Adventures in the Betty Bus

A letter to Kinikia

2012-01-11T14:07:00.000-08:00

Dear Kinikia,

Thanks for visiting my blog. I think you should scroll back to the very beginning of my adventures - July 2008 - and see just how wonderful this adventure has been. To answer your immediate questions: What with the price of gas, the low miles per gallon, the cost of overnight parking in campgrounds and such, living in a motor vehicle is still a cheaper way to go than owning a house, with its attendant taxes, upkeep and mortgage.

Of course if you buy a high end motor home, you may well have a mortgage as we do, and vehicles, as you are undoubtedly aware, decline in value far more quickly than homes.

That being said, there's nothing like the freedom you can have when you are portable. We made it our business to head for all the national parks, but we saw much more than that, too, because anywhere you go in this beautiful country there's something wonderful to see, learn about and experience.

We stayed mostly in campgrounds here and in Canada, mainly because they offer the hookups we needed for electricity, water and sewage. We did however get adventurous from time to time, and ventured off the beaten path, "dry camping" as we went. We had plenty of water in storage, and a generator running off the motor gave us lights and even television if we wanted. Our gas was propane, so cooking wasn't a problem, even in a snowstorm, which we ran into twice. We stayed warm and cozy and thoroughly enjoyed being stranded for a couple of days. Having packed no winter gear to speak of, we layered up, wore two of everything and faced the weather. And this was maybe 50 miles from San Diego!

After three years of turtle living, we decided we needed dirt -- and for me, a pool -- so we bought a home in Florida. We love it here, and are enjoying the equally pleasurable benefits of living in one place and getting to know our neighbors, putting in plants and swimming in our, of course, pool.

Our only conundrum now is the fact that we have this gorgeous coach sitting idle in a storage facility. We've decided to sell our baby, and rent when and if we get the wandering bug again. Two mortgages at our age is just plan silly.

Maybe you should come and take a look at it. Better yet, I've got a whole file of pictures I can email you. It's a real beauty and I'd love to have somebody nice to take it out of lockdown for a while. What do you say?

Best Regards,
Betty

Coming Home

2011-03-08T16:26:00.000-08:00

Holt Florida
Just outside of Pensacola

There is something about dirt and sticks and mortar and permanence that makes the heart beat faster. Even if you’ve never set foot in a place, if that place is your own, it can engender such tender feelings, such commitment, such incredible loyalty as to defy ordinary reason.

Such are the feelings I am dealing with, a mere five hours away from my new house in Palm Coast, Florida.

Never mind that I have spent the last four days on line, researching fire pits, chairs, curtains, bed frames and bookcases. Never mind that in my mind I have entirely rearranged four rooms in this house that I have lived in for all of one and a half weeks. It is mine, mine, mine, and I can’t wait to get there and make it my own.

Despite the face that some rooms remain empty, I will change two of the rooms I have already decorated. I will depend on Craig’s list to get rid of the old memories in favor of the new memories I hope to create. I’ll sell the hutch and buy a marble top for the buffet. It’s cooler, and more modern. I’ll move the guest room to another location, so that I can put in a lovely bureau, all the better to feel comfortable and welcome when you visit. I’ll even move the entire dining room, the one room that has a full complement of furniture, to the living room, sell the table and spend money on a glass-topped table that will be a showpiece for all who enter the front door.

Flexibility is the word, and change is the option I embrace with enthusiasm. My family room will be modern, oh joy, with one solidly antique chair to defy the convention that modern means cool, spare and mostly, uncomfortable.

I will spend whatever it takes to put in that punch of yellow, that statement of my individuality. A color I have never ever used, but it will probably end up looking like all the rooms I have ever decorated, I’m afraid. We are who we are, after all.

But meanwhile, this is so exciting. Sitting in a bus I will not live in for at least three months, the longest stretch in over three years. Anticipating that I have all the money in the world, and all the options in creation, to create the dream home of my future. Except that now is my future, and the reality is, it had better be functional and comfortable, or my husband will put the kibosh on my grand schemes, at the risk of his taking up residence in the bus in storage.

But nobody, yes nobody can rain on my parade. Hey Mr. Arnstein, I’m almost home.

Zoned in the Zones

2011-03-02T11:43:00.000-08:00

Route 10 from Phoenix
To Benson AZ

Although we have both said that we are in a real hurry to get home to our new little home—one we have lived in for a week and a half of the four months we’ve owned it—we are only going two and a half hours down the road today.

We’ll be stopping in Benson, AZ, on the border of New Mexico, at a strange little resort whose main attraction is its homemade planetarium. We stopped there a couple of years ago, and while staring at the stars is something I do regularly, the night of the star gazing was one of the most painfully boring I have ever experienced.

It had mainly to do with people’s politeness. Instead of lining up for a quick peek into the telescope, as we impatient New Yorkers would undoubtedly have done, these gentle folk remained seated, each in turn toddling up to the step stool, gingerly mounting it, putting an eye to the scope and observing the faraway constellations, all the while murmuring their awe and admiration in appropriately hushed tones. The little building wasn’t heated, and after the warm daytime sun, it was darned chilly. Each constellation took the group of 13—note the number—at least half an hour to view. And there were five to see that night.

And that doesn’t catalog the guy with the night blindness, who had to be escorted up and back from his seat, by his equally doddering wife. Oh the pain.

So hearing that Benson was our intended stopover, I sweetly asked why my dear husband was choosing to map such a short trip for the day—bearing in mind that, you know, we wanted to get home. Here’s what he said, knowing full well what a wonderful time I’d had the last time we were there.

“We need to take short trips when we change time zones, so our bodies will get used to the shift in time.”

Now that’s creative. That’s also ridiculous, given that each time change involves only an hour, but I have to give the guy credit. He’s nuts for astronomy and has been talking about going back to Benson since we were there, but he never would want to appear so selfish as to deny my need for speed and stop at a place I so volubly disliked.

Oh wait. Maybe he’s right. I’m feeling confused right now. Is it eleven o’clock? Ten? Twelve? Is it really Wednesday? Maybe It’s Thursday! If so, it’s my birthday. OMG, I wonder if this time zone thing can work for years too. Maybe I just got younger. Oh Calloo Callay, oh frabjous day, maybe I’ll be four years younger by the time we hit Florida. If that’s true, then Hello Benson! I’ll be staying here a few days longer.

I just love them stars.

She’s baaaaaaack!

2011-03-01T12:03:00.000-08:00

Route 10
From Desert Hot Springs CA
to Phoenix AZ

After a long spell of nothing, I finally have regained my muse and will be writing again of our travels. First, however, let’s catch up.

After almost three year of hitting the road, we bought a house in Florida. Why? Because the price was right, the pool was there, and although we are still in love with this exploration that has become our life, we also began to feel the need for seed … and dirt and walls and rooms to go hide in. We were in our new little castle for exactly one and a half weeks, and then we got in the bus again and headed for San Francisco and Christmas with Jeff.

It was a lovely holiday with our beloved son, and from there we headed South to the desert, where we spent a wonderful couple of weeks with our friends Irwin and Randy, playing cards, eating too much and generally having fun. We did a little exploring too, including a tram to the top of the highest mountain in Palm Springs, and a drive to the tippity top of another peak, from which we could see the entire Coachella Valley which comprises Palm Springs, Palm Desert, Indian Wells, Rancho Mirage and more, undoubtedly the priciest desert in the world. And breathtaking as long as it isn’t raining and making foot-wide ruts in the roads. Which it does from time to time.

We took off from LA to Cabo San Lucas in the Baja of Mexico, that little finger of heaven that sits between the Sea of Cortez and the Pacific Ocean. There in Paradise, we spent four weeks of complete hedonism, soaking the sun into our old bones, regrouping with Joyce and Marty, Robin and Rodney, and yes, eating and drinking too much. It was colder than we’d experienced before, but when cold is 65 degrees, you put up with it and try not to complain too much. The highlight of the trip was a whale watching tour, something we do every year. We didn’t see a lot of whales--actually saw more from our patio overlooking the ocean—but we did get to watch a family of humpbacks, including the father, very unusual, and the new baby born the previous day. Amazing.

We landed back on US soil on Saturday, took a couple of days to hang with Irwin and Randy, do copious amounts of laundry, pick up Zeus at the dog sitter and check out the bus. Right now, we’re driving on the mostly boring Route 10, and expect to land in phoenix by nightfall, where John has promised to help me replace the entire selection of needlepoint threads I accidentally left by the pool the day I decided to indulge in Happy Hour, where the Margaritas were two-for-one. If drinking and driving are a no-no, then drinking and sewing should be too. Ach! All that beautiful silk thread, purchased with such care, and more beautiful colors you’ve never seen. Not to mention what they cost. I don’t want to think about that.

And here we come round to the reason I haven’t written in so long. Needlepoint! Blame it on that blast from the past, when we were young, and all the pillows on our couches were made by hand and whole shops opened in honor of the fad, with canvases that sold as high as hundreds of dollars. And let’s not even discuss Bargello, which came and went like the maxi, midi and minis that were popular at that time.
I got into needlepoint shortly after I convinced John that a needlepoint canvas was as much fun as, if not more than, hooking rugs. I was up to my ears in the damn rugs, as he was turning them out faster than I could find surfaces to lay them on. The man is certainly goal-oriented, that’s for sure.

So I got him into needlepoint, and he took it up with a fever, and then I went to a shop in South Hampton, as much to keep a worried eye on his expenditures for his craft as anything else, and ended up buying a small, exquisite painting of a seashell canvas for myself. And that’s when I stopped writing. I’d found a new, old, way to waste time creatively.

And I guess I’m a lot like Erma Bombeck, who confessed that she’d do anything to avoid writing, including polishing her paper clips. If you’ve ever cleaned the lint between the keys on your keyboard rather than, oh say, start a term paper, then you know the feeling.

But I have no thread anymore! I think God is reminding me of my true calling and letting me know that it’s only eight months until the next Writer’s Convention, where I promised myself I’d have my book finished and reading for the agents, editors and publishers I’ll hook up with to make me famous and rich.

Not that I have any pretensions or aspirations at this point in my life. Right. And where would Grandma Moses have been if she’d believed that.

Maybe I should tell John to skip that store in Phoenix.

B

Jeff & Keith's Tree

Dad & Son

The Christmas Dog is exhausted

John, Irwin & Randy

Shannon's Birthday at Irwin & Randy's House

Me & Shannon

Joyce in relaxed mode, setting up the evening Scrabble game

The Arch at Cabo

Whale Watching

Out on the Ocean

Me, John & Marty

2011-01-13T21:45:00.000-08:00

Dear Kevin,

Glad you have made the jump and are now looking forward to launch.

Many RV resorts have Internet. I'd even say, most do. Some don't, but that number is shrinking. However, you may want to use your computer while your significant other is at the wheel. If your whole life is your connection to the outside world, then you will want an Internet key. Otherwise, you can just wait and see if the place you're stopping at has Internet. And if it does, what does it cost? And if it is free, does it really work? These are all things we addressed during our first six months on the road.

I have a Verizon cellphone, and my husband has Sprint. I was able to contract for an Internet key with Verizon, and it gives me Internet connectivity wherever my phone works -- which is just about everywhere. it took me 3 keys before I truly bought that you had to take care of your plastic thingys or they will break and it will cause you grief. Now I am careful to handle my USB thingy carefully and I am happy to report that all is good, with very very few exceptions. It adds about $60 a month to my phone bill, but I am glad to pay it, as my writing, research and communicating with the rest of the world is of premium importance to me.

John just got a Droid with wifi capability included and adds only $20 a month to his bill. (He has Sprint.) But that involved buying a new phone, and I am not, seriously not, an early adopter, so I will have to see if that works for him before I upgrade to a real phone, my current flip phone being quite ancient in today's hi-tech universe. But hey, it works for me, and while I can't text with ease, I still like it. For another month, anyway. My birthday may signal a move up the ladder. (And I won't have to pay. There's a method to my old-fashionedness.)

So do you want to add $60 to your current phone bill and live with that? Or do you want a new phone that costs $Bazillion and has that capability at $20 a month. Either way, if you're living full time in a bus, this is one expense you may want to bear. It really depends on just how connected you want to be. But if you asked, I think I already know the answer to that one.

Happy travels. Stay in touch. I wish you many many days of wonderful experiences.
And no calls from anybody wanting money. Hey, we're retired, y'know?

Best wishes,
Betty

Don't Miss Places I've Been To

2011-01-13T17:00:00.000-08:00

Dear Anonymous,

Thanks for reading my blog. I sure wish you'd told me your name. You know mine. And this blog doesn't allow for private replies, so here are my suggestions for must-do's in the Colorado and nearby areas.

The most wonderful place in the US to visit could well be the Grand Canyon, unless of course you're in Wyoming and in sight of the Grand Tetons. Then of course there's always Yellowstone with its thousands of geysers, wildlife roaming at will, and spectacular views from virtually every point in the park.

