Home Again

And boy, am I tired...

I made the drive in a day - didn't want to stop, for varying reasons. I need a day to recover, write, and do laundry, so I'm being a slacker blogger and giving you this:


It's not, actually, the best rendition, but it's the best one I could find. It's been stuck in my head all day...now it can be stuck in ours, too...

Homeward Bound

I'm just finishing the last bit of packing and tidying up before I hit the road - I decided to go ahead and get an early-ish AM start today since the A/C in Rosie is wonky...that way, if it get too hot in the afternoon, I can always stop with a good day's drive behind me.

I am sad to leave - Texas has been wonderful.

When I get home, I'll have pictures to post (I met another e-quaintance and his cats, and the felines demanded space on my blog), a funny fish story to tell, and a lot of laundry and unpacking to do. Sigh.

Meanwhile, here's a photo from yesterday evening in Galveston:

Thanks, Texas...I'm glad I made the trip.

See y'all tomorrow...

What Say You?

Monday the Thirteenth

It's Monday the thirteenth, a week past the full moon. A little magic is in order.
Remember the box of goodies my friend Rachel sent me? Sure you do - she's the insanely talented poet over at The Waxing Moon, my friend in the Yukon, a woman I've never met but love like a sister.

Anyway.

Last Monday, as I was preparing for my trip to Texas, I had the Black Hat Society over for dinner and gossip. I haven't seen them in a while, and I missed them...and I was baking bread and they love to take it home, so we're a perfect fit.

Since it was already a baking day, I decided to make dinner for everyone, too. I had a few veggies to use up, and some corkscrew pasta left over from the pasta salad I made for the trip. I chopped up a zucchini, a yellow squash, and some asparagus lurking in the vegetable drawer and sauteed them in olive oil with chopped garlic and onion. I added some leftover green beans I'd steamed the night before (now chopped) and a can of organic, chopped tomatoes with garlic, basil and oregano, and let it simmer until the vegetables were just cooked. In went the already cooked pasta. Dinner was served...with a little grated cheddar cheese over the top of each bowl to give it a little extra zip. Yum!

I wanted something special for dessert...a celebration, of sorts. What were we celebrating? Friendship, mostly, and anticipation, and happiness.

What better way to celebrate friends than with chocolate? I had been saving the Lunatic bar for...something...and I decided we should share it.

We sat in a circle in the kitchen - smelling bread as it baked, laughing, listening to our children play - and shared the chocolate, savoring each bite, three women, three mothers, three friends, so different and yet...united by love, happy to be just where we were in that moment. The fourth woman was there in spirit, if not in body. Thanks, Rachel.

Kitchen witchery at its finest...

Thirteen Things, the Final Thing

I hear you breathing a sigh of relief...but remember...this is an evolving list, so it could come back to haunt you again some other time! Muahahahahah....ahem...
~~~~~

Lucky Thirteen - I did this list without an eye toward order of importance...but somehow, I feel like this one should be special. Thirteen is lucky for me... So what to put here? Should I go for the improbable? Like...climb Mount Everest? The optimistic? Like...win the lottery? It's a list of dreams, right? Well...maybe it's a list of things I am striving toward...and some of the stuff I listed was boring, but easy...and some of it may look unlikely, but I can make it happen if I work hard enough. So...what to put for lucky thirteen? Hmm...

OK...I think I have it...it's not noble, not even very grand...and maybe impossible...but...

Publish. Not self-publish...I mean, convince a publishing house that some of my words, strung together in fanciful ways, are worth investing in, worth the risk...

Yeah...I'll probably swim with the shark first...but a body can dream...
~~~~~
So...how about you? Got a dream or thirteen? Tell me about them...

Thirteen Things, Fourth Day

How many posts can I stretch this thing into? Hahahahah!!!!
~~~~~
Tenth - Swim with a Whale Shark. I once tried to swim with a Basking Shark, but the skipper (my father) said "No!" Apparently he objected to the idea of a thirteen-year-old swimming with a shark that was larger than the thirty-two foot boat. Hmph. It's a vegetarian, I argued. No, he said. Double hmph. I really would like to swim with a Whale Shark, though...they are stunning creatures...and vegan...

Eleventy - Liposuction. Yes, really. Not because I'm vain - yeah, if you know me, you know better - but because I am losing weight, and plan to continue to do so...and that means some lonely little fat cells just aching to plump up again. I want them gone before they figure out how to reload.

Zwolf - Australia and New Zealand, preferably over a period of months, if not years.
~~~~~
But wait, you cry, there's one missing! Yep. Tomorrow...

