Yikes!

Well, it all worked out for the best. I didn’t have to go to the client’s site to work. Instead I can do it all from home. Good thing too. The original plan was likely to have put me here. Sometimes it’s best when a plan doesn’t come together.

And now for something completely different.

This morning and early afternoon the weather was beyond gorgeous here. Warm but not too hot with a cool breeze. So, feeling inspired, I ran an extension cord out the office window and set up my laptop on the table under a mimosa tree. Before long I was completely set up with my computer, phone, paperwork and coffee all around me. I did feel a bit silly, though after a while. I realized I looked much like John Cleese at the beginning of a Monty Python episode. Now I just need to work on the silly walk…

Before I forget

I tend to walk around and think of things that I want to put in here and often forget them by the time I’m actually sitting in front of the computer. So with any luck I’ll remember all the recent ones here. I tend to walk around and think of things that I want to put in here and often forget them by the time I’m actually sitting in front of the computer. So with any luck I’ll remember all the recent ones here.

First off – a warning to those of you writing book or movie reviews. Don’t be surprised to hear the author’s opinion of your reviews. I just got my second comment on one of the books I reviewed way back when we were at the yurt. It wasn’t the nicest review, but the email I got was nice enough. Hope I didn’t hurt the author’s feelings. So I guess I’m not the only one putting my own name into google to see what comes up.

You know, food in the midwest is, for the most part, beyond awful. Any reader of this journal knows that that’s my opinion. But I’m starting to find a few places that are actually decent. A few more, and I might have to make another directory like Alternative Ozarks to list where in this part of the country someone can find a good dinner out. The latest is the Ridge Market and Italian Deli. This place, literally 30 miles from nowhere and 40 miles from our house (we happened to take a 40 mile detour on our way back from visiting a friend in Branson), sells the first decent sandwiches I’ve had in the area. The owners moved here from NJ, and disgusted at the quality of cold cuts and cheeses found in our local supermarkets, they set up their own deli. Most of their stuff is shipped from New Jersey. The food’s good enough that if it weren’t like 100 degrees outside and a ride that makes Sage carsick (curves and hills galore) we’d have to go there and get another couple of sandwiches.

I’ve cut my hair and beard off. So it’s official now. I’m going out of town to work. Everyone in town from the bank to the stores seems very proud of themselves for deducing my pending trip from my appearance. To be honest, I kind of prefer my shorter haired, clean shaven look. Now I’m just reviewing documents and preparing for my trip. With any luck I’ll be able to take a train out. And with a little more luck I can get a sleeping compartment. A sleeping compartment from St. Louis (including meals) costs only slightly more than airfare from Springfield. No matter what I think that’ll be the way I travel. I really don’t want to think about boarding a plane now and it’s worth the extra few days away from home.

And now it’s time to go eat something and hang out with everyone.

And the answer is…

I’m not going to Quebec City just yet – maybe in a little while. In the meantime another project has come up that I start on tomorrow, fedex-willing. I’ll be writing some documents for a company in Baltimore, MD and it looks as if I’ll be heading up that way for 3-4 days on the week of the 29th. I’m kind of excited. So I guess I’ll be shaving my beard off (I don’t have a businessey beard – that’s as much work as shaving IMO, so when I work I shave it all off), and I’ll be cutting off my hair again down to a more professional length. Damn, it was almost long enough to be tied back out of my face, too…

Forget Burger King

Paul, anyway, is king at the nearest Thai restaurant. Since they shut down both Vietnamese restaurants in Springfield within days of one another our usual routine of me eating a big bowl of noodle soup and his eating a big plate of chicken with lemon grass ended. So we had to find a new restaurant. Paul had had Thai food before and didn’t really care much for it but when we stopped in front of this restaurant we got out of the van and he exclaimed “Something smells good!” He was right, too. The food smelled delicious. And tasted good too. So far we’ve been there about three times and have absolutely loved it each time. And each time we went there, the service, while really great, was particularly excellent for Paul.

The first time he went was several weeks ago. On that day Paul was having some trouble with his eye. The TCM diagnosis is damp heat in the liver (as I recall) and results in a runny, somewhat goopy looking eye (when it’s just watery it’s only wind that’s causing it – no, really!). Anyway, it was looking particularly bad as we’d just started herbs for it (within a few days of an anti-damp herbal prescription) it was almost totally cleared up). They asked if he was okay and I let them know that it was just allergies (the simplest and quickest explanation to give). They offered him a wet cloth and brought it out to him. When we ordered, Paul wanted a limonade (sic) and while they didn’t have any, they made another carbonated fruit drink and offered to trade it for a sprite if he didn’t like it (thank goodness he did – this had way less sugar).

The next time we went, all three of us went together. Paul wanted the drink he had before again, but they didn’t have it so we asked for juice (none available that day) and so we chose water. Paul was visibly disappointed. They saw this, too, and brought him out an electric green “emerald soda” (on the house!) that he absolutely adored, but was loaded with sugar, (that was the day Sage also had sugary, caffeine-loaded Thai coffee – what a pair I had to put up with).

Today, we went for lunch. I ordered ginger tofu (our acupuncturist says that I, too, am having a problem with damp heat and that ginger will be helpful for the digestive troubles I’m having as a result), and Paul got his usual chicken satay. When they brought out the soup that came with my lunch, they also brought out a plate of fries for Paul. Then after our entrees were brought out they came by with a couple of spring rolls for us. It’s very sweet just how much attention they pay him. Every time they filled his water they had to play with him.

But even if you don’t have children, it’s well worth the trip. The food is fabulous.

Oh, and an update on the work situation. I’m playing phone tag with my client (whom I consult through for their clients) but I have a sneaking suspicion I might have to go on the road after all. Not a big deal, of course, considering that after doing 6-8 weeks away from home I’ve managed to have about that many months of free time to do as I please. I’d be crazy to complain.

