I ♥ Flagstaff

I once walked all over Flagstaff when I spent a couple days here by myself on my way to teach at Art Unraveled in Phoenix. It was where I learned, after 20-something years of marriage, that there was no longer any reason to pretend that I wanted to be independent. While I was perfectly capable of driving myself across the desert and finding food and entertaining myself, it wasn't much fun to do things I knew The EGE would have enjoyed (it was a whole complicated arrangement: we went to the Indian Market in Santa Fe for my birthday, staying in Albuquerque because Santa Fe was full. I put him on the plane in Albuquerque to go home and teach (school had started, and he was still teaching) and then drove to Flagstaff and on to Phoenix. On Friday after school he flew to Phoenix, where I picked him up at the airport--he and some big cowboy had entertained the whole plane for the whole flight--they got off the plane together, and I knew something was up because everyone else was kind of following them, grinning expectantly like they were waiting to see what was going to happen next. The EGE and the cowboy were laughing, and everybody looked so happy, and I knew I'd missed a great time.))

Which reminds me: Art Unraveled is where I met Richard Salley and his wife. I got to talk to him a couple weeks ago, remember? He's just retired from teaching, and they've moved to Santa Fe. He called yesterday while we were driving through the Mojave, and we're going to meet for drinks this weekend. So cool how life is: you meet people from everywhere, and then, years later, you hook up with them again in some other place, far away. It's one of our favorite things. Like getting to see Ty and Marcia Schultz last week after so long. And meeting Theo and Judy Wise and, and--yowza!

Anyway--the REASON I ♥ Flagstaff has nothing to do with any of that. We didn't get here in time to look for the little wine place--it's probably long gone, anyway. But when I checked the phone book for a grocery store, I found New Frontiers Natural Marketplace, which could have been cheesy or lame but turned out to be fabulous--almost exactly like a small Whole Foods but without the wine. The salad bar was good, with some fabulous tofu. And the "Hot Food Bar," which is a horrible name but is wonderful, nevertheless, had broccoli and something with various kinds of squash that was perhaps the best thing I've had to eat since we left home. Fresh bread, some (more) cheese (my personal weakness and why I'm not a vegan), fizzy water. It was wonderful, and so I love Flagstaff. Some might think it sad that I love a town for having a decent grocery store, but there you go.

This morning I'm thinking a lot about Place--about places I love and places I loathe and what makes the difference. Midland is home, but I'd never rec. that anyone choose it as a Pleasure Destination unless their goal in life is to hang out at Starbucks on the interstate and watch traffic go by. It's comfortable to me. But the two cities I love to visit are Santa Fe and New Orleans, and they're just about as different as any two cities I can imagine. Santa Fe is cool and high and dry, and the people are white and Indian and Hispanic, thin and hippie-ish. Hardly any black people at all (and no red drinks, The EGE will point out). It's easy to find food I can eat--lots of vegetarian. It's an early morning city, where people are out early, walking their dogs. After dark, there's not much to do. It gets cold quickly once the sun goes down.

New Orleans is hot and damp and sea-level-ish. Lots of black people. Not a lot of hippies--you don't see a lot of thin, serious white folks in Birkenstocks. People are much larger--it's a whole different kind of food place. Much harder for me to find things to eat unless we go to a restaurant and have fish--even the beans are cooked with meat. Things are slow in the morning, but they go on late into the night. Perhaps it's the temperature--people wait until the sun goes down and it begins to cool off. Fabulous music everywhere.

But however different they are, I love them both. Santa Fe in June and New Orleans in August, usually. They're places that have always felt familiar, as if I knew them in some past life. Except I don't believe in past lives, so that's not it. It's not the people or the shops or the architecture or the food. It's not the history or the myth. It's something about the odor in the air, about the way the light looks, about something I can't grasp that just makes these places feel like I've known them before.

Take, for example, the Cafe du Monde. Because I read so much, I had read many books (fiction and non) that had some writer sitting at a table at the Cafe du Monde, making notes. When we went there, it looked nothing like I'd imagined. It's sticky and loud and hot. But I love it. When I'm there, I'm There, sitting at the table and not imagining some other table, not day-dreaming or visualizing anything else but having a sense of being somewhere that's lived in my imagination for as long as I can remember. We go there and have a beignets and cafe au lait every year, amid the noise and pigeons and crowds and unrelenting stickiness, and I adore it. I'm there, and my brain taps into something I can't grasp well enough to even articulate. I have no wish for it to be anything but what it is--I'm not one of those people who long for a past time, a time when I foolishly believe things were better, more romantic, easier, nicer, whatever. For us--for me and The EGE--any time before our time would have been a constant battle. So that's not it. I can't explain it. The French Quarter is New Orleans is my favorite place in the world. Dirty, noisy, smelly, crowded. And very nearly perfect.

