture is before I discovered this sad fact.

On our way back to Frederick, we got to have coffee with Steve and Darla, here for the holiday from Portland! He grew up in this area, as did Jason, and Darla and I are from towns a couple hours apart in Montana. Despite all that, we actually knew Steve from Alaska and hadn't yet met his wife of now over a year. It was December 23rd, and we planned to meet them in a gigantic parking lot in front of a sporting goods' store, rife with shopping humans. We both had car GPS's of our parents to find the place, as well as cell phones. With all that technology, we still missed seeing each other parked two cars apart. I mean, we were both at the far outer edge of the lot, two cars apart out of like 4 billion. Anyway, what a fantastic couple of hours we had together in front of a fake fireplace at a strip mall coffee shop, catching up on each others' lives and dreams, and discussing living with less technology, ignoring the urge to buy things out east here, the state of America's education system, and nature deficit disorder. It was nothing short of therapeutic for me.

week 3 with grandpa & grandma

By now we've been back in Maryland for a couple of weeks, but I thought it would be good to post a blog about our last week in Indiana, if for no other reason than to finish the story. Finishing things is hard business for me; I much prefer starting. The long and the short of it is that J's grandparents are in a care facility now. Actually, that's just the short of it. Getting them there was the long of it. They got checked in under the supposition that it's for temporary physical therapy. Quite simply, they wouldn't have gone otherwise. And because of a loophole in their insurance or Medicaid or something, grandma had to be admitted to the regular hospital for three days first, for no specific reason, an ordeal in and of itself. Take people who are already confused and try explaining nonsensical actions to them. You're likely to start blibbering your fingers to your lips.

The weather didn't help at dreary and freezing. Also, one day that Uncle Jim was driving Grandpa's car to secretly check out a care facility, Grandpa's pride and joy that he rarely lets anyone else drive, a deer ran onto the highway and into the driver's door and window, making the vehicle undriveable, killing the deer, and furthering that unsettled feeling among the family. The whole thing was seriously stressful. But Jason and his uncles and aunt handled it beautifully. I did too - by staying out of the way. That, and by tenderly carrying a hard-boiled egg around for a couple of days, an egg I had obtained at the hospital breakfast buffet. What? It represented new life, hope, and simplicity, see. It was nice to feel in my jacket pocket or see on the dresser, all nestled in my faded red scarf.

In other happenings, we spent part of that third week at a nearby relative's house, which is an old, cool place. Here's a photo of it, taken around 1888. Look closely at the doorway in the background for Miss Freaky Deaky in her long black dress. The house looks essentially the same now, and we stayed in an upstairs room whose door closes very slowly with a long, loud creak. The wind even howls upon the windows.

To top it all off, there's a graveyard hidden amongst the trees near the edge of the property. We visited it on a wet, dreary day and thoroughly enjoyed the setup of family plots and the old gravestones, some of which marked deaths from the 1840's. As a boy, Jason walked through the surrounding fields right past this graveyard to get from grandpa's house to David's (who owns the old house). Jason says it's probably better he didn't know it was here. After we explored it on foot, he did a bit of internet research about the people buried here. The neatest thing he found posted was a letter that a Civil War soldier had written to one of the members of this family.


Our last several days were spent back over at grandpa and grandma's place, since they were in the care facility by then. It was a very rich time with Jason's uncles Jim and Ray and aunt Beth, who are all siblings to Jason's dad. We started the process of going through photos and belongings. That prompted many wonderful conversations about Jason's dad and other family members who are gone. We found geneology information showing that Jason does indeed have Amish blood in him, explaining his beard, his propensity to find non-electric gadgets like manual coffee grinders, and thinking children should obey the first time they're told. Do the Amish even drink coffee? If not, that's what you call a good blood blend; coffee, but made non-electrically. Before Jason and I left for Maryland again, we sat with Jim and Beth in a tight circle around the bowl of remaining Watergate salad, each with a spoon to scrape the edges.

Here we are with Uncle Jim, Aunt Beth, and a waitress statue.

"My First Wicked Woman"

I like themes in life. Do you? Here's the link for a great story that The Prof wrote about his elderly aunt who recently died. (We met The Prof hiking on the PCT in 2002.)

http://iwishiwereayoda.blogspot.com/2007/11/my-first-wicked-woman.html

Be Still, My Soul

Here's a video Tamie posted to her blog this summer when she lost her grandmother, and I think of it now in our situation. I love this hymn, and it's especially peaceful and grounding set against images of imprisonment, inhumanity, and sorrow. It hearkens to some movies we've watched recently from the seclusion of our little bedroom, including "The Lives of Others," "Babel," and "Black Snake Moan."

* * * * *

Take Me by Don Chaffer

“Old ain’t a word that I’m fond of,” he said.
“And these days I’ve begun to lose count.”
Mumbling she rolls in her wheelchair, and says,
“I’m afraid that they’ve closed my account.”