Problems found, problems solved

It’s been that sort of week – a week of various annoying problems of various shapes and sizes in our lives, followed by varying degrees of crabbiness and/or panic, followed by a resolution. Sort of makes for a life like Ken Follet’s Pillars of the Earth or one of those “that’s good/that’s bad” childrens books but there you go.

First off, there was the everpresent issue of money. Sometimes business booms and it’s plentiful and other times it’s slow and money’s a little more scarce. This is one of those times. It seems like web design business, anyway, slows down in the summer – what with everyone outside, I suppose. There was a glimmer of hope, though, as a couple days before the fourth I got a call about a month’s worth of at-home work which would only entail a couple of days away from home. And those would be in Quebec City which sounds quite lovely. It’s always been on my list of places to visit sometime but I haven’t gotten around to it yet. And now it looks as if someone is going to pay me to do it. Who could ask for more. Well, that’s what I thought, and then I never heard from the person again. So Sage and I started to plan for my having another trip away – Michigan seemed most attractive given the low cost of living, my familiarity with the client and the area, and the relatively high living allowance given on that job. Then on Friday I gave one last call to follow up on the Quebec job but I got the person’s voicemail. But! When Sage and I came back from a trip later that evening there was a message on the machine promising a call on Monday (tomorrow) and work to do later this week. So that’s resolved for the moment.

Meanwhile, things for Paul were being a little difficult. His friend whose granny lives next door inexplicably won’t play with him anymore (she is about twice his age. He was disappointed but it wasn’t until yesterday that I think he had any problem with it. Last night, he spotted her and her cousin (a year older than Paul) outside on the swings and he got very inspired to go outside and play with them. So inspired that he brought his treasured new (real) stethoscope out – the one with his name on it and everything to share with them. His friend was somewhat gracious and looked it over before offering it to her cousin who wasn’t interested in looking at it before giving it back to him. Then when that was done they proceeded to pretend to ignore Paul while ‘cousin’ decided she would list off all the fun things the two of them would do without Paul that night. So maddening. So Sage and I went back indoors with Paul who was visibly disappointed and a little confused that they weren’t interested in playing with him even if he was willing to share one of his most treasured things. Within minutes he was trying to think of things first to try sharing with his friend and then things that he could outright give to her to get her attention. But as it was bedtime and all three of us had had enough disappointment for one night I read Paul to sleep.

Then Sage and I talked about how it’s been lately. First off the whole thing that I just mentioned above, and also the fact that recently we also had a hard time with two other kids who weren’t interested in playing with Paul. I was feeling particularly frustrated – in part because of all I’ve mentioned, and adding to that the fact that just about everyone we know is about an hours drive (and $20 worth of gas) away from us. I, in my usual jump to extremism, suggested leaving town to go back to an urban area where the population density would be higher – more kids, more likely playmates, less gas to get there. I was feeling particularly concerned that it felt as if driving several hundred miles/week in a van that has nearly 170K miles on it might be a mistake, but what was the alternative? The best we could come up with was one trip for kid stuff every week – that’d be 120-150 miles which wasn’t great but do-able – as long as when we made our trip to Springfield we did all our other errands as well.

Well, that resolution lasted about 17 hours, I think. Today we all got in the car to go to a large gathering at a friend’s house about 40 minutes from here. Paul had a great time with all the kids there – even ones that he’d had trouble getting along with before. He did so well, it seemed like he had aged like four years in the process. Anyway, inspired by the great time he was having we arranged a get together in Springfield on Tuesday for him again, and independent of that we arranged a second get together in Branson on Friday. So…So much for resolutions. Perhaps we’ll just have to find a cheap car without too many miles on it that gets better than 10-15mpg for all this social activity.

While we were there I got hungrier and crabbier and more restless. After about five hours I was ready to go on to the rest of our trip which involved a visit to the library in Springfield to take back all our books and get a few new ones. Paul was having none of it, and neither of us really wanted to drag him kicking and screaming from something he was obviously having a great time at and doing well with. So we finally resolved that I would drive the rest of the way to Springfield (another 25 miles) myself. That left me about an hour at the library before they closed to just browse. And since the card catalog was down, I could only browse. It was an interesting experience. Aside from the shelves of new books I realize I generally don’t browse, but instead do a sort of stream of consciousness lookup of various authors then fetch the books, then go back and look at the card catalog again with the new things I thought to look up and so on until we have so many books that we need a library cart (no, really!) to bring them all up to the checkout desk. But today I just wandered through the shelves. And it was such a pleasant experience. I might have to do that again even when the card catalog is working.

After it closed I headed back to get Sage and Paul, stopping first for food at a really yummy roadside barbeque stand and then for gas before arriving back at our friend’s house. I felt totally refreshed after that trip and ready to spend more time there. At first I thought it was because I was fed (I’d been hungry all day) but the more I think about it, my crabbiness and restlessness abated before I even got to the library. I think it was like Mary Sheedy Kurcinka talks about in Raising your Sprited Child. I am an introvert and I had just had enough of social contact. I needed to go be by myself to “recharge” as she called it. And it worked. I came back refreshed. Unfortunately, by then Sage was hungry and crabby and the kids (just Paul and one other kid left at this point) were getting tired and crabby. So we headed home. Paul fell asleep about half way home and he’s still asleep now. Probably for the night.

Things we learned today:

• Be patient with clients – they’ll come through when you need them
• Be patient with kids, they’re really fickle and will appear to be unable to get along with each other. Give them a break, allow them to spend some time by themselves and they’ll sort things out.
• I can just leave a social situation for a little while if I need a break and be much the better for it.

