house

Oh, hey. We bought a house.

We did not set out to buy a house, other than the fact that we've been going to open houses for well over a year. But that was just for fun, right? We'd sort of decided that buying a house while planning a wedding was a little too much.

Oops.

I happened to see that there were open houses near the park where we almost always take the pup, the park with the big trees for shade or shelter from the rain, the park with wood chips so it doesn't get too muddy or dusty. It was a whim, something to do on a weekend afternoon between errands and housework.

The next morning, J. went back with the realtor, and a month later, we had a (second) house. (J. already owns one.)

It just so happens that this house has a wall of south-facing windows, and a finished basement, and a yard with beautiful trees. It just so happens that it has a fireplace, and a bright clean kitchen, and a garage for all the stuff we've been cramming into the small third bedroom here. It just so happens that it has fruit trees in the yard, and a cozy family room, and a pantry cupboard. 

So we bought a house. We're moving stuff into it a little at time, and we're never quite sure where things might be - is the dog's second food dish here or there? For that matter, is the pup herself here or there? (On hot days, we sometimes bring her over to the cooler basement there to wile the day away without constant panting.)

Because we are just that smart, we also went camping twice in the weeks before our wedding. 

I even took a day off work to drive out to the mountains - J. and the pup were already there with another friend - and hang out next to a lake. The pup learned to swim. We all got a little sunburned. It actually cooled off at night, which was a welcome break from the unrelenting heat in town. 

When the pup woke me up at 6:05 am, I walked with her the nearly 5 miles around the lake, through the woods, through the campgrounds, hrough the white trunks of trees that burned years ago and past the views of the mountain, to keep her from waking everyone else up. She bounded over logs, then raced past me to sniff something invisible, then dashed past the other way. 

I breathed in mountain air, and all was well. 

Then we got back, and we made some lists in lieu of panicking about all that we have to do before the wedding. 

delight

Life is so delightful sometimes.

I've been riding my bike to work for six or seven weeks now. Getting started was the biggest hurdle, but once I started, I remembered why I love it so. It's so lovely to walk out into the cool morning air and jump on a bike, with the breeze in your face. 

My current ride to work is 2 miles, mostly downhill, on quiet bike streets, so there aren't so many stop signs or lights. I whiz along with my lunch and my purse in bike bags. I loved it so much after a week that I went and bought a new bike. (This was, of course, before I knew that we were about to buy a house. Oops.)

At work, there is a bike room in the basement, which requires an id and a code to get in, so I don't even need a lock. I ride my new bike to work. If I'm going to need to lock up my bike somewhere, I ride my old one,which clanks and clatters and takes a lot more work.

I've been riding my bike other places, too: to the other work location, downtown to a gathering, up the hill to Pilates. I'm trying to look at riding my bike not as exercise but as one of the viable means of transportation. Fortunately, it's such a pleasant means of transportation, absent rain or extreme heat or busy roads, that I choose it more and more.

...

Ten days ago, we went camping out at B.'s parents' place, up in the mountains. On Saturday, we all put on shorts and sandals and meandered a mile or two up the creek, wading through the water, climbing over fallen trees. The pups ran ahead, and then had to be helped down off high logs when they dared not jump down the other side. 

The sun was bright, and the trees made everything all dappled and lovely, and it was so delightful to wade through the ice-cold water that J. and B. and I took a creek walk the other direction the next day, dragging a tired pup with us.

Too bad it turned out she was getting sick. Poor little lady. (A few antibiotics and she's fine now.)

totality

I will admit that I was a little anxious about whether we were going to find a place to watch the eclipse. This is because the entirety of our plan was "drive into the zone, preferable somewhere remote."

Only we don't live somewhere remote, and the stories of the projected traffic struck fear into the heart of a person who commutes 2+ hours a day. The idea of more time in the car, stuck in traffic, made me feel slightly ill. I tried to talk the rest of the team into leaving earlier or making a more concrete plan, but everyone else thought it would be fine.

Sunday afternoon, we packed up the Subaru with tents and all the camping gear, and off we set.

Just inside the national forest, we stopped at a ranger station, where they gave us a map with the non-reservable sites highlighted, and then we just guessed. We picked a campground and drove.

When we drove into the campground we'd chosen, there were empty spots. There was even, upon inspection, a big, quiet spot down a little trail next to the creek, with two tables and space for multiple tents. We couldn't even hear our nearest neighbors. 

The guys took the tiny hatchet that I gave J. for his birthday and used it to hack at a fallen tree to break off pieces for firewood, and then JT took the hatchet from them and crouched down, holding it in both hands, and chipped away until she broke off a piece. 

In the morning, we lounged about making breakfast. There were eggs on the stove.

Jeff put on the eclipse glasses just to see how they worked, and suddenly said, "It's already happening!" 

We turned off the eggs, scrambled around for chairs and the rest of the eclipse glasses, and looked up.

There was a bite out of the sun. 

