The Rest of the Story

In answer to my Dad's question about the previous post: Brex was great in the car. It helped that Muttola was with us so he could throw his food at her and giggle hysterically watching her eating it. People ask if he's talking yet. We answer no, but as we were reminded during the car ride, he talks ALL the time, we just have no idea what he's saying.

His consistent list of words thus far:
"No.No.No."
"Yeah"
"[Dog's Name]!"
"Wow"
"Ap-Pa!" (figured it out during the trip. Evolved from Da-da, to Ba-ba, to Appa)
"...llo?" (Hello)


Enough of words, here are the promised photos:

First hike: The Window. Many of the trails in Big Bend were built courtesy of the WPA during FDR's presidency. This one had lovely sets of stone stairs along the wash.

Brex at the bottom of the wash (after lunch). The women at daycare keep commenting how much he loves being outside. This trip just confirmed it.

Why yes, yes. That's attitude. Already. (He saw an 11-year old trying to rock climb and launched himself at every cliff the rest of the trip. That's my boy!)

The end of hike 1. Don't you just want to eat those cheeks?!

After moving to California (and now Texas) and being exposed to desert flora, I discovered that Dr. Seuss was a realist.

Hike 2: Lost Mine Trail. The view from the top.

Do NOT try to tell him he's a baby. If you ask him, whatever we can do, he can do better. No need to bring a bottle on the hikes, he loved drinking our water.

Along the trail.

Our home sweet home. A mere 45-minute drive from the main road.

The crazy coot who built the original cabin blasted dynamite in the valley to create a pond. See the green? In the summer, when it rains, there's water here.

Perhaps not the best toy for a kid, but he loved our trekking poles.

Two of the huge windows on all three sides of the living area.

Desert dog having her day.

Click to enlarge. The land across the river in this photo is Mexico (the Rio Grande, shallow enough here to walk across). See the tracks on the other side? Not wild animals.

Well, the other prints were human, but here on the USA side we found a nice fresh mountain lion print.

Evidence of geekdom. We commented that Peter Jackson wouldn't have needed CGI if he'd filmed Mordor in Big Bend instead of Texas. Look, the Gates of Mordor straight ahead! (Locally known by the profoundly evocative name of Mule Ear Peak)

If I can't get a husband to be a climbing partner, I'll just have to raise one from scratch.

Not so impressive if you think it's a sunset. Is it better if I tell you that's the moon?

Here comes the sun. 

Big Bend? Definitely worth the trip.

Aunts & Cousins weekend

There’s nothing better than actually feeling relaxed and happy after five days with family. It’s hard to sum it all up in a tidy package, so here are a few highlights and tidbits:

• Driving the van turned out to be fine. It handled similarly to our Subaru and Aunt Bird was next to me and she was able to tell me how to parallel park the beast.
• I found out that my uncle died over a year ago! NOW I feel bad about my post about him... I guess he’d developed lung cancer and died in prison. My aunts had visited him after their Mom died a few years ago. From what they said, he never expressed remorse, but he did say that prison was the best place for him because he couldn’t control his urges.
• Apparently the aunts have traditions for their sister weekends. They usually have tshirts made, give each other jewelry and buy a commemorative pin. The aunts’ shirts were pink and said, “Who needs a therapist, I have a SISTER”. For the cousins, navy shirts with “If you met my family, you would understand.”
  
  
• I always thought my Dad was the playful one (doing puzzles, playing card games, dancing), not my Mom. Being with her sisters showed me why she must have enjoyed him: our default option was to play together. I learned to play cribbage, we watched movies, and we obsessively put together puzzles (no one got to go to bed until the last piece was IN that 1000 piece puzzle, darn it).
  
  
• When we figured out how to play music through the house stereo system, OTRsis exclaimed, “We should have a dance party!” So we did. We moved back the table and chairs then did a conga line, had party lines with a soloist dancing down the middle (including a very impressive ‘worm’) and in general had a raucous, fun time.
  
  
• Every time one of my aunts said they missed my Mom, I asked what they missed about her. “She always made me think about God.” “How she lived her life.” “She read us the Narnia tales and she really made them come alive.”
• When everyone else left for a wine tasting tour, my cousin E and I took off separately for a day of wandering the town of Point Reyes as well as a dash out to the lighthouse. We found some great buys including To Go Ware. It was fun to have a two-person day in the midst of so much big family activity. We’d been the last to leave the rental house and had carefully locked up. At the end of the day, as we left the lighthouse (with an hour and a half drive to get back to the rental house), we came into cell phone range to find texts and voice mails that everyone else had returned and they were locked out! We freaked out, but were on little twisty roads (which I took as fast as possible). After twenty minutes of non-stop guilt and not enough consistent signal to call out, we got a text that two of the aunts had climbed up to the balcony (which hangs over the cliff...) and managed to get into the upstairs door. Phew!!! Dinner was ready when we got back and no one was TOO mad at us.
• At the end of the weekend, they were overjoyed to be able to pack up boxes of leftovers for me to take home. On previous sister weekends they’ve had to throw away food which was awful for them.