Mindless Games

For the past several months, I got the majority of my time alone in the late evenings. Paul would go to bed, with Sage soon after, and then I would stay up until anywhere between eleven at night or one in the morning. But for whatever reason things are shifting and now, I’m going to bed somewhere between ten and eleven, but am waking up earlier. Quite often, now, I’m waking between 6-7 in the morning, and even 5:00 one morning. But it’s working quite well, actually. When I’m staying up late it seems all I’m up for are mindless games. Or games that take a little thought at best like backgammon. When I wake before everyone, I quite often am ready to write a journal entry or some email.

Sage and I got another web design job which should prove to be quite interesting. The husband of a person we know built a hand-notched log cabin entirely himself on 130 acres outside of town here. The person is obviously very talented as I’ve never been in a more solid-feeling building. And at the same time it’s really aesthetically pleasing with refinished antique hardware, claw footed tub, wonderful landscaping and so forth. It was actually tempting, for a bit – not so much to buy (it’s way out of our price range even if I were working full time) but we were offered the opportunity to caretake the place and live in the guest house (another smaller cabin built for the owners to live in while they built the main house). But I think even if our cats were well behaved enough to trust them in someone else’s house, I just can’t imagine living quite that isolated again. I really love being in town surrounded by people, able to walk most places. And one further reminder of why living in the country is a pain for us happened the next morning after we got back from the house. We had a flat tire. Something about the dirt roads here, many of which are frequently graded breaking up bits of flint, just eats all but the newest and best tires. Our last summer in the yurt we had six flat tires. Anyway, look for a site devoted to the building of this house soon. We’ll also be working with Dogwood Video to provide a video tour of the site as well. So if you’re interested in a lovely house in the Ozarks, either to own or to caretake let me know at [link now defunct]

Paul is becoming interested in cooking lately and it’s so much fun. He’s really into it, and is getting old enough to actually help. Two nights ago we made a homemade pizza together. Last night he and Sage made some really great reduced sugar cupcakes (maybe Sage will provide the link to the recipe later).

I shouldn’t be surprised. Paul is almost four years old, after all. In fact, his birthday is next month and I think this year he really is interested in a party. And, unsurprisingly – to us anyway, he’s interested in a Halloween themed party. Some kids spend their whole year looking forward to Christmas. Not Paul. He absolutely adores Halloween. He seems to have an appreciation for scary things like I’ve never seen in someone so young. Not so much in a dark evil way, but almost aesthetically. And in fact, we’ve taken advantage of that to help him learn to read. The wall of his room is covered with pictures of various ghouls, ghosts, skeletons, witches, ogres and other monsters, each with their name printed below them. And it seems to be helping – he recognizes a few of the words already. Last night I got a fairly good handle on an analogy to his appreciation of all things scary and Halloween-ey. It’s very much like some of the descriptions I’ve read of “Dies de los muertos” (pardon my poor spanish) – the celebration in Mexico. It was reading to him about that festival last night in Ray Bradbury’s “The Halloween Tree” (highly recommended by the way – interesting historical observations on top of a fascinating story.) that made the connection for me.

I’m going to write a bit more email now before I’m meant to meet our neighbor – he came over last night to say he noticed my flat and offer the use of his air compressor. It’s a slow leak so I should be able to put some air in the tire and drive it over to the tire shop before it goes flat again.

mumble mumble *bleep* mumble

I’m always thinking of things to write when I’m away from my computer and then when I sit down here to write I’ve managed to forget every one almost without fail. So I’m going to try now to remember most of them. I’m always thinking of things to write when I’m away from my computer and then when I sit down here to write I’ve managed to forget every one almost without fail. So I’m going to try now to remember most of them. If this entry seems a bit disconnected, it is, for the very reason that hopefully I’m getting all the things down that I’ve been meaning to get down over the past several weeks to months.

For quite some time, I’d been feeling totally uninspired about cooking. For those that have read much of this journal you realize just how out of character this is for me. I really began to wonder just what was going on. It wasn’t until a few weeks ago I realized a good part of why this was the case. Shopping at the same few stores in town, all of which have the very same choice of food, has really created this lack of inspiration. The health food store isn’t bad. It has the basics, anyway, lots of bulk food, a bit of local produce, and an admirable selection of cheeses – particularly for a town of this size. But there isn’t enough of a selection to do all of one’s shopping there, and the produce selection is pretty poor, albeit of good quality. So quite often we wind up having to go to Town and Country. Town and Country is a great store. Well, great, if you grew up in the midwest and only want a meat and potatoes diet with the same basic menu every week. The produce selection is very basic: lettuce (leaf, iceberg, romaine), peppers, onions, a couple kinds of squash, turnips, broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, garlic, oranges, apples, bananas, strawberries, maybe a few plums. Don’t be surprised, either, to find the produce bruised or fruit flies swarming. No, it’s not an experiment in Mendelian genetics, this is a grocery store with no other competition in town and no other grocery store for 15 miles, and no grocery store from another chain for 30 or more miles. It was particularly bad a few days ago when I went. When I was working in a grocery store about 15 years ago, there was always a manager walking the store making sure all was presentable and in order. I don’t think there is one here. Because if they did, in the past week they would have found a person with a bad case of bronchitis hacking her brains out (with an impressively productive cough) as she dished up hot dishes from the deli, the usual fruit flies in the produce department, and the latest was a warm dairy case with several dead flies peppering the cheeses (perhaps they were resting…or simply pining for the fjords!).