We all sat for the next forty five minutes, looking up, enthralled. 

When the sun disappeared through the glasses, we all tentatively took them off, and then we couldn't help ourselves. We whooped and shouted. We laughed. 

"The world is divided into two kinds of people," JT said, after the light had returned. "People who have seen totality, and people who haven't."

"Totality or bust."

We're already planning for Mexico in 2024.

what happened when we went camping:

What happened when we went camping: 

(Not all camping. Just this particular camping.) 

We forgot the dog. It's not our dog, but J. was supposed to dog sit for some neighbors and the days got mixed up. We were already out of network and 90 minutes out of town in crazy Friday afternoon traffic when he saw the text asking if they could drop the dog off Saturday morning. He sent a response on the wifi at the ranger station, but we didn’t know until later whether they would be able to find someone else.

We forgot the rain fly for the tent. The weekend before, a tree dripped sap on it camping out at B.’s parents’ house, so we left it out to clean it, and there it stayed, uncleaned, during a busy week and while we packed everything for this weekend. I thought of it soon after we left the ranger station, and J. and E. and I speculated on whether this would mean sleeping in the car or curled up on the floor of E. and B.’s tent. 

Fortunately, when we got to the camp site, we found that B. had packed a 9’x9’ tarp that E. picked up once on sale at rei, and when tied just so over the tent, it blocked all the rain and gave a beautiful view of the lake. It was more exposed to wind, but the wind didn’t get that bad in the trees. 

We forgot to fill the car up with gas. This we also remembered around the ranger station, having passed many, many gas stations between Gone West and the depths of the woods. We were headed two hours up into the mountains, with the nearest gas station 30 miles away on dirt roads. It was risky.

We planned to drive back out through State City so we could stop at the nearest gas station (adding an hour to the drive), but when we hit the intersection on the way home, the car said we had 70 miles of gas left, and the sign said we had 47 miles to the first town on the direct route back to Gone West, so we chanced it and headed straight toward home. B. and E. followed us in case we ran out of gas.

It turns out that when a Subaru says 70 miles of gas left after driving 30 miles of dirt road, it still has many miles of lovely paved road left in it, especially when that lovely paved road is mostly downhill. The gauge still said it had 70 miles to go after the 47 mile drive. 

And then, to top off the weekend, B. stepped in a hole that turned out to be a rusting culvert and it gouged a 2-3 inch long gash in his leg, about half an inch deep. I tried to wash it out, and someone who works as a medical assistant in an orthopedist's office (and, more importantly, is a mom of teenagers) came from a neighboring campsite came to look at it, and the consensus was that we needed a real doctor, not butterfly bandages and tap water. 

The nearest urgent care was 2.5 hours away in State City, and it was closed. The nearest emergency room was 2 hours away.

Math problem: if you leave your campsite at 6 pm to drive to an emergency room 2 hours away, and it takes 3.5 hours to be seen and cleaned and stitched at the emergency room and you still need to fill up on gas and snacks because no one has eaten dinner, and it takes 2 hours to drive back, what time will you get back to your campsite?

The answer is 2:12 am. 

Meanwhile, sitting in the waiting room in a little country hospital, we read about what happened in Charlottesville. 

There are actual Nazis marching unashamed in our streets, making KKK and Nazi salutes, and the president of this country can’t bring himself to denounce them. He says there are “two sides.”

Let’s be clear: what happened in Charlottesville is not the fault of people who oppose Nazis and the KKK. There are not two equally justified sides. There is one side that espouses hatred, and that is one side that opposes hatred based on race, gender, or religion. 

Pick your side.

lasik, part 2

At the surgeon's office the morning after my lasik, I still had my dark mask on. I could see through it, but it scared me a little that I would hurt my eyes if I left them open, so I would look at the world and then close my eyes again.

Then I went into the exam room and they told me to take my mask off, and then they turned on the lights. 

So much for protecting my eyes. 

When I went back out into the waiting room, J. told me that the woman who had surgery right before me the day before and the appointment right before me that morning had a problem with the flap. Her person left her there so that they could fix the flap.

Me? I was fine. Not even an itch in my eyes. 

It was a beautiful sunny day, and I walked out into the sunshine without sunglasses. I wasn't supposed to spend much time looking at screens, so I didn't go to work. Instead, I walked to the tea place. I wore sunglasses out of an abundance of caution, but my eyes didn't hurt.

I was supposed to sleep in the dark mask for a week so that I did not accidentally rub my eye or stab myself in the eye during the night (a legitimate concern, since I stabbed myself in the eye with my finger while turning over just this week), and that worked for a few days, but as time went on, I found myself ripping it off sometime during the night. In the morning, it would be under the pillow, or on the floor next to the bed. I was, apparently, getting less cautious about my eyes.

I was also supposed to wait at least a week before climbing (chalk dust is everywhere). I made it six days, but it was cool. I just took tears with me and used them when someone above me knocked chalk dust down into my eyes, instead of rubbing my eyes and dislodging the flap.