There’s a blur that occurs in the line of their life
That decays the whole notion of sense
And they call to the past, insisting that it last,
While they’re climbing down reality’s fence

Singing with me
Take me
Take me
Write my name in the most Holy Tome
And when it’s my time
To assume the sublime,
Take me to my promised home

And their hands aren’t gnarled, they’re in love with the earth
And they’re dying to go there again
We say the essence of life is strong in our youth,
Slowly buried under wrinkles of skin

But there’s God in the way that life comes to an end,
In the way that it draws to a close,
In the saying of soul to the house of the skin,
You’re too weak now to really oppose

week 2 with grandpa & grandma

Twenty:

1. It's how many ounces of coffee Jason just ordered without blinking. We knew we needed to come get coffee for therapy this evening, but that's when we realized how badly we needed it. He's usually a 16-ounce guy.
2. It's how many minutes after we got home from a doctor's appointment today that Grandma looked at her calendar and exclaimed, "Oh no! We've missed today's appointment!"
3. It's how many years before dementia is even a possibility that we are going to sit our offspring down and plainly say to them, "When we get to such-and-such point, don't listen to us anymore. If we're too much for you, put us someplace for help. Do it. You have our blessing. We hope we raised you well enough that we can trust you with that decision."
4. It's how many times Grandma has whispered to Grandpa that we kids have been here too long. It's also how many seconds later she turns to him and asks if we were here yesterday.
5. It's how many times Grandpa has responded with "I dunno" and his signature shoulder shrug.

Our second week isn't over yet; there are actually 53 hours and 59 minutes left. But it has been much more difficult than last week because they are increasingly more decided that we should hit the old dusty trail. The tasks we do are outside of their normal routine, so they forget about them and can't understand we're around for their sake. Instead, they're starting to think we're milking them for something. I tell you, it's almost impossible to separate ourselves emotionally, because they're not yet totally out of it. Some facets of their real selves are still active. So, words hurt.

We're trying to remember how hard this is for them, how tough it must be to let that thing go you began striving for as soon as you could crawl: independence. The freedom to go and do and be. And now you have a couple of yae-hoos asking if you've taken your medication or if you need to use the restroom. Ridiculous! Who do they think they are, taking over our lives?

Still, when I put myself in their shoes and really think about it, I want to attain peace, not independence. I want to think that this is my lot. This is my time to let go, my season for fading. I'm going to sink into the loving arms of my family, to remember that God is holding me through them. Is that a fundamental perspective difference, a personality difference, or naivety? This whole experience makes me want to firmly establish those routines, those thought patterns of un-anxiety, of trust, that will last me.

My sister Rachel thinks somebody should make cookies, lollipops, etc. laced with weed for the elderly. I can't say I disagree. But also, elderly schmelderly; I could use a lollipop myself. Cream soda flavor, please.

family conversing

In line at the grocery store a couple days ago, there was a tired dad, a very yappy 7-year old boy, and a responsible 9-year old girl ahead of us. If I could always listen to interactions like theirs, I wouldn't mind standing in line. Be sure to read these in a thick, southern Indiana drawl:

Boy: Daddy, what are them [pointing]? What are them, Daddy? Daddy, what are them?
Dad, eventually: Them are Skittles.

....and only seconds later....

Boy: My asthma's gone! My asthma's gone!
Girl: Asthma don't just go away. It never goes away.

week 1 with grandpa & grandma

I’ve been debating whether or not to blog about our time here with J’s grandparents, because I am, after all, talking about other people at their most vulnerable. I am going ahead with it, and here’s why:

1. G & G both have grand senses of humor, and when they’re at their best, that is, the most similar to their old selves, they face aging head on, without denial. With disappointment and resignation, to be sure, but also a good chuckle.
2. They are simply going through a process any of us might.
3. Those who are the closest to them, namely their children, are already doing what I hope to: finding the humor, the sadness, the life, the beauty, the humanity in their experiences.
4. Sharing helps me to retain my sanity.
5. Some of it’s real funny.

So with those facts established, I press on to a recap. About living for a whole week with people you don’t normally live with who are experiencing dementia: I firstly recommend it just for the insight, and then I recommend running like hell. Ha! The most frustrating thing is that we're here to help, at the family's request, but our presence is itself a stressor to them since it's out of the ordinary. They constantly forget why we're here and tell people we're taking over the place. We try to stay out of their hair, but options are limited because of the physical set-up of their home; their chairs face the main part of the house that you have to walk by to get anywhere - in or outside, to the kitchen, to the bathroom. One minute you're a hero for taking a month's worth of garbage to the dump; the next you're a villain for also getting rid of the PRIZED CARDBOARD BOX. I am not kidding.

Here are a few highlights from the week:

ð Grandpa’s billfold went missing just as we were on our way out the door. After a house-wide search, we found that Grandma had accidentally put it through a whole wash and dry cycle with a load of laundry. So there we all were, pulling underwear and towels out of the dryer, ID cards and money falling with each shake. How odd it was to see twenty-dollar bills falling from Grandma’s aqua-blue nightgown, her secret night job uncovered. Ha! But instead of seeing the humor, Grandma had a melt down, thinking we were accusing her of stealing Grandpa’s billfold. It ended very sadly. You can’t speak reason to someone in that condition.