Anyway, I finally had had enough and resolved that I’d do my best to do my grocery shopping in Springfield. What a good move that turned out to be. I don’t think most of my readers would be impressed by my account of the store. It wasn’t much more than a medium sized grocery store not unlike the one we used to shop at in Bethlehem (this was in the days before two Wegmans opened up which in terms of size and marketing prowess alone are quite something to see. Anyway, Paul and I went to the grocery store and absolutely loaded up on interesting produce and other great stuff. And the interesting thing is, we used it. In Bethlehem, I was always one to get inspired by some strange looking tuber or other well marketed item only to bring it back home and add it to our compost heap otherwise known as our fridge. (For those of you unacquainted with our Bethlehem life as Sage talked about in her former online journal “Coffee Shakes” let me just say that we’d quite frequently spend a great deal at the grocery store only to bring it home and order yet another pizza or curry. We were good, though, we changed the contents of the fridge regularly) I’ve been shopping there almost once a week now along with our usual library trips and such and it’s made such a difference in how I feel about cooking.

In other news, it looks as if I might be working a little from home again soon. Someone at a company where a friend of mine works called to ask if I could do some writing from home for a company in Quebec city. I’m still waiting to hear back on the details and to get a definite answer that they’d want me for the job, but if all goes as planned I’ll be flying up there for a couple of days to do a little information gathering and then coming back to work for about a month. While I’m not looking forward to the airplane trip, I am really looking forward to getting to Canada. I’ve always enjoyed my trips to Canada, and have always been interested in going to Quebec City. In fact, going anywhere in Quebec would be interesting. I’ve made several trips in my life to Montreal, but all but two of those were night trips from UVM which was about 90 minutes away to take advantage of the 18 year old drinking age. So needless to say all I got to see of the city were the various nightclubs and a couple of restaurants. It’ll be interesting to see if this time I can actually get away without working from Windows. Almost everyone in the industry I’m in uses Microsoft Word as a document standard. That’s all well and good except it doesn’t run under linux without a $59 plugin and a bit of tweaking. Fortunately, though, since the last time I tried, Openoffice 1.0 has come out and it’s quite impressive. It includes the first non-Microsoft word processor I’ve found that doesn’t totally mess up the formatting of my documents. And as the documents I write are for FDA compliance, formatting is of absolute importance. A cynical person might even say it’s of more importance than the content but I don’t think I’d go that far. Regardless I think the time might be here for me to get a new computer. Right now I’m using a Toshiba Sattelite Pro 490CDT laptop with a 233MMX processor and 64MB of RAM. It works pretty well for most things, but when it comes to working on some of the stuff Sage needs me to do it’s pretty slow. And it doesn’t really run Openoffice that well. Still, I don’t need as much as Sage does given what I do. Where she needs a P4-1.6 with 512 MB of RAM to get by I could probably do quite happily with a PIII-750. I might use this as an opportunity to say that it’s mostly due to the fact that I don’t use Windows but I won’t.

Things have been interesting with Paul lately. He and I have been having trouble getting along at home lately. We’d do okay on trips to Springfield or elsewhere but we’d just get on each others nerves at home. It got to the point where he’d actively do things to annoy me and then I’d be totally unmotivated to spend time with him and then he’d do some more irritating things and before we knew it the day was over and we were still crabby. Anyway, I wasn’t sure what to do for a while. On the 4th, Sage and I talked about how it was and I’m not even sure we figured out anything more than that it was a problem and that he might really have been wanting more attention and was acting out as a result. That night, when he got home from his Granny’s (he’d spent a few hours there that evening) I just dove right in, doing my best to forget about all the recent times he’d yelled or thrown things at me. And interestingly enough, it’s worked swimmingly so far. His behavior has turned completely around. The only place where it’s been difficult is when Sage might try to ask me something when he and I are playing and he’ll yell or try to disrupt us otherwise. We’ve found a rather effective consequence for that, too. We let him know that I’m setting a timer for 10 minutes during which time I won’t read or play with him. Sometimes if he’s particularly crabby (usually when he’s hungry) he might continue still, at which point I might add another 5 minutes to the timer. Usually it only takes one or two additions of time for things to calm down. Sage then gets h
er answer. I read or do a few chores for those ten minutes and then Paul and I play happily again. It’s been almost five days now of doing that and it’s been absolutely wonderful almost 99% of the time. And my level of inspiration to do things with him at home has gone back up tremendously. Like the cooking thing before, I was beginning to wonder where that inspiration went and if it would ever come back.

From the guilty pleasures file: Sage and I have recently become addicted to episodes of The Osbournes. A while ago we watched one episode and didn’t enjoy it at all. We could hardly understand a thing and so it often sounded like “mumble mumble *bleep* mumble” For the heck of it, though, we read a wrap-up at Television without Pity. And what a difference. The wrap-ups make the show not only bearable but absolutely hysterical. And as a bonus they also reflect hours of work on the author’s part translating everyone’s mumbles. It’s funny, though, it really pointed out how often Sage and I call out to each other in that panicked “Sharon!” way Ozzy does when we can’t figure something out.

It was rather startling a couple of days ago. Paul was spending the evening at his granny’s and the phone rang. Sage picked it up and handed it to me. Turns out it was my brother on the line. It’s not like we haven’t spoken in years or anything – we chat online occasionally, email once in a while and even see each other once in a while as we did when I was back east this past winter. But I think this was the first time he had called me up since maybe 1998. Okay, there was that time a couple years ago when my mom died and he sent me an email to call him (we were at the yurt and didn’t have a phone of our own). But it was nice, for a change to just get a call from him with no big news, just a bit of blabbing about our lives. For the curious, he’s doing really well with a new job he is challenged by and loves, a new apartment with his girlfriend about 60 miles from home. It sounds like things are beginning to come together for him in a way he’s been trying to make happen literally for years.

Today Sage and I are going to meet with someone about a possible website job and Paul and his granny are going to the Womens land (Paul’s still young enough that his gender isn’t much of an issue) to pick blackberries.