Of course, that ignores South Dakota's unbelievable and immense and breathtaking Mt. Rushmore, probably the world's best-kept national treasure, and situated in the world's most interesting forest, a place where getting lost is a gift you must give yourself.

Denver didn't rock my world, by the way. I preferred Colorado's ski towns, and Pike's Peak where for some reason only a sugar donut and coffee could help me cope with the rarified atmosphere.

All in all, most of what I have enjoyed are gifts of Mother Nature, not the accomplishments of man, but then again, that would ignore all the fabulous museums like Atlanta's, all the gorgeous buildings and amazing bridges I've seen. And Canada. I loved Eastern Canada, and have Western Canada on my bucket list.

Today I took a tram up to the top of a mountain in, of all places, Palm Springs, California. I marveled at both the mountain and the tram that took us up there, a feat of engineering only the Swiss could have performed. The inside floor rotated so that everybody could have a 360 degree view twice during the ride. And that was just one little activity of many that have had a lasting impact. I came back to the coach and watched Judge Judy. Talk about culture shock.

Go. Experience. Have some destinations, and national parks are great places to head for, but along the way, open your eyes and your door to things you haven't anticipated. Otherwise, I wouldn't have seen that Indian village completely built into a cliff, where they pulled the ladders up each night to keep marauders out, and I would have missed the Petrified Forest, where every dead tree is a gem of inestimable value. I'd heard of it, but didn't even know where it was until we stumbled across it. Sometimes the accidents are as much fun or more than the events you've planned.

Have a great time, and please do let me know how your trip was. And please don't sign your letter Anonymous. I have more Anonymous friends than I can deal with at this point, and I'd love to know which one you are.
Love
Betty

Danger, Will Robinson!

2010-12-29T10:21:00.000-08:00

Pacifica, CA
Outside of San Francisco

We are sitting on a cliff by the sea, and the inevitability of its collapse is weighing on my mind. The water is rough, pounding our cliff, and the winds are so high as to rock us from side to side, alternately terrifying and lulling us to sleep. It’s been like this for almost 48 hours. Last night the sign on the fence that said, “Danger. Do not go beyond this sign. Cliff is unstable,” blew off and fell into the sea.

I have already formulated a plan in my mind for escaping the bus and running behind it to move the car so John can back up in a hurry, should the inevitable happen while we are parked here, in the best and most treacherous spot in the park. We have a 180 degree view of the Pacific with no impediments, but that also means there’s nothing between us and the water.

A few years ago, the Pacific claimed an entire row of houses on the street next to our cliff. Now there’s a whole row of apartments a block down that’s been condemned, despite the fact that three times this year the town dumped mega-tons of boulders at the water’s edge. Obviously the sea will not be denied. Obviously there will be a year when our preferred spot at the water’s edge will be unavailable simply because it’s just not there anymore.

I just hope it doesn’t happen today.

The real culprit is the rain, which has been pouring down for not just days, but weeks. The sun is shining now, but the sky is otherwise grey and the fog is rolling in, as it has at least twice a day since we’ve been here. It’s just so San Francisco.

And now it’s raining. That’s all it took. One paragraph, and it's pouring again.

I think I’ll back up now. Why wait for me to prove me right. I don’t need to say, “See? I told you so” to myself, now do I.

Christmas Eve in the Bus

2010-12-24T11:08:00.000-08:00

Pacifica, CA
Just South of San Francisco

What you've heard about the rains in Southern California is true. It rained for over a week while we passed through. We were silly enough to get both the bus and the car washed during a break in the deluge, but it rained steadily on our trip north to San Francico and both arrived covered in mud. Then again, there were moments like these, when the clouds would part, and the blue of the real sky would peek through.

Quite magnificent.

We have been in Pacifica for two days now, and the weather is holding, although it's forecast to make us wish for an ark on Christmas day, tomorrow. We're parked right on the ocean with a view that is a gift in itself, and I learned yesterday that the cliff is eroding and promises to lose another six feet in the next heavy rain. We may just back up a bit, since that could be a Christmas gift to rival all the bad ties and Chia Pets you've ever received.

But even in our comparatively small space, the Christmas spirit reigns. You make do as best you can, and live in happy chaos, as you will see. We always buy too much wrapping paper, and then have a small competition as to who has purchased the best paper. We all have our traditions, and this is one of ours. Last year I bought a small live tree, but even a three foot tree is too big for a bus, so I put it up outside. Unfortunately this time of year is the blowingest of all San Francisco seasons, and all it did was fall over. So this year I opted for a different holiday touch. People have been passing by and photographing it, go figure.

With all the huzzah and wrapping and stacking, Zeus can't figure out where to go. He keeps lying down on crinkly paper and getting upset. Right now he's standing on the back of the couch, the only place without bows, paper, ribbons or to-be-wrapped.

I guess Christmas just isn't a dog's ideal holiday. Too much craziness and no place to rest. But by this time tomorrow, it will be all over and things will begin to settle down. We'll store the extra paper, so that next year we will forget and buy more, and end up, as always, with too much. Some traditions just keep on happening.

Merry Christmas
Love
Betty

A Houseful of Good Wishes

2010-12-22T11:22:00.000-08:00

On the Road
Bakersfield to San Francisco

My New Zealand cousin Jenny Jeffares tells me my blog is getting moldy, and I can see how that could be true. First of all, after almost three years, not so much is new about this RV living. Wake up, make coffee, see who emailed me, shower, dress, wash the dishes, make the bed, get going on the day. Gee, sounds like a house, doesn’t it.

Speaking of which, we slapped our retirement account in the face by buying a sweet house in Florida, somewhere we could go and have down time in. With everything I had hoped for, including a beautiful pool. I have visions of a dinner party with the pool lighted and candles all around. Oh it will be lovely.

But when will it happen? Now that’s a good question. Right now, we’re in California for Christmas with Jeff, then we’ll head to Palm Springs, then Quartzsite Arizona for a rally of Beaver Coach owners, even though we’ve sold ours. We’re still FOB – Friends of Beavers. And besides, Quartzsite is near friends Irwin and Randy, and has wonderful Southwestern beads straight from China at amazing prices. Then in February we’ll go back to LA and fly to Cabo for a Mexican month. We won’t even be back to our little house until mid-March.

My book has been stalled since we bought this house and I am feeling guilty about losing momentum, especially since there has been some interest in it from a couple of publishers. But the thrill of making a home and furnishing it has been all-consuming. It’s just not something you want to do online, although you can buy just about anything online, including a couch.

Tomorrow is Jonathan’s birthday; he would have turned 40. It’s been seventeen years since he joined the angels in heaven, but it still feels new, especially around this time of year. He was the best Christmas present I ever got, and Jeff was the best Birthday present. And you wonder why I love the holidays so much.

JONATHAN

JEFFREY

We’ll go out to dinner with Jeff and Hannah to celebrate his life and toast him in heaven. It will be a happy-sad time, but it is our tradition and we wouldn’t miss it.

Then there are all the gifts to wrap, a more modest selection than in years past, but there’s that house to furnish, remember. And besides, as we grow more and more golden, as in golden years, stuff just doesn’t do it so much anymore. We’re really about experiences, as evidenced by this peripatetic lifestyle. Look it up; it’s a great word.

So maybe for Jeff’s birthday, we’ll give him an experience – like a week at our new house in Florida, did I mention we bought a house?

I’d like to bake some cookies, but probably won’t get around to it. My oven works, but the tray is so small it takes hours just to make a couple of dozen. Besides, I always eat up half of what I’ve baked before they’ve even cooled. And I’m boring. There aren’t any cookies worth baking except chocolate chip. I made them with macadamia nuts from one of those frozen mixes last week and man, my eyes crossed with the pleasure of each bite.

So here I travel, currently cookie-less but salivating as I write this, and the California rains keep acomin’. Lordy, it’s wet. It’s been pouring here all up and down the state for a week or more. There are mudslides everywhere, road closings and collapses, and it’s neither warm enough or dry enough. I’m wearing socks for the first time in two years and I’m still cold to the bone.

Zeus is under his blanket and John’s wearing a sweater. Boy is he ever going to love his Christmas sweater. It’s perfect for this weather. Jeff will love his too. It’ll probably be his eleventh grey sweater; that boy is in a rut. Christmas sweaters is another tradition I just can’t break with, house or no house. I’ll just have to forego that guest room headboard. You won’t care, will you?

Merry Christmas everyone.
Love
Betty

Where in the World

2010-11-05T08:24:00.000-07:00

As Lisa would say, Hello My Facebook Friends. Or rather, blogger readers.

I've never met anyone more upbeat than Lisa, my sister-in-law Donna's sister. Except maybe Peggy Mascia, who would call the devil sweetheart, kiss his cheek and turn him into an angel in 30 seconds flat.

I've learned a lot from these two about the power of happiness. It's about being happy, not waiting for happiness to show up. You'd be at the bus station a long time if you did that.

We're happily on the road again, leaving behind for a week or so the mortgage commitment, house inspection, door repair and furniture purchases, the arranging for the move of what's left of our old house that is in storage, and the trip to NY to oversee same. For now, we're just lazin' along, headed southerly on the west coast of Florida.

We should hitch up with Tony and Ellen, Art and Marge (or as I have always called them, Mart and Argie) this weekend, and then Nancy and Gary next week. So it will be a lovely Tarrytown reunion all around. I will collect all the latest townie gossip from Tony, who seems plugged into the local news there, pass it on to John, and we will bask in the glow of old friendships. That silver and gold thing is true, by the way. Old friends are golden.

Actually we're mostly gray, but we won't talk about that.

We had hoped to do the East Coast of Florida, but our new home calls to us and we need to be around, so it will be a quick trip back up to North Florida, where it was still in the 80's until the rain last night that cooled everything off. I wouldn't call this Fall, but it's nice to have a long sleeved shirt on. My t-shirts are looking awfully boring to me at this point. I need some variety.

Boy, I sure am boring if all I have to talk about is t-shirts and the banality of what I put on my back. I'll try and be more interesting next time. Meantime, I'm off to add a few words to the book. I only have 80,000 more to go. Piece a' cake.

Love to everybody.
B

Elegy in a Country Bus

2010-10-31T14:14:00.000-07:00

How long I have been soldiering on?
Seems like ages you’ve been gone.
Tears, regrets, remorse have I
There’s just no sparkle in my eye
No sunshine glint here any more
Only dullness at the core
Nothing helps, I have to say
I know. I've tried. But life's still grey.
No matter how I try to shine
Nothing works if you’re not mine
I miss you so, I need you too
Just how much, I never knew
Water spots and soapy rings
Brillo marks on everything...
O shining platters, sparkling glass
O dishwasher, I miss your ass.

Pennies from Heaven

2010-10-07T14:56:00.000-07:00

Pueblo Bonito Sunset Beach Resort
Cabo San Lucas, Mexico

I’m sitting poolside at the top of a little mountain in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. My son and his novia Hannah are beside me and they appear to be in love. She’s just the girl I have been hoping for and I already love her to pieces. My husband is deep into his book and has that “soon to be asleep” look on his face. Life couldn’t get any sweeter than it is.

Or so I thought.

Then I finally got into a wi-fi zone here at the resort and read my emails, and there among all the ads, real estate notices for hovels in South Hampton, requests to have my long-dead Jeep in for service, and suggestions that I check out some of the fabulous bargains on eBay, there in the middle of the morass was a letter from Penny.

Now I don’t even know Penny, but she made my day, let me tell you. I have gotten rather lazy and distracted lately, especially since my pathetic attempts at making jewelry have met a measure of success – I mean, a necklace for a rock group, what a coup! And people are ordering my Baby Mama Bracelet for wives, grandmothers and baby shower gifts. I’m a happy puppy.

But like Erma Bombeck, who used to polish her paper clips rather than get down to the business of writing, I have been using any and all excuses to not do what I really should do. At least that’s what the universe appears to be telling me. Write, they say, and so I should.

And I’ve been getting away with it, despite prompts from the dedicated blog readers among my friends and family. Yeah, sure, sure. I’ll get to it. It’s just that we’re going to Mexico. And it’s just that I have to make these five necklaces for the Gregg Rolie Band and none of the parts came in, so I have to scramble to make the due date. And it’s just that I’m sitting by the pool and so on and so on.

Then Penny, my email angel, comes from out of the ether and lets me know she’s disappointed in my performance. I haven’t been living up to my promise to chronicle this bumpy life of mine since we committed to the turtle life, i.e, living with our home on our backs and traveling these United States.

I’ve never met this angel, but I will be forever grateful to her, and to all those people who have been following my blog and reminding me that I still have a job to do. I had no idea that people who’ve never met me might just enjoy what I had to say.

