Winter Wonderland

The paragraphs below were written in January, 2009, saved as a draft, and never published. Well, I couldn't let even one golden word of mine go unpublished, could I? So I'm publishing this today, four and a half years after the events it tells of occurred. But please notice that it shows the Law of Attraction, which I speak about in today's other blog (actually written today), in action. This long snowy trip with its many delays could have been horrible, but instead, except for some bad food, was really almost fun. Read this or not, as you will. I just couldn't resist publishing it because it really is appropos of what I just finished writing today. No pictures, though--sorry about that.. 

My trip back to Washington from Maine on January 4, 2009, was very interesting. In a weird way, I actually enjoyed it. I got up at 3:30 a.m. Eastern time so that Scott could drive me from his house in Maine to New Hampshire (a 1-1/2 hour drive), where my plane took off at 7:10 a.m. Sandy decided to come with us, so that he'd have company on the drive back. I really appreciated that--although Scott says she slept the whole way over and back! But she was willing, and she gets lots of kudos for that!

Everything went pretty much according to plan: from NH to Chicago, I had an empty seat next to me---YAY!!! From Chicago to Phoenix, I had a large 13-year-old black boy next to me who first stuck his elbow in my ribs (never seemed to notice) and then laid his head on my shoulder and slept the whole way! Literally! He slept through the landing and the noise of slowing down and everything, and never woke up until we got to the gate and everyone else started getting up and moving around. Four solid hours!!!

Phoenix stands out because I bought the worst meal I've EVER had (EVER!!!) in the Phoenix airport--a four-cheese pizza from Pizza Hut which was nothing but grease and AWFUL cheese. In fact, really the only thing wrong with my trip was the food--this meal in Phoenix and my supper in Seattle (more later on that).

The flight from Phoenix to Seattle left a little late but was otherwise fine. A fellow sat next to me and never spoke until we landed--then he talked a blue streak until we were walking into the terminal! Landing in Seattle was fun: it was snowing like MAD and the runway hadn't been plowed. But it went okay--my talkative seatmate explained that, even though the runway was greasy, we were a large heavy plane. Though logic suggested we should land and slide right off the runway, the plane is equipped with a large rudder and that keeps us moving straight ahead after we land in the mess of ice and slush and snow.

The real fun began here in Seattle. First, as I say, it was snowing madly and had been for a while. We got in at 6:10 (instead of 5:30) and my next flight (to Spokane, where I had left my car 25 days earlier) was supposed to leave at 8:55, but was already delayed until 9:40. I decided I'd have a nice meal and just watch something on my iPod and the time would go quickly. Nice plan, but. . . . I had a pasty yucky chicken quesadilla at Casa del Agave in Seattle--one more place I'll NEVER eat at again! In fact, the best thing I had to eat all day was the coffee my son made me before we left home in Maine.

One nice thing, though: I was recharging my iPod while I watched it (Southwest is so good about the charging stations) and got to talking with a really sweet young man who is in his freshman year at Whitford or Whitman College in Spokane. Victor was very polite (he let his phone ring--it was his father--while we were talking because, he told me later, it wasn't polite to interrupt to answer the phone!)--and very talkative. I made sure to sit behind him, rather than next to him, so that we talked a little bit, but mostly we each did our own thing. I didn't want to be rude, but I was pretty tired and didn't want to try to make conversation once we took off.

Ultimately, Victor and I and about 80 other people boarded our flight at 10:15. It was still madly snowing--and we were told there were similar conditions in Spokane. We sat in the plane for an hour (I had three seats to myself so that was no problem) while Southwest let us know periodically that there was some minor problem with a guage that read the fuel level in one of the tanks. After about half an hour, during which the GREAT Southwest crew kept us well-informed, they finally told us, with a bit of sarcasm, 'cause THEY were at the end of their shift, too, and were not happy about the delays, that maintenance had been called to check things out, but no one wanted to come back to the airport because of the snow. I can understand that, because the highways were either a big mess or closed, but still. . . .