In Santa Fe, it's a sense that this is where People Like Me come from: pale, wiry hippie-ish women. I look like I belong. Well, kind of. I see other women who look like me (more or less). Plus it smells familiar--I think it's pinion, which must grow around the places I grew up (Farmington, Cortez, et. al.) I'm guessing the light and odor is similar and that triggers something in my reptile brain.

And then there are all the perfectly lovely places that just don't do it for me. While they're fun to visit once, and while the people are often wonderful, there's something off. The light isn't right, or the odor of the air is odd. Portland and Seattle are marvelous, but I could never spend much time there. They're way too cold and damp and grey, and the people dress in black and look so depressed. Los Angeles smells funny (the French Quarter stinks to high heaven, but after about an hour, it seems perfectly normal to me--I have no idea why this is so). Santa Monica and Santa Barbara are lovely, but. . . .

The cities in Texas--Dallas and Austin, Houston and San Antonio--are all familiar to me from many, many visits over the course of my life. I can find my way around, the people sound familiar, the weather is good. But they don't have That Thing, whatever it is.

What about y'all? Do you feel this? Is there somewhere that feels as familiar to you as your skin for some odd reason? Why, do you think? Tell me about it.

And if you're in Santa Fe this weekend, remember there's a jigsaw puzzle on the second-floor landing of the Hotel St. Francis (at least there'd better be). Plus, of course, afternoon tea and a nice bar--

That's Teh-HATCH-a-pee.

Nope, not staying in Bakersfield. Honeys, I just couldn't do it. Anyplace someone I like refers to as An Armpit, and then a name like "Bakersfield"? I couldn't give it the chance it deserved. Oh, sure: the room would have been $49, which is a really great rate, right? But the real reason--I swear this is true--that I booked a room in Bakersfield in the first place is so that The Ever-Gorgeous Earl could walk the streets.

If this means nothing to you, never mind. You're not a fan of country music, and that's perfectly OK with me. (I just won't tell my husband.) You probably better remember Dwight Yokum from Sling Blade, and I don't need to tell you the degree of delight his role provided in our household. At least among the small contingent of us (that would be 1 person) who actually recognized him.

So we didn't stay there. We came on to Tehachapi, about 45 miles farther down the road. It's quite gorgeous, in a very almost-to-the-desert sort of way, the La Quinta being about 3 miles out of town and kind of creepy, if you came upon it on a moonless night, what with the abandoned and weed-infested restaurant out front and not much else anywhere nearby. I, of course, love the creepiness, although it did serve to much lower my expectations for the room. That and the sign posted on the fence around the pool, saying that the pool was closed by the State of California due to 1) inadequate fencing and (!) 2) unsanitary conditions. That would have forced me to forge on across the desert by moonlight except for the fact that there was no cancellation (smart move on their part) and no LQ for the next 300 miles.

The desk guy was From Elsewhere, hard to understand, suspicious of me, and odoriferous. Imagine my delight to find that the "suite" I had sprung for (for which, but with a word like "sprung," who's really noticing?) was quite delightful. Clean (except for the long black hairs that mysteriously appeared in the bathtub this morning, never mind that The EGE had patrolled for them when we checked in, as he considers this a real challenge (also dicking with the lock on the bathroom door, which is stuck and which will, I'm willing to bet, be fixed before he leaves today). Anyway, anyway: really nice room--big, clean, quiet, comfortable. I avoid the whole Pool Area, needless to say. One can only imagine the "unsanitary conditions," esp. if one was once a counselor at YMCA summer camp and had a child (who went on to become valedictorian of his high school class and a college football stud) who regularly crapped in the pool (and also in the bathroom after lunch, whereupon he smeared it on himself and indulged in what he apparently considered "dessert," and you WONDER why I have issues? Please.)

So: giving wide, wide berth to The Pool Area.

But first, we stopped in Bakersfield to try to find some vegetables. We travel with wine, cheeses, bread, crackers, and an assortment of almonds (some of which we bought fresh from a store next door to the winery where we stopped for a wonderful hour yesterday, somewhere out in the middle of nowhere. Madera, I think), so we don't have to worry about food. But every once in a while we need vegetables. So we tried to find some. I, having neglected to google groceries in Bakersfield, had no clue. We drove up and down a likely-looking street, and we stopped at a little bakery where the proprietors spoke very, very little English--no way we could have asked them, since we could barely understand the price of the baguette (it's where I come to appreciate that the majority of the people in Midland speak Spanish, or Spanglish, which I can understand enough to at least buy stuff). And as The EGE walked across the parking lot, so he could at least claim to have walked BESIDE the streets of Bakersfield, if not actually on them, we came to realize that perhaps the song had a different, secret meaning. At least as it might relate to the part of town where we found ourselves. The first woman in a tiny tight dress standing on the corner talking to the men in the truck might well have been someone from the neighborhood, on her way to the bakery for a loaf of bread of indeterminate price, wearing a cool summer-y frock and stopping to chat with friends.