ð Another night, Grandma couldn’t sleep, and she came out to the living room where Jason was watching television. She was utterly confused but wanted to be informed of what was going on. This, as opposed to confusion that’s accompanied by belligerency. I was in our bedroom, but I could hear their interaction, and it caused me to weep. My sweet, sweet husband. I hope it’s not tacky to brag on your spouse from time to time, but if I were a millionaire, I would pay every last one of my dimes to have Jason keep me in my old age. [Do you hear that, millionaires? We’ll consider all offers.] He sat Grandma down in her chair and, for the hundredth time, with comforting words, explained why we were there and all about Grandpa’s health status, including a nice synopsis of the anatomy and physiology of the kidney and bladder. But Jason’s also a problem-solver, so he helped her to compile a bulleted reference list of “things to know” about our time with them and Grandpa’s condition. Eventually Jason came and got me from the bedroom, and we had such a sweet and lovely conversation for an hour, Grandma in her chair and we at her feet on the floor. We spoke quite frankly about what was happening to her mind, and she understood and mourned it. We talked of old times, Jason’s childhood, and she told us stories from her own childhood and stories her grandmother had told from her rocking chair. We had our old grandma back. A veil was lifted. The clouds were parted. We’d been almost a week in deep, murky waters and were finally coming up for air. Of course, we knew it was a fleeting moment, but I can’t impart what a beautiful moment it was.

ð Today, Jason’s uncle Jim and aunt Kate came over for a Thanksgiving meal, which I mostly made! This is a very big deal; trust me. Like I’ve mentioned before, I like recipes, but I have an aversion to following them precisely (and not in the way that a skilled chef can add a little of this or that and have it taste good; more in the way of feeling like it’s not truly my creation if it’s straight out of a book). I always get in too deep, but today was almost an exception to that. I got things done almost in time, with very little burning. I won’t state the whole of the menu, but it included piping hot cider with baked apple slices floating on top, stuffed acorn squash and stuffed mushrooms. Anyhow, Thanksgiving was always the main annual meal to this family, the meal everybody came home for, even more important than Christmas. We held hands and Grandpa said grace like in days of old. After lunch, Jason, Jim, Kate, and I went on a walk down the railroad tracks to the bridge. It was an important day, and likely the last of its kind in this place.

gingerbread snowmen revealed

I always get surprises in my baking endeavors, because following the recipe precisely is real hard for me to do. I don't know why. It's an issue I'm working on. In this case, the candy I bought in a rush to decorate them simply wasn't ideal. I wanted a small bag of red hots and a small bag of mini-M&M's, you know, tiny candies for eyes and buttons, but could only find them in huge bags. So, instead I grabbed mini-Hershey's kisses and Twizler's pull-apart strings. Then, since I didn't want the gingerbread men to be that break-your-teeth consistency, I didn't bake them as long. The softness made them delightful to eat but not to stick together in 3-segmented snowmen. Invariably, one snowball kept falling off. This meant a 2-segmented cookie with one mini-Hershey's kiss on each segment. You get the point. They would've been appropriate cookies for a bachelor's party, not a big Thanksgiving meal with my inlaws. And, no matter how I arranged the red licorice strings, they looked like various innards. I ended up focusing more on circle cookie art rather than making my men decipherable.

Oh well! Here's a sampling photo of the least gory or perverted gingerbread snowmen (a.k.a. glow worms) and circles. How do you like the Olympic circles at the bottom right? Thank you. Thank you very much.

thankfulness, gingerbread men and circles

I've been feeling particularly thankful this holiday season. For family. For friends. For experiences. For dreams. And for gingerbread snowmen and circles (on account of not being able to find shaped cookie cutters at the grandparents' house). And for neighbors who stock ginger (on account of me forgetting to buy that wiley ingredient at the store).

I'm certain photographs will follow soon. I'm going to be darn proud of my snowmen and circles. Mark my words.

back to Indiana

Rain is falling but it’s warm out – one of several paradoxes we’re living right now. I’m sitting on the front porch of Jason’s grandparents’ in Indiana, both of whom are having recurring health issues, expected at 88. The family living close-by is stretched very thin at the moment, so we're here for a week or two to hang out, see to their medications and daily activities, rush them to the emergency room, etc. etc.

Their home, once so restful, is now a breeding ground for stress (theirs, and hence, ours). When the meds have worn off, we are the enemy, suspected of vague ill intentions and wished gone. Jason suddenly has to be assertive toward his grandfather, always a proud and respected man, about a number of private matters. There are mental matches to be wrestled from dawn to dusk. Now, it’s truly an honor to care for family two generations older, and we are fortunate to have the flexibility for it, but honesty says it requires agility of mind to switch between a jolly story of grandma’s parents waltzing across the living room floor to the Victrola, to having to explain the reason their little town has changed so incredulously is that we’re actually driving through Indianapolis!