Anyway, Southwest took us off that plane and put us on the plane next door--which was cold and had to be warmed up before we could get on--and then they spent an hour de-icing it (which was fine with all of us--safety first, after all). We finally got off the ground at 12:30, with a little disclaimer that they weren't certain we'd be able to land in Spokane, that we might be re-routed. That was the only time I was a bit perturbed: I'd have thought they'd just keep us in Seattle, where'd it probably be easier to get us all to Spokane the next day. But in the end there was no problem. After a bumpy flight (all the flights all the way across the country were bumpy--there were a lot of exciting weather things happening country-wide on Sunday!), we landed in Spokane at 1:30 a.m.--25 hours (Pacific time) after I had gotten up in Maine that morning).

I waited until all the bags were unloaded, but mine did not show up. I turned around and headed for the baggage claim area--and almost tripped over my two bags, tiredly leaning on each other and wondering where the heck I was. Seems they made an earlier flight and had been waiting there patiently--right in back of where I was standing watching the bags come down onto the baggage carousel--for me to show up.

Earlier in Seattle, I had already decided I did NOT want to try to dig my car out in the middle of the night in Spokane (it was under LITERALLY 5 feet of snow, some of which had fallen 3 weeks earlier!), so I had called and booked a room at the hotel where the car was. The hotel shuttle picked up me and another girl (who'd just spent a week in 80-degree weather in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico--what a change for her!) at 2:00 a.m., and by 2:30 a.m., I was in a nice warm room in the Spokane Hampton Inn. It was 5:30 a.m. in Maine, and I knew my son was already at work (he's Sales Manager at a Lowes' store there), so I called him to report I was now only 2 hours away from home, but I was NOT going to try to dig my car out and head for home at 2:30 a.m. with heavy snow still falling. He agreed.

Four hours later (6:30 a.m. in Spokane, 9:30 in NH), I got a call from my company in NH asking if I knew anything more about my job. I didn't (had been hoping THEY did!) so I made a few calls, still couldn't find anything out, and went back to sleep. Got up around 11, asked for an extension on my check out time till 1 pm (which they gave me--I LOVE Hampton Inn), packed up and came downstairs to check out. That was the best part: I ate a nice lunch while the hotel staff dug my car out--YAYYYY!!!! I TRULY, TRULY LOVE Hampton Inn!

I loaded up, got in, and drove home on roads that became clearer as I got closer to home. Stopped only to get windshield washer fluid, because of course the car chose that time to run out. Got home just before 5 to a lovely pale winter sunset over "my" Columbia River valley and the sound of geese honking above, as they left the river to go to wherever they spend the night. Brought my stuff into the apartment to find out the furnace wasn't working and the temperature was below 45 degrees inside (below freezing outside). Tony, the maintenance guy, had already gone home, and I took pity on him and told him I'd use a space heater for the night and he could come in the morning to fix it. It was a cold night, but I went to bed early and didn't really notice. Tony came at 8:30 on Tuesday, and the heat was soon working fine.

I was unpacked by 6 p.m. Monday night, so my trip ended 42 hours after it began with no real problems. Even those two TERRIBLE meals and the cold apartment weren't really that awful. Everyone I encountered on the trip was pleasant and tried to be helpful, and that always makes things go so smoothly. The Southwest crews, the Hampton Inn people, Victor--everyone was doing their best, so I have no complaints. Now I just hope I get my job in Massachusetts, so I can turn around and do the trip in reverse next weekend!!!

Creating Darkness

My actual cake was prettier!

It's been nearly a month since my last blog. Where DOES the time go? In that month, both my dog and I added a year to our chronological ages. My dog is now 6 years old (42, in dog years), and I am nearly twice that. I don't mind in the least admitting that I just turned 72 and I can say with absolute truth that, when I get up in the morning, absolutely nothing hurts! And, as my mother predicted, this new decade, my seventh, sees me even happier than did the previous six! I'm delighted to be able to make both of those claims.