Two weeks after surgery, back at the surgeon's office, after reading the 20/10 line, I asked her if the flap was ok. (I was a little paranoid about the flap.)

"You wouldn't be seeing 20/10 if there was a problem with the flap," she said dryly. 

What we've discovered, J. and I, by comparing our experiences, is that lasik seems to exacerbate whatever sensitivities your eyes have. J. is still, 10 years later, more bothered by light than I am. I am a little more light sensitive than before, but my real issue is air blowing at my eyes. This has always bothered me, but now I can't stand the air blowing through the vents in my car or standing by my coworker's desk when the little space heater is on.

I now wear sunglasses in the car, even in the dark rain clouds, to block the blowing air (the vents are off and closed and pointed down but some gets through), and I wear layers in my office so that I don't have to turn on the space heater.

It's worth it. It's so worth it. 

I can SEE.

The strangest thing, after 21 years of taking my contacts every night, is going to sleep without taking my vision out of my eyes. I am still using tears at night, and allergy eye drops, so I'm using that ritual to convince my eyes that it really is okay not to take anything out of my eyes before I sleep. It's weird, though. It's really weird. 

It's also the best money I've ever spent.

days

J. and I hosted Thanksgiving at his house. Truthfully, J. did most of the work. And bought most of the food. I ordered the turkey, but J. picked it up and made the sage butter rub and basted the turkey every hour.  

But I made two pies and a sweet potato dish (you're going to want to make this asap: Crispy Sweet Potato Roast. The chili lemon vinaigrette is perfect), and I helped with the general prep. 

And the cleanup. The cleanup has taken days. I guess it didn't help that we decided to make stock out of the turkey carcass. And then we had to figure out how to transfer all the broth to another pan even though we'd left too much of the turkey meat on the bones. We still have to get all the broth into containers. And I'm fairly sure the butter is still sitting on the counter. 

Yesterday we went downtown to watch the tree lighting. A year ago yesterday (or today, or tomorrow, depending on how you count; we decided to count by the day after Thanksgiving), J. and I went on our first date to the tree lighting. We stood in the crowd again. Then we went to wait in line for the same restaurant we waited in line for last year. 

Only this year, we went rock climbing first, and J. isn't a stranger. 

The woman standing behind us in line said uncomplimentary things about the peanut curry, which is what I was planning to order. I ordered it anyway, and it was delicious. "I knew you were going to order it as soon as the guy mentioned green beans," J. said. (The green beans were perfect.)

Today we went for a hike in old growth forest in the rain, deterred at one point because there were many signs forbidding entrance onto private property. I neglected to keep my hood up. Rain dripped down my back, and we turned around when we started hearing closer gunshots; we'd forgotten to wear orange during hunting season. 

On the drive out, when we hit pavement, we heard a strange noise. "I'll check," I said, and jumped out to look. "Drive forward a little."

There was a bolt stuck in the tire, so we pulled off in an opportune place (namely, the middle of a dying timber town) to change it. J. jacked up the car. I wrestled the muddy tire into the trunk. 

We limped back to the suburbs on the donut, with the tire pressure light on all the way. I read the manual. Blah blah blah, driving on the donut may make the tire pressure light come on. It's fine, right?

We left the car at the shop, and I shivered as we walked to a nearby restaurant (the same one where we attended a wedding a few weeks ago). J. kept one of my hands warm, at least. He can't believe how fast I lose body heat. I can't understand how he manages to retain his. It took changing into the dry clothes that I had in my bag in order to warm me up.

When we got back, J.'s car was up on the lift, and two tires were off. 

Turns out the car had picked up two bolts. 

But we made it back in time for J. to catch most of the game. Some sort of sportsing, I don't know. There may be a ball involved. 

spider

Over Labor Day, J. and I drove down to that One Big State that takes up most of the west coast. We met some friends of his, who drove up from the south to meet us at a great location for climbing.

So, about climbing. I like climbing. If you give me a rock wall with reasonably large variations in it, I will scramble right up it.

Real rock climbing, though, involves walls that do not appear to have anything to hold onto.

I failed. Twice. I kinda choked, because the wall was harder than anything I've ever tried.

It was frustrating for someone who is mostly fearless about heights except for a tiny itty bitty little (small) fear of falling. Also a twinge of perfectionism. 

So I signed myself up for women's climbing clinic out on a big rock formation in the middle of State of Happiness on one of the weekends that J. was in Spain. 

I drove myself out there in my new car, the back full of tent and bedding (the comfy version of camping: foam pad and real sheets). I found a campsite in campground with a creepy name in a national wild land with another creepy name. Turns out the camp manager was also one of those older guys who calls every woman sweetie or honey or darling. So, maybe creepy? It's hard to tell with old men. I reserved judgment.

I went into Central Ski Town for dinner, which was more like 4 pm because I hadn't managed to eat lunch and was dizzy with hunger, and then bought a bunch of (somewhat necessary) stuff at Re!, and then settled into my tent by about 9 pm. 