Best laid plans

If it matters, I’ve meant to do an entry. But the best laid plans and all that. The thing is, as usual, when I’m inspired it isn’t a good time and when it’s a good time (Paul’s asleep, it’s 11:00 PM) I’m too tired or just not inspired to write. Go figure.

Anyway – I know at least one person is wondering how everything went on our trip west so I suppose I’ll start there:

On the Friday of our departure, Paul and I had breakfast and loaded our personal stuff in the truck and left by mid-morning. Paul had a minor cough but it didn’t seem worrysome. That day was pretty uneventful. We drove as far as Oklahoma City with only a couple long stops. When we did get to Oklahoma City the U-Haul started making rather disturbing noises. Actually more like the sound of a flat tire. I pulled over to check what was up and couldn’t find anything amiss and so I went on. As is my nature I began to sort of obsess over what might be wrong and what I should do about it. I guessed that it could be due to the rough state of the roads but even as the roads improved a little things didn’t. So I got a hotel and called U-Haul. They came in about 1/2 hour and looked at that as well as a couple of other minor complaints I had and fixed them all. That was the last mechanical problem I’d have (if you can call it that) on the trip.

Meanwhile, that night Paul and I had a pizza and watched a little Animal Planet before going to bed. Wouldn’t you know it, his cough got quite a bit worse after the pizza. I talked to Sage and we guessed that his cough was either being created or at least exacerbated by the food he was eating and that we should eat extremely healthily – avoiding corn (which he is very sensitive to) and dairy products.

So the next morning we went off to find a health food store and picked up a bunch of food before going on our way. Then, for good measure I stopped at Wal Mart and picked up a cool mist vaporizer, ice, and a cooler for all our food. All that done, we continued on across Texas. I have to say, that that part of the drive seemed to be one of the longest and most boring stretches of the whole trip. And at times it was positively dismal and eerie with towns with tilted watertowers (tornado damage I’m presuming) and other towns whose biggest attraction was “The Largest Cross in the Western Hemisphere”. And the sad thing was that that sort of thing actually became interesting – and something to even look forward to as the contrast between it and nothing but dry grass and open space was so great.

We got into Tucumcari, NM fairly early on Saturday, found a hotel and grabbed a snack from the cooler and then stopped at the first of the roadside attractions, the Mesalands Dinosaur Museum. We’d been seeing the signs for this place since just after we left Oklahoma city and you’d be really surprised at how exciting anything can sound when it’s the only thing you hear about while driving across the desolation of the Texas panhandle. Fortunately, the museum wasn’t a disappointment. It was a rather small place – probably not much bigger than a small grocery store, but their choices of exhibits were well done. Paul was fascinated by nearly everything he saw there. Well, he was fascinated after he finally realized that unlike the St. Louis Science Center, the exhibits here were not 40 foot tall animatronic wonders with huge teeth and earth shattering roars. Most of what was there was fossilized bones and bronze castings of bones. These were particularly great because they were sturdy enough that we could actually touch them and get close enough to see just how big they were. We spent quite a while there looking at the bones, digging in piles of crushed walnut shells for plaster castings of fossils and just wandering around before we had to leave. We drove back to the hotel and weren’t awake long before we both read a few stories and went to sleep.

The next morning things got a little more stressful. Paul and I went downstairs for the free continental breakfast, bringing along some cereal we knew had no corn in it for Paul. The other offerings were pretty paltry (What can one expect, though, from a $36/night Microtel?) and so all I managed to have was some sort of pastry and a coffee. Paul had his cereal, orange juice and a banana. Not long after he ate he began to cough. And not long after that he threw up most of his breakfast. This was a little discouraging in and of itself, but more discouraging because it was beginning to feel like Michigan all over again where Paul had a very sensitive stomach and numerous coughing fits all summer until he got back home. After cleaning everything up we went back up to the room and packed for the day’s drive.

Paul and I then headed west. If it was possible, New Mexico was even more desolate than Texas. But for some reason the scenery was more pleasing anyway. After a few hours, Paul was hungry and needed to use the bathroom so we stopped at a rest area and had some peanut butter sandwiches, carrot sticks and water.

Wouldn’t you know it, though. Just as before, eating seemed to bring on another coughing fit. It came on fairly slowly, but after about 60-90 minutes he was coughing like crazy and it sounded like he was going to be throwing up soon. Sure enough, just before the next rest area he threw up all over again. We pulled over at the rest area, cleaned him up, cleaned the U-Haul up, and got out the cell-phone (we bought a pre-paid one for emergencies on the trip) and called Sage. She was fairly helpful and it just so happened that one of the people who does chiropractic/acupuncture for us and who has worked with Paul a lot was there. She suggested a few foods that might be helpful and which I resolved to get once I got back to civilization. Feeling a little more supported after being in touch with people from home, we got back on our way.

And as we grew to expect later in the trip, Paul’s coughing completely diminished and he slept peacefully for 2-3 hours. He woke up briefly in Gallup when we got gas and then went back to sleep again until we got to the Petrified Forest at which point I needed to find a bathroom so we got off the interstate. Here Paul woke up, and for the first time seemed to be upset about what was going on. I think he was really tired of feeling crummy, and was at the same time really tired and disoriented. Once he got his bearings enough that we could talk a little I encouraged him to go outside where we wandered a little in the desert checking out the various animal tracks. When he had calmed down a bit, I asked him if he’d rather spend time at the Petrified Forest or the next day at the Grand Canyon. I admit, the offer was somewhat selfish. With him feeling this way I wanted to get the trip finished soon so I could get home. And good for me, he chose the Petrified Forest. And so we headed into the park, stopping at the visitor’s center to figure out what was what and to use the bathroom. We got there just in time, as they were just starting the movie about how the petrified wood was created. Paul was utterly fascinated by this and still talks about it to this day.