And this decade has already seen a sea change in my life. I tossed that phrase off, and then decided I wanted to be sure I was using it properly, so I wiki-ed it. It's defined there as a gradual transformation that winds up with the object looking the same on the outside but substantially new inside. That is exactly what I meant by the term. Yay, me! Dictionary.com defines it as "a striking change in appearance," Merriam Webster calls it "a marked change." But both of those definitions imply the outer form has taken on a new look, and that's really not true for me. It's all been internal.

Can't resist showing you Cheo en pointe!

Inside, I'm almost all novelist now. Which is to say, I'm thinking and analyzing as a novelist. I do not imply that the outer world sees me as a novelist, for that is definitely not the case. In almost two months, I've sold around 30 books and given away 400 for free. That's one of the ways Amazon.com promotes your book cheaply but fairly effectively: they allow you to offer it for free five days out of 90. Both of us hope that will get more people aware of the book, so that sales will increase. We'll see. . . ..

So what does it mean to be a novelist internally? It means everything that happens out there, whether in a book I'm reading, a TV show or movie I'm watching, or a live interaction I'm having with someone is fodder for my pen. I talk to myself about what I experience in grammatically correct sentences, with modifiers, subordinate clauses, and parallel structure. If I detect an error, I go back mentally and write over it. And I think in paragraphs. It truly is a new way to think about the world I live in.

Creating darkness is part of creating a novel

And (here's where the title of this blog comes from) I imagine bad things happening to my characters. This has been a problem for me, and that's why I'm writing about it here. I'm a great believer in the Law of Attraction, and one of my characters (not the main one) speaks a dialect of LOA. The gist of this Law is that like attracts like. Physically true, right? Well, mentally true as well. If you seek happiness--all who do not, please step back three paces. Hmmm, no one moved. Point made!--then you can attract it most easily by BEING as happy as possible, by focusing on things that give you at least some joy, by remembering or anticipating things that were or will be pleasurable. Not necessarily hedonistically pleasurable, although there's nothing wrong with that, but, say, a world of no physical pain for myself and all who wish to join me in that world. Or a world of abundance, of fulfillment, for myself and all who wish to join me in that world.

You get the point, I hope. And the corollary is that, if I focus on things that do not make me happy, then I will attract more of the same. Of course, we all have problems, even the most Pollyanna-ish of us occasionally spills chocolate ice cream on our blouse or steps in doggy do-do or worse--you get this point, too, I'm sure. Well, to practice LOA, you find something to focus on that makes you feel better than you do when you're pissed off thinking about that chocolate stain or those smelly shoes. You do not ignore them; rather you focus on the blouse with the stain completely gone, the shoe smelling like new-mown grass, the body without the infectious disease raging through it. You do what needs to be done to fix things, but once you've done what can be done, you move your attention to something that makes you feel better.

One thoughtful reviewer--so far.

Yet, here I am, as a novelist, creating those stains, that "sole-ful" mess, dangerous life-threatening situations for my main character. Doesn't that seem to go against the LOA? Isn't there enough darkness in the world without my adding more to it? Only one person who has read my book has written a review of it--so far--and her review was complementary except that she said my violent scene went farther than she liked to see in novels she read--though she understood why I wrote such an intense scene. That is actually one of the things that brought me to write this blog--and the blog that will follow this one, because I want to explore my answer to the questions I've raised here.

So, tune in next time--and it won't be a month before I get back to this, I promise.

Seeking Margo

The Diamond Princess in Auckland, New Zealand

Two and a half years ago, I took myself on a two-week cruise to New Zealand with a couple of stops in Australia. The cruise was one of the most memorable things I've ever done, and one of the reasons for that is that I met a pair of Aussies on my first day on the ship, a mother, Rosemary, and her daughter, Philippa (thankfully called Phil or Pip, so I don't have to figure out how many l's and p's are in her name). We hit it off instantly and had become family by the end of the trip.