I laid there in the dark, realizing that I'd never gone camping alone before, not real camping, not with only a tent between nature (cougars! rattlesnakes!) and me. Always before there have been other people around. People I knew, not just the strangers in campsites 50 feet away. I wasn't sure if I would sleep, but I did.

In the morning, we gathered at the climbing supply store, a group of women between 23 and 50. We'd all climbed before, some only inside, and we all wanted to learn.

We did. We learned to build an anchor up at the top of a pitch and to clean the anchor to rappel back down after everyone is done climbing. We climbed.

And then we hit a pitch that I couldn't climb. My confidence was up, because I'd been climbing, but this one didn't seem to have handholds. At all. 

The usual thing that people do when this happens, when they are standing below you, is to yell things like, "Try to the right of your left knee. Can you get a foothold there?" 

These women, though, they knew. They knew that it wasn't just about telling me where to reach. It was about giving me the knowledge that I didn't have to find a perfect handhold to try another step. "You won't find handholds here," one of them said. "Your hands are just for balance. Your feet move you up."

And so I put my hands flat against the wall and did exactly as the climbers say: I trusted my feet. I stood up on the tiniest little bit of incline, on my rubber shoes, and it worked. I climbed the wall like a spider, and at the top I got to undo the entire anchor and re-loop the rope through and do my favorite thing about climbing: I rappelled down the side of the rock, reminding myself to look around at this beautiful place and enjoy every moment.

weekends

The last few weekends have looked like this: 

1. 

J. got back from Spain on Saturday, jet-lagged. We spent Sunday shopping the sale at re!, buying very important things like a sleeping bag (me) and a cargo box for roof of a car (him). Rain came down in sheets, so we took refuge in a Thai restaurant, where we sat in a booth made out of a tuktuk and found out that J.'s final softball game was canceled. We ordered more Thai iced tea to wait out the storm. 

2. 

I took Friday off so that we could head off to the desert. We spent Friday morning packing J.'s Subi with way too much camping gear (a canopy is really vital, obviously) and about two weeks worth of food and water and a dog. For a weekend. I miiiiiiiight not have conveyed quite how far away the desert is, because when we got to Sunny Ski Town, J. thought we were almost there. We were, in fact, almost halfway there. 

We ate West African peanut soup and chilaquiles outside in the sunshine in Sunny Ski Town with the (borrowed) dog constantly begging next to us. 

By the time we got to the desert, it was dark, and the camp was not in the same place it had been last year. We ended up driving through the fog over the flat, cracked dirt. It was eery not being able to see very far in front of us. With the fog, we could have been in a forest, even though there was nothing to run into for miles. 

The camp was full of lights and music. People played music at all hours - one night there was a stage set up in the middle of the desert - and lounged in open sided tents during the day. "This is the Pleasure Pavilion," a woman I know from hiking said as we walked by one afternoon, from pillows in a screen tent. There was a geodesic dome with hammocks strung from the frame. 

J. and I mostly went for hikes and explored, though. We drove south to another mountain range one day, and across the desert to the bluff the next day. J. took the Subaru up past 100 mph on the open desert, and then he took his hands off the wheel. There was nothing to make the car deviate from its course. 

The dog turned out, at age 10, to have a bit of a mind of her own. When she got tired, she just plopped down and laid there. That was fine on the first hike, where we mostly followed a little stream. She could go frolic in the water until she had her energy back. One time she laid down and sat, panting, looking at us, while a lizard snuck up and jumped on her back. We laughed at how she turned her head and scared it off, but didn't startle enough to jump up. As soon as she looked away, the lizard came back and jumped on her back again. This time she grudgingly got up. The lizard scampered off for good.

There was no water on our walk the second day, back between the bluffs out of the desert, and so when she refused to move we just turned around and started back. We saw a snake that startled us, but it didn't have a rattle, so we weren't too worried. (It was probably a Pacific gopher snake.)

The drive back to Gone West was just as long, except interrupted by lunch at a Lebanese place in Sunny Ski Town.

3. 

J. was in San Diego for work, so I drove his car out over the mountains after work to the cabin of one of my climbing friends. A bunch of them were gathered there. I made guacamole and we all laid out our climbing gear in the living room, asking people's opinions. 

"Do I need a puffy?" S. asked. 

"I don't think so," I said. "It's going to be almost 100 degrees this weekend, and even if it is 40 degrees on the mountain, I was okay in the desert with only a fleece and this other light jacket."

After dark, I drove out to the nearest airport to pick J. up. He had changed his flight to join us for the climb, so that we didn't have to drive three hours from Gone West in the dark.  

The next morning, we all packed our packs and met our climb leader at the trailhead. We hiked through a large burn, our leader telling us stories about the time he got caught in that fire and had to hike out the other side, without a trail. We hiked through snow, until we were right at the bottom of the glacier, and there we made camp. 