The truth is, I’m writing a book, a novel, and basing some of her adventures on my own travels and travails in the Betty Bus. My heroine is a woman whose husband abruptly leaves her after 17 years of marriage and …. Well, you’ll just have to wait for the book, won’t you.

Penny’s little nudge about the blog was that shot of confidence I needed to continue on with the first rewrite of the first half of the book, which I’d decided just wasn’t good enough. Rewrites are daunting but if I can make this book really, really funny, maybe Penny and people like you will be interested in buying, borrowing or downloading it. Or stealing it. If Abby Hoffman didn't care, why should I.

So thanks Penny. You’ve done me a big favor, and I appreciate it. And I promise. I’ll write again soon. I' not done with these adventures of mine, for sure.

Your new BFF.
Betty

A Nation of Hairdressers

2010-08-18T10:03:00.000-07:00

Illinois, headed for Wisconsin

I am a natural blonde. Or I was, once. When I was born my hair was so white, people compared me to Brad Pitt in that movie where he goes from old to young over the course of his life. Okay, that movie wasn’t out yet, but where do you think they got the idea?

I was a towhead for all my growing up years, and I soon became aware of its color, its silkiness and its length. For a chubby kid, my hair was my beauty spot and if I didn’t particularly like my eight-year-old figure, I could always revel in my head with its long silky locks.

It darkened over time, of course. Nobody has that kind of hair when they’re past puberty. Or rather, nobody comes by it naturally. Sorry, Britney Spears, your secret is out.

My hair is naturally wavy, not curly or straight, and very susceptible to humidity, which sort of puts me in nowhere land, style-wise. In college I used to iron my hair. Or wrap it around toilet paper rolls. The problem was, I’d fall asleep on them and wake up with crushed toilet-paper-roll hair. You don’t want to know.

I got married, had a baby, then another, and my hair grew gradually darker. Dark blonde, I was, by then. And then I hit 40 and welcomed my first white hairs. Like my grandmothers on both sides, I never had grey hair. It went from blonde to white. Which was kind of cool for a while, except that eventually the white started asserting itself a bit too much for me, so I began to color it. I found a great colorist at Frederic Fekkai, a name you might have heard of, who only charged me $250 to put my “real” color back.

That got old pretty fast, and I switched to Barbara, then Louise, then Kit, then Barbara again, because she was the best of the lot. Not a $250 hairdresser, but not cheap either. Then I retired and “fixed income” took on real meaning, so I began to get to know Miss Clairol. I found that Monsieur L’Oreal delivered a better product, so I switched again.

But remember, I live in a bus, where the water is pumped in from outside, and you are at the mercy of that campground guy with the beer belly and suspenders, oily t-shirt and sweaty brow, who may just think that recycled or heavy salinated water is just as nice as softened water and a lot cheaper, so as good as your dye job is, the water may make it look like straw anyway.

First we bought a water softener, then we bought a whole new bus with a built-in water softener. That helped a little. But still I longed for the good old silky shiny days.

So I ventured outside the bus and got to know small town USA salons.

I’ve had my hair done in thousands, okay hundreds, of small towns, at prices ranging from $32 to $175, and let me tell you a $175 job isn’t a whole lot better than a $32 job. More importantly, it’s interesting to see what various hairdressers call blonde.

Gary in Florida, who came highly recommended, and whose salon looked like a cross between an Egyptian palace and a 20’s bawdy house, decided blonde was dark brown with white stripes. Wide white stripes.

Gina in Ohio tut-tutted over that one, and decided the only way to fix it was to cross-hatch the dark color as it grew out. I was plaid for a few weeks. Not to worry. I went to CVS and bought a $9.99 hank of fake hair and tacked it onto the back of my slicked-back hair. It was 104 degrees in Kentucky, so it was cooler that way, anyway.

Mary up in Syracuse seemed to know her stuff. Then she smiled and revealed a single front tooth. My color looked like a single tooth would work with it. Hey, no problem. I washed it right away, and some of the orange came out.

Ralph in Pacifica, just below San Francisco, gave me brown for Christmas. He kept asking me for my number. He was gay, so I was confused Turned out colors are numbered and he wanted to know if I was a 6, 7, 8 or 9. I think he made me a 5. As in brunette. My husband thought it was “different” but my son was not amused. He’s the honest one in the family.

I’m headed back to New York, eventually, where I’m hoping Barbara hasn’t retired to the world of punk rock with a little punk rock baby – I know her other life and it scares me, but she can cut and she can color.

I’m going to ask her about a Brazilian. Not a person, and not what you’re thinking of, but a new hair process that makes your frizzy, dry, unkempt hair exceptionally long and strong, sleek and chic. You have to put up with lank for three days while it does its thing but you emerge a diva and your hair is lush, full and glorious. I’ve heard it costs $350, and this is way out of the ballpark, but maybe all my friends who’ve done it are lying. You never know.

Meanwhile, you’d love how my glasses, all three pair of them, one for reading, one for sun, and one for driving, hold back my mop, hide the streaks and generally give me the look of a cool, confident “I’m worth it” woman.

And I am. In a small-town kind of way.

Camptown Lady

2010-08-13T08:01:00.000-07:00

Natural Springs Resort County Park
Owensboro, Kentucky

You’d think it would be easy.

You pull into a beautiful county park. It looks deserted. The temperature is 104 at 4 in the afternoon. There are lakes galore. A pool. Golf carts. A horse in a corral. Even a go-cart setup.

The office has a snack bar that promises grilled cheese, burgers and other assorted deadly American food. Perfect. We won’t have to cook. We can park, have a swim, grab a burger and watch TV in the air conditioning and go to bed refreshed. There’s a country music concert on Saturday night that promises to be fun.

I’m excited for this break in the long hours of driving.

There’s a nice lady behind the registration counter. John gets a spot. We drive half way to California and there it is. With a nice view of the dumpster. And trees that make it impossible for him to negotiate the turn. In this huge park, isn’t there something nicer?

I drive our little tow car back to the office and ask, sweetly, if there might be something else. But with 50 amps of electricity. We need that much to run the AC.

“Wayl,” she says, “Let’s see. Y’see, that’s the problem. I don’t have much that can accommodate your vee-hickle. But maybe …”

“I just don’t want to be near the dump, “ I say. “How abut that one right there?” I say, pointing to a lovely spot overlooking a small lake right across from the office.

“Oh, that one is too small for you.” She says.

“No, I’m sure it’s fine, “I say. “I checked it out.”

“No, your car won’t fit.”

“I’ll park the car in the parking lot.”

“No, let’s see if there’s something else. Now here’s a spot that has everything you need, but there’s someone coming in tomorrow.”

“That’s perfect,” I say, “We’re leaving in the morning.” A sudden decision. I can miss the concert. At this point, I just want to be back in the air conditioning with my pajamas on. This whole negotiating thing has taken almost 20 minutes. I’ve left out the part about 7 spots that were offered and then retracted for one reason or another.

“No,” she says, “that one’s reserved.”

“But for tomorrow,” I say. “We’ll leave early. I promise.” Now I’m planning getting up at dawn. John will love this one.

“No,” she says, staring at her computer screen, apparently mesmerized. “That’s not gonna work for me.”

The negotiations continue. This one doesn’t have 50 amps, this one is booked, this one has too many trees, this one has someone coming in for the weekend. The weekend! It’s only Thursday and we’re only staying for one night! Half a night! Twenty minutes! I’m getting desperate.

Finally, among at least two hundred empty sites, she finds one. It’s a pull-thru, yes! With 50 amps, yes! With no satellite or cable, because this is the country, honey. Fine, I’ll do without.

John can’t figure out what’s taking so long. He drives the bus over to the office and the nice lady shows him on the map of the campground, the precious, one-of-a-kind spot. We head for it.

It’s a nice spot on a little hill with a view of, oh I don’t know, something acceptable, I guess. We pull in, set up, and hook up. And nothing. Nothing works. We don’t have electricity. It’s not working. We’re going to die in this heat, in this giant coffin. Even the dog is grumpy now.

Half an hour later, the bus is an oven, but the camp’s handyman has fixed the problem. Oh joy. We eschew the burger, drown our sorrows in beer, ice-cold from our own refrigerator, and wait for the cool to kick in. Ah, there it is.

It happens that we’ve pulled into another time zone, so we could stay up an extra hour, but instead, we hop under the covers with our books and read until the eyelids begin to shutter. After all, tomorrow is another day and, since we’re leaving, another campground. We need our beauty sleep.

We’ll have to be fresh for the next round of negotiations.

Compliments to Mother Nature

2010-08-08T08:07:00.000-07:00

On Rte 90 heading for Hudson, Ohio

A few days ago, when we were in Connecticut, Laurie and Mark Johnson very sweetly asked us if we would like to join them for dinner on their anniversary, that night. We declined, saying we'd been (pity) pre-invited by Pam and Dick, but thanked them for offering to share their special day with us. Imagine. Two pity invites in one day. We certainly are worth feeling sorry for, obviously.

Instead, we are now headed for Hudson Ohio, to which they've only just returned, to keep the dinner date and celebrate their anniversary belatedly. On my sister Kathy's birthday, ironically. (Why that is ironic I can't tell you. Maybe coincidentally is the better word, but it certainly isn't as interesting.)

After all my carping about the hot weather last month, I felt it incumbent on me to remark on Mother Nature's recent gift of low temperatures, low humidity and high clouds in blue sky. It's been fabulous, hasn't it. And great sleeping weather. We kept all the shades up so the breeze could waft through our bedroom, which also meant the sun showed up earlier than I wanted, waking most of the campground.

Why is it that some people think 5 in the morning is not the nighttime? Why do they insist on walking their pooches at that hour ... and talking to them in full outside voice? "Good boy, nice poopie, good dog, ready for a run? Yeehah! Let's go!"

Do they really think the dog is interested in their patter at that hour? My dog hears it, wurfs in his sleep, adjusts, then goes right back to snoring. Now that's a dog worth having, let me tell you. And I never have to give him a poop pep talk. He just does it. Then again I watch Cesar Millan regularly and know all about dog psychology. My dog is in balance, as Cesar would observe. And being an old dog, he likes to sleep late, same as his owners.

Nevertheless, it was nice to get up and brew a cuppa early in the morning and enjoy the rising sun, the sweet breeze and the pearls of dew on the grass outside. Not to mention doing the NYT Sunday Crossword on line. I'll bet Joyce and Pam and Dick and Maggie and Fred haven't even started yet. Heh heh.

Okay, now I'm going back to sleep. John's driving, the road is flat and wide, and my eyes are closing. It's 11 in the morning. Time for my nap. Obviously.

B

The Dropping of the Other Shoe

2010-08-03T13:14:00.000-07:00

Not Lake Placid

I knew it couldn't last.

We are not in Lake Placid. We are not camped on a serene lake with view. We are in a KOA Kampground (sic) in a heavily wooded area in the town next to Lake Placid with no view. There is a busload of French Canadian kids camped out nearby with what appears to be all of two adults with them.

Our first site was a muddy slope which assured us we'd never ever be able to level this monolith. It's just too big for the world. Went back and requested another site. It took almost half an hour, but we were moved to the site next door. Fine.

John backed the bus straight into a tree and put a three-inch crack in our fiberglass hull as I ran up to him, arms waving, yelling stop stop stop. He didn't didn't didn't.

I opened the door and he looked at me and said, "I hate this place already."

I suspect we'll be coming home early.

Stay tuned.
Betty

A Three State Day

2010-08-03T09:12:00.000-07:00

From CT through MA to NY Upstate

I have been home with friends and family (too briefly with family) for much of July, and after numerous dinners out, reunions by the score, two bridal showers, a baby shower and a funeral, we are once again on the road, headed for someplace I’ve heard about all my life, but have never seen: Lake Placid.

The bus is behaving well, nothing has fallen out of the refrigerator, and our little Honda is tagging along behind us with no surprises. I’m unfamiliar with all this serenity. Why isn’t the dog barking? Why isn’t anyone passing us on the wrong side? Why isn’t some trucker giving us the finger just because we are also driving a big rig and didn’t have to go to trucker school or get a special license?

All this peace is making me nervous.

We aren’t even arguing about driving skills or lack thereof. Am I asleep? Is this a dream?

No, it’s just one of those perfect days when it all seems to fall into place and Bad Luck takes a holiday from the Betty Bus.

I guess we’re just getting ready for Lake Placid. La dee da.

Grumpy Hot Friday

2010-06-25T16:20:00.000-07:00

Croton Point Park

If this isn’t the worst Friday night I have ever spent in my life, it has got to be up there with those others that for now I don’t remember, grumpy as I am with this particular one. No, I’m not complaining.

Yes I am! Of course I’m complaining. I have a right to. I didn’t ask for this Friday night, and I didn’t expect it. I just got it. John is away and I'm dealing with this all by myself.