Last year, they decided to take another cruise--and they invited me to share it with them. We spent a week in the Inner Passage of Alaska and then five more days in Los Angeles. Almost as memorable as the first cruise, and a wonderful chance to see them again.

This year, no cruise, but still closeness through emails, etc., with my two friends--except that I haven't had any emails from Rosemary since, I think, before the new year. So I wrote to Pip: what's up? Is your mom okay? Not nagging, just want to be sure she's still out there. And Pip wrote back, ". . .what you are feeling is the neglect of a long distance friend who has found a close friend in her neighbourhood. Mum and Margo have found each other. They text like school girls. They walk together nearly every day, they are at each other's houses most days, eat dinner together many nights, etc., etc."

Rosemary and Pip in Tasmania

So now I know what's going on, and I'm so happy for "Mum" (Rosemary), who's found her Margo. Before Margo, Rosemary was a very busy woman, taking a law degree in her late sixties, managing a house alone, with several dogs, but not completely fulfilled. There was a Margo-shaped hole in her life, and now finally there is a Margo to fill it.

I'm retired now, living by myself here in Kentucky, with my sister and her family nearby whom I see at least once or twice a week. I have friends, not here, but in places I've lived. However, they're not close, either emotionally or geographically. I have a brother who calls two or three times a week, children who call not quite that often, but as often as they can, and two or three friends who (better than I) do keep the lines of communication going.

But I don't have a Margo. I've had a Margo perhaps twice in my life. Once, nearly fifty years ago, when my children were toddlers, my next-door neighbor and I were Margos for each other. We had coffee every day, we shopped together, when her first baby and then her second came, we all grew together. Her husband worked with mine and one day he was transferred--and that was the end of "Margo," whose name was actually Sue.

Ten years later, when my children were in school and I had returned to get my undergraduate and then my graduate degrees, I met my second Margo. We taught and studied together, we shared ideas, teaching methods, dreams, and summer vacations together. But one day, that Margo, too, was gone. Since then, there have been no Margos for me, at least not in the sense that Pip describes her mother's new friendship.

And, until I got that letter from Pip last week, I didn't realize that, just like Rosemary, I, too, have a Margo-shaped hole in my life. I'm a very happy solitary person, with a life that follows a schedule I love, that provides me more than enough time to write, but that doesn't include heart-to-hearts, high-school-type closeness, a kind of familiarity that means you can walk in the side door of her house without knocking--you know, that kind of Margo-ness.

My "Margo"--when I find her!

I'm sort of sad to find out about this hole. On the other hand, nature abhors a vacuum, doesn't she? So I'll bet that, if I expect a Margo-shaped person to show up in my life in the next few whatevers, she's gonna show up.

I'll let you know. . . . unless my "Margo" keeps me too busy.

Inspiration

I've been thinking a lot, lately, about inspiration. About where it comes from, how we receive it, whether we have any control over it. You know, the easy questions.

Take the story behind my first novel. At one point, one day, I got the image of one of those old station wagons, with the wood-paneled sides--I mean a really old one, from the forties, maybe. I'm not a very visual person, nor do I have much of an imagination. But suddenly I had in my imagination the image of this car. Where it was painted, the paint was old, faded, chipped and dented dark green. The wood panels were scarred, marred. A really old car.

I watched (in my head, remember) as this car turned in to a tree-shrouded lane and disappeared. The road, I noticed, was dirt. There was a small cloud of it still hanging in the air after the car was gone. I also saw that there was no sign naming the road, as a street or as a county road. And I suddenly realized that, though I hadn't seen them, the inhabitants of the car were two women. Old women--or at least older--as would befit a car of its advanced age.