And the other woman in the parking lot, wearing a tiny skirt and what appeared to be the top of a bathing thong and talking to men in a car? Well, she could have been giving directions to tourists, right? But after a while it became obvious even to us that this was less about neighborhood friendliness than it was about age-old commerce, and we decided we did not need vegetables so much after all and could wait to get ice until we got to Tehachapi.

I chose Tehachapi not only because it was, well, really my only La Quinta choice (and, man, am I racking up the points for free nights) but because I once had a student whose grandmother had lived in Tehachapi and had written an essay about it, about how hot and dry it was, and who had pronounced it for me in that way students do when they know something you don't and get to catch you in a mistake. So, of course, I've never forgotten.

Huh. Maybe that's the key: make a mistake and have someone point it out to you in a gleeful manner, and you'll remember it forever. If only I could get someone to ridicule me while explaining quantum physics, I might be in line for a whole new career.

So yesterday wasn't very eventful. Wonderfully nice people at the winery, as usual: winery people (both those who work there and those who stop there) are almost always extraordinarily cheerful and friendly. We met a grouchy one once, in Solvang, on our last California road trip. That's saying a lot, given how many wineries/tasting rooms we've visited over the years, and given how we are somehow given to provoking reactions, of one sort or another, in people, as you might imagine.

And here let me confess: I've been having Map Woes. I think I told you that I like Rand McNally maps. They have exit numbers on them, and I love those. For some reason, the only California road map I have is not Rand McNally, but is, instead, from some evil rat bastards at "Thomas Bros. Maps." I hate these people. They are truly, insidiously evil. They are the kind of people who would put their grandmother on an ice floe with a can of tuna and no can opener and tell people she'd gone to Florida to visit her sister.

This map is, without a doubt, the worst map I've ever tried to work with. And I have TONS of maps. There are places on this map where roads are not labelled--no name, no number, nothing. And then yesterday I discovered that it's off-kilter: I was comparing its sorry ass to the California map in the atlas, and I noticed that things were a little off. Both maps purport to be aligned so that the top of the page is due north, as everything in Life should be, but they're tilted in different directions. The atlas has the border with Oregon running straight east and west, which, while not really accurate, is MUCH better than this Rat Bastard Map, which has that same border at a 135-degree angle (if you think of the atlas as having it at a 90-degree angle, and do NOT whinge at me about angles and shit, 'coz I don't know from geometry, OK? Believe it or not (and nobody ever does), I never had a geometry class, ever. I have Math Issues, and I've explained those before: I had an excellent math background and excelled through elementary school and was put into a special math curriculum in junior high that, had we not moved, would have let me graduate from high school with the equivalent of a BA in mathematics. Then we moved to California, where there was no accelerated program in math and where I had the same textbook I'd had the year before, and something happened, and after that year, I could no longer Do Math and have had Math Issues ever since. But it all turned out OK, so it's all cool. As long as no one makes fun of my trying to explain angles. Otherwise? I might snap, begin screaming about the Pythagorean theorem and run amok through the streets with a particularly sharp protractor and a slide rule, doing unimaginable damage with the latter.)

Anyway. My point: the map is wrong. Our taking wrong turns and having trouble for the last three days is Not My Fault. Not at all.

So when we missed a turn and stopped for gas at an Arco station in Lathrop, I went in to get a new map. First, though, I needed to pee. The women were very nice, calling me "sweetie" in a very non-California-more-like-Texas kind of automatic-but-still-endearing way and digging around behind the counter to find the key. Finding the key: this is always a Very Bad Sign, almost as bad as when they send you outside around the back of the building. Which they did. I was leery, but who knew when I would have a chance to pee again? So I took the key, which was scarily tied to a huge, stained plastic drink cup, the Big Gulp size, as if they were afraid someone was going to try to abscond with the key to the bathroom.

Bathroom. That would be singular. Now, I hate to dis men, because you know I love them and I hate it when women talk bad about them. But goodlordalmighty. Is there anything nastier on this planet than a men's restroom at a gas station off the highway? Oh, no, there is not. And a unisex restroom is an abomination unto the lord. If my husband can leave any bathroom cleaner than it was when he entered it, and if he can go for lo! these past 32 years without EVER getting pee anywhere but IN THE TOILET, which--hello, dudes!--is where it fucking BELONGS, then what the hell is up with the rest of them? Tell me, because I don't understand, and their amazing nastiness just seems the tiniest bit hostile to me, like they're all saying, "Here, take this, and this," as they spray and dribble and drip and shake themselves. I don't know what they think about this, maybe thinking it's a sign of freedom and power that they can leave piss wherever they want, but the truth is that it's just nasty and lazy and akin to grown-ups picking their noses and wiping boogers on the pages of library books: it's hostile and filthy and has no other purpose than saying, "Take that. I hate you" to everyone else.