Confused? Why would I be confused?

And I thought Spaghetti Junction in Atlanta was impressive...Apparently, four-thousand highways meet in Houston, and this interchange...
...is where they all meet...
...mingle...

...and go their separate ways. I am glad I had a native driver, today...else I may have ended up in Guam...

Thirteen Things, Day Three

Yep, still going...
~~~~~
Septus - visit the arctic circle. I love the cold, and the photographs I've seen of the arctic have always made me hanker to be there...experiencing...taking in that cold wonder... Antarctica would be nice, too...

Huit - love with abandon. Think that doesn't sound like much? Try it...try loving without doubting yourself...without fear...

Nonnes - Alaska. No, it's NOT the same as the arctic circle...the mosquitoes are MUCH bigger.
~~~~~
See you tomorrow...

My Room and Fuzzy Purple Things

I really am going to get a nap...eventually...maybe...

But I was hungry and wanted some lunch, so I went over to Schlotsky's to see what they had on offer because I wanted something with substance and haven't been to the market yet so all I have here is lovely fruit, cheese and crackers, and the pasta salad which wasn't interesting just now...pant...pant...

Anyway...Here are some photos of my room:
From the doorway. Yes, that's my quilt on the bed - haven't you seen that Dirty Jobs episode where Mike Rowe talks about the nastiness on Motel bed spreads? Or the Family Guy episode where Stewie gets all CSI on a room? Eww!! I'll bring my own blankie, thanks... I'm using the kitchen/dining/whatever table as my desk/altar instead, because a gal's got to have priorities!

From next to the bed, looking into my kitchen. OK, so there's no oven, only two burners on the stove, and a bag of popcorn could seriously crowd the microwave...but it's still usable! The partially open door lead to the bathroom. I'll spare you the photo-essay on that bit... The mirrored doors hide the closet and ironing board.

Directly across from the fridge is this little storage area where they keep the pots 'n' pans. I annexed it for storage and stowed my wooden dishes (yes, they travel with me) and the bread I brought.

Sitting at the head of the bed - kitchen to the left, front door to the right, TV straight ahead, and my two little travel-buddies are perched where they can oversee all the goings on...which, right now, is mostly me on the Internet, and possibly (probably) napping in a few.

And as a bonus, I saw these little darlin's growing by the curb at Schlotsky's:

...so I came back to my room, deposited my lunch, grabbed the camera, and wandered back for some pictures...consequently convincing the locals that a nutjob is staying next door. Yay! Aren't they cute? I shall call them Seuss Flowers (or should they be "Who Blossoms" instead?) until someone tells me otherwise.

OK...lunch is over...I'm for a nap...cheers, y'all!

Houuuuuuston....

Whew, I made it.

Actually, I made it yesterday, but didn't have time to drop a post. Hey, don't look at me that way - it was a long drive, and there were some snafus and beautiful things along the way that left me a little preoccupied. We're still pals, right? Right??

Lemme tell you about some of it.

It rained on the way out of Atlanta, and my windscreen fogged, so I turned the A/C thingy to vent. Once I was clear of the rain (Somewhere in Mississippi, I think), I turned it back to A/C. Well...I tried, anyway...turns out, when the dealership replaced the compressor for me, they may have mucked up the control thingy...so I had to drive the rest of the trip with a trickle of cool (not cold, cool) air and plenty of cold water to keep me from over heating. You can bet I'll be getting that repaired post-haste! That was the first snafu.

There was the gully-washer in Alabama that damn near got me killed several times. Not the rain itself, which was actually pretty amazing. No...it was the people in the rain, afraid to drive in it, that nearly did me in. Hey, Alabama? And everyone else, for that matter? If you don't like driving int the rain, stay off the bloody road!! Don't pull onto a major highway, drive twenty miles-per-hour under the speed limit in the right lane with your flashers on (An aside - flashers are for emergencies. Rain is not an emergency. Please note that. Thank you.), decide that the left lane is the place you want to be, then pull over in front of the Astro van going significantly faster than you, forcing the usually often sometimes occasionally nice lady behind the wheel to tap gently apply slam on her brakes, thereby fishtailing said van and generally giving cause for choice language and an errant curse or three. Yeah, sorry about that flat tire you're going to have...it just slipped out...kinda like the back end of my van...

There was the sunset in Louisiana. The clouds had thinned, arrayed themselves around the sun in gauzy veils, reflecting the molten peach-gold, shot through with silver. As the sun sank lower, the clouds morphed into strands of white hair, the Crone's locks flowing across the sky, threaded with peach, vermilion, and gold.