About a dozen or so years ago, I joined one of the offshoots of what was then the Austin Writers' League. The group was called Novels in Progress, and its members were NIPpers. We came together to share what we wrote, the novels we were beginning, struggling with, or polishing up for publication. As it became clear that I'd have to produce something for the group to push around and poke at, I sat down one day in front of my Mac and--didn't have to wait too long--suddenly there was an image in front of me. A child's sneaker, red and empty. And I began to write.<

Couldn't get much beyond a first chapter, though my group got quite a bit of mileage out of it. But I couldn't figure out where the story wanted to go. Was the owner of that sneaker, a small boy, going to make it to the end of my novel? Had he been kidnapped? And who was this person who had seen the sneaker? She was a woman, I knew that much, and she was not a terribly worldly woman (sort of mirrored me, her creator. Imagine that!). But was she going to fall in love with the policeman who answered her question in that first chapter? And--oh my goodness, look at that! One of those two women in that old station wagon had also showed up in that first chapter. Where did she come from? And where was she going to wind up? What part was she going to play as the whole thing unwound?

Those questions just ran around in my head like a herd of loose cats. I had no idea how to corral them, to manage them into a story that those NIPpers would approve of. Until one day, when my friend Joanne and I wound up in a car together with a couple of hours to entertain each other. I mentioned my story, she asked me to tell her about it, and I did. I told her about that first chapter, with its red sneaker. And when I'd gotten to the last page of that first chapter, my mouth continued to move and a second chapter manifested, and then third, and by the time we'd reached Brooklyn, our destination (almost under the bridge, as I remember it), I was mentally typing "The End" on my narrative.

Where the heck did it come from? And I could also ask, where did it go? I didn't have a tape recorder on that trip, which was something I regretted for a long time, because neither of us could remember everything--or even most of the things--that I had said. I thought for some time--years, actually--that I had lost that story. But it wasn't lost. It was waiting for me to reach the point where I was ready to put it down in a more permanent form. When that time came, last November, elements had changed, endings turned up in very different locations, characters disappeared and were replaced by more interesting ones. This time, the story made it onto the page, all the way to the end, and it flowed just as easily as the first one had, and the place it came from was just as mysterious as ever.

And I still don't know where that place is or how it works, or how--or even whether--we can have any control over it. But it sure is fun to be dipping my toes in that stream, to be catching some of the ideas and urges that are available when we tap into it. In fact, I'll tell you about some of that fun, maybe in the next post.

Till then, buy the book, Awakening, if you haven't already, write a review if you have, and in either case, tell all your friends about it. That's your job. Mine is to write the next book. And then the next. And I'm on it!

Pie in the Sky

I wanted to talk a little bit about dreams. About how far you can go. About how far is too far. About what might hold you back. In essence, I'm talking about pie in the sky. 

I looked that phrase up just now, and I found two slightly different meanings. The first is an empty impossible wish, but the second is something that is not likely to happen--but is not impossible. I'm hanging my hat on that second meaning.

So now, what does pie in the sky--in either form--have to do with Patsy in Writer/Wonderland? Well, it's like this. Think Howey and Hoover, just to start with. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal talked about one Hugh Howey, who wrote a short piece about apocalypse and put it up on Amazon for, I think, $.99. Sort of like what I did on Monday, only 1/3 the price of my book. But that's okay--his was just a short story, or rather part of a story.

After a bit, he put a second part of the story up--maybe he upped the price, a bit--I can't remember. Anyway, a third followed, then a fourth, and finally, a fifth. And I think by that fifth installment, he was charging a bit more. And by that fifth installment, he had garnered a huge following! To condense his story, he condensed his stories--into one volume that he has titled "Wool" and that he's selling for $5.99. And he's selling 'em by the cartload. He's made a million simoleons, as my dad used to say. Traditional publishers are knocking his door down to take over his book, make paperbacks, hardbacks, movies, all kinds of media. And he has said, pretty much to everyone, no, my electronic publishing empire is not broken, it does not need fixing, so no, I'm going to keep taking care of that part of things. Now, I will consider selling the rights to the other media. . . And I think Mr. Howey has done that, garnering himself another cartload of simoleons. Good for him.