Whoa. Where did that come from? Oh: Lathrop. The Arco station.

I could smell the odor of urine before I opened the door. Why did I go ahead and open the door? Just so I could do what I did next: I let the door slam without ever setting foot inside, and I walked back around the building and into the station and set the cup on the counter and said, "We have driven 1500 miles [I was way off: it was over 2600 at that point, but who knew?] and that restroom is without a doubt the nastiest thing I've seen so far."

And do you know what one of them said, unbelievably? "Oh, well, I'm not saying you could eat off the floor, but it's not that bad."

Amazing.

I said, "Oh, yeah, it is." And left before I went into Full Rant Mode, wherein I would have said, "Oh, honeys, pleasepleaseplease tell me you have your very own clean and sanitized private restroom somewhere on this property. Because if you don't, the idea of your working an 8-hour shift in here, peeing in that horrible pit of filth and then coming back in here to serve up those greasy hot dogs to travelers who have no idea--no idea!--where your hands have been? It will make me die, right here."

So I just left. But remember that: it's the Arco off 205 in Lathrop. Nastiest restroom on the planet. Germs for miles. Wear a mask and keep your windows rolled up when you speed past. You'll thank me later.

And now we're off to Flagstaff. There was a little wine bar downtown with the cutest little rack of miniature glasses for tastings, and I'm going to find out if it's still there.

XO

Here's to The Good Poop

I don't feel quite as crochety. Although people who know me will tell you I'm always pretty damned crochety. Sometimes I just wish, you know, that I didn't have so many opinions. I used to think I had to have one about everything. I'm way past that by now, but I still have them--way too many of them to do me any good. Good grief. And so of course I have to share some of them with you. Forgive me.

--humans' bodily effluvia is just nasty. I don't care what anyone says. If it comes off of or out of someone with whom you're not madly in love (this covers lovers as well as mothers who swear their baby's diapers don't stink. Well, either this covers it, or they're just completely and totally nuts. Guess which one I believe. But never mind.) I have a lot of human hair at my house--the woman who owns the voodoo shop in New Orleans sent me a ton of hair from the salon next door to her shop. I washed it and dyed it. Sometimes some of it comes out, and I find it on the floor. This does not bother me. [Let me say here that I am typing this sitting on top of our ice chest (yes, we're the fucking Joads, traveling across the west with our blue and white plastic ice chest) because the chair, the desk chair I would normally sit in while typing, was covered with someone's long grey hairs, which made my throat close up. So I've eaten meals and typed blog posts sitting on the top of the ice chest and getting dents in my butt.] It's just like when I had hip-length hair and had pieces of it all over everything, as hair will do. It didn't bother me, either. Why not? Because I washed it every. Single. Day. Always. I might have missed half a dozen days in the entire 35 years it was that long. Hell, I doubt I've missed many more days than that in my entire LIFE, since I got over my Rampant Tomboy Stage when I hated having my hair washed even more than I hated coming in the house from playing outside. Since it's not like I camp or anything ("camp" = willingly going out into the wilderness to lie on the hard ground, pee in the dirt, and drink coffee that has been, as likely as not, filtered through squares of toilet paper (yeah, yeah, I know: I'm not a City Girl, and I'm not a Country Girl. Know why? I'm way too old to be a Girl of any sort, and that means I learned long, long ago what I can tolerate (weak coffee, very little food, hours and hours of walking in the heat up to about, oh, 102 degrees) and what I cannot (bad restroom situations, other people's nastiness, bad odors, parasites of any stripe, sleeping on the ground, crazy-bad traffic). See, I'd rather not eat than eat bad food (which is why I lose weight when we travel). I'd rather not sleep than sleep somewhere where I'll wake up with a neck that won't move and pain that will last for a week (which is why I sleep so little when we travel and wake up stiff and walk pretty much like Grandpa McCoy for those first few moments in the morning) and I'd rather not go at all than go in a Bad Restroom, which explains the inevitable bladder infection.

And, oh, honeys, I am not alone. Sure, if you're young and adventurous and given to touring the world, sure: you find me an anomaly. But let me tell you, this trip has proven one thing to me, if nothing else: we're way more alike than you might think. One of the most enlightening conversations I've had was at breakfast one morning with two delightful women--two of my favorites--who were just the least little bit irritable, spooning down bowls of granola and grousing about The Good Poop. Which had deserted them, if you will. Living in a dorm, eating dinner at noon (well, actually at 5:30, but when you're used to eating at 9 pm, it SEEMS like noon, and your body is all like, "Huh?" They were riffing on The Good Poop, and if you think Regular Women don't talk about stuff like this, you need to hie you to an art retreat. Not only do they talk about it, but they make it funny and then, later, will cheerfully report to you that The Problem has resolved itself. Which could easily fall under TMI, probably. Except you're so glad to know you're not the only person who finds the whole concept of shared bathrooms just completely uncivilized. It's like urinals. What's the deal there? Who decided it was a great thing to have men pee in a row, right in front of each other? Oh, sure: if you're in basic training and are going to be shipped out to the trenches where you're going to have to pee wherever, maybe you can see it as indoctrination. But just in everyday life? Let's have some privacy, people! Bathrooms with ONE toilet, REAL walls, a LOCK on the door. An exhaust fan. Some flowers. A nice painting on the wall. . . .