Who knows, if we move to Texas, I could be ‘host’ for the next one, too!

Canadian Tidbits

Still haven't touched the photos.

Why? Well, we got in Saturday night at 11 pm. The next morning we scooted up to SF to pick up the mutt. That night, we met a friend for dinner. Then yesterday, after work, we had dinner with my women's group. In celebration of the birthday of the group's founder, we had a dinner with all our spouses (and our mutt!). I'd thought we were having an outdoor barbque, or I'd never have asked if we could bring the dog. Instead, it was a sit-down dinner for 11 people. Oops . . .

Now I'm back at work where it's blissfully slow (lots I could do, little I HAVE to do).

Sooooo...a few anecdotes from our trip.
-------

Our last morning in the Vancouver B&B, we were joined by one other guest. Turns out she's a well-known Canadian poet. We ended up talking for 3 1/2 hours! By the end, it was Jrex and she chatting away while I scooted downstairs to pack up all our stuff and load it in the car. I'd scheduled us for kayaking and was nervous we'd be late. (We were, but they let us shift our reservation, so it worked out fine.) The Poet was really great at drawing Jrex out. Made me realize what things might have been like had Mom lived. The Poet felt very similar to my Mom (though she had a lighter sense of humor): acreative, intelligent, compassionate writer who is aging gracefully and filled with life.
-------

Then, in Whistler, my introverted husband did it again! He bonded with our B&B owner about wine. The two of them would talk and talk and our breakfasts turned into brunches. It was really fun. We found out that the Canadian government has a stranglehold monopoly on wine distribution. No other importer. No other source. Therefore, an $8 bottle US, can cost $35 in a Canadian wine store. We'd fallen in love with Vancouver and were playfully trying to figure out how we could move there. That wine news put a big crimp in our happy fantasy . . .

We did three gorgeous hikes. The first took us up high enough to see a glacier (we hiked through an afternoon thunderstorm!). The second took us up to a lake that was still coated with thin ice. While we sat on the shore, we heard crackles and cracks of breaking ice. The last day, we wandered along a fairly level trail through a temperate rain forest to a view from a lower lake.

Despite running up and down stairs during the conference, I was woefully out of shape. By the third day, I had to rest. We took the gondola up Whistler mountain only to find out at the top that all the hiking trails were closed due to snow. Jrex was bummed, but I was (not-so) secretly relieved. Having nothing else to do, we took the Peak2Peak gondola across to Blackcomb. This is a new option that goes across a deep valley between the two mountains. It was a bit freaky to pass the last gondola tower on one mountain and look ahead to a huge span before the next tower.

Over on Blackcomb, it looked like there was a little less snow. I saw a ranger and asked if we could hike anything. He looked at my long nylon pants, trekking poles, Asolo mountain boots and told me we could sneak around the gondola and head up the mountain towards a certain hut. Basically, they didn't want tourists in flip-flops braving what snow was left and trying to flounder through it. I passed the news on to Jrex, and then spread out in the lodge while he made the trek up (in shorts and hiking boots).

Jrex'd been gone over an hour and I was starting to get a little worried when the ranger came into the lodge and asked us all to make our way to the gondola. There was electrical activity and they needed to clear the mountain. Obviously, that really freaked me out! I told him my husband had gone up toward the hut, he reassured me that they'd go find him. Then as we all left the building, another ranger announced we needed to go back inside, they'd shut down the gondola. Fortunately, Jrex walked up just then. He'd been rained on twice, but decided after the hail that he should turn back.

After waiting an hour to see if they could restart the lifts, they announced we'd be trucked down the mountain. They put out a call for any trucks in the area to come ferry us down the mountain. First out were the old people, which was as it should be. However, after that, I watched group after group pushing ahead and getting loaded in. I wanted us to join the push and get out of there, but my sweet, courteous husband was waiting for permission. It wouldn't have been a big deal, but the pattern for how we both were handling the situation was SO reflective of how we both do life. My pushing (steamrolling) drives him crazy, his waiting for things means I'm usually 'stuck' waiting with him. We got really pissy with each other. I had my journal with me, so I could just vent and fume (which was definitely better than taking it out on Jrex).