Then there's Colleen Hoover. Actually, Colleen came before Hugh, both in the alphabet, and chronologically in the publishing world. Before I tell you about Colleen, I must disclose the following: Colleen is the niece of my daughter's next door neighbor, and Aunt Jean Ann made my daughter aware of what I'm about to tell you long before most of the rest of the world knew about it. I want an Aunt Jean Ann in my life, for reasons that are about to become clear. 

Anyway, about a year and a half ago, Colleen Hoover decided to write a book--or perhaps she finished one that she'd been working on for a while. Or maybe it was the 31st book she'd penned since she was a romantic teenager. Whatever, she wrote a book, titled it "Slammed," and put it up on Amazon, like Hugh Howey, for a mere $.99. I don't think Colleen and Hugh were talking, but they both had the right idea. Colleen talked about her book (and so did Aunt Jean Ann, and probably every other member of her family and all her friends) on Facebook, in a blog (sort of like this one, actually) and wherever else anyone would listen (I don't know that last for a fact, but I'd bet my book sales on it). 

And pretty soon, there was another book up on Colleen's Amazon bookshelf (and that's actually what Amazon calls it. I have a bookshelf, now, too, though there's only one book on it), This was called "Point of Return," and people who'd bought "Slammed" and loved it now lined up to by "POR" (that's how Colleen refers to it). Then came "Hopeless"--that's the point that I hopped on her boat. I bought "Hopeless" for--I think--$1.99 or $2.99? Something like that.

And now Colleen's getting high six-figure advances from traditional publishers and she's doing all right for herself. If you want to know just how well she's doing, read all the way to the end of that article I added a link for up there. She's mentioned there--and Publishers Weekly lists her as their #2 ebook author for the first quarter of 2013. How 'bout them apples!

She said it (or something very like it) herself: never in her wildest dreams 18 months ago could she have imagined it'd go this far. Well, that's probably not quite true: she was probably dreaming pretty regularly about pie in the sky back then. The thing is, there actually was pie in her sky, and she's chowing down on a big thick slice of it even as I write this.

So can you guess where this is going? Yup! I think there's some more pie up there, enough so that I can have a slice of it, too. There's enough for Hugh, for Colleen, for the millions of other authors out there, and for me. That is, if everyone I know and everyone they know and everyone they know. . . . will buy a copy of my book, Awakening. And then a copy of the next one--which, by the way, should be out before I even get the first royalty check for this one! YAY!

I'll take a slice of blueberry, please--and yes, heat it up and slap a scoop of vanilla on there, if you don't mind. Mmmmmmmm. 

An Overnight Sensation!

I guess I should consider changing my blog title to "Patsy in Writerland," because that's where I live these days. But it's also, in many ways, still Wonderland, too, so I'm not going to fix it. At least not until it appears to need fixing.

And yes, I'm back. After nearly four years of silence, the floodgates have opened and words are spewing forth, gushing forth, flooding forth. This flood of words first showed up on my computer and then in my iPad. Then it overflowed into my emails, and now the waters are lapping here, at my blog, where the drought has been harshest and has lasted for many, many months.

But no longer. I'm writing--novels, emails, and blogs, not to mention letters, notes, and grocery lists. Anywhere there's a keyboard, my fingers tap and words fly out.

Today, in this "rebirth of a blog," I'm focusing on this novel thing, this mushroom of creativity that suddenly--almost overnight, it seems--pushed its way out of whatever soil it had been sleeping in for more than 70 years and grew to a size, shape, and solidity that, finally, demanded that it be plucked and laid out on the groaning banquet table of self-published novels for possible consumption by--you the reader!

The seed was planted more than ten years ago, when I brought a fledgling chapter to a writing group in Austin for their gentle ministrations. Taking to heart some of what they told me to do, I gave that chapter a new set of feathers and tried pushing it out of the nest again. Splat! Not very successful. So back into the recesses of the nest it went, to lick its wounds and work on yet another set of feathers.

