Pre-Packing Count Down

With only a little over a week before leaving for England I thought it would be a good idea to blow the cobwebs off my blog and start fresh for the new adventure.  Over the next month my goal is to post several times each week with stories of our misadventures in the land where queens rule long, Hobbits were born, and paths follow hedgeways to pubs not serving microbrew.

However before leaving it is necessary to make sure the carry-on closes with nothing major missing. So today I spent the good portion of the morning packing and repacking.  The carry-on measurements, allowed by our airline, is smaller then the cooler we take camping.  How does one fit everything into a box 9"x15.5"x21.5".  That was my test, having already over the past month planned my outfits through that old fashioned format of "garanimals".

I must divert for a moment and explain this phenomenon of my childhood.  Garanimals were started in 1972 and was a system devised for kids to pick out their own clothes and have them match no matter the mix; pants, shirts, skirts etc.  The singles were all tagged with an image of an animal- lions, tigers, and bears Oh My, penguins and zebras too.  When clothes were paired from the same animal family of tags the separates created an outfit that was stylin and fun to wear.

Using the same formula my wardrobe, of limited palate, took shape and as you can see from the pictures I will be able to create a number of casual/dressy outfits for any occasion I may encounter.

A combination of short & long sleeves with button ups.

Light sweaters for those rainy, chilly days

Combination of skirt, tights and quick dry fabrics.

Add a few accessories and I have a month's wardrobe at my fingertips. Note that out of this will be my flight attire, and the blue fleece vest zips into my raincoat. Who said a girl needs a closet full of shoes! I'm only bringing two pair. All this in one little carry-on, amazing! I should mention the flight does allow two carry-ones, which will be the topic of my next post.

Well here is where I head into the wild blue yonder of London fog and heather greys, of cobble streets and pints in pubs, and fish rolled in paper. How wonderful to think you'll be following along. Now where did I place my passport?

In January, realizing getting a yurt wasn't going to happen for quite awhile,  Dave gave me a big hug and said, "you need your own space in your own house to do the stuff you love now not later"  and then he proceeded to move his office and the entertainment center into the front room leaving me with the den.  

Over the next month I cleaned the carpet and moved my writing and art into this beautifully large area. 

Now I can spread out and make messes not share the space with the refrigerator or washing machine, or worry about having an ongoing project out and in the way of family and friends. I have the ability to shut the french doors turn on my music and have sanctuary.  

And then I did this....

Inspired by these...

Rico, CO

Rico, CO

... taken during our trip while visiting family and friends in Colorado.

Grand Mesa, CO letterboxing

And after I painted the trees the space seemed more enchanting and it brought to mind one of my favorite stories.

"That very night in Max's room a forest grew-

and grew-

and grew until his ceiling hung with vines and the walls became the world all around..."

Where The Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak

BLANK THOUGHT...

While rummaging through a box of stuff I'd put aside and forgotten I came across this bit of pros I'd written years ago. Reading through it, it seemed appropriate for some of the stuff I've been dealing with this year. I had written it after reading Ursula LeGuin's short story The Compass Rose. My copy of her book, by the same name, is yellowed and dog eared, and still one of my favorites.

Complete and utter darkness filled the little room. The blackness, thick and heavy, hung in the room's corners, like pitch on a pole. In the north corner of the 12 foot by 12 foot room sat an over sized chair. Lost in it's floral pattern slouched a woman. With feet dangling over the edge of the cushion, not quite able to touch the floor, her feeble frame suffocated against the furniture's high back, and overstuffed wings and arms.

The room was a black hole of nothingness, where light and sound escaped away from. The woman sat trying to think of only the blackness, the emptiness, the silence. In this way she figured she could shift old thoughts downward, to make room for new. She found it hard to focus on nothing, as even the smallest idea would slip inside her head and germinate. How was she to stop her brain from filling to the brim?

"What would happen if my brain filled completely up with thoughts, old and new? Would the brain explode, expand, shut down, stop all together?" Staring comatose into the black void of space she attempted to control her thinking. STOP THE INPUT! However after hours, days, months, she could not stop the thoughts.

"If I cannot stop the input, the stimuli, can I instead reorganize their placement? Can I create a place for new ideas? Can I rid myself of the old and useless information to make room for the new vibrant concepts that have been so recently collected? Yet how do I define 'old'; is it hours, minutes, seconds? Or are they days, weeks, months, years? It is a conundrum. How do I decide what has value, for what appears useless now, may surely have worth one day? Once gone what will I do?