Soon after my journal venting, the rangers came to invite us to join the line. We got a ride soon after that. Our driver was a ski instructor. She'd been up at the glacier on Blackcomb setting up for classes next week when they saw lightning. She picked up her skis so they could ski down. As she held them, they became so charged she had to throw them away from her. Freaked them all out and they got out of there FAST.

Turns out the way down is the road that gets used for bear tours, and sure enough, in one of the lower meadows, we saw a big black bear (not a grizzly). Bonus!

Home at last

We're safely home. Picked up the mutt from the kennel. She's clingy, but seems fine otherwise.

Neither of us wanted a computer on vacation, so we didn't have the laptops. In Vancouver, the B&B had a computer hooked up for guest use, but not the one in Whistler. Thus the abrupt loss of news. I'm hoping to do a longer update later today.

Oh yeah, the in-laws arrive tomorrow night! We found out Friday night, before leaving Saturday, that it would work out for them to head our way for a week and then down to LA for another week with Jrex's sister.

Thank God I 'worked from home' the Thursday and Friday after the show and cleaned the whole apartment. It allows me to look forward to their arrival. We actually haven't seen them since our Yosemite trip last summer!

Watch those left turns . . .

Day 3. I can't even remember yesterday anymore! I can barely remember this morning. Oh, yeah! It's coming back . . .

After a delightful breakfast served by our B&B owner, we strolled over to catch the SkyTrain over to Chinatown. Our targets were the Scholar's Garden and Hon's Won Ton house. We opted for the paid tour of the Garden. It's built in the style of a scholar's garden during the Ming dynasty (we also opted for the tour).

Side note: on the tour of the museum of First Nation artifacts yesterday, and today, on the tour of a Chinese scholar's garden, in one of the oldest Chinatowns in the Americas, the tours were led by old white women. Hmm . . .

Anyway, the guy who paid to have the garden built imported stone from a lake in China where the acidic water in the lake eats away at the limestone of the rock and creates wild formations. The men who built the 'mountain' in the heart of the garden took six months. They moved all the stone using Ming era mechanisms (can you say bamboo pulleys and bamboo hardhats?). Yesterday we visited a Japanese garden on the UBC campus which was nice, but felt a bit park-like, yet somehow fairly artificial. The Chinese garden, with it's bonsai trees (can't remember the Chinese word for it), imported rock, moon windows, lattice walls and crafted bridges, somehow felt more meditative and more evocative.

Jrex had the camera most of the time . . . (he used to get SO impatient when his father took pictures. Love the irony.) I love watching him get absorbed in finding the best angle for a shot.

We then set off to try to find the Won Ton house. On the way, we took a random turn and seemed to step out of Chinatown. As we walked down a small street, I looked to the left into a broad sunlit alley. There was a cluster of white people sitting and squatting on the ground. One woman lay on her back in the middle of the clump. What are they doing? Is she ok? And then I saw that the man on her left held a needle and the other people on her right were swaying back and forth as if mesmerized as he shot her up. We turned left on Hastings street and saw a long line of junkies across the street with grocery carts mounded full of cans and bottles. They stood in front of the bottle reclamation store. On both sides of the street, gaunt white folk hovered. Not begging, just swaying as they waited for whatever came next.

Whew. Another left and we ducked back into the tourist mall of Chinatown. Just one block made all the difference in the world. Before coming here, I'd heard over and over how clean and safe it was in Vancouver. Most of the places we've seen have seemed that way. Some have seemed a bit quirky, a bit edgy, but not ever dangerous. Hastings street? I felt like we'd stepped into one of those horror movies where the living dead can taste it when someone with actual blood steps into town.

Randomness from the great North

Jrex fell asleep while I was changing, so I'm not sure how long I'll have for this entry.

We're in Vancouver! Last night we crashed at a skanky Days Inn in "Saigon". The neighborhood came complete with massage parlours and lots of neon lights. However, we're now ensconced in our cozy B&B over on West 10th St. We can walk over to Commercial Drive which is our kind of quirky strip. It really made us wistful for Baltimore as the parade of Characters wandered by our sidewalk table. At brunch this morning, we sat next to a table full of mixed race couples with lots of kids running around in all hues. We've heard accents and languages from all over the world.

Today we went to the Museum of Anthropology on the University of British Columbia campus. The building itself is very modern, yet was created with the totem poles and fragile wood structures in mind. I love juxtapositions of modern and old, and it's one of the better examples I've seen.