My first title page--home-grown, yes, but
adequate to the purpose--at least for now! 

Comes November 1, which many in the writing world know as the start of NAtional NOvel WRIting MOnth, or NaNoWriMo. For the third time in nine years, I took on the challenge: write at least 50,000 words of a novel before midnight, November 30. I torpedoed that poor bedraggled first chapter and started in from scratch, sending words onto the page as fast as I could get them there.

And the words just poured out. In the middle of the month, I flew from here, Murray, in western Kentucky, up to Maine for Thanksgiving with my son and his family--and every day, while the rest of the family worked or went to school, I sat at my iPad, bluetoothed keyboard smoking, and continued to write. Took Thanksgiving Day off for some excellent turkey, but was right back at it on Black Friday. By November 30, I had over 53,000 words. I had met the challenge! But I didn't stop for even a day, and, by February 19, the word count was more than 145,000. And it was pens down.

What amazes me now, looking back, is that there was never a moment where I sat, hands poised over the keyboard, and wondered what to say next. Never. At night, I'd write scenes in my head, changing dialogue, redressing this character or that, choreographing a love scene or a rape. By day, the words flowed out of me as if they'd been fashioned into a chain that could be pulled out, one link after another, in the right order (mostly) and ready to be engraved onto the page.

Even before that February day of completion arrived, I'd already begun scripting the second novel in my head. So there was hardly a gap between "The End" of one novel, and "Once upon a time" of the next. Hey, man, I thought, this novel-writing thing is unbelievable! So easy! And what the heck is writer's block, anyway--something to eat?

In a nutshell, that's how, at the age of 71 and a half, I became a novelist. It's like those middle-aged film stars who are suddenly--overnight, it seems--the talk of the town. Yeah, right, never mind the fifteen or twenty years of struggle, of bit parts, of waiting table hoping for those bit parts. And that's sort of how I feel about my sudden career change. It was overnight--but it took years to get here.

But more of that next time. For now, just let me give you a link to that first novel, if I haven't already emailed it to you.  Put the following into your browser, and you're there:  www.amazon.com/dp/B00CD7WQUK. And, if you read it and like it, don't forget to write a review! Thanks.

Only Connect

Ahhhh, connectivity. . . .

For once, I have an excellent reason for the 3-1/2 weeks since my last blog: I've been adrift, alone, unconnected to the world. And now, finally (well, yesterday), I got re-connected. YAY!!!

To explain: since I left Austin, I've spent 2 nights in hotels, which were the only times my computer has been able to get on the internet. And since I arrived here in Aiken, my cell phone has been unable to find more than 1 bar (and usually not even that) of signal--and to find that one bar has required that, whenever my phone rings or I want to place a call, I've had to leave my house and talk out in the driveway. In 93-degree heat AND 100% humidity! NOT an ideal situation.


[Speaking of my driveway in Aiken reminds me that, for most of last week, an empty ABF trailer sat in it (since ABF didn't come to pick it up until Thursday). That's getting a little ahead of my story, but I wanted to include a picture of the trailer as it was parked for loading at the apartment building in Pasco. Here it is, and please note that my apartment was on the far side of the building at the left. The movers figured they walked an extra 10 miles to cart everything all the way around the building and get it into the trailer!]

Back to my explanation. To check my email, I've traveled each evening to the hotel near here where I spent the last night before my furniture got moved into my house and asked if I could use their business center for that purpose. They've graciously allowed me to do that. But as of yesterday, I've solved both problems: Atlantic Broadband installed cable/internet/phone service, so I am now--after three weeks--reconnected to the outer world. It has really been an experience, living as we did back in the 1960s and 1970s, with only snail mail to keep me in touch. If I hadn't had some time in the car with NPR, I wouldn't know that we lost Ed MacMahon, Farah Fawcett, and that Michael guy--what's his name? Michael Jordan? Michael Jones? Whatever.