I’m quite fascinated with the brain. Comparing the emotions and actions of elderly folks who have dementia and children is common because it’s so accurate, but caring for the two is not so similar. I suppose you’ve got to let everybody have as much independence as is healthy for them, but it’s easy to tell a kid you’ve had enough of their sassy mouth. Not so much with Grandma.

And then there are issues of fakery. Playing, pretending, experimenting – they’re part of childhood, how kids figure out life and roles, and we let ‘em go at it, right? Fine and good. But toward the end of life, when you’re no longer capable of cooking or paying bills, is it fair to be given a fake checkbook or dulled crocheting tools that don’t actually produce anything because you’ve injured yourself one too many times? At least you still feel useful, are still taking part in soothing routines. Sure, your world is being created for you, but to what degree is it always that way for us, adulthood included?

Gettysburg

A couple of days ago, Jason and I visited Gettysburg. There was an exhibit in the Visitor's Center that we'd never seen there: a giant relief map on the floor, with little, colored light bulbs embedded throughout. The bulbs lit up as the 1/2-hour presentation was given, showing Confederate and Union troop movements during the 3-day battle that so affected our nation. Of all the fields and woods and ridges and hills in that scene, Little Round Top struck me as the best blend of geography, chance or Providence, and human choice/activity. Little Round Top was not the highest hill and wouldn't have afforded the best battlefield view but for the fact that the town's inhabitants had previously cleared it of trees. The Union Army ultimately attained that spot and was greatly advantaged.

Here is a picture Jason took of Brig. Gen. Warren's statue on Little Round Top. It was he who realized the key position needed defending and called for troop arrangement there. Then there's a shot of a canon pointed toward the big field of the famous Pickett's Charge.

These events and others of our country's early history I've had a hard time envisioning over my life, not being from this area. Nearly all the town names end in -ville, -town, or -burg. The peoples' accents are strange. The traffic guy on the radio lists off three hundred million highways, biways, freeways, and turnpikes like everybody can keep track of it all! But Jason grew up knowing these place names, hearing them in everyday language, and understanding how the geography and history all fits together. What's interesting is that he could never get a grasp on the westward expansion, which always made good sense to me, having grown up on the plains of Nebraska seeing displays of original covered wagons and old homesteads, and then northwest Montana, a place of cowboys and Indians, where the names of innumerable mountains and rivers bear witness to the native peoples and their lives and struggles there.

"Now the people spoke among themselves and agreed with what their leaders had said. They agreed to be known for the place where they first planted corn. Now they spoke of themselves to other people that way. 'We are Juniper Tree Stands Alone People,' they would say to them....You see, their names for themselves are really the names of their places....That is how they are still known, even though they have scattered and live now in many different states, some in cities far from here."

--Charles Henry, a member of the Western Apache tribe,
as quoted in the book Wisdom Sits in Places

places

This is not the first time we've been homeless, but it is the first time we've been wandering with no solid decision on where to land. It's the most I've ever thought about place - how we define ourselves by place and are shaped by it. I cherish new places, being wooed by the tantalizing ones and coaxing beauty from the mundane ones, and wondering all along what makes a particular place home to people. I wouldn't make a good longterm homeless person. It has been just less than a year of traveling, and I am yearning for home.

We watched Into The Wild tonight at the theatre. There were scenes from many places we've been, places that have defined us, like the Northern California desert, the bottom of the Grand Canyon, campsights with other road rats, and most movingly, the mountains of Alaska. When I saw footage of the land, of caribou, snow, fireweed, and moose, my heart swelled with love and loss, fullness and emptiness. I miss her! Jason leaned over and said, "Let's go back. Right now."

We have so many ideas of what to do next in life, but unless they involve Alaska, they don't feel very permanent to me. Alaska's vastness is hard to be away from, especially now, when we drive for hours and are never out of identical suburbs. Alaska represents for me independence from the conveniences of society that insulate people from anything raw and real and enduring. And yet, people must be okay living out east here, because 2/3 of the US population is within a 500 radius of DC. I saw that in a pamphlet so it must be true.

Here are a couple of places that make life okay for now: the first two are at Catoctin National Park yesterday, and the last is today in Bethesda.

RV culture, revolt!

In our recent travels, Jason and I had the unfortunate experience of becoming familiar with the world of RV Parks. Unless you are a millionaire, hope to heaven you don't have to do the same. Let us stand as a beacon of warning to you: avoid them like the plague. Go to state park camp sights if at all feasible. Find pullouts along the road. When you're in the middle of civilization, even seek out the loving, plastic, made-in-China arms of Wal-Mart and her free parking lot. But don't stay in RV Parks.

Number one, they are very proud of the skinny little strip of gravel they're going to let you park on for one night. So proud, in fact, that they will charge you upwards of $40 or $50 to do so ($3 off with an AARP discount). And you, my friend, are providing your own shelter, your own linens, your own maid service, your own continental breakfast, your own t.v. Now they are letting you plug in to their electricity, which we can estimate to cost them, oh, maybe 65 cents for the night. And yes, you can hook into their water and sewer if you choose to, and you can use their bath-house, again, if you want to. But everyone parking there already has this stuff in their house on wheels. So all together, the cost to the Park has got to be less than $5 a night, TOPS. That is my main qualm. It makes no sense to charge so heavily, and furthermore, why the RV community is not outraged at this. But I'll go on, for good measure.