The biggest revelation of this trip has been that Jrex has a better eye than I do!!! I'm so mad (and enjoying it). Last night we didn't know what to do with ourselves after an early dinner at the 'no reservation' Indian restaurant Vij's. We wandered over to a beach on the northwest side of the city. After perching on a bench, I proceeded to take a bunch of photos. Then I handed the camera to Jrex. He protested, but I insisted he should get revenge for all the closeup shots I'd just taken of his chin stubble. Did he ever! I'll have to post them after we get home, but he took some very cool shots of my new glasses, of my earrings and a great shot of a kid bouncing by us on the bike path. As we looked through the photos, he kept saying that he'd think, "What will happen if I do this?" Trust a scientist to experiment... Anyway, his crafted photos have shown me how lazy I've become when I take pictures. I'm too used to being able to take them into Photoshop and crop and polish to my heart's content.

Jrex and I have never had a shared artistic endeavor. He's great at music, I enjoy but that's it. I do the art, he enjoyes. We're having a lot of fun discovering his inner photographer. It's making me step up my game and it's really amazing.

Hope you're all doing well.

Love,
Shamed in Vancouver.

The cyst will come out tomorrow...

A collection of completely random thoughts:

My last day at work. Everyone keeps telling me it will be fine. I'll be able to work in 10 days or so. What they don't understand is that given a choice between politics and stress or pain, I'll take the pain, thank you very much! If my doctor is tough and won't let me go back to work early, I think I'll be just fine with that.

I'm not worried. I don't know enough to be nervous about the pain, since I've never been injured before. I'm more worried about what I'll be like after a week of sitting around. Without my bike ride and climbing, I get a bit twitchy.

The other day, the VP in charge of this account stopped by. As mentioned before, we affectionately call him The Devil. He starts telling me stories of how soon he was working after having his gall bladder out. How it only took three days before he grabbed back his Crackberry after his liposuction. I actually laughed in his face as I said, "That's cool. I can tell you now, I won't be back that fast! I don't have a need to be needed." My creative director was with us and he started coughing he was laughing so hard.

I'm grateful I have the health insurance to cover this. Grateful I have job security. Heck, it's taking three people to replace me. When I sent the intro list to our client, there were a total of five people (including the two positions for the help I'd already needed). Compared to all that, I'm cheap!

OTRmama and her dog Azure are on their way down from Portland. They stopped for an overnight last night in Northern California. My MIL is sad that she can't come to help. I've tried to tell her it's not that I don't want her, it's just a neat opportunity to spend time with my Mom's best friend. I know she understands in her head, but I can tell she's hurt. If I didn't have OTRmama coming, I'm sure it would have been fine to have had my MIL. It's just that she comes with my FIL attached, and I don't see that being stress-free AT ALL.

In any case, having OTRmama is as close as I can get to having my Mom come. We grew up a block away from them. Her three daughters are the same ages as the three of us. They were a source for TV (I remember a summer of All My Children), art lessons, playing with Barbie, laughter, cats and goldfish with mile-long tails. She's bringing Mom's bread recipe (I never have learned to bake).

I raided the library and am well stocked. I found The Muppet Show, Season 1. My So Called Life, Seasons 2, 3, 5. One of my work friends is bringing in the box sets for Friends, Gilmore Girls and Sex in the City. The comments for what to do while sick have been really helpful. It sounds like I'll have the attention span of a six-month old kitten, so I figure sitcoms are the way to go. I do have a few books, but nothing super serious.

On Ash Wednesday, I went to a Lutheran church nearby. I grew up in a (very unconventional) Lutheran church and miss those traditions on the high holy days: Ash Wednesday, Advent, Christmas, Good Friday, Easter. During the service, I asked the Lord what I should give up for Lent. I could feel him laugh quietly. I realized, "Oh, I'll be immobilized for most of it! I'll truly have time to enter into the rest, silence and Presence that You keep calling me to seek. I guess that's plenty to give up (and gain), huh?" Gentle agreement.

I'm looking forward to it.

Is that a glimmer?

The surgery is set for Wednesday, March 4th. OTRmama (my mom's best friend), with her dog, is coming down to take care of me that week. She's already planning to ask for 'the rest of the stories' while I'm on pain meds and vulnerable to telling all.

Yesterday we spoke with a design team from our company headquarters in Car Capital, USA. Thanks to the failing auto industry, they have no work--which means, we get their A-team, not the dregs we got from Bean Town. I'm already happy with what I've seen from them thus far. Apparently, it takes two people to replace me (a designer and a web guy), plus we get a production designer who will continue to work with me throughout the rest of the show cycle. I'm now tasked with working myself out of a job over the next week and a half. Feeding everything over to Car Capital.

Yesterday we told our internal team. Ms. Anxiety started the meeting with some general announcements and then said, "OTRgirl is with us today to make an announcement."