The movie was only 20 minutes long and so before long we were back out in the truck heading in to the park. Paul was a bit hungry so he had a few crackers we picked up at the health food store in OK City. The first portion of the drive took us through the Painted Desert which I have to say was way more beautiful than any of the pictures can show. I don’t know what is missing from all the pictures but it was absolutely beautiful. Paul was quite impressed, and we took a few pictures (that were sadly disappointing) before heading on to some ruins of a native american settlement that was there about 800-1000 years ago. We wandered through the ruins and looked at several of the petroglyphs. Paul seemed quite interested in the area and rather eerily, I think, told me about someone having a sword
battle here and dying.

Meanwhile, his cough had started to get worse again. And let me just say here, that while I was glad that he wasn’t coughing all the time as it would have been worrisome and probably indicative of something truly serious, it was equally discouraging for me to have these times of virtually no coughing and then, oh damn here it comes again. We headed further into the park – not stopping everywhere as we didn’t have much time before the park closed, and besides, we were considering coming back the next day. We did want to make it to somewhere with more petrified wood, though. Paul had seen a few of the petrified trees and was truly impressed and wanted to see more. Sadly, though, his coughing got worse and worse after the ruins and before we could stop anywhere else, he had thrown up all of his crackers again and was sad and frustrated and just wanted to get a hotel. So we drove through the rest of the park without stopping until we got to Holbrook, AZ where we stopped.

At $36, the Wigwam Motel appeared to be one of the more expensive stays in a town that still has motels for under $20. This is that famous place that is seen in many movies and documentaries about Route 66. Instead of rooms, each guest stays in a small concrete tipi that is furnished much as it was in the 40’s and 50’s when the place was built. And after having spent 2 years in a 20′ diameter yurt it was utterly fascinating to see how well they made due with what appeared to be a much smaller circular space. There was a large area with a bed and a couple of tables and chairs, and a smaller, crescent shaped room that was the bathroom – complete with shower. It was a nice use of space and I was really surprised at how well it worked. Granted, they didn’t try to fit a kitchen in which would have taken up a great deal of the space, but still I was impressed. And I have to say there was something comforting about staying in a round space after the stressful day we had. And Paul was quite thrilled with the space too, still fondly remembering as he did the yurt and his granny’s tipi next door.

After we settled in, we walked across the street to the grocery store to pick up a few things to eat before going back to the room. When we got there Paul had a couple of things to eat (I forget now what they were) and I had a couple cups of Thai noodles. Then we watched a bit of Stuart Little before turning in for the night.

True to form, Paul’s cough came back again while he slept. It was getting so maddening. Obviously it had something to do with food, but seemed to have no relation to any particular food. It didn’t matter what he ate, he’d cough until he threw up then feel better. So at 2:00 AM or so I called Sage again. I’d done as much as I could and didn’t know what else to do. We talked for a little while. Sage was great, albeit crabby to be awakened in the middle of the night. She was very practical about it all and hardly worried in the least. So we decided then that Paul and I would turn back the next morning and Sage would head west and we’d meet somewhere in the middle using her mom as a coordinator. The first to stop would call her mom and then the next to stop would get the number from her. And so the plan began to be executed the next morning. I called U-Haul back in Ava, and asked for a few extra days and miles. They couldn’t give me the miles so it promised to be like $900 extra not including gas, depending on how far Sage made it out. I told Paul of the plan and surprisingly (or maybe not) he was totally up for it. So we packed the truck and headed back east, stopping at a souvenir shop he had his eye on on the way to the hotel where we picked up a small ceramic turtle and a big piece of unfinished petrified wood (is it me, am I the only one who thinks the unpolished petrified wood is as beautiful as the polished?) before getting back on the highway.

Oh right, something I should have mentioned by now too, was that I was, indeed, beginning to catch on that Paul’s problems were somewhat related to food. At first I thought it was his usual problem with corn. By the time we were headed back I attributed it to practically everything. And remembering that when he returned home from Michigan he felt better I just resolved to let him take the lead in asking about food but if he didn’t eat much I wasn’t going to worry – he’d be home in a couple days. And to help him out in his resolve to not eat corn or other processed foods, I didn’t eat much either. On the day of our turning back I had a few crackers and a sandwich (while he was asleep) so that he wouldn’t feel sad that I was eating a bunch of stuff that would make him feel sick. Or worse yet, tempt him to eat it too. So it was a hungry few days, let me tell you.

Anyway, as you might imagine, Paul seemed to be getting it that food was making him feel yucky and so he ate very little on the way back. Meanwhile, he slept a bunch. And as you might guess, he improved very rapidly. In that one day we drove all the way back to Amarillo, TX. We called Sage’s mom and found that Sage was at the Super 8 in Tulsa, OK. Sage and I talked a little, but as neither of us had eaten much that day, we were both too crabby to enjoy it much. But we did figure out where we’d meet the next day – about half way between us at the Best Western in Elk City, OK. After that, Paul had a few noodles (he was quite confident they’d be okay, which he mostly kept down and which didn’t make him cough anywhere near as bad as earlier on the trip.

The next morning Paul and I headed for Oklahoma after a little morning TV. And after a couple hours we were in Elk City – arriving just a few minutes before Sage. His cough was almost gone by now and he was able to keep a little food down without it causing him to cough and without throwing up. Sage, Paul, and I all had lunch together at a grocery store before unloading all of Paul’s stuff into our van and going our separate ways.

I then headed back west, managing to get to Santa Rosa, NM. It wasn’t a bad trip at all. While I didn’t have any company I did manage to find a good college station out of Amarillo to listen to for much of the trip and then found NPR when I got into New Mexico.