First of all, it’s 92 degrees in this bus. I am wearing as little as I can without becoming a campground stripper, but it doesn’t do much good. The washcloth I soaked with cold water is actually mildewing as I write. It’s so hot the dog took a nap at nine this morning and hasn’t stirred since. He’s not dead, I don't think.

What happened was this: Yesterday I wanted to go to NYC, so I washed my hair. Of course I did. You always wash for the big time, don’t you? We had all three air conditioners on, so John turned on the generator so I could use my hair dryer.

Suddenly all three air conditioners went dead. Was this my fault, I ask you? Not really, I learned today. We just shouldn’t have tried to air-condition the entire coach when we were plugged in to 30 amps.

Who knew from amps? It was working, the coach was cool, and I wanted to dry my hair. No biggie, I thought.

Apparently it was such a drain on the campground’s meager electrical supply that once we switched over to generator power, it didn’t know what to do with all that electricity, so a power surge occurred, frying the outside hookup and almost causing a fire, and apparently killing all our A/C compressors. God knows what that will cost.

So the nice guys from the county park came over and spent almost the entire day working on the outside hookup. They got it fixed, and that’s when I learned the trouble wasn't just outside; it was inside too. So now I have power, but only fans, and no air-condish. OMG it’s 92 in here.

Meanwhile, I did what housework I needed to do, which was basically washing some dishes, and Phil the park worker came to the door. His face was pale. Funny I hadn't notice that before.

“Did you just use the bathroom?” he asked.

I told him, no, I’d done the dishes. The relief was immediately apparent. “Oh,” he said, “because you’ve got a leak in your sewer line and it just soaked my pants up to the knees.”

Eyuuuu. Or maybe phew. It wasn't the bad water. It was good water.

Then I looked down at my hands, and the dish-washing (seriously, two glasses, a pot and a dish, give me a break) had managed to chip two brand new French manicured nails – which I had done yesterday, at a cost of $40.

“Sorry,” I said, “Keep on working. I’ve got an emergency.” I jumped in the car. I decided I wouldn’t go back to the original nail parlor. It was too far, and I was too hot, and they were too lame at French manicures. I went locally.

Ah. It was air-conditioned.

I sat for a heavenly 45 minutes, decided I’d get the whole manicure completely redone – because after all, when I do the dishes tomorrow, I’ll probably chip another two fingernails.

Joy fixed my nails, Pat gave me a backrub, and Lee the owner charged me $80.

What!!!!! I’ve never paid that much for a manicure, even a costly gel manicure like I usually get. Tops is $40. But this time, to keep my fingers looking well-tended, I have thrown away $120.

Not only that, the air conditioner fixer (or almost-fixer, if you will) deserved a tip, so I gave him a bottle of water, then a beer, then $20, then one of my favorite necklace creations for his wife. Then his two assistants were looking sort of left out, so I gave them each a pair of sterling silver earrings from my collection.

This day has cost me in the neighborhood of $250 and it’s still 92 degrees in here.
You’d be grumpy too.

I was going to treat myself to dinner out, but instead I settled for Kraft mac n' cheese, not the healthiest dinner, but comfort food at least.

I think I’ll take myself to a movie. But only if I can sneak Zeus in; we're compatriots in this rotten Friday. And if I’m lucky, they won’t notice I’ve brought my jammies and pillow too. I'll let you know.

The Gift of Needing

2010-06-21T10:35:00.000-07:00

Susquehanna Valley, PA
On our Way to the Poconos

The best gift you can ever give to a friend is to say, “Please come, I need you.” I am only now just learning the truth of this in practice, although I was once the giver of this gift without being particularly aware of it.

When my son Jonathan died, I was devastated. Beyond that. There aren’t words to express how his sudden passing affected me. I was helpless. So grief-struck, my entire body ached. My arms, suddenly empty of his beautiful presence, actually hurt. I forgot to arrange for his burial. I forgot to put a notice in the paper. I forgot to tell my friends. I didn’t eat for six days. I had to be prompted to exist, it seemed.
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And yet, here was my brother and John’s brother, both driving some 70 miles at breakneck speed just to be with us when we went to the funeral home. Here was my sister, staying in a motel, for god’s sake, just to be close if I needed her. Here were my friends, answering the phone, cooking meals, keeping lists, making arrangements, sitting quietly with me, while their own families made due without mom and dad at home. I needed every one of them and I was in no condition to even ask. But I never said no.

At the graveside, I invited everyone to come back to the house, as is the tradition. Then I realized I had made no plans, bought no food, hadn’t cleaned, didn’t know if we had liquor or soda, or for that matter, even water. And yet, when we got home, there was a feast. The table groaned with the casseroles, meat platters, breads, drinks and desserts. A sweet acquaintance, the father of one of Jon's friends, brought huge trays of pasta and meats and god only knows what all from his restaurant. Another friend stayed away from the funeral to keep an eye on our house, knowing that sometimes people are robbed when they are at a funeral. How kind of him.

The police escorted us to and from the church, stopping the entire town’s commerce for us and for our son, the same kid who had made their lives more difficult just a few years earlier with his teenage hijinks. And yet, they were there when we needed them.

Now, some 16 years later, I still carry the memory of everyone's generosity and their selfless gifts of themselves when I needed it most. But I never realized how much of a gift I had given them. I say this with all humility, but it is true. Today I had a friend tell me, “Please come, I need you.” The situation is dire, and they will hear today whether there is hope or whether they should prepare for the end. It will mean that we may be delayed another day, but what is a day when a life’s course is being decided. If we can go to them and hold them in their hour of need, is that not a gift of great measure?

I’m going to stop and buy a twelve-pack of a great new beer we’ve discovered, get it icy cold, and drink it with them. We’ll drink to life, either way. I won’t know until we get there, and the news may be more than I want to deal with, but I’ll do it because they have more to handle than we do, and if we can help them shoulder this burden, that’s a mitzvah, as they say in Yiddish. A good thing. A gift that gives back, filling the heart with love, and the knowledge that someone needed you, and you were able to be there for them.

Slow Movin' Shooters

2010-06-17T18:46:00.000-07:00

As I sit here in Elysburg, Pennsylvania, two tables of jewels that I spent hours and hours making now lying in the sun and sparkling at all who pass by – and they are indeed passing by – I am struck by the shapes and sizes of the American trap enthusiast.

I estimate that the median age of the American trap shooter is 68, and the average shape is potato. The usual outfit, not surprisingly, is a t-shirt and jeans or shorts, with a baseball cap advertising something. This is most often topped off with a shooting vest, one of those cotton and mesh contraptions with a million pockets, loops and snaps which are meant to accommodate shooting paraphernalia. Most shooters are men, but increasingly, women are trying their luck at eagle-eye marksmanship and doing quite well. I predict that one day there will be no ladies’ events and no men’s events – just people events. Which women will win, as we are very keen of eye and quite adept at watching two things at once, a prerequisite for excellence in doubles shooting.

What’s most interesting about the American shooter is the pace of his stride. Turtle doesn’t begin to describe it. When you can count one-thousand-one, one-thousand-two between each footstep, you know that’s a slow walker. As a sociological group, women haven’t quite mastered the pace, but I do see them slowing down, and unfortunately, gaining weight as they walk, the negative caloric impact of their perambulatory rhythms showing up before they even finish the promenade. The way we women gain weight, you can easily go from size 10 to size 14 by the end of a shooter’s walk.

The sad side for me about women shooters is they tend to eschew the bling in favor of the sexy shorts, tees and tiny vests. So nobody’s buying from Betty. The other category is wife-of-shooter, who so far have viewed and commented on the jewelry, but have not ponied up the dough. The usual comment is, “Pretty things. But I don’t have my wallet.”

Then what are you carrying in that big satchel? And by the effing way, why are you wearing four-inch heels at a trap shoot? And I’m not talking about first-timers, either. Those women you can forgive, but it’s the ones who I’ve seen several times before, who seem to think this is a runway event, and they must dress accordingly. And still, they don’t buy jewels! Who then, I have to ask myself.

Where is my consumer target? Probably manning the many booths that sell guns (of course), gun equipment, t-shirts, vests, sweat shirts, baseball hats, watches with little guns on their faces, RV equipment, gloves, shoes, sneakers and various other male-type must-haves. My next-door neighbor Patty is selling shooting glasses, oversized specs with lenses of yellow, orange, red and purple, the better to see the target with my dear. She’s been a lot of fun to talk with, and she’s helped me pass the hours happily frying in the sun because it’s so windy my canopy wouldn’t stand a chance.

And just because I decided to give my incredibly astute observations about shooters, two young, and three skinny, ones have just passed by. I may well have to change my opening paragraph. No, now that I look up from my keyboard, that was just an aberration. Here come six more potatoes. I could write a novel by the time they pass this table. And aren’t you lucky I don’t have it in me today

Why Are You On Crutches?

2010-05-06T07:50:00.000-07:00

DEAR PAM,

In the past month we have had a few mishaps --
In Tennessee I fell out of the bus and fractured/bruised my sternum--
Then the awning motor died so we tied it with the dog's leash and anchored it by closing the door on the leash--
Which bent the door and locked us inside with a jammed latch--
So we enlisted the aid of a really fat biker who got us a ladder--
Which I climbed out onto (with sore chest) and promptly fell off the top step--
Breaking my pelvis, after which we--
Blew a turbo motor so were confined to a hotel for a long weekend--
Because they sent the wrong part and we had to wait for five days for the new one--
And we finally got going and took a turn too fast (my bad) --
Which spilled the contents of the refrigerator--
Which got John so mad he left me to clean it up--
Which got me so mad I used his bath towel to do so--
Then I slipped on the towel and probably broke whatever had healed--
So John didn't dare ask me to guide him into the campground spot--
And the woman who helped giggled as she led him into a wood post--
Scraping the side of the bus--
So that's why I'm still on crutches.

They make a good weapon.

Betty

New Yorkers in Carolina

2010-04-28T11:44:00.000-07:00

Greensboro NC
Waiting for a part for the Coach

A block or so away from the University of North Carolina sits a nice little deli called, appropriately enough, North Carolina Deli. We gave it a shot. It smelled good and pickle-y when we walked in, and the menu looked pretty decent. Among the many selections were bagels, lox, bialys, smoked herring, chicken soup, pastrami, kosher pickles, brisket, and even Dr. Brown's Cream Soda.

Looking up from his menu, John said, "No matzoh ball soup."

Then he added, "Carolina Posers."

Please Help Me I'm Falling

2010-04-18T12:30:00.000-07:00

Buddy Gregg RV Dealership
Knoxville, TN
Sunday Afternoon

I fell out of the bus a couple of days ago. And no, it wasn’t moving. I slipped sideways in my sandals and headed – and I do mean head – down and out and onto the grass, where I pirouetted on my noggin, slammed a shoulder, cracking my neck and landing flat on my back, praying I’d be able to walk at some point in the future. Thank god for grass, any way you take that.

What I got for my troubles was a bruise the size of a brick extending from my clavicle, over my left girl and down to my ribs, where it crosses over in perfect symmetry to my left arm. Which, if I were a forensic pathologist, would tell me exactly how the victim fell. It also got me a trip to the hospital and the news that I’d also bruised my sternum, which is why, I guess, I have not been able to lift anything using two arms in synchronization, cough, or clap in that veddy British way with arms extended towards the clapee.

I fall a lot.

Once I tripped on a sidewalk pothole, grabbing my partner Frank’s raincoat and pants on the way down. He had to peel my frozen, curled claw off his person before he could help me into a cab to go to the hospital for my broken ankle. He went on to our appointment and had to borrow a stapler from the receptionist to fix the seam of his pants, which had torn from crotch to belt line. Needless to say, he stood to make the presentation.

A year later, I broke my wrist falling in another sidewalk pothole. New York City is a dangerous place for me. I got myself into my car, cradling the throbbing limb on a file folder, and headed home. When I called my husband to tell him of my mishap, he offered this suggestion: “Why don’t you stop at a hospital on the way home and see if it’s broken.” I guess he’s a little over-stimulated on the falling/breaking thing. Needless to say, the man drove me to the emergency room. Every time’s a first time for me.

Then there was the time I was standing perfectly still, holding onto a shopping cart while I looked around to enjoy the bling and baublery of the seasonal Christmas Store, you know, the one that sells patio furniture the rest of the year, and next thing I knew both the cart and I were sideways on the floor.

I don’t know why I fall. Is it the fault of my ears? The fluid in the semi-circular canals? Do I need a refill? Is it the fault of my parents, who obviously each contributed a recessive gene for lack of balance when I was being manufactured? Is it my brain, which goes into meditative mode whenever it has a chance, and doesn’t alert me to things like, oh, say, danger?

Oh my god, that’s it. It’s all of those things. That and some minor deafness. This is what lets me write while my husband is walking around fuming, the dog is whining and the coach is making weird engine noise, obviously the cause of the fuming and whining. Maybe the dog was fuming and John was whining. Anything’s possible.