Around 3:50 am, 30 minutes into trudging up the snow, the only thing I wanted was to turn around and go back to my warm sleeping bag. The only thing in the world. 

But then the sun came up, over the east ridge of the mountain to the north, and the world was all aglow, and my muscles loosened up, and then it was just one step and another, all the way up the snow to the top of the mountain. 

4. 

J. and some friends ran a half marathon up on the mountain. There were ten adults and one 2 year old in two condos. (Our condo got the two year old.) 

The morning of the race, J. and R. went off with one of the other runners in her car. I followed an hour or so later, driving mostly blindly since I didn't have network on my phone. It was like the old days: I had to watch for the sign.

Driving semi-aimlessly, I finally found a spot where the runners were passing. I didn't know how many had passed, so I watched for a while and then worried that I might have missed J. Also I had parked J.'s car in a place with many signs demanding that one pay for the park entry and put the proof of payment in the car window, and I had not, mostly because I had no cash. 

I should have waited, though, because I beat the fastest runners to the finish line, and it was confusing who had run the marathon and who the half, and it took almost an hour before J. and one of the other runners made it to the finish line.

Fortunately, there was a hot tub and ridiculous amounts of nachos and some crazy 80s kids game that involved fitting shapes into the correct spot while a timer ticked, and if you didn't get them all in time to stop it, the whole thing got upset.

5. 

J. went to Spain, so I had a weekend to rest and do nothing. 

Of course I volunteered to spend Saturday assisting with the summer climbing class. Which meant getting up at 4:35 am. 

I have no explanation for myself. 

I didn't do much climbing, but the wind picked up and the guy in charge of the chimney decided to shut it down, so I climbed last, with my pack. There's a little lip at the top that I struggled to get over last time even without a pack and without the wind. I might have panicked a little. The poor guy had to pull hard on the rope to keep it without any slack, and even then I panicked about falling. 

I didn't fall (not that I would have gone anywhere if I did). 

in

"You are fearless," my mountaineering instructor said, as I leaned back off the edge of a rock to do my final safety check.

"Everyone has fears," I said. "I feel funny in my stomach when I stand at the edge of heights." (Facing backward is apparently fine.)

"So do I," he said. "But it doesn't stop you."

One other student and I were so excited about rappelling the forty feet off the rock that we did it three times. Everyone else did it twice, but we were first, and then we were standing at the bottom looking up longingly as the others finished up, so they let us do it again.

"You are a pro," my instructor's fiancee said, down at the bottom, as I finished my rappel, leaned fully back like I was sitting in a chair. 

"It's so much fun!" I said.

I was trying to explain it to someone the other day: I can't do sports that require much in the way of hand-eye coordination, which rules out most team sports. But give me a sport that requires fearlessness and a willingness to work hard, and I'm in. (See martial arts. See also mountaineering.)

climbing problem

The hike yesterday was, hm, let's just say: harder. 

Much of it was very steeply uphill, so I ate my way through the ziplock bag of sour jelly bellies that I had stashed in my cargo pocket, which is my method of keeping my energy up on steep hikes.  

There were more ropes - did I mention that we all have to take turns carrying 8 pound ropes tied to our packs? no? we do, and it is not pleasant, because they are heavy and unwieldy - so we each had to take more turns carrying them. With the rope, I started up the trail with a 33 pound pack. (Truth be told, I have no idea how my pack got to 25 pounds without the rope. Maybe it was the thermos of hot chocolate? Maybe it was the climbing harness and all the carabiners?)

Our fearless leader wanted it to be as challenging as possible, so we climbed straight up a boulder field half-covered in slippery, melting snow. We walked/slid straight down a different snow field. (Not a glacier, thank goodness. The class last week made me paranoid about glaciers and crevasses and avalanches, especially since I live in a place that has constant rotation between snowing / thawing / raining / freezing / snowing, resulting in slabs of snow between layers of ice, which is apparently the perfect set-up for slab avalanches. But this was a small snow field, and I don't think the snow was deep enough for an avalanche.)

When I took my pack off at the end of the hike, I felt so free that I could hardly help but jog on my way to the restroom. It's kind of weird to me that I have so much energy after so much hard work. Never fear, it disappeared completely by the time I got home and had to try to stand up to brush my teeth. I could have used a stool to sit on in the bathroom. I was that exhausted.

Then I slept for 11 hours and today I started thinking that maybe I want to climb this mountain again. I looked it up, and it's harder than what I did yesterday but maybe about the same difficulty as what I'm doing next Saturday. Although if I go at the right time of year, there is no snow on the trail (the best time is August/September). I have time to get into better shape. And the view from the top is incomparable. I'm not sure there is anywhere else in this state with quite the same view. 

I'm turning into one of those people with a climbing problem. 

learning

After two semi-disastrous experiences, I planned more carefully for my third round of cross-country skiing.

I only invited people who were willing to take a lesson with me. (It ended up just being two of us.)