The brain was too immense for her to comprehend. The main center for sorting and compartmentalizing information, both eternal and internal, this organ operated as the body's mainframe. A giant muscle in charge of processing all thoughts, ideas, concepts, and stimuli. It held trivia gathered from the many hundreds of books she'd read, memories from the places she had visited, conversations with people she had encountered. How was it all stored? How was it organized and cataloged? As chaos scattered about, or orderly in files and shoe boxes? Was it alphabetical, numerical, or by subject? She could not stop thinking.

Then her original question surfaced again, "What happens when my brain is full? When you're full do you start forgetting, do you begin going backwards replacing old thoughts with new? Or does the recent input leave first, the old input last? Is this what leads to senility? Dementia? Death?"

She slumped in the blackness trying to concentrate on the darkness, on the vacant void of space. Stopping the input, filling her mind with NOTHINGNESS. Her old thoughts sifted to the bottom, somewhere making room for the new thoughts that would come. Thoughts she could not stop from being collected and stored somewhere inside her head.

Daffodowndilly

She wore her yellow sun-bonnet,

She wore her greenest gown;

She turned to the south wind

And curtsied up and down.

She turned to the sunlight

Snd shook her yellow head,

And whispered to her neighbour:

"Winter is dead."

from When We Were Very Young

A.A. Milne

From winter to spring, how quickly time passes.

Today I took advantage of a little quiet time, Ty's at her boyfriend and Dave's working. I grabbed my shovel and pruners, new gardening gloves and a bit of bird seed, and headed to the yard. I'm reorganizing the yard. While Dave and I were away the yard was not high on the priority list, so this year I am treating it like a blank palate, begin again FRESH. The first step is moving the raised beds from the east side of the yard to the west and closer to the house. I want a true kitchen garden. I thought why not dig down a bit and make the boxes a little deeper, I did not anticipate the number of rocks I'd encounter on this venture. At first I attacked each rock head on getting frustrated as I went. Each rock not wishing to give up its spot in the yard. If this was an animated movie the rock would grow tendrils through the soil and these tendrils would turn into limbs hugging the earth to to its mineralized composition. Or maybe the rocks would link their arm like tendrils together in a tug of war display... It doesn't matter all I know was trying to dig them out wasn't working. So trying for a new tactic I found a smaller shovel and began clearing the smaller rocks around them, and then for some unfathomed notion the larger rocks began breaking apart. As I dug around getting the rocks smaller counterparts I began to realize this isn't much different to attacking life's issues. It occurred to me that problems always seem to be huge and unsurmountable when attacking them head on. However, when I work at the smaller issues surrounding the bigger problem the one issue that seemed unyielding simply begins to break into smaller more manageable pieces. WOW life's lessons learned while gardening, very Zen.

I look forward to the reawakening that spring and soon summer will reveal to me. It reminds me of when I first moved into my house eleven years ago. The yard was a tangled crazy mass of chaos then as well, but over time, listening carefully, it told me what to do, showed me things hidden in the unruliness and it will again. Only this time I'm not a rookie, so let's hope it doesn't take another eight years for the plan to come together.

Best to you and yours,

and may your weeds be blessings in disguise.

Vanessa

MMXI

A new year brings a new look, and with good intention, new blogs more often. I hope everyone had a safe ringing-in. For us we decided to send 2010 out with some fun, setting the tone for 2011. To do this we called some friends and headed out to the desert for a bit of laser tag.

How crazy was this, with the wind chill factored in we figured it must have been around 12 degrees out there. Thankfully we had the trailer, with a nice campfire going, hot chocolate and our usual New Year fare- Chinese take away. Dressed in layers with our faces wrapped up we tucked and rolled our way to hours of running around in the snow, while hiding behind Junipers and shrubbery. With five of us and a dog we did away with teams and decided to play against each other. It was so cold the guns kept misbehaving. How magnificent it all was with the mighty hunter Orion above us brightly lit up, as we chased and tracked one another through the darkness. Predators, with only the green glow from our scopes to give our positions away. After about 2 hours we had to quit, as several us could not feel our limbs and face parts. Not even standing near the fire helped. So into the warm trailer we did pack, shedding our gear and outerwear, though not before documenting the extreme event.

back (L-R): Stephanie, Vanessa, and Ty front (L-R): Dave, Katie, and Sydney

It wasn't long until we were defrosted, with hot cocoa and Chinese food in our tummies. The rest of the evening was spent playing Texas Hold'em and telling crazy stories. While the hours ticked away we got antsy. Once again braving the cold we departed the hideaway and lit off a few firecrackers and sparklers. The wind, however, got the better of us and we had to cut our noise making short. Couldn't get anything lit safely.