Like the fact that we were trapped in this bus today for over an hour with no sign of rescue. The short story is, John tied our recalcitrant non-obedient electric awning with the dog’s leash so that we could drive to the dealer, with whom we were to have dealings with on Monday anyway. It's always something.

He pulled the rope inside and slammed the door to secure his efforts. When we got to the dealer to drop off the bus, we discovered we couldn't get out. The thick rope had jammed the door and the lock would not function.

Now in case it hasn’t occurred to you, this was Sunday and nobody was home to help us. We drove around until we happened upon a motorcyclist in leather chaps with the price tag hanging off them. ($379, holy sh#t, that's a lot of money.)

He very nicely went around to the side of the bus and got our ladder out so we could escape. I went first, sore ribs and all, and skipping here a few ins and outs and you try this and I’ll try that, we finally decided to cut the beloved dog leash, the one that’s been dragging through the mud for two years, so dirty no dog worth his fleas would choose to wear it, but my husband loves it because it’s really long.

John cut the outside and I tugged from the inside. No use. So we switched places. I was to climb the ladder, take the hammer, wedge it in the door and create space for the tugger to pull the rope through. I wedged and wedged and wedged. Nothing. Then the hammer popped out of the door and I fell off the ladder. Of course I did. My sore chest is now back to square one in the hurtin’ department, and I now have a groin pull in addition to the bruised sternum.

After I caught my breath and my heart slowed to a reasonable 200 beats per minute, I took the inside shift and the leash came sliding out – which of course sent me backwards and I fell, but only into the driver’s seat. That didn’t hurt at all.

I opened the door, then turned around and headed for the Advil. Doing the safest thing I could imagine, I tucked myself into my little breakfast booth, turned on the computer, and began to finish this article while John cleaned up our rescue attempts.

Suddenly I was aware of whining. Oh no, another problem. But it wasn’t. It was Zeus, smiling up at me, his ugly, filthy, peed-upon, germy leash affixed to his collar and, in the middle, a nice, neat square knot.

I laughed for five minutes. And it hurt everything, everywhere, the whole time.

Shotgun Shooters Stingy Hooters

2010-04-17T10:00:00.000-07:00

White Pine Tennessee
Hog Heaven Gun Club

Now I am familiar with the adage “Southern Gentleman” and I assume that means great manners, true regard for women, generosity towards one’s kin, and drinking prodigiously but holding it well.

Maybe I’m too far North, and maybe I’m in too unusual a niche, but Tennessee shooters are the stingiest men I’ve ever met when it comes to their wimmen. They waltz past my display of lovely jewels, fairly priced, and make comments like, ‘Wayl, mah wife in’t into this nemore. (sic)”

No woman into jewelry? Okay, maybe three women in this country, but are they polygamists and do they only marry shooters? My big, flower-decorated sign announcing that Mother’s Day is just two weeks away is greeted with snorts and silly smiles, as if these women hadn’t ever borne Southern children, washed Southern overalls, or spent lonely weekends alone with the Jewelry Channel because ol’ Boone, or Charley, or Whit was out at the range, shooting targets at $39 a round, shooting the breeze with his cronies and shooting the spice out of his woman by neglecting her so thoroughly.

And by the way, my husband is a shooter with Giants games in the off season, but he’s sweet and generous and thoughtful, and he never begrudges my Jewelry Channel purchases.

No wonder these old farts think the wahf jist isn’t into it. They haven’t brought her home a little surprise in years and she’s lost all hope.

And I do allow for those guys who’ve brought little gifts home, only to have them returned the next day. That’s disheartening, to say the least, and can kill a guy’s instinct for the romantic gesture. But most women are smart enough not to do that – at least on a consistent basis – and instead, tuck the major gaffes into a drawer, offer some unusual sexual favor, if you get my drift, and the next day, take him shopping and show him what they like. That’s male adult education and I know from experience that it works.

What’s the harm in a sweet and thoughtful little gesture that costs him, oh say, $40? Consider: A three-day shooting event, with three 100-shot target events each day at an average of $35 per event. That’s a $315 investment, plus the side bets that can cost $25 each. For example, who shoots the second lowest with no matching score and is wearing green that day, something on that order. Next there’s breakfast, lunch and dinner, for I have never seen a shooter, ever, with his own brown bag lunch. It just isn’t done. That’s a conservative $75 for the weekend. Oh, and lest we forget, those shotgun shells cost a dollar apiece, so add in $90. Do I hear $500 dollar weekend? Not counting gas? Oh yes.

So isn’t the little woman worth a ten-percent tip for staying behind with junior and Ellie Mae and the two dogs and the house and god forbid, no car? Or does he hope Jethro from next door will drop by with a bottle of Southern and lascivious intentions, thereby eliminating the need for him to administer some Southern Comfort of his own on his return, such as it is, dirty, exhausted and where’s the heyl’s dinner anyway?

So here I sit on a Tennessee Saturday afternoon, my lovely, lonely wares on a picnic table covered with black velvet, my nose running because it’s kind of cold and windy under this lean-to, my lacerations, contusions and sore ribs throbbing from the fall out of the bus earlier this weekend, but that’s another story.

I don’t know why I expected it to be any different, but I did think I’d sell some stuff. After all, I made $500 in Arizona and the shoot was much smaller. But then again, those were westerners, not southerners. And that place wasn’t called Hog Heaven.

Come to think of it, that was my first clue. Missed it completely.

Crossing Oklahoma

2010-04-01T09:44:00.000-07:00

With apologies to Rodgers and Hammerstein

There's a bright golden haze on the meadow
There's a bright golden haze on the meadow
A gust full of dust makes my hairdo go bust
And I feel like I'm blowing clear up to the sky

Oh what a beautiful morning
Oh what a beautiful day
The wind here's beyond merely breezy
Feels like we're blowing away

It's so shocking
How we're rocking
Hold the wheel and say a prayer
For this tussle
You need muscle
And a ros'ry to help get you there

Oh what a beautiful morning
Oh what beautiful day
It's fun when the bus takes you sideways
Oh Lord we're blowing away.

The Aunt Who Sends Rocks

2010-03-30T14:35:00.000-07:00

March 30
Holbrook, AZ

Dear Courtney & Timmy,

Uncle John is laughing at me. I just sent you a package and he says, “You sent our niece and nephew cotton, and now you’re sending rocks? What kind of a weird aunt are you?”

I guess pretty weird. But I get excited about things I have never seen before, and want to share them with you.

First, one of the rocks is a polished piece of petrified wood from the Petrified Forest in Arizona. Here’s the story: During the dinosaur age, that desert area of Arizona was a lush and humid jungle. Trees grew and died and with the change of weather they were eventually buried under three major layers of dirt and silica (and something else) that preserved them from rotting. The silica seeped into the xylem and phloem of the wood and turned it into rock – quartz, mica, hematite, even amethyst, which are all semiprecious stones.

Millions of years later, upheavals in the earth cause these stone trees to come up through the layers of rock that had preserved them. I took some pictures, and the land is covered with what looks like uncut wood from a woodpile, except when you get close up and see that they are petrified. The bigger specimens actually still look like whole trees. Amazing.

I also got you a couple of bracelets made of polished bits of petrified wood so you could see all the colors.

Later, we went through the Painted Desert where you could easily see all the layers of sediment that piled up over time.

When we arrived at our campground in Holbrook, Arizona, it was surrounded by all these really strange, really black boulders. When I asked about them, the camp host told me they were lava. Mt. Taylor, nearby, erupted 225,000 years ago, blew off its peak, and spewed lava in the area. It hasn’t blown since. That lava I sent you is 225,000 years old. Doesn’t look like much, but still …

Look, I know you guys are sophisticated teens and almost teens, about the coolest people I know in this world. But I hope these rocks will mean something to you, even if it’s just that your weird aunt and crazy uncle are thinking of you as we bop around this country. We would have wrapped up the horses and sent them, but I wasn’t sure your parents would appreciate two more mouths to feed.

See you soon, I promise.
Love
Aunt Betty

Pity Me Please

2010-03-22T12:47:00.000-07:00

Mesa, AZ
Mesa Spirit RV Campground

Pity me, world, for I have lost so much. I’m retired, you see, and things just aren’t the same.

First, I lost my job writing ads for cranky clients, with recent college graduates opining such profundities as, “Women don’t bathe with rubber ducks.” Instead, I have discovered writing for myself, and while I am my own worst critic, I don’t make myself angry when I criticize me.

I lost my partner and employees in the deal too. Then again, we’re still emailing, so I guess we’re friends. That’s nice.

Then I lost two acres of land and a house. Actually two acres and a skosh, if you count the condo. And my beautiful BMW. Now my house is on wheels, and we’re towing a little Jeep. It’s not a BMW, but it gets me there.

Somewhere along the way, I lost my alarm clock. Now I have to depend on the sun and the birds and the warm air drifting in my window to wake me up. It’s a sacrifice, I know, but we’re on a budget, so I’m not replacing that clock.

I lost my dishwasher, but it’s amazing how clean your nails get when you dunk them in sudsy water for five minutes once a day. I haven’t lost my dishes, though. They’re still in the cabinet, right behind the paper plates, if memory serves.

I’ve lost my schedule. Sometimes I do the laundry on Monday, sometimes not. (Sometimes not at all.) The same with cleaning. In fact, I downsized my vacuum for a Swiffer and damn if it isn’t the quietest thing in the world. I have all the cleaning products I ever had at home, but they’re happier in the closet these days and I hate to disturb them.

If all this gives you the impression that I retired to become a housekeeper in a bus, let me assure you that this was a bargain I struck when I discovered that the other jobs available were dump and water hookup, engine maintenance and heavy lifting.

I didn’t lose my dog and he still sheds a lot. And your point is?

Interestingly, I’ve also lost my wallet. I do carry a couple of credit cards around, but I let the old guy take care of all the cash transactions. I hear the Queen of England never carries cash either. It’s just so … plebian.

Which leads me to another financial loss: my money worries. For some reason, being on a budget, spending less and beating the challenge of having a fabulous life anyway are incredibly gratifying. If you had told me this three years ago, I would have laughed out loud, waved my seven credit cards in your face and driven away in my BMW to my huge house and huge bills.

I’ve lost other stresses too, but honestly, stress has a way of sneaking up on me. That’s just the way I am. However, OMG we’re out of coffee is a small one compared to OMG we’re out of clients.

I’ve lost my bicycle. It was hanging on the back of the motor coach, slipped off its moorings and one wheel got stuck on the exhaust pipe. The bike melted. I’m serious; not just the tire, but the metal parts too. I’ll get a new one. One of these days.

Retirement is all about loss. You lose a lot of things you never wanted in the first place, some things you hadn’t even known you didn’t want, and a couple of things you probably should replace.

I lost nights alone without my husband’s back to rest my icy feet on. I lost working around the clock – and I was in advertising, so you can believe that one. I lost my three-hour commute on a jammed-up highway. I lost my high heels. I think they’re in a box somewhere. In losing those three-inchers, I lost my ability to walk in them, but I also lost two throbbing corns. I’m ahead of the game.

What else have I lost? I can’t even remember. But there’s another side to this coin, as you may have guessed.

Wait until the next chapter. I haven’t even begun to tell you what I’ve gained.

Betty

The Challenge of Change

2010-03-16T10:03:00.000-07:00

Sedona AZ

Dear Mrs. Cast,

Thank you for your comments on my blog. They are very much appreciated. And you came to the right girl for advice. So here’s my take on retiring to an RV full time.

I feel your pain.

But like all change, it’s really the anticipation that is scary. I should know. When I went into labor with my second child, I decided I just wasn't having this baby. I'd changed my mind. Guess what.

Once you commit to any life, whether it’s retirement, period, with all its adjustments, or moving to another part of the country, or downsizing, or god forbid moving in with the kids, it’s unnerving. Especially that kids thing, oy.

But the reality of this turtle living, moving around with your home on your figurative backs, is that it doesn’t have to be permanent. You can always change your mind. Encourage your reluctant spouse to think of it as a nice long, protracted vacation adventure, with lots of time for visiting with friends and family, lots of fun exploring new sights, foods, people and places, lots of learning that will undoubtedly keep your mind agile even if your back is growing achy, your knees are giving out and your hearing’s getting more selective by the day.

And you can stop doing it the minute you get bored, or begin to long for dirt. That’s the only thing I’ve missed in two years on the road, dirt. A nice little plot to put seeds in, nurture and watch grow into beautiful flowers. I missed the decorating thing for a while, but buying a couple of pillows for the couch seemed to staunch that fire. They’re on the floor as I write this, making a nice resting place for our smelly little dog. So much for living in style.

Seriously, I’m not going to be 95 and hauling ass all over America. I’m going to be rocking and knitting. Then again, I could well move that rocker into the bus and haul my bony old self up to Alaska for just one more look. I have every option in the world, you see.

That’s the beautiful part of the rest of our lives. We still have all the choices in the world, and all the world to discover.