I raced back to Gone West one evening to get to the cheaper outdoor clothing place before it closed, tried on every pair of snow pants on the clearance rack that looked vaguely like my size, and bought the only ones that were long enough. (They also happen to be a sort of teal/mint green. Yay.)

I bought toe warmers.

I was set.

The day was perfect: about 30 degrees up on the mountain, and snowing. The snow wasn't icy like the last time. 

I offered to drive, but oddly J. preferred his Subaru. As if my 18 year old Civic couldn't handle snowy mountains. My little car was insulted, frankly. He did just fine in Colorado two years ago. I only had one sheriff's deputy follow me up the pass to make sure I got out alive. That's just normal, right?

So we made it, all-wheel drive and all, and taking a lesson turns out to be the best decision I've made in quite some time. 

I'm sure cross-country skiing just comes naturally for some people: they get on the skis and zip off into the sunset. I needed someone telling me to bend my ankles and look farther ahead than the tips of my skis and twist my hips just a bit and hit the ground with my poles right next to my foot. I learned thing I didn't know there were to learn.

A week later, back out on the trail in warm, slippery snow (it was raining, actually), I wasn't afraid to push off with my poles and go whizzing down the hill. I knew I could stop if I needed to stop. I didn't fall once.

On the drive home, someone rear-ended us in SHO's SUV, and when we pulled off to the side of the road, the bumper of the car that hit us was skewered on the SUV's trailer hitch. All involved necks were fine.

trails

I've gone cross country skiing thrice this winter. The first two times were remarkable, if the remarks being made happen to be about how miserable one can be while cross country skiing. 

The first time, I raced back from State City to get to the rental place in time. They were very nice there, if somewhat unable to make the calculation from US to European shoe sizes, which was maybe a bad sign. (They brought me boots three sizes too small, and then proceeded to bring one size bigger at a time, until someone finally looked at the chart.)

I managed to wedge the skis into my little car, and then onto the roof of SHO's car, and things were good.

Except that the skis appeared to have last been waxed never. I collected an inch of snow on the bottoms of them every few minutes, so that they stuck in the wet snow instead of gliding, and I'd have to hold my skis up sideways so SHO could knock the snow off of them. And that was after two rounds of waxing on the trail.

So that trip was beautiful and fun, but also a lot of work.

On the next trip, the snow had melted and then iced over, and most of the sno parks* we tried were crunchy and slippery. We ended up at the Nordic section of a downhill ski area, where you have to pay to use the trails but also they groom the trails. The trails were still ice, just ice covered in a bit of snow, and the trails were not all easy trails. Most of them were intermediate. (Read: hills.)

My basic survival strategy was to careen down toward the right and crash into the ice bank on the side of the trail, then get up and careen down toward the left and crash into the ice bank on the other side of the trail. It hurt and it sucked and I hated it. After way too long of this, I finally gave up, took off my skis, and marched off down the trails back to the Nordic center. There was self-pity involved.

The Nordic center is mostly staffed with older people who are like wizards on skis. They zip around effortlessly. One of them told me, as I was sitting in the warmth trying to recover from the adrenaline of all the thinking I was about to crash into a tree and bash my head in, that there are skills one can learn to help deal with the ice.

Then and there, I vowed not to go cross country skiing again until I took a lesson.

* I'm not spelling this wrong. They are actually called sno parks. It's very annoying.

woods

We are wandering in the piney woods. Well, I can hear the others coming closer, and I am leaning against a log writing a blog post, because I have cell network in the forest. 

It's the sort of piney woods with lots of fallen trees and spongey soil from all the years of pine needles rotting into mulch. The sky is grey, and the ferns are green, and everything feels damp and cool. 

Others are looking for mushrooms. I hate mushrooms (slimey. mushy. ew.). So I am wandering and observing. It's an adventure, either way. 

no regrets

The nice thing about having guests (okay, not the actual nice thing, but a lingering nice thing after they leave and leave you all alone [sob]) is that the house is so organized.

All those papers that lived on my dresser for 8 months? Gone.

(By gone, I mean stuffed in a brown paper grocery bag in the closet. Obviously.)

My room has not been this bare of clutter since ever. 

Also, I am eating the world's largest one-person salad in a mixing bowl because I picked too much lettuce from the garden and I had to get rid of half an avocado that we started last Wednesday. (I might not make it through the whole salad.)

(Update: I managed the whole salad. It took me an hour.)

My momma and Aunt K. arrived last Tuesday, and we embarked upon a whirlwind of farmers market and holding baby twins and Other PNW City and waterfalls. We settled, on the last day with the three of us, on a motto of No Regrets. 

We tried to find a waterfall and it wasn't where I thought (right by the road), and I started driving away. My momma seemed to want to see it, though, and finally I said, "Tell me to turn around if you want me to turn around. We are not going to have any regrets for the things we didn't do on this trip. That is our motto. No regrets."

So we turned around. 