Where was I? Oh: since I do not camp, the only times my hair isn't going to be washed (and my damn legs shaved) is due either to surgery or the flu. That's pretty much it, and I try to avoid both, you know? I wonder how much shampoo I've used in my life. . . .

--people have got to quit reproducing such a reckless rate. There are way, way, way too many people in the world. I have seen most of them since I left home, so I know this for a fact. At first we thought it friendly and charming that the interstates in California have rest areas with restrooms every 30 miles or so. How nice of them, to provide so many places to pee! We quickly realized they must do this not out of the goodness of their hearts but because the rest areas are always packed full of all the gazillions of sweaty fat people who are driving their huge vehicles up and down the interstates, so you have to be able to drive to the next one without misery. Good lord, what a lot of people. And here I am, in my behemoth of a vehicle and with my tiny bladder, contributing to the madness. Mea culpa.

--there is no way in hell that those kids are Michael Jackson's biological offspring, is all I'm saying. And the pretense that they are just pisses me off anew. It's bad enough that someone with serious, unhealthy body issues was a star to so many people. That's sad. And it's worse that he was financially able to indulge his self-hate by altering nearly everything about the way he looked. But the fiction that he actually became that white, so white that he could produce blond-headed, white-skinned, pale-eyed kids? Oh, sure--biracial kids can be as varied as any other kids. They can be pale or dark. They can be paler than the pale parent or darker than the dark parent, given the quirks of genetics and secret liaisons by great-grandparents. But for three kids to have absolutely no visible features at all in common with one of the parents? And for that to reinforce the fairy tale that Jackson actually succeeded in turning himself white? White enough to make white children? If he weren't dead, I'd go slap him. I should feel sorry for him, that he hated himself that much, but no. He had enough money to get some help and get better and instead chose to indulge every bit of wacko weirdness. After I slapped him, I'd put him in prison; but that's just me.

Well, you can tell what we've been doing in the evenings in our room. Good grief. Jackson's death is everywhere--on the front page of the USA Today that's given out every morning, on the news shows, the entertainment channels. Sirius has a channel for his music. Did y'all see the story about the face in the clouds? Holy crap. Not only are there way, way too many people, but a large percentage of them appear to be both gullible and just the tiniest bit totally wacked out nuts.

It reminds me of when Elvis died: we were on our honeymoon, driving home, and we heard on the radio about his death at almost exactly the moment I realized I had a raging bladder infection, the kind that sets your nether regions on fire and requires you to hit every crappy little gas station restroom along your route AND, back in the car, to sit gingerly on a soft pillow and whimper. Elvis and a bladder infection, Michael Jackson and a mammatous cloud formation.

I'll take the clouds any day, never mind that, in West Texas, those are the kind of clouds you watch for tornadoes. Maybe there's a lesson in there somewhere, but I doubt it. And so I'll leave you with those opinions as we head off to Bakersfield, where I've been at least once before, back in 1969, back when San Francisco was hip and groovy and Bakersfield was probably--although of course I don't remember it--the same Armpit our friend Debbie describes it as today. (She had a friend who was from there who said that was exactly what it was, so please do not send me whiny notes saying I'm trashing your favorite town, OK?)

But let me leave you with this: there is a completely delightful and adorable and hilariously funny artist who will forever be known to us only as That Constipated Woman from Atlanta. And when we bade each other goodbye, that last morning at breakfast, I did not wish her Happy Trails. Oh, no. You already know the wish I with which I sent her back to Georgia: Here's to The Good Poop.

No Question

I am not remotely hip enough to be in San Francisco. Or California, never mind that I once lived here. In fact, if you really want to know, I'm not remotely hip enough to even be alive in the 21st century. I'm a fucking dinosaur, OK?



I just went downstairs to get a packet of decaf, since whoever made up the room missed the whole Coffee Pot Thang. I go down and ask for a packet of decaf, and the hip young woman at the desk, who may or may not have been the same one who, this morning, had a reverse French manicure, which probably has another name but not for me: she had the tips of all her nails painted black, which looked, as you might guess, as if she'd been doing manual labor of a particularly nasty sort and hadn't had time to clean the sewage from beneath her nails--she brought the little cheap-ass packet of coffee and handed it to me and said, "No question."



I said, "?" But I said this silently, and quickly, as I immediately realized this is the natural progression from "No problem," which I've accepted and can use comfortably.