But the pain, oh the pain, of giving up your stuff. Your house, your furniture, your washing machine, your rake, your trash compacter, your closet with those clothes you haven’t worn in years, those knick knacks you’ve forgotten to dust for three months.

You get my drift. What I discovered was that I was holding onto a concept of hearth and home that had little, if any, basis in reality. Things don’t make a home. You do. And you will turn wherever you are into your home and love it as much as that house with its dust bunnies under the bed, air conditioner that dies on the hottest day, and washing machine that burps if you put clothes in it.

It took my husband three years to get me to sell my thriving business, abandon my partner and employees, my brothers and sisters, friends and acquaintances, sell my beautiful house, pretty condo and BMW and trade it all for – let’s get real here – the future of my marriage and the safety of our nest egg. We were simply living too high on the hog, accent on the hog.

Once I finally committed to this big change, I surprised myself. I got jazzed about it. And I began to see what really mattered to me in my life. For example, where I had been in love with the antique demilune chest with the marble top that graced our entrance and made it elegant, special and unique, I now saw it as a gorgeous box for candles I’d never light, tassels I’d bought and never used, vases I couldn’t throw away and keys to things I couldn’t remember. Plus, it was a catchall for purses, gloves and stuff that wasn’t even decorative. So when someone at the garage sale offered me the same price I’d paid for it two years earlier, I happily sold it, even though I’d had every intention of keeping it in storage.

But I kept every picture I’d ever taken of my kids, my Betty Boop collection because it has sentimental value, my brand new mattress, but not the bed, and a couple of bureaus that were so expensive I’d never get what they were worth. We have three rooms full of stored things, and I have been thinking lately of how much it costs to store stuff, and which of those things I couldn’t bear to part with, things that are now just a monkey on my back money-wise, and how I’m going to put most of them on Craig’s List when I get back to New York. So much for what I couldn’t live without. You’ll be amazed. And the money will be really nice if I ever buy a place. All new stuff, how exciting.

I thought I’d miss my friends and family, and while I certainly do miss our regular dinners together, card games visits and the like, I’m actually seeing much more of them than I expected. Wheels can take you anywhere, remember. And I’ve reconnected with old friends who’ve moved away, which is one of the happiest of all my happy experiences. Hanging out with somebody you’ve not seen for twenty years, who is just as great to be with as you remember – that’s a gift.

And thank God for phone and Internet and Facebook and computers with cameras and Skype and all the ways we can stay close no matter where we are.

So you see, dear Mrs. C, home is where you make it. And things are less important than you think. And if you don’t have a patch of dirt to plant, then you buy a portable flower box and throw some seeds in it. And if your friends are far away, you will make more of an effort to stay in touch. Adapting is the name of the game, and change really does shake the tree and help the dead fruit to fall to the ground. The good peaches will stay with you and taste riper and juicier than you ever imagined.

I think I just made the longest metaphor ever attempted by a writer. See? When I lived on my dirt, I could never have done that. The dryer would have dinged and I’d have to fold clothes. It just wouldn’t have happened.

Oh, and by the way, before you leave, tell your husband he’s now in charge of his own laundry. You’re not retiring to become a housekeeper. It’s bad enough you’ll have to toss those paper plates in the garbage. That’s enough housework for any woman.

Love Betty

A MESSAGE FOR PAM

2010-03-15T17:17:00.000-07:00

Get well quick, you have babies to deliver!! Love from Betty & John

Time for Reflection

2010-03-15T17:15:00.000-07:00

Verde Valley AZ
Outside of Sedona

We learned a day late that it was now Daylight Davings Time, so late Sunday night we made a couple of our key clocks Spring Ahead.Good thing, because we had to get up really early this morning to get to the RV dealer for a new pump that would correct a water pressure problem. We had a 9 a.m. appointment so we could get the job done and get on the road asap. Except we arrived at 7:45.

They don't have daylight savings in Arizona. It and Indiana are the only two states that don't change the clocks. Who knew.

Now I can't figure out what time it is anywhere, including here and wherever you are. I know that some of the clocks are right, and some are wrong. But which ones are which- watch, microwave, computer, alarm clock, kitchen clock, second watch in the drawer, car radio???? I give up. I think it's 5, but that's only because I'm on the computer. If I were making coffee, it'd be 4. Unless I were using the microwave, which, for some reason, insists it's just 2:30.

Maybe it was made in Indiana.

Betty

Happy Birthday to Me

2010-03-03T17:18:00.000-08:00

Just Outside of Phoenix

Today is my birthday, and damn if it doesn’t feel a lot different from what I imagined it would when I was 35. It feels wonderful. I woke up feeling super energized, came out to find all my beautiful pink roses with their heads bowed in supplication to my advanced age, made a pot of perfect coffee and opened my computer and went to Facebook in my pj’s.

There, thanks to modern technology, hundreds of friends I haven’t seen in 20 years were wishing many happy returns and letting me know that they were thinking of me. How great for the ego is that.

The people I love most in my life all called, all except my brother Pat, who is not a caller but is a wonderful writer, so I’m sure I’ll hear from him before the day is out. My son Jeff called me twice, emailed me once, sent me a gift online and put a fabulous tribute to my mothering abilities on Facebook for all to see. He is a perfect son, and I shall justly take all the credit, with a small bow to my husband, who did participate.

John gave me a Nook, which is not what you think, but is the Barnes and Noble version of Kindl, the e-book. It was partly because I wanted it, and partly a move in his own self-defense, since I made him to carry all the books I took to Mexico because my luggage was full. Now I can take 12 books with me and it will weigh no more than my hair dryer, which I should have left home but also dragged along.

We took off and went from California to Arizona, and Mr. Gotta Get There made the ultimate sacrifice for my birthday and stopped for over an hour in Quartzsite, AZ, where I bought a ton of jewelry making supplies. I loaded my basket with every wonderful rock, gem or mineral I could imagine in a piece of jewelry, then took them up to the little lady at the register.

“You may remember me,” I said. “I was the woman that old guy with the no teeth and hair in his ears insulted about a month ago.”

“Oh!” she said, recognition dawning and fresh anger lighting up her face. “Do me a favor. Tell that story to George. He needs to know that that guy is insulting people. It’s not the first time.”

So I called the young Chinese-American guapo (good looking guy) aside and told him my story. Basically the old guy had made a bad a pun on the concept of picking on a person – a lot of you to pick on or something like that -- and I had really forgotten the lame attempt at humor at my expense. But Barbara hadn’t, and she embellished the insult so artistically that I barely recognized myself. According to her, I was “shakin’ and almost cryin’.”

Not true, but it sounded so compelling, I was tearing up just thinking about myself being royally strafed in public, humiliated beyond anything I’d ever experienced, and put down lower than a slug in the Garden of Good and Evil. By the end of her tale, I almost handed myself a spa weekend to recover.

The bottom line was, not only did George give me a 10% dealer discount, he cut the total in HALF, and if that weren’t enough, little Barbara, who said her birthday was next week so we were soul sisters, began putting two and three strands of stones into the bag and charging me for one. “This,” she whispered, “is $32 a strand, reduced to $16 less 10%, so you can have both of these for $3.”

My kind of shopping.

Later, as I exited, three guys working on the roof of the Flying J across the street, stopped to watch me cross the street with my haul – so big I had to buy a basket for it all($15, but you can have it for $5).

I was wearing my go-to birthday outfit – nice jeans, my white Easy Spirit slip-on sneaks, the new ones, not the old dirty ones, and a white tank top that I probably should have worn a jacket over but didn’t. I wasn’t exactly Dolly Parton, but neither was I Totie Fields. I still had it. I felt great.

They hooted, whistled and yelled at me. I waved back. After all, they were only being kind. And it was my birthday, so what the heck. Just then, a big section of roof hit the ground. One of them yelled, “Hope you weren’t startled.”

Now you can take what you will from that tale. Were they appreciating my total togetherness at such an advanced age, or were they just convinced I was about to walk under the falling roof.

You already know what I think. Please don’t tell me any different. Unless, of course, you’re planning on giving me at least 50% off.

Happy Birthday to Me.

Betty

Waiting in the Desert

2010-02-27T09:27:00.000-08:00

Desert Hot Springs, CA

What is it with the desert? Every time we show up here, it rains. I thought it never rained in the desert, but the last time we were here it rained for a solid four days and flooded everything.

it just showered, but I see the sun is out now, so I can venture over to the Craft Show they're having today at the Sands RV and Golf Resort, where we are currently parked, waiting for our windshield to be replaced. It's a long story.

The short version is this. We went to Cabo (see my blog below) for three weeks and left the new bus with the dealer for tweaks and repairs, among them the replacement window and a new thermometer for the blown one in the dryer. When we returned, everything but those two things had been done, so we're stuck here until the parts arrive and we can be made whole again.

We're not stranded, however, because we're near Irwin and Randy, old friends who have delighted us with their willingness to spend this week with us, cooking great meals, hanging out playing Whist, May I, Mexican Train dominoes and laughing a lot. Last night Irwin's friend Lawson came for dinner, and I got him to cut my hair. He did a great job, saving not only my purse, but my shaggy self as well. You can't get more services from these guys than a fire on the patio, steaks on the grill, a nice glass of wine, some really great stories and a haircut. I will miss them when we leave.

On Monday we head back to Irvine, then hopefully on Tuesday we'll be on our way east. It's a good thing too, because it's about to rain again here in the desert. We must have some strange effect on the weather. If we stay here any longer, we could just turn this vast wasteland into a lush valley. And wouldn't that be a shame.

Betty

Where in the World Am I

2010-02-27T09:09:00.000-08:00

Desert Hot Springs, CA

I see from the list that I haven't posted much in February. Oops. But there is a reason.

We spent most of the month at our timeshare in Cabo San Lucas, at the bottom of the Baja peninsula in Mexico. Our partners for this vacation adventure were Joyce and Marty Kaplan, and it was absolutely wonderful. In case you're interested, here's what we did: ate a lot of Mexican food, drank a lot of Margaritas, drank some more Tequila, laid our fat, sated selves down on lounge chairs by the pool and read, played Scrabble, played cards and did I say read? We put away at least 25 books between us. I read nine myself.

After literally begging John to take some of my books so we wouldn't have to pay an overweight fee on the plane, I am beginning to see the wisdom of a Kindl, even though I have staunchly resisted the electronic book, arguing that the feel of a real book, the smell of the paper and the weight of it in my hands are all an important part of the reading experience. Now I'm not so sure.

My birthday's next Wednesday, and I can pretty much guarantee you that I'll get an e-book from my husband. He's a strong believer in load-lightening. I threw away four t-shirts yesterday and he cheered, convinced that now the bus will ride higher and smoother with less weight on board. To get even with this crazy man, I bought four salad bowls, They weigh more than the t-shirts. The next time he crows about how much easier the bus is to drive, I'll make a big salad and haul out those bowls.

And smile to myself.

John's Tornado Story

2010-02-27T08:56:00.000-08:00

A couple of years ago, John took our then bus out to somewhere in the middle of America for a trap shooting event. On the second day, they heard news of tornadoes in the area, but continued the shoot. It was really hot, and the group took shelter from the sun under a temporary lean-to, erected for that purpose. John was sitting in his golf cart under the lean-to when the sky turned from blue to dark grey and the winds became fierce.

Someone shouted, "Get out, it's going." And the lean-to began to sway in the wind. John fumbled with the keys, got the motor going and chugged out of the way, just as a huge gust took the structure down. It also took John down.

He was blown out of the cart, which continued on its way and drove straight into a Port-A-San, knocking it over. A man came running towards him, shouting "Are you okay? Are you okay?"

John was a little bruised and bloody, but it was only minor, so he assured the man that he was fine.

"No," the man said. "I mean my wife. She's in the Port-A-San."

You can't make things like this up.

Aloe to You Too

2010-01-25T09:38:00.000-08:00

Mission Bay CG
San Diego, CA

With all the snow and the water leak and the dryer isn’t working either, I did what any same woman would do once she reached dry land. I went shopping.

There is a mall nearby in San Diego, and of course any woman reading this will understand the lure. You men, just try to imagine. Think football game and you’ll get the idea.

In this mall is a Bed Bath & Beyond, one of the most wonderful stores in the world, a browser’s delight, an impulse purchaser’s dream. (And I needed that electric duster, Bernie! Truly I did.)

I reined in my raging impulses, however, and prepared to exit the store with only a few items, when I passed by one of those kiosks with the video of an exciting new product. As shown on TV! OMG. I paused and watched as six ugly models with disgusting hair became swans with the application of this fabulous hair thingy with the rolling hot barrel and hairbrush combo designed to straighten and smooth your hair in just one minute.