Much exhausted by our merriment we all got comfortable and settled in for the duration of the evening. By the time the clock finally clicked midnight we were ready to head back home. There would be no spending the night out in the desert, until the weather got warmer. In high spirits we departed, all agreed that it was necessary to repeat this "Most Excellent" event in the future, but without the extreme cold.

We wish you all the very best for 2011. For us it starts a new chapter in our adventure book, filled with lots of anticipated excitement and discoveries to keep our hero and heroine going for awhile. But those are stories for later installments.

Take care and stay in touch...

La Luna

Biladeau Rd, Bend Oregon

Written early April.

MOONBEAMS SHINE THROUGH the window resting on my face. La Luna woke me. Without my glasses she looks large, soft, and a bit fuzzy around the edges. Her silver light fills the tiny bedroom reflecting off dust mites, floating in the air. It feels magical. Dave's arm drapes across my body, his shallow breathing quiet for now. I lay still, afraid to break the spell. Fuzzy Four Paws joins us, it must be close to 5 am. "BREAKFAST NOW!", he purrs in my ear, treading over my head and onto Dave's torso, to the window and back to me again. Each heavy step leaves a new bruise. The clock reads 4:45 am, no chance returning to a dreamy slumber. I am wide awake. Getting out of bed the sheets shift inviting the chill of the morning under the covers. Dave turns away from me, mumbles something and burrows deeper for warmth.

The trailer is cold, out the window the blues of predawn mingle with Luna's silver shimmers. It has snowed in the night leaving a shifting of powdered sugar on the ground and sage bushes. Jack Frost has followed us, not content to leave us be. More cold weather... will it ever be warm? Sackett has shadowed me into the kitchen, rubbing figure 8's between my legs and the cupboard, where his food is kept. One wonders if he is really a giant tapeworm in disguise. once fed he's content for awhile. I make myself a cup of tea and sit down to write, only my mind is drawn back to the moon and her mystery.

Soon She will be full, her pull stronger, her ascendancy dominant over us. Our moods change when her face is well rounded, our rhythms rise and fall like tides in the Spring. She tells us when to plant and when to harvest, She moves us to love and to grieve. The Moon is alive and always changing, a beautiful woman cursed to only be seen between dusk and dawn. Somehow there is comfort knowing that she is above, watching over me while I sleep. The mug is warm in my hands. As I sip the green tea sweetened with honey its steam rises clouding my glasses like the cold air against the window. I hear the whoosh of propane, a promising sound of a warm room on the way.

IT IS HARD to believe sometimes that I am 43. I remember turning 30 and thinking back on all I had done up to that point and wishing, on the the candles of a coffin cake, that my next thirty years would be as exciting and full. The phases of the moon bring to mind the changes I have gone through. Gaining fifteen pounds and establishing the ability to "Flame On" have been a personal challenge for me on this trip. During the winter in Grand Junction Colorado my newly adapted mutation came in handy on those below zero nights. While I was shedding sheets Dave was cuddling closer... "Who needs an electric blanket Honey, when I've got you". Placing my hand against the trailer paneling was all I needed to cool down before retrieving blankets from the hibernating bear beside me. It is strange to be placing myself into this new category of WOMAN. It is like being 10 years old and thinking 25 years is a long way off. Before you know it BANG your there. Now it's like a tsunami, wondering when the next wave will hit. In the meantime I continue to eat my vegges, take my multivitamin, and drink my soy... oh and now we're back in Bend, walk the Butte. Soon the warm weather will be here, Bob the weatherman reports this, so it must be true, and with that comes more outdoor exercise; biking, hiking, letterboxing. Old muscles finding new uses and the smell of sports cream, the downing of Aleve, a happy hypothalamus and hopefully the shedding of a few pounds.

I feel very settled. Not stuck in a rut, complaisant settled, but more comfortable in my own skin settled. I'm becoming more flexible, definitely not physically bendable, that comes with stretching. If I were to chose between the Tortoise or the Hare I would say today I a m the Tortoise. Go at my own speed, enjoy things around me, taking life as it comes while still being willing to meet the challenges at hand. Sometimes it works and at other times it doesn't. I have discovered approaching life with humor and a little Hakuna Matata is really the best medicine for me. Especially since I don't anticipate a call from the X-Men anytime soon ("Flame On!"). Life, I am finding out is a process that is constantly evolving. That's the exciting part- THE ADVENTURE! Getting up and not knowing what the day will bring... "Where does the trail lead today?"