All eyes turned, panic and foreboding haunting their gazes. I laughed, "I'm not quitting!" They all sighed in relief until I continued, "But, it's close! I'm going in for a procedure that will require 2-4 weeks of recovery. I may be able to work from home after 2 weeks, but we'll see. I'm fine, it's not cancer or anything, but I'll be out of commission. That's why we've been working so hard to get a protocol in place and why we've got Car Capital helping out. We'll tell the client early next week, but wanted all of you to know."

The sad truth is that I'm looking forward to surgery as a "vacation"! I'm not looking forward to an overnight in the hospital (they'll have to intubate me during the surgery so they have to watch me after). I'm too busy to really worry about it and even if I weren't, I feel totally fine about getting this done. I like being married to a doctor so I can ask him my paranoid questions and get nice mental pats on the head in return.

Any books or movies I should watch? Will I need a lap desk for working on the computer in bed?

Joshua Tree, Part I

After judging all the brownness of the Nevada desert, our time in Joshua Tree convinced me that in such barrenness, there is usually more going on than meets the eye. It felt like much of what we saw contained evidence: of the passage of water in the last rainy season, of the passage of animals in scat or tracks, of the grinding passage of time in the rocks and landscape.

Being in JTree is like being in a Giant Child’s rock garden. In the middle of flat land, all of a sudden, there rise piles of golden stones, rounded and haphazardly stacked and strewn about. In the flat areas, the land stretches to the horizon with spikes of Joshua Trees. At times it looks like the Dr. Suess’ idea of a Christmas Tree farm: regularly spaced whacky shapes bent at crazy angles with funny spikes of leaves.


It was beautiful.



Before this trip, I had a cliche notion of the desert: vast dunes of sand, with me crawling toward scant shade. What I’d never thought about was the wind. Every morning the wind picked up, sometimes gusting up to 40 mph. Our tent was tucked behind some big rocks, so at most, we had continuous fluttering, but other people, who set up in the quiet of evening, woke to tents that were whipping back and forth over their heads at crazy angles. Then at night, as the sun set and the moon rose, the wind usually died down. We were tucked among the child’s stones with the moon bright enough for clambering.

Day 1/Hike 1: Lost Palms Oasis
As usual when camping, we did one (long) hike per day. Joshua Tree spans parts of two deserts. The Mojave, home of the Joshua Tree itself, is 3,000 feet higher than the lower, drier Colorado. The first day, we descended to the lower desert to hike to an oasis. The trail was rocky, but very pretty. As we hiked out of a wash, Jrex ahead of me, I saw his foot descending right on top of a snake. What I couldn’t see was if there was a rattle on the tail. Jrex never even saw the snake until I pointed it out. No rattle, thank God. In fact, after being stepped on, the snake didn’t even move. That was my adrenaline rush for the day!

After 3.5 miles in on a rocky path, we turned and looked down on palm trees.


My Oasis image was also a cliche: a babbling brook or spring, palm trees, and someone in a toga waiting to feed me grapes and fan me with a palm branch. Instead, there was a row of palms straggling down the valley in the midst of dry rocks. As with much of my desert experience, once I adjusted my expectations to what it was, I found the beauty.




Day 2/Hike 2: Death by shifting sands

OK. OK. I’m being melodramatic. This was supposed to be a 10.5 mile up-and-down hike to a peak. The guide book mentioned climbing up gully’s and washes to the peak. What it didn’t say was that the WHOLE hike would be on sand. Imagine being forced to walk in the soft part of a beach, uphill, for hours.

The hike was my idea so I couldn’t get mad at Jrex, but we both agreed that sand was NOT fun. The view was pretty, we found a hidden valley of huge Joshua Trees, but I wouldn’t want to do that one again.

To add insult to injury, neither the signs on the mountain, the guidebook, nor the topo map seemed to agree on anything. We had to bust out the compass to figure out where we were and where we needed to go. On the way back, I insisted on trusting a sign instead of Jrex’s memory. What should have been the last mile turned into two.

I also wore sneakers. With mesh sides for ‘breathability’. The whole way down I had to stop every mile to drain my shoes and socks of sand. I kept telling myself: “It’s better than being at work. It’s better than being at work.”

It was.

We were there the night of the full-moon and the days leading up to and after. Which meant that after Jrex cooked dinner over one-burner, we could go and wander among the rocks in the moonlight. The moon was so bright we could see colors in the rocks.

Joshua Tree, Part II

Day 3: Aborted Hike and Acceptable Substitutes

We left camp by 8:30 AM. Drove 40 minutes west. Our goal was to explore a bit in the Coxcomb Mountains. It’s an area with no trails, so we planned to build little cairns of rock at each turn so we could find our way back. The guide book instructions: “From the intersection of Utah Drive and Adobe Road, drive 41.9 miles east. You’ll see a dirt road on the right. Watch for it, it’s hard to spot.” We found it. But, the dirt road was closed.