And it was only $99. Wow. A beauty bargain if I ever saw one. I looked in the TV monitor and saw the reflection of my fuzzy unkempt hair and lusted after this remarkable revolution. I was the target market all right. I could have been the pinspot inside of the bullseye that every arrow wants to pierce. I wanted that thing. I still can’t think of its name, but I sure wanted it.

My fuzzy hair and I left the store without the miracle product. Given that I had never spent more than $30 for any kind of hair dryer, hair comb, brush, straightener or curler, I thought $99 a mite excessive. Like all those TV products, it would come down from the pricing stratosphere in time.

But this kind of lust doesn’t go away, even in a cold shower. The mind is a terrible thing.

I thought. I equivocated. I longed. I lusted. I caved. I reasoned that the one box of stuff that didn’t make it from the old coach to the new one was my box of “product” --and I’m not making a grammatical error here; that is indeed what they are called. (And why it didn’t make it boggles the mind, since we were parked next to each other in the parking lot and all we had to do was transfer stuff out one door and into the other, but that’s obviously another story.)

Here’s my logic: Sixteen bottles of shampoo, conditioner and hair spray, one ordinary dryer, one high speed dryer, one flatiron, two curling irons – that had to add up to $100, right? I’d actually be saving a dollar if I bought this new revolutionary gotta-have-it.

So two days later, I went back and bought it.

It worked like a dream, turning my curly mess into smooth straight locks in ten seconds flat. And no wonder. The barrel of the roller must have been 212 degrees. That baby was smokin’ – or maybe that was my hair. In any event, it delivered. I began to feel better about the $99. Although I didn’t save the dollar, since there’s tax in California.

Then Saturday morning, preparing for a lovely outing to Old Town San Diego, I decided to get straight. I turned on the juice, heated up my straightener, applied it to my errant locks, and promptly burned the left side of my face. Ow. Owowow. I splashed on cold water, finished my hair and pulled it over the burn, now turning bright red and becoming sort of incredibly painful.

The hair-over-the-face trick didn’t work and John soon became aware that I looked like an abused wife and started to ask questions. Not to worry, I said.

The good thing about Old Town is that they believe in cactus, and among the plantings were several that looked to my New York eyes like they might be aloe. I broke off a piece of the nearest cactus, squeezing the juice onto the burn and smiling triumphantly.

Then the left side of my face turned day-glo yellow. I realized I could have been applying yucca or saguaro juice to a third-degree burn and turning my face a clownish tint for the rest of my life. John said nothing except, "You missed the burn." I moved the jelly over an inch and covered the sore part I hadn't wanted to touch. Now the entire cheek was yellow. I got some strange looks in the old style cantina we visited for lunch. Maybe they liked my hair.

Two days later, I still have the burn mark. It still hurts, but my hair is still straight, so there’s comfort in that. The yellow has faded around the burn mark, but the burn itself still glows iridescent. And I still haven’t looked up an aloe plant on Google Images.

Why bother. I have that leaf in the refrigerator and I’m thinking it might make a good eye shadow, and that’s another $6.50 I would have saved. I am so thrifty I just can’t believe myself.

Happy Birthday Sis

2010-01-24T09:38:00.000-08:00

Dear Sue,

Your birthday card sits stamped and soggy on my dashboard, the victim of an unexpected six inches of snow and hail that hit us hard in Julian California.

Who knew this effing place was in the mountains and there would be an effing snow storm that left us stranded ! Oh, yeah, now I remember. It was free. Never trust anything free.

This was a new "upscale" campground and all we had to do was listen to a 90-minute lecture. We left the desert, the flooded, soggy, gritty, dirty desert with its four days of rain and climbed steadily upwards in the rain, until the rain turned to hail and we turned to each other with one of those "uh-oh" looks. By the time we reached the campground, it was hailing so hard it was painful.

And the "resort" was unoccupied. Nobody home. Of course it was. It was a GD snowstorm and they weren't going to get stuck in it. We pulled in and got ourselves up to the highest point, the lowest having flooded so bad, all the new picnic tables were now under water. We hunkered down for the night. Thank you God for a generator and a tank full of fresh water. A knock on the door brought us upright.

"You're parked in the construction workers' parking lot," said a genial sort, a worker type.

And here we stay.

"Everybody's gone." We know, we know. But we're here for the night and we'll get out in the morning.

We had franks and beans and Kraft dinner. Comfort food. Played cards, then went to bed. The bus rocked us to sleep in the thousand-mile-an-hour winds.

The next morning we awoke to six inches of snow. Oh Lordy. I couldn't put the slides in because the snow on them was cemented into place. Our ladder is only four feet tall, so John scouted up a bigger ladder and got up to brush it off with the only things we had available: the sponge mop and the spatula. I held the ladder. Every bit of snow he brushed off landed smack on my head. He was in that "crutzarackaracka" mood like the Dad in "A Christmas Story" and I was laughing my ass off, only to myself because he definitely would not have looked kindly on my amusement. He was wet, cold and his supposedly waterproof raincoat was dripping red dye everywhere. He swore he was bleeding. It must have felt that way. His efforts were heroic.

I held the ladder, wore snow and chuckled in silence.

Of course I had to take pictures. Here's me with seven layers of clothes on, including two fleeces and two scarves. If John was the father in "A Christmas Story," I was the little brother who fell down in the snow and couldn't get up.

Meanwhile, the door to the coach stayed open, and snow came in and soaked your card. That's all right; it was a dorky card anyway. I'll send it as soon as it dries.

Meantime, I hope you have a most wonderful birthday. I certainly will enjoy it. I'm warmer and drier in San Diego, and thinking of you. I love you to the stars. Sorry about the card.

Love
Betty

My Private Collection

2010-01-12T17:40:00.000-08:00

Chula Vista, CA

We went to the San Diego Zoo today. We've been before with the kids, but we decided to go to the zoo, because when we got to Sea World, our original destination, it was $17 to park and $69 per adult to get in. For $155 Shamu would have had to cook me a meal and serve me a martini on one of his flippers. No thanks.

So instead we headed for the zoo, where we sat on our butts and rode the trolley, then took the sky ride, then called it a day. It was a great decision.

I'm starting a collection of favorite sayings, mis-speaks and funny observations, and thinking this would make a great little book. So if you'd like to add a few of your own favs, just send them to me and I'll credit you if they ever end up between the covers.

All of these except one were first-hand comments, and by regular people who just happen to say what they said at a particular time and place and I never forgot them. So, in no particular order:

Whatever comes, I eat.
        Frank DeVito

There's a man cremated for every woman.
        Stu Kuby

She's so loose mints on the desk.
        Mary Reynolds

There ain't no 28 cent pig.
        Anon. Overheard on the street

Never little in de lake.
        Anon. Advice given to my children by an old black woman.
        Little: litter

It's cold. Better put on your thermos.
        Lottie

I had an atomic pregnancy.
        Thelma

I'm going to get some of that Paramus for my bathroom.
        Thelma

Your chirren been actin up.
        Lottie

Them teeth needs a toof broth.
        Sidney

Koran Tabu
        Baby named after favorite book and favorite perfume
        Thelma's grandson

You do too know the gas station man: You say his name every time.
Philip Regular
        Jeff, Age 4

Mom! A chocolate policeman!
        Jeff, Age 4

I don't like that wicky wacky woo.
        Jeff, Age 3, at the car wash

You're not the boss of me
        Jonathan, Age 6, to his Aunt

She's all Monet Jewelry, beige hose, white hat.
        Mary Reynolds, describing an uptight co-worker

Why can't I see that movie? It is sex and violins?
        Jonathan, Age 8

And finally, the one I didn't hear myself but I made it my mantra:

If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun.
         Katherine Hepburn

There are more to collect, mostly from my own childhood. I haven't included shobbi, but that's a blog for another day.

Love
Betty

Want a Cup of Coffee?

2010-01-12T12:01:00.000-08:00

Chula Vista, CA
Outside of San Diego

Men have a curiously strange inability to multi-task, I read somewhere, and recently I have witnessed the proof of that theory. I just asked my husband if he wanted a cup of coffee. “Want a cup of coffee?” I said. The pot had been sitting on the counter for two hours and I wanted to dump the unwanted coffee and clean the pot.

“What?” he said, grunting and looking surprised.

“Coffee,” I said.

“What about it?” he answered.

“Do you want some?” I replied.

“No, why?” he answered testily, looking up from his computer.

Uh-oh. Here was my fork in the road. I could go the good wife route and tell him I was sorry for bothering him and to never mind. Or, I could go the Betty route and respond with slight pique, “Why do you want coffee? I don’t know. Maybe you’d like some. Then again, maybe I can wash the pot.”

“I’m busy,” he said. “I can’t think about that now.”

Oh I’m sorry. I’ll just try and figure out when you are not doing something, or thinking about something, and then I’ll ask. Like when you’re sleeping, that’s when I’ll ask.

The other day I asked him a question and he refused to answer me because he was busy turning a key in a lock. Now that required real concentration and deep mental commitment.

I guess the point is, we women whose lives revolve around multi-tasking, find this point of difference in the species quite amusing.

Imagine. You’re doing the laundry, separating the darks from the lights, choosing the cycle, filling the soap dispenser, when little Fauntleroy comes in to confess that he had tossed one of Daddy’s forbidden darts and it somehow landed in Abercrombie’s hair, and there’s blood coming down his face in rivers and you better come quick.

"Can’t you see I’m busy here?" Go tell Daddy.

Happy New Bus, er, Year.

2010-01-01T10:58:00.000-08:00

San Francisco
December 30

The big news is, we have jumped the stick, bought the bullet, closed our eyes and bungee jumped ourselves into a new, bigger, better and way too expensive coach to replace our Beaver and make our current lives so much more worthwhile. It has better brakes, better acceleration and a stronger, more reliable chassis. It also has granite counter tops, a ceramic slate floor with the most adorable little black squares, almond leather all around with black piping, a breakfast banquette and a super duper oven, plus washer and dryer, bigger shower and electric toilet.   But I am not one to be swayed by the decor of a thing, as you well know.

Are you LOL yet?

Here's the really LOL part. We bought this baby in Newport Beach CA, the very day I wrote my family and said that I was in financial straits and couldn't afford the big Christmas checks I like to write for all the kids. It was a coincidence, but a poor one, so I haven't told anybody in my family about this ridiculous purchase. I haven't written about this because they read the blog religiously and would then question my sanity, if not my penury, or my stinginess.

Rest easy, dear one, for I did send the original amount. Guilt? Yes, definitely. But they're great kids and I reasoned that this could be the last hurrah for us. When we start working at Walmart, we'll cheap out, but until then ...

So that's why I haven't written in the blog until today.   Plus:

The new bus, a Country Coach, was to be prepped and ready on my return from a quick trip to NY for a business reunion of 200 former Young & Rubicam employees.

That meant I had to pack up the Beaver before I left. Turns out, the new bus wasn't ready on time for our trip north to San Francisco for Christmas with our son, so John unpacked a lot of stuff and stored our other stuff in the new coach -- including some Christmas presents that Jeff never got.

Oh, men. Amen. We went to SF in the Beaver. I spent the next two weeks in the clothes I went to NY with, plus a few odd odds and ends I'd left on hangers. Nevertheless, Christmas with Jeff was fabulous as always.

The Monday after Christmas, John flew to Vegas (are you following this?) to pick up the new coach out of state (and save taxes.) Then he drove back the same day, arriving here in SF at 2:30 in the morning.

Tuesday we got up at the crack of civilization, and proceeded to throw everything from the Beaver into the new coach. We had to be done by noon because the salesman was driving the Beaver back to Newport Beach, where a buyer was waiting. This is one hell of a salesman, let me tell you, and it didn't hurt that he was totally cute and a real ladies' man. We both liked him immensely. And John's not gay, as far as I know.

Today we spent the day trying to stuff fifteen pounds of doo-doo into a ten pound bag. We mostly rearranged things and found that organization does make quite a difference. Right now, instead of a movie, we are going to Bed Bath and Better Write a Big Check for all the storage items, soap dishes, etc that we cannot live without. Then we'll have a quick dinner out, and flop into bed to get ready for the New Year.

My hair isn't exactly blonde to the roots, my nails are like claws so I keep making typos, and I have no idea what to wear to dinner tomorrow night -- perhaps something from the New York trip? -- but all is (almost) put away and I can see that we made the new almond tile floor kind of muddy -- but hey, I can see the floor!   It's pretty. Call me Pollyanna, but I'm happy. Poor. But happy.

Manual Labor

2010-01-01T10:46:00.001-08:00

January 1 2010
Happy New Year

Our new coach came with a plastic file cabinet full of manuals tucked into file folders, in alphabetical order, no less. My husband is a reader of manuals. He’s already half way through the two-inch thick book that came with the coach. Last night he plopped the instructions for the washing machine and dryer on the table where I was sitting.

Hey, fella! I’m busy heah. I’m playing a video game, so don’t interrupt my losing streak.