Number two, RV Parks don't like riff-raff, and that most definitely includes tent-dwellers - those wretched, good for nothing kids that want to stick up a tent and make this place look like a stinkin' hippy camp. Number three, RV Park owners have a problem with certain dog breeds - in our case, the rottweiler. That is, all parks but one in Arizona whose welcome packet read, "We don't care what your breed of dog is, as long as it's on a leash and well-behaved. We don't tolerate aggressive behavior from any dog, regardless of its breed." That reasoning impressed us a lot, but trust me, it was exceedingly rare.

And all this when an entire generation of old people is thinking outside the box. They're finally saying, "Look. We don't want to spend a huge chunk of our life, 20+ years of retirement, just wasting away. We want to see the country, we want to travel, we want to live in a long house on wheels and play Pinochle at a miniature table with our friends, dangit!" And how are they rewarded? By the evil RV Parks who charge them their hard-earned cash for strips of gravel. Crud, even at a conservative rate of $30 a night, that's $900 a month!

Is there something I'm missing here?

[Blogging is real fun, because you can vent this stuff to an audience of unknown proportions, and perhaps your words will be read by someone who will correct you, in which case, awesome! A debate! Or maybe they'll agree and get out there and start an RV culture revolt. If the latter happens, call me up. I don't have the inclination to start a revolt myself, but I will bring poster board and markers.]

We're here in Maryland!

Boy oh boy oh boy oh boy oh. We have arrived. We are in a place we can park the camper and not move it for like weeks at a whack. Even as I write that, there is a surge of joy, of squiggliness, that is spreading to and alighting each of my cells. We're glad we had the chance to travel across the country for 6 weeks with J's Mom (and her cousin for 1/2 the time), but um, yeah, we would have some morsels of wisdom for anybody else with plans to attempt that particular feat.

So now we're in Maryland, parked at the 1936-built home of J's sister and her husband (and two kids and one dog). It's in about as rural of a place as you can get around here, and there's a clothesline running right past the camper! We have little country roads to run on, and Beth can lay on the grass by the trickling stream all day long, with only their male (read non-fixed) dog, Hunter, to ward off. We have found a coffee shop with internet access in town and a couple of delightful markets. Pretty much, we're in hog-heaven.

It's a matter now of organizing ourselves to see all we want to see, and of figuring out what our next step in life will be come January. One current possibility is to become backup singers for Allison Kraus. Ha ha ha ha ha. No, serious. Wouldn't that be fun? She wouldn't have to pay us much - just enough to keep us alive, and that's negotiable. Anyway. Other ideas, anyone?

O-Hi-oh

The last official stop on the trip was to stay the night in Ohio with Nate and Nicole and their two daughters. Nate and I graduated from high school together, and I'm so glad our families have kept in contact. Highlight memories of my friendship with him, his brother Brett, and their neighbor, Gabe, include a bunch of us sneaking into a gravel plant in the middle of the night to slide down the gravel hills, planning a train-hopping venture (which Gabe actually carried out with other friends - boo!), and scheming how to get down into the floor vents at the high school in hopes of making our way to the unsuspecting Spanish class, so we could hop out of the floor wearing sombreros. Nate and I also went to junior prom together (the first and only time for either of us; neither of us were the prom types). And now to see him with a beautiful and adept wife and two gorgeous kids - man. That's the good stuff right there.

Conversation centered around the communal living dream, organic gardening, fighting The Man, a literal interpretation of Genesis as it relates to science, and catching up on mutual folk. Nicole sent us on our way with homemade cinnamon rolls and fresh garden tomatoes.

Indiana

Indiana was another of the states we spent longer in, because Jason's grandparents live in a weensy town there called Dupont. The quiet contrasted with the busyness of the rest of our trip, but things are different now because of G & G's age-related dementia. There's just a different feel about it, and it makes us sad. There's a whole lot less story-telling, for one thing. We mostly sat around and watched television, read magazines, took walks, fiddled with the camper, went out to eat, and visited with a few other relatives. One of my favorite times was singing old hymns with Grandma at the piano. She didn't remember she'd done so 1/2 hour later, but I do and will.

One morning Jason and I went to breakfast with Grandpa and Grandma at the Railroad Diner in Dupont, where very few meals were priced over $3. Coffee was 85 cents and came in free mugs from varying businesses in the bigger surrounding towns. Young men wore camouflage shirts and hats (but we could still see them against the simple brown booths), everybody smoked, and the walls were covered in Nascar paraphenalia, most notably a life-sized poster of Dale Earnhardt Jr. on the bathroom door. Jason and I love experiences like that where you're all of a sudden in a long-forgotten realm. You look around and think about Dupont's opposite, someplace like Seattle, and you think, "My gosh. This is all part of the same country. Our country!"