We parked in the lot and hiked down the little trail to the waterfall. I'd never seen this one before, and it was just enough of a hike to give my guests a little taste of State of Happiness hiking, with a beautiful cascade of water into a pool and then further down into another pool. 

No regrets. 

water

Everything hurts. I feel like I've been beaten from head to toe. 

I have rope burn on my hands. I scraped up my arm and elbow falling on some rocks (but the expensive camera I was holding is okay!). My arms won't go above my head. My chest muscles hurt. I have a bruise on the back of my thigh from hitting the water too hard. The insides of my knees feel bruised for some reason. The bottoms of my feet are sore from hitting the water too hard, and also from something sharp that got into my sandal. My little toe might be broken. I have mosquito bites on my legs. There is an area of raw skin on the top of my foot from an unknown source. My skin is either sunburned, despite frequent applications of sunscreen, or it just shriveled up like a raisin from the water and heat. I haven't slept well since Wednesday night. 

It was a brilliant weekend, basically.

Mostly it was brilliant because it involved jumping off high rocks into pools of clear, topaz water. 

It took me a little while to work up my courage on the first day, but then I spent a couple of hours happily jumping off a ledge into a pretty little pool. I had to be (virtually) dragged away from the water, kicking and screaming. (My momma will recall this from when my brother and I were little. My sister, too, come to think of it, although she was much younger. We were not the sort to walk away from water - ever - unless coerced.)

On the second day, the cliffs were just too high. I couldn't do it. I do not like heights. Well, the heights don't bother me. What bothers me is the falling.

"Come over to this side. It's a little lower," D. said, and I did. I scrambled through the foliage to the rocky outcropping and stepped off without even looking. 

Back on the first side, though, I still couldn't do it, even at the lower of the points. 

After a lot of hemming and hawing and allowing other people to go first, a middle-aged woman arrived at the vanguard of a troop of parents and kids. 

"Should I jump?" I asked, as she was looking over the edge in horror. 

"No!" she said. "Don't do it!"

So I leapt. The prospect of horrifying a mom-type person was enough to get me off the ledge. 

It still took me a while to jump from the higher point, even though it was only 5 or so feet higher, and even more time, somehow, to do it a second time.

"I have to do it at least three times," I said. "The third time really proves that I can."

I did it five times, in total, shivering from the 42 degree water in-between, especially as the sun shifted and the area at the top of the cliff fell into shadow. The rest of the group lost interest and sat around drying off and eating. I kept jumping. Each time, though, I made sure that someone was paying attention. For some reason, the idea of dropping off the cliff and no one knowing where I had gone bothered me. (I was left at a waterfall in Honduras once. This concern may date back to that incident.)

Further down the creek, the same: there was a natural waterslide in the rocks. Most adults did it once or twice and left it to the kids, but not me. I kept sliding over and over until the group was ready to go. 

Years pass, but water does not lose its thrall. What I needed was my brother or sister with me. They wouldn't have lost interest, either. 

quick coast trip

There was camping.

It was hot and sunny in Universe City - my chocolate melted in the trunk of my car by 11 am - and warm and sunny at the campsite at the coast, but on the beach it was cold and cloudy.

I made the classic going-to-the-coast mistake of wearing shorts. (There is virtually never a time when shorts work for the coast in State of Happiness. Ditto a swimsuit.)

Waiting on a dock for crabs to crawl into the pots we had dropped, I shivered. SHO gave me his rain pants and a pair of socks, which I put on with my sandals. I still shivered.

"They sell a lot of sweatshirts out here to people like us," I said, as the six of us who had taken refuge in the famous chowder restaurant waited in line for a table, a line that wended its way through trinkets and sweatshirts.

"Also cheap plastic crap to kids," someone commented.

There were no crabs to be caught. The rest of the crowd gave up while we drank warm beverages inside.

We went back to camp and grilled clams on the fire after extensive googling about which clams are currently safe to eat. We piled corn on the coals, still in the husk but with the silk removed. We roasted marshmallows. 

I fell asleep to the sound of the sea.

The next day was clear and sunny, with a bank of fog hovering just over there, always just out of reach. Most people left, but three of us walked away down the beach to the rocks at the end and over them into a little cove. The wind blew so hard that I wore a sweatshirt and a rain jacket tied up around my face, together with sunglasses, and still I had sand in my hair when I got home. 

The tide was coming in, and we had to go back (I had to time my climb over the rocks for when the waves went out), but we had long enough to stand in the force of the wind and watch the waves roll in, just to take it in.

Driving back to Gone West, I left my windows open most of the way, feeling the heat grow and grow. 

desert

Far out past the mountains and the high desert and the mountains again, there is a strange little desert, a few square miles of dry, cracked earth. 

Most of the year, it doesn't rain at all. In the spring, it sprinkles now and then. 

There are bluffs to the east and a mountain to the west. The wind blows in gusts that seem like to bring down your tent, and simultaneously the sun shines so hot that you can't be inside the tent during the afternoon. 