There was the rainbow incident. Two double rainbows arching overhead form where I came from to where I was headed. So vivid, they were almost solid - I wanted to reach from my van and gather a handful of colors, drink them, roll in them, clothe myself in them. As I looked, a bolt of lightning lanced downward from the clouds at the center of the arc, sizzling blue-white light, energy, clapping, bellowing, brilliant beater striking the great sky-drum, rolling out beyond me, carrying me with it.

The clouds were almost clear when the moon rose, and I watched her out my side window as she peeked this way and that, peering under, around, and finally over, then sailing grandly upward slightly behind me. She pushed me onward, laughing, the tinkle of bells in my mind. I wasn't on pavement any more, but sailing on her pathways, gliding, floating, suddenly removed from the ordinary, the mundane, passed through a gateway to another realm, born along by silver horses in my chariot of glass...

There was the Hampton Inn that was full...but the nice lady at the desk kindly directed me to the motels with the cheapest rooms rather than trying to convince me to go up the highway a little more and stay at another of her chain...and the good woman at the Super8 who searched for her cheapest room so I didn't have to spend a Benjamin just to sleep for a few hours - honestly, I would have just parked at a rest stop and cracked the windows if I didn't think Mum would somehow know, fly there on her broomstick, and bitch-slap me.

Next day, there was the stop for fuel that was almost, but not quite, the stop for another day because the Magic Wand o' Fueling suddenly wouldn't work. Kudos to Exxon for their diligence, noting that there was anomalous use of the Magic Wand o' Fueling and putting a security hold on it until they could make certain it wasn't stolen - even if it did add thirty minutes to my fuel stop. Better safe than sorry. That snafu was an easy fix...thanks Mum, for making that call!!

When I checked into my current lodging, the good woman at the front desk was kind enough to charge me a different rate from the one I thought I'd have, saving me nearly a hundred dollars - which was terrific, because when you pay cash there's a hundred-dollar deposit, and that would have put a real crimp in my grocery/dining budget! My room was nice, plenty of space, nice little kitchen...I got unpacked, called everyone who wanted to be called and told I was alive and safe, and booted up bob the Wonder Computer...only to find the Internet resisting me! Aww, dang.

Turns out, there's a weird access point in that building, and they couldn't get to it to fix it because of a less-than-congenial resident in that room...so instead of making me go without Internet, the good woman up front offered to let me move - to a ground-floor room up front! Awesome! Here I am, settled in and finally online. I am about to take a nap...didn't sleep much last night, up late talking and uh...talking. Also, the danged alarm clock kept going off...starting at three in the morning! What the Hell!! At three-thirty I threatened it with a hammer, and it stopped. You just have to know how to talk to these things. I'm sure finding the "Off" switch had nothing to do with it.

Whew, long post - and I didn't even tell you about cars in ditches, the Texas welcome center, my breakfast at Waffle House, and why Slim Jims are still the best processed-meat-in-a-plastic-sleeve available on the road.

I'll end with this - the Motel6/Studio6 in Houston is full of the awesome, and I am now totally a fan of this fine establishment. No kidding - the bed isn't as good as the ones at Hampton Inn, but I don't care - there's a freakin' kitchen!!

More live updates later, when I've gone out and about, explored, maybe shot some photos - I'm hoping there's a garden or three in my near future (botanical type place/s) and perhaps a trip to Galveston, and if I can possibly shoot a pic of the amazing interchange outside this motel, I will - it puts Spaghetti Junction in Atlanta to shame!!

Cheers, y'all!

Thirteen Things, Continued

What, you actually came back? Guess I better come up with something, then...
~~~~~

Thing the Fourth - rise above the earth once more in a hot air balloon, floating higher and higher until I can see the her curvature below me, drifting along in that peculiar silence that is punctuated only by the sudden roar of dragons overhead, keeping me skyward. I loved my one ballooning trip, despite the back injury that plagues me to this day, and I want more...ballooning, not back injuries...

Fifth - travel my nation's back roads, snapping photographs as I go, showing my son how beautiful it all is, teaching him the history of each place we see, taking our time and living a Gypsy life.

Cinco - this is harder than I thought it would be. I am, it seems, a woman of small dreams. Hmm. Oh, I know! Travel to Ireland, then Scotland and Wales, see where my family came from all those generations ago...see where the old tree is rooted...
~~~~~
More tomorrow...aren't you excited??