Jason smoking pipes with Grandpa

night shot of the rairoad tracks that run by the house

We ended our time in Indiana by having lunch with some old pals from Alaska - Steve and Kim and their three boys. Yay!

Kansas (a couple weeks ago)

As everyone knows, it takes a lot of time to drive across Kansas, and there's very little payoff scenery-wise. The primary tidbit Barb's guidebook offered about the state was that early pioneers there frequently suffered apeirophobia (fear of infinity). We camped at Lake Scott State Park because it was one of National Geographic Magazine's top 50 "must see state parks," and while it is an oasis of sorts among the fields, quite frankly, we decided that either the author of the article was himself suffering apeirophobia when he named the park thus, there was a passing of dirty money in the naming, or there are only roughly 50 state parks in our nation.

However, don't be mistaken; I found our travel through Kansas to be quite pleasant. Not mind-blowing, but pleasant. I liked seeing the old windmills and farm houses, especially against the dusky evening sky. We purposely took the highway rather than the freeway for seeing small towns. The antique stores of the midwest are amazing - for deals and town gossip. At one store, I found a lovely old necklace and learned that the old man who'd brought it in permanently swapped wives with his brother about 15 years back, after each couple raised their own kids and everything. They all still live near each other on the family farm too.

Toward the end of Kansas, we happened upon a sign that said the Wizard of Oz Museum was a mere 18 miles off freeway, so we naturally turned off to have a look. When we couldn't find the museum in town, we pulled into a gas station for me to run in for directions. But on my way in, I caught sight of my shadow on the pavement and started giggling, then laughing, and finally, I stopped walking and couldn't go inside. For you see, I had my hair in two pig-tail braids, banded off higher than usual so that the free hair at the bottom was extra fluffy. I was pretty much Dorothy, but completely by accident. I ran back to the pickup instead, where Barb and Jason were already in a tither, because they had noticed the same thing of me as I headed in. Good times. By the way, that story is more entertaining than the Museum itself appeared to be once we found it, and we decided against throwing good money at it.

Colorado

It was very good to be back in Flagstaff last weekend. Besides crashing the Pinks Reunion, we got to stay at Tamie's for good conversation, youtube trading, and awesome biscuits with egg gravy. We saw Jonah and Erica briefly and hit up a couple of sorely-missed establishments like Macy's Coffee and the White Flag Laundromat. Does anyone else get that yummy community feeling at the coin-op laundromat?

Seeing the red rocks and immense diversity of the southwest is an eyeball shocker for sure, and you find yourself amazed around every corner. In fact, I-70 through Utah is the most beautiful stretch of US freeway we've ever seen. But, but, but. Getting back to the northwest (or northwest-esque terrain) is a homecoming. The mountains, the trees, the intermittent snow. Daydreams of buying a cattle ranch were prompted, it's true.

In Colorado Springs, we stayed with my cousin, Nathan, and his wife Lauren at their new place to exchange summer adventure stories and climb around on the wall they're building in their garage. Here's Nathan:

And here's Lauren telling the tale of their hairy climb in August up the famous Long's Peak wall, which included an unexpected overnight stay mid-wall and her middle of the night backwards fall-and-head-conk-trick (the rope held, which is what it's supposed to do and why she's alive). It's one for the books.

Now we're at Kelly and Amanda's in Pueblo, where we happened to cross paths with Laura, another co-worker from Anchorage who is also on a long road trip and stopped at Kelly and Amanda's. Yay for staying up until 2 am talking about Bizarre Office Life back home. Also, I'm not saying anything specific by this comment, but the girls beat the guys in team marbles.

Here are a couple shots of baby Ella figuring out Beth.

And Jason chillin.'

on the road

Traveling fools is what we are! It has been an absolute whirlwind this three weeks. I've longed to blog, but alas, it seems that all businesses with wireless internet in the United States have gone the way of "secured networks." Bah! And I will not pay tmobile $39.99 for a month's access, that's for darn sure. I digress. Here are the four of us (Jason's Mom = Barb; her cousin = Karen) in tiny Pole Bridge, Montana, near Glacier Park:

We four left Montana at the end of September. Here's visiting Jason's cousin, Mike, his wife Megan, and 4-day old baby Jack.

Then we hung out with my cousins in Sequim, playing music until the wee hours and exploring the Sequim Bay on a cabin-cruiser boat. Autumn flew down from Anchorage for the weekend to hang out. Yay! We had been on friend deprivation otherwise.

We drove down the Oregon coast on Highway 101, and hit the Redwoods in California. Then it was off to San Francisco, where it happened to be "Fleet Week." We got to see the Blue Angels perform from our vantage point on Alcatraz! One thing about not being big planners: you experience a lot of frustration, like trying to find a campsite at 10 pm, but then you randomly run into these amazing experiences you couldn't have planned if you tried.

There was one wild night in Las Vegas where we stayed at the MGM. Well, at least we were hoping it would be a little wilder. Jason and I drank a bunch of coffee and went walking down "The Strip" until 2 am, and would you believe we were some of the last people on the street?! I guess it was a weeknight, but still.