There wasn’t much to speak of in Santa Rosa that I could see – it appeared to mostly be a stop on the highway. But it did have the best Mexican restaurant on the whole trip. I don’t recall the name, unfortunately, so I can’t pass on the recommendation should any of you get there.

The next day I drove the rest of New Mexico and most of Arizona without many stops, save for eating and bathroom breaks. And not many of either. However, at one bathroom stop just east of Flagstaff, I tried calling home to see if Sage had made it home yet. And indeed, she and Paul had made it home. How was their trip? Excellent, Sage said. Paul’s cough and food-intolerance (for lack of a better word) which had been gradually improving on his way home with me, continued to improve and he was almost completely recovered. We’re still not sure what it was all about. Our best guess was a combination nervous stomach (causing some acid reflux causing a cough?) and perhaps carsickness. After all, he was right in the front seat, for the first time in his life. And we were driving 6-10 hours/day. I’m leaning towards the former, since he had a similar problem in Michigan, and in both cases it got better with distraction. In Michigan he was really stressed out and wanted to go home from the beginning. In this case, he might have wanted to go but was still nervous about it all.

That day I made it as far as Kingman, Arizona. And that was the beginning of the gas price insanity. For the rest of the trip, it didn’t seem to matter where I was, gas prices could be anywhere between $1.30 and $1.80/gallon – often in the same town.

Hotel, Mexican Dinner, sleep.

The next day I started for California, intending to make it as far as Bakersfiel
d. My welcome to California started with an agricultural checkpoint. And of course I felt instantly guilty. Just like I do at customs, just like I do at traffic stops. It doesn’t matter that I’m not doing anything wrong. I immediatlely get nervous. Like the time I took my brother to Montreal with me in my mom’s car about 15 years ago. Accidentally I took the car without taking her sewing machine out of the trunk. I pulled up to the customs officer and he asked if I had anything to declare. I told him I didn’t, but that I did have a sewing machine in the back. He got a strange look and asked in a heavy French accent? “A sewing machine??? Why do you have a…sewing machine…in the trunk of your car.” I then explained to him the story of my inattention and he got this disgusted look on his face and waved me through.

Anyway, at the agricultural inspection station I was asked all sorts of questions about the various produce I might be bringing in with me. I told him I wasn’t bringing anything in. No fresh fruit, no plants. It wasn’t until later that I realized that I hadn’t told him about the seeds. Yes, indeed, the sunflower seeds Paul had spilled all over the truck. Well, we’ll all hope I didn’t start a crisis resulting in a great famine and agricultural collapse on the west coast.

I spent the next night in Bakersfield, CA and tried unsuccessfully to get in touch with a long-time reader whom Sage and I have been in touch with over the past 5-7 years. That night I walked to the mall for dinner (no way I was going to drive the U-Haul – the traffic was crazy – and not only that, it wasn’t like I could afford to put a bunch of miles on the U-Haul at this point.

The next morning after a breakfast at Denny’s (oh, excuse me…Denny’s diner) I was on my way to my final destination. And in fact, by early afternoon I was up in the Santa Cruz mountains waiting to meet the buyer of the yurt whom I was to follow up to his house. And sure enough, after a few minutes he arrived and we headed for his home.

Driving up through the redwoods was amazing it smelled so wonderful and the forest had such a good feel to it. Sort of like something from a fantasy novel. Well, except in fantasy novels you don’t have BMW X5 SUVs barreling down the hill at you. But you get the idea.

We went further and further up a road that got progressively steeper and narrower until it was literally steeper and narrower than the driveway up which the yurt used to be. Just when I thought the road couldn’t get any steeper we pretty much hit the top of the hill. A lovely spot for the yurt with no visible neighbors that I could see, intense quiet, a view of the distant ocean and (so I’m told) occasional snow. What a lovely place – and all within an easy commute of San Francisco. It seemed hard to believe that such a place existed so close to the city.

After unloading the yurt and getting the rest of the money, I headed for Santa Cruz, back down the mountain. If the road weren’t stressful enough, add to it the fact that I had barely enough gas for the trip down, and it was nearly time for the drop-off point to close. I drove until I got to the neigborhood where the drop-off point was meant to be and no matter what I did I couldn’t find the place. I headed up a road that looked promising only to find it went back up into the mountains. And once again the road got progressively narrower and narrower until it was next to impossible to turn this 17′ beast around. Finally I found a likely driveway and quickly turned around before a car came behind me and trapped me in. So I headed back down, with the now angry red “low fuel” light staring me in the face. Taking that as a hint I drove over to the first gas station I found, despite it’s small lot and difficult entrance and filled up the U-Haul. (I know I was supposed to anyway, but up until then I was just so in a hurry to get rid of it that I didn’t mind paying the $2.50/gallon instead of $1.70/gallon for them to fill it up). The gas station attendant told me how to get to the U-Haul place – just around the corner. And I drove there. Except there was no U-Haul place. Four more trips around the block finally turned up a U-Haul parked in the grocery store parking lot across the street. And once I parked there I was able to walk around and find that the Harley Davidson shop across the street was also the (unmarked) U-Haul rental point. Which was all well and good except they said they couldn’t take the big U-Haul I had as they had no place for it and instead told me to go to another place. “It’s easy” they said, “Just get on this highway and take this exit and you’re there.” Except it wasn’t easy. Before I knew it I was headed back up into the mountains on a highway. And about 5 miles later I was able to get off an exit and turn around (after a short detour up another narrowing mountain road). But…Sad for me. It was now the evening rush back home to Santa Cruz. So I sat in traffic for another 20 minutes until I got back into town. Good thing I filled up the tank! Finally I got off the exit at about 5 minutes before 5:00 (closing time for the other place) and at the last second, was able to turn in the U-Haul. And despite my not having cleaned out the cab of coke bottles, sunflower seeds and other debris. And despite my having driven well over 1,000 miles over my allotment, I simply told the person behind the desk my story. He then asked if I’d be okay with making the mileage overage come out to about $200 – almost $500 less than it should have been. And now we see my prejudice against city folk in being totally surprised that someone in a city, a California city at that, would be so nice.