But that's all behind me--as is the whole move--and I want to set down here some of the more exciting points of my trip for those of you who might be interested. It'll take me 2-3 postings to get it all in, I expect, but bear with me. Or go read something else--I'll never know and there will NOT be a quiz.

Let's see: I left Pasco on Sunday, June 7, after JR, my wonderful mover (that's him on the left), and his cohort, Brian, had packed all my stuff. JR and I cleaned up the apartment and then I took him to Outback (his favorite place) for a well-earned prime rib dinner. We spent the night at the Best Western next to the Pasco Airport. On Sunday morning, we took the moving equipment and extra boxes back to U-Haul, took one last look around the apartment, and then I put JR on a plane back to Las Vegas, and I headed east and south towards Austin.

Backing up a bit, here's JR with his handiwork. He packs stuff as if he were doing a jigsaw puzzle. He is truly amazing! Here, the trailer is almost packed--the twelve linear feet at the back end of the trailer, that is. When they were done, JR put up a barrier, and then ABF filled the rest of the trailer with other loads that went other places.


Also want to show you the rains that didn't come until we were all through with the job. It was really a perfect day for a move!








That first day I traveled 635 miles, stopping long after dark in North Salt Lake City, Utah. The things that stand out on that leg of the trip are 1) my lunch at Nell's-n-Out in La Grande, OR, where I had the best french fries I've ever had in my life, along with some pretty doggone good fish and a memorable milkshake; 2) the fact that, when I reached the Best Western where I spent the night, Steve at the front desk let me leave my car (which contained all of the things I treasure the most) right in front of the hotel where the light was strong and he could watch it for me; and 3) the GORGEOUS scenery in Oregon, Idaho, and Utah. The unfortunate thing is that I couldn't/didn't stop to take lots of pictures. But trust me, I was constantly doing an "Ahhhh" or "WOW!" or "Ooooo"--and wishing that my bamboo plant could talk back to me and let me know that I really was seeing all this beauty.

I'm including a picture here of some gorgeous Oregon scenery, but I remember particularly the storms in Idaho. There'd be lightning off in one direction or another, and then a spattering of rain on the windshield--with huge spectacular cloud formations in every direction around me. And I'd say, "Thanks for all of this--it is truly unbelievable. But I don't want any rain on the roads I'm traveling, please, since I'm leery of planing in the water/oil slick that initial rainfall creates." [My hesitancy comes from nearly getting killed when my car planed in Tennessee in 1984.] And sure enough, the spattering of rain would pretty much stop. I make no claims (other than my usual one of focusing on what I want in my world), but I have to say that for three of the four days of my trip to Austin, I was constantly surrounded by clouds and storms but almost never even had to put on my windshield wipers.

I'm grateful for that, and also for the fact that I stopped when I did on that first night (here's where my car spent the night--right at the front door!), because, if I'd gone on, I'd have missed the most spectacular scenery of my whole trip, which was the mountains surrounding Salt Lake City and the passes I went through heading east out of Salt Lake City and into Wyoming. The traffic and construction in Salt Lake City on Monday morning was a challenge, especially because my jaw was constantly dropping as I tried to take in the scenery, but suffice it to say that I made it--and will forever have those gorgeous mountains in my head.

It's funny: I've always thought of myself as an ocean person, since my favorite spot on earth is Bustins Island, Casco Bay, Maine. But now that I've pretty much left the mountains behind, after 2-1/2 years surrounded by them, I'm finding that I miss them--perhaps even more than I do the ocean when I have to leave it. Wonder what that's all about. . . .

Well, the only other thing to say about this leg of the trip is that, when I figured things up that night in my North Salt Lake City hotel room, I found that my trusty 1999 Toyota Camry had done all those miles at the phenomenal rate of 33.5 miles per gallon. Pretty good, right? But you ain't seen nothin' yet, folks!

I'm going to stop at this point, put in a few pictures, and save the next leg for my next posting. Hope that'll be tomorrow--but no promises.