Now we've been exploring Arizona, including the Canyon, the wonderful town of Jerome, and the like. Karen flew back home Friday to get back to her real job, so it's just the three of us for the rest of the trip. And Bethy, naturally. As of today, we're in Flagstaff Arizona at Darrell's house. It happens to be a reunion after 42 years of "The Pinks," the intermural basketball team my dad and a bunch of guys were on in high school on Kodiak island, Alaska. You see, they were, in their words, "Dweebsville Central," and lost pretty much every game. Also, as the legend goes, their name was supposed to be "The Reds" but one of them accidentally dyed their white shirts pink instead, and they had no more money to buy new shirts. In a major upset, they miraculously won the intermural championship their senior year, even beating the official school team. My dad is second from left in the original picture and third from left in the modern shot.

And

I am haunted by my love for comparison

My fascination with a single common theme

And I am hounded by the fear that I might be losing it

Slipping from reality into dream

When my mind is muddled by the way it seems to work

I start looking for just one connecting Force

Someone to assure me we that didn't lose the war today

That the battle's General's still riding on his horse

In the mornings when I pray, I've often come to You with dreams

Little bits of power that I can't comprehend

And sometimes I can keep my eyes unclosed for long enough

To see the blowing of a distant steady Wind

The distance doesn't take too long for You to cover it

And when You reach me, You just blow these things apart

You clear the crowd that's gathered 'round the crisis of my soul

And whisper to my suffocating heart

And is the juice of the joints of the motion of life

And is the love that is between God and his beautiful wife

And has two hands and two feet and a long, lovely side

And rose three days after he was crucified

So You're the Force of gravity that I feel pulling at my feet

You're the Fuel at the center of the sun

And, it's your Ghost that fills the atmosphere

with what we need to breathe

And, everything I've ever wondered, You're the one

Both my hands are stained with blood

And both my lips are stained with tears

From when I kissed the widow of the man I killed

And, yet You're asking me to swallow Your forgivness here today

You say the bond required for my pardon's been fulfilled

by Don Chaffer

.

.

.

computer speakers and clean teeth

WELL. If you ever want a fun time at home with the family, go out and buy yourself two different sets of computer speakers. Set them up with your laptop at the kitchen table and have everybody stand or sit in the living room while you swap back and forth between the speakers. They can't know which speakers you've got plugged in at any given moment. Say, "Do you like Speaker A?....[while Ladysmith Black Mambazo sings, 'rain, rain, rain, rain, beautiful rain']...or do you like Speaker B? A..........or B?" Good conversation will ensue, including people being paranoid that they're selecting the cheapies over the nice speakers. Turns out that people choose Bose speakers over Philips five to one.

In other household news, Molly had her teeth cleaned today. She's Mom's Schnauzer that Luke lovingly calls "Little Gray Turd." No amount of insults can stop Molly from yipping day and night, which is how she has earned her nickname. Jason just emerged from the bathroom with a newly-tamed beard. I guess everyone is going for improvements lately. Other than Mom, who got her toenail ripped off a couple days ago. And Gunther, another of the dogs who is currently eating dirt out of a planter.

So I guess we're all at different points along our journeys.

A bird's eye view

of my folks' place today would've had Jason on the driveway making a plug for the engine of our little VW rabbit pickup (surrounded by the oddest assortment of vehicles ever), Dad out in the corral shoeing horses, me in the lawn trying to collect Beth's pee in a baggie, a confused Beth trying to go pee with a little bit of privacy around here, and Mom inside on the phone, listening to Brother Dave tell about his first run-in with school authorities for living there unauthorized.

We were probably thinking about the fact that Rachel, Cameron, and their friends Bryan and Lisa are on the drive here from Portland to spend the long weekend, thinking about Beth's age-related incontinence, about the coming dark storm clouds, and about dinner, which turned out to be creamed tuna made to the music of Johnny Cash. Oh, and about kicking some Epworth tail in softball last night (which means, and this does not qualify as bragging since this is so much to the surprise of everyone involved, that next week we'll be playing for the championship title!!) .

One of my favorite parts of the day was when those storm clouds had the horses running wildly about the meadow, up to the barn, back down to the meadow, separating into mini-herds and then swirling around to come together.

humanity's interconnectedness

Below are two Youtube videos I like. They seem to go together, in form and content. Jason happened across "Dark Hand and Lamplight," which is a song called "Rank Stranger" that my family, especially Grandpa Gene, sings. The singer is opening for Bonnie Prince Billy, one of our fave musicians. I saw "Women in Art" posted on the space of Jessica C.

Dark Hand and Lamplight -

Women In Art

the camper

Welp, we found a camper, our home for the next little while! We had narrowed it down to a specific model, the Northland Polar, because (A) it is very insulated (a basement model) and we'll be in potentially freezing temperatures out east, and (B) there are older ones out there and thus in our price range. We'd been looking around the northwest for a few weeks, and we found this'un via craigslist in Boise. We traveled there Saturday and arrived back home at 2 am this morning. Jason got a solid 4.5 hours of sleep before work. We haven't figured out precisely how we cut everything so close, but this seems to happen despite our best efforts.