After 12 miles in sand the day before, neither of us was really tempted by the thought of hiking in 4.5 miles (and hiking that back out), in order to hike another 4-7 miles in the mountains. We agreed it would be a fun weekend backpack trip, hike in, camp, explore, sleep, hike out. As a Day Trip though? Fuggedabadit.

Instead we drove back and did two smaller hikes. We scooted up Ryan Mountain in an hour to a great view. We could see the Wonderland of Rocks from above as well as see the descent of the Mojave toward the Colorado Basin.


After Ryan, we drove through Hidden Valley, the campground paradise for climbers. (yes, I was wistful and a little bitter since I’m married to a non-climber, but held myself together) We hiked a mile through rocks to get to Barker Dam. I love the ‘no swimming’ sign! Apparently for 9 months of the year, there’s high water and lots of birds and wildlife.


Beyond the dam area, there are rocks with petroglyphs. The colors were painted on relatively recently, so they look great for the photo, but are inauthentic.


Yet again, I took us on a wrong turn and we had to hike out through some sand, but not for too long...

The next day, we packed up everything. Jrex made us a final cup of tea and we clambered up the rock near our campsite to have a final farewell to the park. Can you see where our tent used to be?


We drove out the West entrance since we’d seen a place with a “Showers” sign. Backpacker and Climber haven, obviously! After getting cleaned up, we asked the guys in the store for a brunch place between here and LA (since we drove around the outskirts of the city to get to Joshua Tree). They stared at us in horror, “You can’t get to LA! The roads are closed.” We were both confused and they continued, “Didn’t you hear about the fires? The 210 and the 101 are both closed. You gotta go north...”

Fortunately, we had a good map and they told us how to get up to Bakersfield the back way.

Our trip confirmed again that in our guts, we like trees and green. We’re not desert rats and don’t seem to be getting converted, but it was still worth it to see Joshua Tree. Jrex has camped in Death Valley with some buddies and says that’s even better, but I think our goal is to get to Kings Canyon for our next camping trip next summer.

The funny thing to me is coming back to work and trying to tell coworkers about my trip. They all look at me like a freak for sleeping in a tent. I try to explain, “You don’t understand, we were car camping, this was luxury! I could walk down the hill to a toilet!”


I guess that didn’t help their perception that I am from another planet. All the gay guys at work say, “Well, Palm Springs is great...” Yeah, it’s close geographically, but NOT Jrex’s scene. Cute shops and a quaint downtown? I would love it, but Jrex barely felt relaxed by car camping. Civilization still felt too close for truly getting lost in the wilderness.

I guess that means I’ll just be further on the freak scale when we take our next trip and backpack it.

Napa, Part I

OK, so the short, non-photographic version is that Napa was lovely. Not our scene, but lovely. On one level, it was just great to have a weekend together. Mr. Scientist Man doesn't get to take two days off in a row very often. I think I'll just book us in fancy hotels every four months or so just to make him take a break.

I've mentioned before that we both enjoy getting maximum bang for the buck. Napa isn't. Jrex's sister bought us two nights in a hotel room for his birthday present (last Friday, he turned 40!!). It turned out to be $198/night for a basic room with one smallish bed, a kitchenette and a small shower. The hotel had mineral pools and spa services (for more money), but was relatively middle-class and not that elegant. For $89 a night, I would have felt like we were in the ballpark, but not for $200! Of course, "free" was great bang for the buck...

The hotel was in Calistoga which is at the very northern end of Napa Valley. I'll post pics and reviews of vineyards and restaurants tomorrow. Jrex did great research and found family-run vineyards that produced leaner style wines. Many Napa wines have a big, bold fruity taste, but they're one-note strong. We tend to like wines that linger and shift as you drink them. Interesting + unusual=fun.

The good news is that at 40, Jrex isn't planning to leave me for a young, hot nurse or blow our nest egg on a sports car. He says he's been having his "what should I do with my life?" crisis for the last 15 years and doesn't need to have one now. He is ready to wrap up training and start whatever is next (not that it means 'wrap up' will happen for a year and a half or so...but that's 'soon' on a Jrex scale...). The other good news is that we still really enjoy being together.

I feel privileged to have this man as a life companion. I love his wit, his endurance and his desire for off-the-beaten-path adventures.

Happy Birthday, love!

More fun than I expected.

"I love it! This so fun!!"

My mother-in-law turns to me, her face glistening with water, shirt and pants drenched and clinging to her. We're climbing stone stairs next to a waterfall in Yosemite. The 'mist trail' is turning out to be more of a 'rain-storm'. Each time the wind blows, we're soaked with another wave of freezing cold water. We're climbing steep walls of the river carved canyon on man-made stairs of boulders and rocks, all drenched with water.