But "No question"? It felt kind of like she was giving me a pass about the interrogation, the one she had planned to administer, complete with the rusty dental tools and the guy named Claude.



Sigh.

It's been an eye-opening day, here in the city by the bay. In part, it was lovely: we had a wonderful vegetarian lunch with Debbie, a dear friend we see way, way too infrequently. We had a drink at Top of the Mark, where we talked by phone with Wendy, who is in her family cabin in upstate New York--and we're all old enough to be just the tiniest bit impressed by this: both of us being over 1000 miles away from home, in some remote-to-us place, having a phone conversation in the afternoon, complete with the 3-hour time difference.



Plus we went to Flax, where my mother used to buy my Christmas gifts, so that I went around corners and ran into things my mother gave me years and years ago. Sad, but cool.



But the overriding truth of the day is that, once again, I realized that I am not made for Real Life. I am not made to live in cities filled with people and traffic and filth and stench and men talking to their shoes and--oh, get THIS: an obviously-well-to-do white woman who leapt out of her SUV in front of the opera house and ran over to fall to her knees and puke in the ever-so-manicured lawn.

[Which, if you know me at all, you'll know ruined my entire fucking day, sending me into Panic Mode, with sweating and a stomach ache and hyperventilation and much, much ranting.]

I am Not Made For This, and I am ready to go home. I do not want to smell other people's piss and vomit and body odor--and oh, honeys, I have smelled more stale, acrid sweat in the past week than I have any need of, ever. I do not want people to ask me for money or for Jesus or for guidance. I do not want anyone to touch me. I do not want to step in things so foul that I have to wash my shoes every day.

In short, I am ready to go home. I want my regular computer, rather than this POS laptop, never mind that The EGE bought me the Top-O'-The-Line PC Laptop just two years ago--I hate it. It hates me. We cannot do anything at all together (it just restarted itself, without warning, right in the middle of this whole post).

I am made for long days of working at home, in front of the computer, and hours spent stitching on the front porch. I am made for a life of living in a town where everyone thinks I'm a freak but--get this!--leaves me alone. Where you don't run into people who, ideally, should be somewhere where someone can take care of them and clean them and feed them and make sure they're taken to the toilet and don't get lost for hours playing with their shoestrings and walking around in clothes in which they've completed all their bodily functions.

It's sad, and it's nasty, and it's disgusting and depressing and scary and hopeless and noisy and overwhelming.

I always think fondly of California, but I don't know why. I didn't like it when I lived here, and I don't like it now. I do not like big cities, and I don't like crowds. I do not like traffic. I don't like paying twice as much as I pay for things at home. I like walking in cities, and I like talking to people, but I like talking to people who are present, who know what species I am and don't think I'm their shoestrings (yes, we saw several people today who seemed to have a Thang about their shoes, yes, we did).

Sure, Midland is not the bastion of intellectual culture. It is not the place you'd go for entertainment or shopping or, gee, much of anything but religious fervor and an abiding adoration of our last appointed president. But, by god, it's also not the place where you'd constantly be bombarded by other people's issues: their mental illnesses (and I'm not talking just the street people; the well-off successful people with their suits and expensive shoes are pretty weird, too, let me tell you: at home, I'm the wacko because I talk to myself; in the Big City, I'd fit right in: they ALL seem to talk to themselves, and not in any Bluetooth sort of way) and their paranoia (these are people who lock everything they own if they're going to step two feet away; we're people who lock our door only at night, when we go to bed). Yeah, I understand the necessity of all this: I know cities are a different thing entirely.

And that's the point: I'm not made for cities. I'm not made for crowds. I'm made for a much quieter, simpler life. And, as always when I'm away from home for way too long, I can't wait to get back to it.

Sorry to rant. We've met some wonderful people, yes, we have. Kind, charming, funny, nice-smelling people. People who followed me out to the truck to tell me that I'd tucked my skirt up into my underwear. How's that for nice?

But also people who were so remote to me that I had to marvel at how I'm better able to understand and communicate with the animals at home--with the dogs--Freddie and Bella and Gus, and the cats--Angle and Humphrey and Paddington and Milo--than I ever would be with them. I know what animals are saying. These people? I had absolutely no clue.

Travel is broadening, yes, indeed. It also serves to remind you of your place in the world, should you be lucky enough to have found yours, never mind how odd and uncomfortable the fit often seems. If you're lucky enough to have found a place that seems at all like home, you're very lucky indeed.

I can't wait to get back to mine.

Hello, My Little Chickadees--From Redding, California

Hello, hello! I think I'm somewhere I've never been before. I'm not really sure, of course. Since we lived in California for a couple of years, and since we once spent several weeks driving up and down the length of the state, I may well have been here at some point. As you might guess, I have absolutely no memory of this.