The cracked ground beneath your feet is like cement: gummy and thick when a moment of rain passes through, hard and unforgiving when dry. 

The dust covers everything. It gets on your hands and into your sleeping bag and behind your ears and in your food, and pretty soon you stop seeing it and start thinking of dust-covered hands as clean. The desert is clean, right? It feels clean, seared by the sun.

During the day, there is hiking up into the mountain, or up on the bluffs. It rains on the mountain, and I take off my shirts to get rid of the bottom cotton layer, not caring that the group is milling about, caring only about getting warm again. Back at the edge of the desert, there is a hot spring, and we all crowd into it as the sun sets and the air cools.

My tent is a refuge from the constancy of people, all having too much fun. "It's like a little Burning Man," we say doubtfully, as we go to bed and the young crowd who cares more about partying lights fireworks off above the campfire. 

The noise of their party abates right around the time that SHO calls quietly outside each of our tents. The sun is coming up, and it's worth rolling out of a warm sleeping bag to watch the golden light of morning begin its sweep across the desert.

The eastern rim seems like it's right there, so close, but after a quick rain shower, it's a muddy, sticky 7 miles away. Two cars get stuck. We push the little one out, two of us, nearly falling on our faces when the tires finally catch and it takes off without us. Far off in the mud, we watch them put snow chains on the SUV, which works, too.

We all pile into the only 4 wheel drive, and drive far to the south around the worst of the mud. The sunroof is open, and we stand up to stick our heads out, beaming into the wind. "This is my crazy thing for the weekend," one person grumbles, before admitting that it's great fun.

Up on the far bluff, we talk about rattlesnakes. I've only seen one before this trip, up on a butte outside of Universe City. "I saw a documentary once about a kid who got bitten by a rattlesnake," I say. "His mom knew exactly what to do, because his dad was a doctor who studied antivenom."

At that very moment, there is a rattle off to my right, between me and the edge of the cliff. It's our second rattler of the day, a big one, and some people (not me) get close, filming it. 

"How was it?" my friend asks when I pick up my car on the way home.

"It was amazing," I say. "It was totally amazing."

camping

Oh, hi.

I am going camping. I have spent every evening this week getting ready for camping (setting up the tent to see if it works! baking muffins!) and tomorrow I am really going to do the camping.

It's been a while.

I am excited.

I will be far, far from internet, as one should be while camping. 

cold

I went for a hike on the coast yesterday. My car is still with the mechanic, so I sent out a request for a ride, and someone from the group offered to pick me up. 

It was a cloudy, drippy day, like so many days on the Pacific Coast, and it drizzled on us as we climbed from the beach up to a parking lot and then out along a cape. There were patches of mud that we picked carefully around.

No matter. I had gaiters on to keep my feet dry. I was wearing a synthetic shirt and had rain gear along, which I put on as I sat out on the end of the cape, looking at the smooth grey water, and took off again to hike back. 

On the way back, one girl started to have knee problems on the downhill sections. I have knee problems on the downhill sections, too, although not as bad as hers, and so when the rest of the crew offered that she could wait at the upper parking lot while they did the steep part of the descent and came back for her, I stayed, too. 

We sat on little pads on the ground, talking, for an hour, while the rest of the people hiked down and I got colder and colder. I kept adding layers. I added my sweatshirt-like layer. I added my raincoat. I added my rain pants. I added my hat. I added my gloves. 

I was still shivering. I could feel the cold wet of my tank top against my back. My tank top was, of course, cotton. I always wear a cotton tank top, figuring that if I get stuck out in the woods overnight, I will just take it off and put the synthetics back on without it and be perfectly warm.

Only it didn't occur to me to take my wet tank top off while I was shivering in the parking lot. Or while I was shivering in the restaurant where we ate dinner. Or while I was shivering in my house at home. 

It's like I broke my body's ability to regulate its own heat in one single hour. 

Even this morning, I have been nervous about going outside. I'm still cold, even though I spent a warm night under the covers. 

It is 64 degrees outside. 

swimsuit

Last weekend, I drove over the mountains to Sunny Ski Town with a couple of friends. We had lovely intentions of hiking and exploring the mountains, but when we got to downtown SST, there were sale racks of clothes out on the sidewalks, and we got sucked in. (Don't worry, we got in some outdoor time, too, and a couple of meals that were so delicious that I am dreaming of them right now.)

One of the stores sold used cowboy boots, some consignment clothes, a bunch of random cute little household objects, and a local swimsuit line. Local to Gone West, actually, although I've never shopped it here.

I tried on a swimsuit that wasn't right for me, and, standing in front of the mirror in the store, I pointed to the upper part of my stomach. "I don't like this," I said. (I usually try to avoid this kind of body shaming, and I'm generally happy with my body, but as a rule, that is the part that I would try to cover in a swimsuit.)

The sales person, who was sitting behind me at the counter with a big steaming cup of tea, said, very gently, "You look beautiful whatever you wear."

I heart her.

The next suit I tried on was perfect.