But woo-hoo! We're ready for the big road trip! Or at least we have the raw materials to begin getting ready with. Here are a couple pictures of the whole get-up:




The trip through Idaho was gorgeous. Curvy mountain roads, tall pines, cute little towns. One highlight happened yesterday evening. We had stopped in a town in search of coffee, and we watched a dad teaching his girl (probably 8 years old) how to mow the lawn with a push-mower. She was supposed to be the main driver, and he was standing behind her sort of steering and helping, but any kinetic energy we observed was the result of his efforts, for sure. At one point, he let her take it, and the mower jutted ahead out of her control. She stood there and cried while he hugged her and encouraged her to go inside and get a drink. We could tell all of this because the mower was so loud they had to use gestures.


Speaking of drinks, getting good coffee in rural Idaho isn't as impossible as it might at first seem. A lot of towns have espresso shacks, and we were sure to hit a few on Saturday, on our way down. However, getting good coffee in rural Idaho at 7:00 pm on Sunday evening on your way back to Montana is a real chore. We got to the point of such craving that I attempted to call Mom and ask her to search the web for potential places. She'll do that for us. Mom's our living "ask jeeves" when we're away from a computer. She's rad. But it wasn't happening last night: no cell service through the mountains.


The trip so far had inspired lots of conversations about rural living, and I asked Jason at that point if he would choose rural living if it meant never having coffe. No, he said. He'd rather live in a city if it came down to that, but it wouldn't come to that, because he would be sure to stock up on beans. I like ridiculous conundrums like that, choices you'll probably never have to make, but Jason's not a big fan of them. Anyway, driving along, he had resigned himself to temporary coffee-less-ness, but I still had a frown on my face when we saw a sign for a little place called Syringa. By now I know that the syringa is the state flower, but yesterday we were mostly concerned with how familiar the town of Syringa was with coffee. They (and by they, I mean the 4 people we saw in Syringa...literally) turned out to be quite familiar. They had this delightful little mediteranean restaurant right by the highway, and they made us mochas. Sure, they used Hershey's syrup as the chocolate flavoring, but who cared? Not us. We also got an order of fish and french fries and an order of pita bread with hummus dip and eggplant dip - to go.


Then we hit the road with our unexpected delights. Jason uttered a "thank you, God" for the mochas,which launched us into a 1/2 hour discussion/argument about thanking God for such things as mochas. Jason said that yes, we should, because aren't mochas good and perfect gifts from God? I asked, "Who's to say mochas are good and perfect." We had to pause right there and realize what a dumb statement I'd made. Of course mochas are. Nevertheless, I feel we should wait to attribute other, bigger things to God, because otherwise you can get into this mindset of reading spirituality into not-necessarily-spiritual things constantly, which can lead to actually losing your mind. Jason says qualifying what you're thankful for is the faulty "Bank of Blessings" mentality, like we only have 329 blessings over the course of our lives, and we'll run out if we count 'em up too quick. Rather, Jason holds that God is the Blessed Controller of all things, which I agree with, but there are things I doubt He cares about. Unless of course these mochas, which to us are pure delight, are made from coffee in a country where people are paid only pennies for their labor, etc. etc. We finally agreed that at a bare minimum, thanking God for mochas at least means you're attempting to conscientiously live a life of gratitude, which is indeed good.


Then we realized the main reason this conversation was even happening was that we were each injesting 20 ounces of coffee. I think I can say in good conscience, "Thank God for gack'dness and road trips."

softball

Co-ed church-league softball. Now there's a series of words to strike fear into the hearts of bystanders. Co-ed! Church-league! Softball! Hmm. Ok, so maybe it doesn't sound so tough. But it sure is fun. My dad's little church has three teams in the league; the people here do love softball. I'm on a team with Dad, brother Dave (now at college - booo), my 70-year old aunt, and an assortment of others, and we are surprising ourselves and our loyal fans by kicking some hiney in the year-end tournament right now! Last night was a win that has us in the seat for a top placement. Two more games and we take it, but naturally we're coming up against the hardest teams next.

My family is into brackets. Dad always coached us girls in softball and the boys in wrestling, and he's a strategizer. There's much bracket-talk before, after, and in between games. We have the bracket for this tournament all drawn up, and we're filling it in as we go with the names of the winners and losers. Sounds so harsh. How about winners and....people who get to go home and do other things than softball with the last days of summer. Church-league softball is a staple around my folks' place, so I guess it took Jason's objective perspective to clue us in to the hilarity of the conversations: "Did St. Matthews ten-run Trinity?" "New Covenant beat the liver out of Dwelling Place." And then there's the favorite, which we happily got to use last night: "We spanked Risen Christ." Expect to hear word of our house being struck by lightening very soon.

mi madre hermosa en su jardín de la flor

that is, my beautiful mother in her wildflower garden :)