I can tell you nothing of Redding. We arrived about 6 pm. It was 108 degrees, according to the thermometer in the truck. We unloaded the stuff we needed, ate almonds and cheese and drank a bottle of sparkling Spanish wine from Trader Joe's in Portland, and didn't set foot out into the hot world. Holy moly. Normally one would have to go to Midland, Texas, for 108 degrees.

Today we go to San Francisco for a couple of days. It's not very far, and we hope to find some wineries along the way. Or, rather, not too far out of the way along the way. But, since it's Monday, and since lots of places are closed on Mondays, we may be out of luck. There are some other places we hope to find and visit, but that's always sort of iffy. I'll let you know.

Art Fiber Fest--it was fabulous. Four days of riotous creativity, people from all over the world (one woman flew in from Taiwan; there were a lot of Canadians--those marvelous Canadians!). A lot of walking--Reed College is perhaps the most beautiful urban space I've ever seen. One afternoon I went down and walked along the creek, a lovely place that took me right back to the creek in Ponca City, Oklahoma, and the endless summer days I spent there.

Do I have photos? I have no clue: one morning I was standing at the espresso cart, paying for my latte, and I looked down and saw my camera on the ground. It was in its little case, so I thought nothing of it. But later, when I tried to take a photo of something fabulous, I discovered that the LCD screen was shattered. It has no alternate viewfinder, so although it appeared willing to take photographs, I had no way of knowing if that was, in fact, what it was actually doing. So I put it away. I need to get the card out and see what's on it, but eh. Later. I'm just thrilled it was my little camera and not The EGE's Official Camera--which was the whole point of the trip: for him to take photos of Art Fiber Fest.

There were lots of great things--the Wine Bottle Installation, wherein I artfully arranged all the empty bottles of all the wine drunk in our dorm over the 4 days: 38 bottles: so cute! So empty! The last night, after show and tell, I spent several hours serving as hostess, pouring wine (we took a case and bought another case from Trader Joe's) and passing snacks. Much more fun (for me) than actually drinking the wine or eating the snacks: I was happy playing hostess, plus I felt great at 5:30 the next morning, whereas some of the other celebrants were wearing their sunglasses at breakfast. I tend to be sort of an enabler A Feeder, really.

Perhaps my favorite thing was meeting the fabulous Judy Wise for lunch at The Cup and Saucer on Hawthorne Street, or, maybe, the next afternoon, when I sat at a table with Teesha and Tracy and their daughter Tiphoni, Judy, and Theo Ellsworth--that's three people (Teesha, Judy, Theo) who are in the next book, all in one place at one time. Yowza. [They were journaling; I was asking nosy questions (duh) and recording with the little recorder. Oh: and stitching. I've been doing a LOT of stitching.]

[That link for Judy's blog has some photos for you.]

There's more, of course. Lots more. But goodlordalmighty, it's a pain in the butt trying to do stuff on a laptop. Sure, I have my plug-in keyboard. But the laptop mouse! And the slowness! I get grouchy every time I have to use this. Just ranting and ranting. So I'm going to leave you to enjoy the various websites of the various cool people while we go off to see what there is to see between here and San Francisco. After that, we're off to Bakersfield, Flagstaff, and then a couple nights in Santa Fe. And then home to get a new roof, new siding, and a new internet provider. Yay!

XO

Hello, My Little Chickadees--From Salt Lake City

Yikes, what a lot of driving! I mean, a LOT. Thank god I wasn't the one doing it, right? We were on the road forfuckingever yesterday--from Albuquerque up through Colorado through Cortez (lived there) over to Utah, through Moab (lived there) and Price (lived there) and on up to Salt Lake City. Haven't ever lived here. I don't even know if I've ever BEEN here. It's weird, you know: used to I could just call one of my parents for stuff like this. Now there's nobody who knows it. And since I sure as hell can't remember it, it's lost forever.

Like that's a big deal. Nope.

Here's a photo of us standing at the Continental Divide. I had no idea about the water. Did you? Probably everybody on the planet knew that but me.

A woman got out of her SUV, which was filled with other people, and offered to take the photo. People are amazingly nice.

These are in Moab, Utah. Every lamppost along this road had these rock sculptures hanging from them, and I LOVE those. I wanted to take them all with me.

Nothing really to report here. Days of stitching in the truck and listening to CD's of Molly Ivins bashing W are a great way to spend time, but they don't much lend themselves to entertaining stories. Oh, sure, I got us ever-so-briefly lost yesterday, failing to make the non-turn in Shiprock that screwed us up and had us heading toward Farmington, waiting patiently for the highway to turn north and having it just keep on not happening. I think it was Fate, trying to force us to go to Farmington, as I'd earlier said to The EGE, "Gee, if we just went over to Farmington, we could go through four places I used to live today." So there was much bitching about the wrong turn. That would be by me, as The EGE doesn't care about stuff like that. Wrong turn? No problem: go back and take the right turn. Wanna see the Two-Headed Rattlesnake? Sure, let's turn around and go back.