Mom K keeps laughing. She's using one of the trekking poles we brought for her and Dad; she's mostly steady on her feet. She's 69, barely five feet tall and has the slightly bowed legs from being carried on other's backs until she was 8 (a maid carried her to school each day). I walk up behind her with my hands out, 'spotting' her in case she slips on the wet rocks. She only needs me once.

We finally get beyond the heavy spray and stake out a place in a patch of sun. I've been glancing back trying to spot Jrex and his Dad, but haven't seen them for a long time. While we wait for them, we try to dry off. She's still giggling, I'm laughing both with and at her. Her carefully blow-dried hair drips and curls around her sun visor as she wipes the water from her glasses. Neither of us have a dry item of clothing left, so we're just smearing big droplets into smaller ones. After a couple of minutes, she's ready to go on. I'm concerned about Jrex, worried something might have happened to Dad on the wet stones, so I insist we wait for them, "In case." She nods, "Of course. In case."

After ten minutes or so, Jrex strolls up with his Dad panting beside him. Dad sits down. His face is pasty beneath his sun-bronzed skin. He's been a heavy smoker all his life, and it's finally catching up with him. After drinks of water and photos of the waterfall, we trudge up more steps. At the next break (20 steps later), Dad K wants to turn around and go back down. We can almost see the top, but he's done. Mom K, contrary to any cultural norm that I'm aware of, wants to keep going up. We start to divide up the food so Mom and I can eat something at the top. Jrex insists on going back down with Dad, "in case". As we're digging through the backpack and discussing what I can fit in my pockets and small camera bag, Dad K interjects with disgust, "OK. I go up."

Fifteen minutes later, we make it. After eating, photographing, napping, taking a potty break (great thing about Yosemite--public toilets everywhere! No digging holes or going in the woods), and smoking a couple cigarettes for the road, we head back down. On the way down, when we reach the wet steps, Mom K starts hopping down them like a rabbit. I laughed and told her she was crazy and she agreed!

All told, a three-mile hike took us 'only' five hours...

--------
As soon as I get the photos off of Jrex's computer, I'll post a select few. I went a little crazy with pictures. Dad and I didn't do competitive pics (though if I took one in a certain spot, he was quick to do the same). He didn't like how I off-centered people and took candid photos and he certainly didn't understand why I kept taking close-ups of rocks or tree bark. Actually, Jrex is the master of the super-macro mode and took some really beautiful bark pictures. He's got a great eye, he'd just rather BE where he is than document it.

---------
We're back 'home' though it doesn't feel like home. Not just cause the in-laws are still here, but Jrex and I are realizing more and more that we just aren't desert rats. The dry, brown, or artificial green of California isn't our scene. It just didn't feel like we were coming back to our place. Even the apartment just feels like a collection of our stuff, but not really our home. We have two more years here, which we'll enjoy, but it's not where we want to settle (despite all of Mom K's hints that it would be a good place for us).

----------
Still to come: I bonded a little too well with Jrex's niece.

Randomness

Home

I loved the feeling of being 'home' that I had in New England. People there live life at maximum intensity; everything matters. What text will be on the mural in the center of town, what store to shop at, trash collection: all subject to public and intense debate. I often feel like I have to tone myself down so I don't blow people away. Not that I need to take up all the space in the room, but I like to ask 'real' questions, dig deep and be honest. That doesn't always work in social situations. Yet, in New England, my friends all asked me 'personal' questions and I loved it. I wasn't the only one!
------------
I'm over it

After my second trip in a month (the other just involving staying on-site in San Francisco for two nights), I think I'm over the travel for work bug. No matter how many people I visited with, the empty hotel room at the end of the night felt cold and very lonely. I can see why people fall into affairs if they travel a great deal. At least with the time difference between Boston and California, I could call Jrex at the end of the night and rehash the day, but it wasn't the same. No matter how luxurious, or how nice the view, the robe or the free shampoo, it's an empty box. When Jrex is out of town, the apartment feels lonely, but with the dog, our books, our music, our movies, it's a welcoming loneliness.
------------

It's very hard to get back into the rhythm of work. I just don't care right now. Plus, most of my current projects are post-conference wrap up. Organizing files and making covers for presentations are just not the sort of project that gets my juices going. Knowing that I'll be on vacation next week is adding to my lack of motivation...
------------
Don't you like mine better?

Vacation with the in-laws next week! Oddly, I'm looking forward to it. We'll have a few days with the whole family all together in a little house in Venice. I'm picturing our poor niece being pulled from one set of arms to the next...as in, if she runs to Jrex to be held or read to, his Dad will get competitive and try to pick her up, too.