One night I got back to the trailer close to midnight. As I pulled into the driveway off Biladeau Road the song "Sweet Home Alabama" started playing on the radio. I left the car running and laid down on the hood of the Subaru, starring up at the stars. It was chilly and even a bit windy, but so nice out. I watched a satellite tumble across the night sky, while the music played in the background. I played dot-to-dot as I pieced together star clusters, drawing constellations I knew, with my finger. Another day I hiked up Pilot Butte and saw a Rosey Boa. Normally snakes make me shudder and squeal. This viewing I did neither. Instead I just stood and watched it as it made its way across the trail and under a rock near a juniper tree. I wondered at the time if he was an indication of warmer weather to come. I am enjoying these changes. Seeing life at a different angle. It is like being in a special effect where I'm moving at normal speed and everyone around me is in slow motion, giving me the opportunity to notice all the details and take my time doing it.

EACH NIGHT THERE is a new face on La Luna, as she phases through her stages, some darker than others. Sometimes life is like that, but finding goodness and staying optimistic enriches and keeps me happy. Full Moons are bright and enchanting, lighting up areas that are often missed in the darkness of night. A Dark, or New Moon, exposes secrets of the universe. Stars shine brighter and more plentiful, meteorites showers fall more brilliantly, and I swear I see more satellites and space junk orbiting the Earth. One face enhances the terrestrial and the other brings to life the celestial. I could view my new phase of womanhood as a pain, an inconvenience, a disruption, OR I embrace it and realize the power of possibilities it introduces.

Hope you are all enjoying the start to your summer.

All our best from Us to You

Vanessa

There's No Place Like Home!

Bend, Oregon

Originally written April 3, 2010

Blonde is stuck in my head and I can't get her out. You know when you get a tune stuck in your brain and you can't seem to rid yourself of it, no matter how hard you try? Well after dropping Dave off at work I turned on the radio and Blonde was playing... what does it mean?

Dave and I are finally home! We left Grand Junction on a Tuesday and pulled into Bend around 8 pm the following Thursday evening. No blown tires. No truck episodes. There were a couple of tall peaks (7800 feet elevation) in Utah and Nevada, but that was all on the first day of driving. The truck ran an average of 44 mph. She doesn't like the peaks and down hill was fun for her, much like a roller coaster. Tuesday night we parked at a truck stop in Ely Nevada, and Wednesday we rested our heads under the halogens of Winnemucca's Wal-mart. We had a good trip stopping along the way for a letterbox or two, food and fuel, and a pee.

There is so much open land out there. Land not fenced, or built on. Land flat, curved, and pointy. Sometimes we'd drive hours without seeing anyone and at other times there would be one car after another. I remember driving through the desert, in Western Utah, and thinking how much it reminds me of Alfalfa, Oregon. The iron enriched soil, the color of a summer sunset, dotted with dwarf junipers and sage brush. Tucked into the surrounding plateaus were small mining outposts, skeletal remains of a time long gone. Their only inhabitants a few jack rabbits and lizards, with the occasional snake curled up in a mud cracked wall. The sounds of the whispering wind swirling through open rafters is the only voice heard. It's a bit eery, a lot of

untamed territory, and absolutely breath taking views. "We" cram ourselves together like sardines in a tin, never stepping outside the safety of the security, which technology has created for us. And living this way "We" never see what is in our backyard, or just down the street, or in the next county over. When "We" do walk outside it is with our heads down, dark glasses shaded over our eyes and plugged into the latest gadget. Am I the only one who knows the pine forests smell sweetest after a spring shower? Maybe not, but sometimes it sure feels like it.

It is good to be home! Dave and I have been staying on some property outside of Bend. Like the desert in Utah, we are surrounded by iron-rich earth, junipers, with cottontails crossing from one sage bush to the next. The white peaks of Bachelor, Faith, Hope, Charity and Broken Top spread wide along the horizon welcoming us back. A friend expressed to me the other day, "I feel like I have my right arm back again". It is the familiarity of knowing a place, its people, its roads, its ways, that is a comfort to me. Dorothy had it right when clicking her heals she repeated, "There's no place like Home, there's no place like Home". Knowing you have someone and someplace to return to always makes the leaving that much easier.

It's good to be Home, so watch out everyone WE'RE BACK!

photos are as follows:

Dave and I in the Deschutes Badlands.

The desert along Utah's route 21.

Rest stop outside Winnemucca, stopped for a LB

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