Me? Holy crap. I HATE it when I make A Navigating Mistake. Drives me fucking NUTS. See, I firmly believe (although My Adoring Husband thinks this is just the teeny, tiniest bit totally wacko on my part, not that he ever says anything right out loud, like, "Jesus, do you think you could lean back and take a breath before I'm forced to crash us into the side of this mountain just to shut you up?" No. Not The EGE. He just looks at me the way people do when you say, "Wow, man, 'soup,' what a great concept! Can you believe it?")--ANYWAY--what I believe is that we've made a Pact. As in A Contract: he's agreed to drive us everywhere and not screw up (because, well, "screwing up while driving" pretty much = death and destruction), and I've agreed to make all the arrangements and get us there without getting us lost or wasting time or never, ever, EVER not knowing exactly where we are every second along the way.

Have I ever mentioned to y'all that I love maps? As in, reallyreallyreally love them? Oh, yeah, baby: I LOVE maps. Like, without even checking, and with my horrible memory, I can tell you that, to get here last night from the interstate, we took Exit 308 west, and then Exit 115 from that. I LOVE exit numbers. I can tell you at any time which direction we're driving and the name of the next town that's coming up. I'm about maps like most people are about their iPhones/Blackberries. I don't leave home without them. I favor the Rand McNally ones that show the rest areas and have all the exit numbers clearly marked, but sometimes I have to make do. Right this minute, the Atlas and Idaho and Utah are spread out on the bed. The trick for me is to look at them and get most of it in my head so that, periodically throughout the day, I can casually say things like, "Over to your left is Big Bald Mountain, which is a little over 10,000 feet."

He's not fooled, but he pretends to be impressed. No, scratch that: he IS impressed. He's impressed as hell that I remembered anything since breakfast.

Well, I could go on, but typing on this laptop just drives me crazy. I have the plugged-in keyboard, but it's a little different, too, and I can't access my Windows Live Writer account to set that up, so the whole photo thang is a pain in the butt, too.

So I'll go brush my teeth (and aren't you glad?) and get ready to get us to Boise. Well, not Boise, actually: Caldwell, which appears to be a suburb. Then, tomorrow, on to Portland.

Hope y'all are all having fun, doing exciting stuff and never getting lost along the way. Unless, of course, you actually LIKE getting lost.

Shudder.

Eye Candy

I hardly ever post any cool photos—I’m such a slacker. So when we went through The EGE’s photo cards last week, I picked out some I like a lot and thought you might enjoy. Here they are, for your Viewing Pleasure:

Some flowers that have lasted almost three weeks sitting out on the front porch in the heat. They don’t have a scent, but they’re gorgeous.

Angel Rodriquez, who lives down the block and comes to get The EGE to walk her home and feed her at least twice a day.

Humphrey, who lives next door to Angel (she loathes him). He fell asleep in the tree after this photo was taken, waiting on the squirrel to come back.

Monk and Larry.

Larry.

Larry again. I may have already posted this photo, but I love it.

A kitten who came around for about a week. The EGE saw her recently in the next block, much larger and apparently staying at home.

Candy, chillin’.

This isn’t the photo he wanted, but I love it:  it perfectly shows our relationship. I’m very cautious and make no sudden moves. Candy will come to me to be fed, but the minute she’s got that pecan, she’s out of there, just in case I get any weird ideas about trying to pet her or something.

This is what our sunsets look like. Not every day, but often enough. I didn’t do a thing to this photo except size it—no cropping, no color enhancing, nothing. Some people say the sunsets are the best things about West Texas.

XO

Albuquerque on Sunday Evening

Leighanna, I swear you made The EGE blush. Holy moly, woman:  I have to LIVE with this man!

We’ll be in ABQ on Sunday evening. We’re staying at the La Quinta here:

Albuquerque I-40 East

2424 San Mateo Blvd. N.E.

and we’re going to try to find the Trader Joe’s that’s supposed to be nearby at the Indian School Plaza. If y’all Albuquerquians are going to be around, send me a note! Sadly, La Quinta’s do not have hotel bars, which are some of my favorite places to hang out when we travel (the fancy ones, with upstairs lobbies and great views, or fireplaces, or piano players. I’m a sucker for those on a rainy evening—we’re trying out all the ones in New Orleans, a few at a time. Too bad I can’t remember the name of the hotel that has one with a great nighttime view of the river. . . .And ones with a balcony? Yowza.)

 

Hey, Warty Mammal!

The No Evil Voodoo Doll couldn’t resist your semi-salacious post and hints of adventures far beyond anything experienced here at the Voodoo Cafe. Send me your address—and, gee, a name, unless you get your mail addressed to Warty Mammal, and this baby, sans scary eyes (remember, they’ve been removed—you’ll have to think of something) will be on its way to you. Today, I hope!