The other interaction that should be 'fun' will be photos in Yosemite. Jrex and his Mom both hate being in photographs and try to avoid it. His Dad and I both enjoy taking photos. The last visit we had with them, we checked out the Japanese Tea Garden in Golden State Park. All the way through, Dad K would exclaim, "Sun Ae (the Korean name they gave me), take a picture of that!" I would. Then he would. Then we'd compare. And I would say, "Wow, Dad, your picture looks so good. I love it!" Due to an intense, traumatic life, there are sides of him that are a seven-year old boy who is starving for affirmation. It doesn't hurt me to give it to him, though I don't know how I'll feel after four days of comparative photography...
------------
Muttola Rules the World

I love having a dog that other people also enjoy. We keep accumulating dog-sitters for her. When I pick up Jrex from lab on weekends, I let her run around while we wait for him. A week ago, she ran up to a woman who was loading her car and looked ready to go home with her. (Muttola is such a scavenger that mostly, she's looking for food, but I don't let on) The woman later told Jrex that she would love to dog sit if we ever need it. That makes three different homes she can stay in, no charge, with people who are grateful to have a dog-fix. I'm all about helping people, so, hey, if having our dog at your house for a few days will be good for you, I'm right there for you! Self-sacrificing, humble, quiet, that's me.

The Best of the Rest

On our second day of vacation we snowshoed up to a nearby ridge. (All the signs listing distance were in km. I love the metric system! 1.5 km is MUCH easier than 1.5 m) We arrived at 8500 feet where there was no wind. We heard absolute silence: no birds, no planes, no car sounds, no other hikers. I felt like I got to drink a full cup of Bigness.

Jrex is gazing at the ridge that lines Kings Canyon. That road is closed from November through April. Not due to snow, but because there are often rock falls that wipe out sections of the road.

Unfortunately, the view to the west, which should consist of glimpses of Fresno, is solid brown smog. From Fresno, you have no idea there are 11,000 foot peaks just an hour away. The brown curtain shrouds both ways.

The day before we left, we got 24 inches of snow in 20 hours. That day Jrex went out cross-country skiing while I opted for a book by the fireplace. The next morning at dawn we went snowshoeing again since it was our last hurrah and we wanted to enjoy the fresh powder. Enjoy we did, up to our knees, despite the snowshoes!



I loved all the funny Dr. Seuss trees.

At every exit from the lodge there were signs that read, "Watch out for falling snow". I wasn't sure how bad it could be until I saw this (that's the main lodge, by the way)

The food was great. Served buffet style, both guests and staff shared the dining room. One night we had braided salmon, the next there was swordfish. Each meal had a veggie entree as well as red meat and an alternative (fish, poultry or pork). Lunch and breakfast were included as well, for $90/weeknight and $120 on the weekend! Nothing fancy, and certainly not a honeymoon locale, it suited our blue-collar style perfectly (good bang for the buck, real people, no pretensions).

Due to the snow, the roads were all closed. We had to wait for an escort to lead a caravan out to the main road.

Twenty minutes later...

Giant Sequoias: More than you ever wanted to know*

On the first day in the Sierras, we drove down to the "Grove of the Giants" in Sequoia National Forest; we collected tidbits we've been inflicting on people since our return:

Sequoias have chemicals in their bark that have made them immune to dying of old age. They aren't succeptible to fungus or bacteria. The only thing that really kills them is fire, or being blown over (usually due to fire damage). Even then, the wood doesn't rot.
Their pine cone seeds are only released through heat; sequoia stumps show fire scars every 13 years or so for the past 2,500 years.
We'd read in the book that we were going to see the largest tree by volume in the world. Honestly, from a distance, it's underwhelming. Redwoods grow tall, Sequoias grow stumpy. At some point, it looks like someone hacked off the top of the tree. They look like a big club with random green stuff clumped at the top. But when you get close, they are definitely huge!
This tree was used as a cabin and saloon in the 1800's.

I took a wonderful shot of Jrex facing the camera while looking up at this 'skylight'. In yet another example of why I love him, he then said, "Do you want me to turn around so you can put this on the blog?"
Aside from signs that said, "Take photo of General Grant Tree here", the other thing that annoyed me was that almost every tree had a masculine name. "The Chief", "The President", "General Lee". Two groves were called "The Senate" and "The House". When I look up at a big, old tree, brooding over the forest and sacrificing itself for the sake of it's seeds, it seems matriarchal. Ah well, I guess that's what we get when a bunch of crazy bachelors are the ones who arrive somewhere first and throw labels on grandeur.

*In true geek fashion, I love random factoids.