I walked a couple blocks down the street and checked into a hotel, which was about $50 more than I had planed on, but then having spent $500 less on the U-Haul than I did I was fine with it. I checked my stuff in and set out to find a bookstore to get a book for my bus trip home. I wound up spending far too much money at Bookshop Santa Cruz before having dinner at Mike’s Soul Food (I had a huge craving for catfish – I must have been homesick) and going back to the hotel.

The next morning I had a breakfast of delicious scrambled tofu and potatoes at the Santa Cruz Diner before checking out of the hotel and locking my bags up at the bus station. I then wandered around the now-quiet downtown, checking out more bookstores (I didn’t spend too much as I found a nice used bookstore) and then sitting down at Cruzio’s office at a rented computer to catch up on some email before heading back to the bus station to start home.

Finally, in mid-afternoon, we were on our way – our first major stop was San Francisco, which had a hugely disappointing bus station. In fact, the only notable thing that happened was a disturbingly cursory security check (the only one on the trip) before boarding the bus for Salt Lake City. A quick glance in my carryon book bag, no look in my suitcase, and a quick wave of the wand over my body, which beeped at my pockets at which the security guard asked me if I had any knives or guns. A simple “no” was all I needed to board the bus. Why should he believe me? And then as we were crossing the bridge to Oakland and I could see the Coast Guard ships watching the bridge I was a bit concerned. After all, it seemed as if anyone could get on that bus and with anything they wanted. And wasn’t this the same bridge that a section of collapsed in the ‘89 earthquake? I just crossed my fingers and hoped for the best.

I dozed off and on until Sacramento where we had a short layover and where I got a bite to eat. Then it was off to Reno. I dozed some more until we crossed the mountains and heard the driver telling of a big snowstorm that had hit there yesterday. No sign of snow now. We stopped again in Reno where there was another layover and where we switched to a very no-nonsense driv
er who spoke with a New York accent and threatened to throw anyone off the bus for any problem and who also threatened to leave anyone behind who didn’t promptly return to the bus from breaks. Thus began the most uncomfortable stage of my trip as I tried every possible contortion to get comfortable. It didn’t matter what I did, my legs were too long to get comfortable. What a long, horrible, night. I actually woke up with bruises on my legs from the various strange positions I put myself in. But it was worth it just for a glimpse of Utah and Wyoming. They were absolutely gorgeous states. The Great Salt Lake was such a trip – I’ve never seen anything quite so reflective in my life.

The one hour layover in Salt Lake city just about tripled in length when the first bus down to Denver was full and it took forever to get a driver to take another bus. Meanwhile I started to get a migraine aura. I went into the cafeteria where though I tried to buy some Tylenol I wasn’t allowed to. The clerk had to go back to her purse and get me two single-dose packs of Tylenol saying that it was too expensive at their store. I refused the second pack but she wouldn’t let me leave without it. And good thing. While my headache didn’t get too bad, my aura got really awful. I dozed with a moderate headache but terrible visual disturbances and light sensitivity throughout the state of Wyoming. Finally after tons of water and those last two Tylenol I was better by Denver.

We left Denver at about 11:00 with one driver, one student driver and a couple other Greyhound employees all headed for Kansas City where I think they lived. This was the first time on the night bus I hadn’t heard the usual “keep your radio down, keep your conversations quiet, etc.” and I quickly found out why. The driver and other employees decided to spend the entire night talking and cackling loudly at each other. The bus was full, too including one woman who, when complaining about water dripping from somewhere on her head was told she could just get off if she didn’t like it. Finally, though, I was able to get to sleep despite having to sit almost bolt upright since there was nowhere else to put my legs and the seats don’t really go back that much. The next morning, though, was nice, as I got to have an interesting conversation with the woman sitting next to me who was just finishing up as a reporter in southern Colorado and was moving back to her home in the Yukon. Very interesting person.

Switched buses in Kansas City and arrived in Springfield that afternoon to find Sage and Paul waiting for me. Paul, as Sage said, was doing really great and we all headed out to what was his new love at the time, the “habitrail” at the Burger King, before going to the Library Center and then home.

Not much of note since I got back. I did go through a big rash of migraine headaches which I attribute in part to my discomfort on the bus knocking my spine out of alignment, and in part due to something interesting I found out one night after almost continuous visual auras for almost two weeks. It was in the evening and Paul was at his granny’s. Sage and I had spent the day working and as was usual when working with Sage during the day I drank far too much coffee and hardly ate. Finally about dinner time we went to the grocery store to get stuff to make dinner as well as some chips and salsa to snack on. On the way home, though, I had something of an anxiety attack. I got through it and we went inside where I put away the groceries. Except the chips and salsa. Those I started eating. Eating like a starving animal. After I had literally finished the entire bag of chips and jar of salsa not only did I feel better emotionally, my visual aura was gone. Go figure. So I looked online for information about this and found out that low both anxiety attacks and migraines have been attributed to low blood sugar. And since I’d returned, for almost two weeks, I was eating really erratically and drinking lots of coffee. No wonder my blood sugar was low and no wonder I was having problems. The next day I started eating regularly (3 meals or more/day instead of 1-2) again and haven’t had a problem since.

I’m sure there are several other things of note going on in my life at the moment but I’m having trouble remembering them, and not only that I’ve been at this for several hours and need a break.