Now I wasn’t going to read any damn manual. My mother taught me how to beat my clothes on a rock when I was just a little child. When machines came along, she taught me how not to get my arm caught in the wringer and that was it. I didn’t get caught, but my brother did, which is why he has a dry, but very flat, arm today. But I digress.

Let’s just say I’ve been using washing machines for a long time. They’re pretty much the same – you toss the clothes in, dump in some soap, turn a dial and push a button. Kaboom, clean clothes. Dryers, same thing.

So why did I go out to dinner in a damp sweater last night?

I washed successfully, but the dryer is stacked on top of the washing machine and the dials are impossible to read from my lowly and shrinking height. I just guessed and pushed the button. Ten minutes later, the machine beeped. My wet sweater was now air-fluffed. Wet but fluffy. I tried again and forty minutes later my sweater was ready for really damp ironing.

I’ll cut to the chase here. That dryer has more damn cycles that a pms-ing woman and I never did find the one that simply dries things. So as the time to leave arrived, I pulled out the sweater, which by now was still wet around the collar where the material was thicker. It was kind of cold and icky, but as it turns out, the restaurant was kind of warm, so things worked out after all.

The manuals are still on the table, but it’s New Years Day, and I have a video game to play. My brother-in-law just jumped way past me and my son is closing in. I can’t let this happen, so I guess I’ll read those manuals another day. God knows when I'll get to the microwave one.

Betty

Standing on a Bubble

2009-12-02T19:52:00.000-08:00

Bakersfield California

When wood gets wet it swells, and when it dries, it doesn’t unswell. Nevertheless, I have spent the entire day standing on the bubbles, in the hope that I will make a difference in our now bumpy lumpy floor, the product of a flood caused by my dwindling mental faculties.

Standing on the bubbles doesn’t work. Not that you shouldn’t try it.

The good news is that while our four-month-old floor will have to be replaced, our RV insurance apparently covers things like this. Oh Hallelujah. Oh thank you Jesus. Oh thank you Moses. We are equal opportunity thankers.

I guess you have to go a long way to stun an insurance company. The response I got was, “Oh, sure, okay, fine, just call the adjuster, yes, I know, no problem.”

It was the “No problem” that gave me hope again.

Not too many women/especially creative women get the chance to change up their creative choices after only four months. I feel I am blessed. The black floor they all warned me about … they were right. It was hard to keep shiny. It was easier than the rug to keep clean, but it wasn’t the easiest thing I could imagine. My next choice will be in a lighter color. Say, white. Or cream. I’ll let you know.

So hello from a much happier, less depressed bus girl who is currently stopped in Bakersfield, on her way to the estimate for services that will save her life and her bank account. Not to mention her marriage.

Not that I’ve stopped stepping on the bubbles. It’s the principle of the thing.

A Flood of Biblical Proportions

2009-12-01T14:13:00.000-08:00

Route 101 South
San Jose, California

After a wonderful seven days in San Francisco, during which John had root canal, and Jeff worked astronomical hours, heroically biting the bullet to have dinner with us after a couple of 12-hour days, and I lost my reading glasses and Fedex lost the replacement pair I ordered, we are once again on the road.

My mother always counseled that it was a grievous error to put all your troubles on one plate, so I’m saving this last one for another paragraph.

It seems I went to wash my hands and couldn’t get any water. I jiggled the faucet up and down and up and down and up and got only a small drool. I called John’s name and there was no reply. He was outside washing the windshield and had turned off the water to the coach. No problem. I went to the kitchen, turned on the electric water pump, and washed my hands in the kitchen sink.

With brilliant powers of recall, after I’d washed my hands I turned the switch off so that the pump wouldn’t run and deplete our battery once he put the water back on. I congratulated myself on my foresight, deciding not to mention my brilliance to Mr. Superintendent of the Coach, lest I sound like an excited child bragging to Daddy that she’d finally learned to tie her shoes.

We left for the root canal. Later while we were getting our salt-encrusted car washed (we had been parked right on the water) John’s phone rang. It was the RV Park. Our rig was leaking. A neighbor had noticed, turned off the water and alerted the management. We hurried home.

Now re-read sentence two of paragraph three and you will see that I left the spigot in the bathroom in the up – as in the on – position. In the four hours that we’d been gone, the tap had been running continuously. It filled our grey water tank – which John had not turned to drain – then backed up through the shower, overflowing and flooding our shiny new black floor.

When we arrived, the water was off, the floor had a sluicing of water which we toweled up, and things seemed to be somewhat under control. Then we sat back and watched as the soaked pine under flooring slowly expanded, and pushed the beautiful new floor into a compromising position, with bubbles here, cracks there, and a strange new surface tension that made you feel like you were a little kid in one of those ball tents people rent for rich kids’ birthday parties.

This morning at 5 I awoke with a start and realized that if the sub floor was soaked, then the storage below was likely soaked too. And I was right. The only real casualties were my new suitcase and all my summer clothes in the cloth suitcase next to it. I will have quite a laundry load when we get to our next campground. I hauled both suitcases out of the bus and put them in the back of the car to dry – along with one of Jeff’s Christmas gifts, which I pray is not damaged inside its box.

So Nick, you wanted me to let you know what I was up to. I’d say, up to my knees and the water’s receding. We’ll stop at a couple of body shops and see if we need to replace the entire floor, or if we can get away with just the worst affected tiles. Meanwhile, we’re both wondering if we have homeowner’s insurance included in our RV policy.

Another dear friend suggested I might want to quit this RV living and get a real house.

Right. If you’re going to ruin a floor, you might as well flood a really big expensive one made of oh, I don't know, some rare African wood and make it worth your while. No, I'm much too dangerous at this point in my life.

And now, I’m going to go stand on a bump. Don’t laugh. It could work.

Where in the World Am I

2009-11-26T11:57:00.000-08:00

Happy Thanksgiving everybody. My good friend and erstwhile conscience, Nick Nardullo, told me today that I had a responsibility to let my friends know where I am on a regular basis.

I allowed as I hadn't had much to say in recent weeks, but he allowed as that was just a lame excuse for laziness and as long as I had started this blogging thing I had an obligation to keep it up. He, at least, was using it as a method for tracking my madness.

So here I am to fill you in on the meanderings of the two nutjobs living in a bus. We went from a Lake Tahoe vacation with Jeff in mid October and drove north as far as Sequim Washington. Stayed a couple of days in Portland, then Bend, Oregon, Shasta, California, and at some point stopped one night for dinner in SF with Jeff, then headed down to Pismo Beach in early November for a nice stay of a week, after which we took a second week in Pacific Dunes in Oceano, the town below Pismo. I did write a blog about Pismo and Dirty Ernie, and except for my brother Richard and my sister Sue, I don't think anyone else in the world has any idea what I was talking about. Ah well. You had to live in our house growing up to understand. We did "bits" at the dinner table -- everything from Dirty Ernie to Gabby Hayes to Uncle Miltie. No wonder half my family is in the theater -- and the rest of us wish we were.

On November 23 we headed north to Pacifica, the town just below SF, where we are in close proximity to Jeff and Keith, his roommate since college, who happens to be a major cook. We'll go to their house at 1:00 today and with 7 friends, partake of over 20 different dishes, then sit back with bursting stomachs and watch football, more football and more football. I may bring a book.

I promise to be better about locating myself. Nick said, "Just write a sentence. One sentence! Just let us know where you are."

Obviously, this is an impossibility for me. But I'll try. God knows, I'll try.

There Ought To Be a Law

2009-11-11T16:56:00.000-08:00

Pismo Beach, California
(Why are all California beaches foggy and rainy when I get there?)

We drove the 220 or so miles from San Francisco to Paso Robles today, planning to stop at Pismo Beach for the night. And if the phrase “Dirty Ernie” just popped into your head, you and I are the same age, and if you didn’t, then you missed one of the funnier bits in early television. Sid Miller was partners with Donald O’Connor, and earned himself several appearances on The Colgate Comedy Hour, where he did a drunken monologue about “Dirty Ernie” who never did show up at Pismo Beach. John remembers the one Dragnet show he was on, and neither of us knew that he directed a lot of the Mickey Mouse Club. But I digress.

After yesterday, a day of living Hell on the twisting, steep and narrow roads through the mountains and along the coast of Northern California –- which netted us a broken tree limb wrapped around a rear wheel, an exhaust pipe packed with fresh dirt, a car with a frozen steering wheel and a road of no return that twisted unceasingly up the side of a mountain and was all of one lane wide -- we opted for a nice, recently paved, wide road south. That put us on the 101, otherwise known as El Camino Real.

South of San Jose, the road takes up residence in the most beautiful valley in California, between the Coast Ranges on the left, and the Santa Lucia Mountains on the right. It is one of the most productive farming areas in the State and I couldn’t get over how big the farms were. There was a 20-mile stretch of beautiful brown dirt, nurtured, rich, and ready for planting. There were miles of vineyards, acres of avocados, and hectares of artichokes, in other words, lots of So-Cal produce. Not so many oranges; it isn’t all that southerly. We saw many more fruit trees around Los Angeles.

I saw big stretches of one type of plant ready for harvesting, a vegetable I presumed, with an abundance of raggedy-edged leaves. John guessed arugula, but I didn’t think so. Then we spied a group of farm workers standing around a makeshift table and lopping off the raggedy leaves to reveal – cauliflower. Had I not seen that tableau, I would never have known what it was. Which leads me to the point of this story, which is, I think they ought to make it a law that every farmer in America must plainly identify the crop being grown.

Think of how many accidents could be avoided if people like me didn’t have to go abruptly from 65 mph to 15 to get a better look at what’s peeking up from the ground.

Think of all the intellectual discussions that could go on as a result. Geez, Louise, I didn’t know artichokes grew like that! Or, say, Cornelius, how do they get those grapevines to twist around those little stakes? Or even, why the Hell are they growing so much damn cauliflower?

Now don’t get me wrong. I don’t hate cauliflower. I like it raw, with globs of onion dip all over it, so you can’t taste it. Occasionally, I like it cooked, as long as it’s creamed, with lots of butter and cheese, so you can’t taste it.

Cauliflower goes into my reject bin along with those little cabbage thingies, what the heck are they called anyway? Brussels sprouts, that’s it. They don’t look like sprouting anything, and they don’t taste like schnitzel, so what’s up with that name. No wonder I can never remember it. And oh yes, Swiss chard is in there too.

Beets are another polarizing vegetable, as is broccoli, isn’t it, Mr. Bush. I love both, but my son Jeff knows that my worst attempt at parenting happened because of beets. I actually made him sit in front of a plate with two tiny slices of beet for over 45 minutes one night just because he wouldn’t put even one half a slice in his mouth. Why winning that test of wills was so important to me, I can’t say.

But I was paid back in spades last night, when Jeff – who never ate anything green, crunchy or for that matter, healthy, when he was growing up – took us out for sushi and insisted on ordering. I ended up eating the “Two Spoons” appetizer, one of which held a glob of uni – horrid yellow stuff – and a raw quail egg. Payback is wonderful isn’t it, son? To be truthful, it was delicious.

I just smothered it in butter and cheese, added a dash of onion dip, held my nose, and swallowed the thing whole.

Betty

Baby for Breakfast

2009-10-30T12:18:00.000-07:00

Prospect, OR
Crater Lake Campground

Today we popped into Prospect Oregon's one diner, next to its one bar, next to its one grocery and its one hotel (!) and ordered an 11 o'clock breakfast. The place was empty; a waitress riffled through a stack of newspapers and took a couple of sections into the bathroom. Our waitress, a really pretty, heavyset woman in her late 30's, told us breakfast was cut off at 11, and the cook had just cleaned the grill.

We acknowledged his hard work, but told her it was eggs or nothing and we'd just pay for the coffee. She went back to the kitchen for the third time, and on her return she allowed as how the cook was willing to make us breakfast.

Fine. John was annoyed, I was amused and the waitress was delighted. She'd been able to get the cook to change his mind, although he'd probably be mad at her for the rest of the day. A couple of customers came and went, hunters from the look of things. Our breakfast finally emerged, and was served with a big smile. A few minutes later, the waitress returned to our table. She was carrying a photograph.

"Wanna see my baby?" she asked, coyly. She handed the picture to John, and he passed it to me without comment.

There she was, kneeling beside a huge deer, its rack enormous, its forehead bloody. "My first buck," she said, proudly. "He's my baby."

Lady, you just murdered this magnificent creature and you're calling him your baby?

Eeuw. I looked down at the homemade sausage that I'd sampled. It definitely wasn't pork. I think we were having baby for breakfast.

Oregon. It ain't California.

Mojave Thoughts

2009-10-17T12:06:00.000-07:00

Bakersfield, CA

Driving across the desert is the equivalent of a morning shower. Now, now, hear me out. The shower is solitary, quiet and somewhat boring, so I do all my best thinking there. The desert is solitary, quiet and really boring, so as I was driving along the 239-mile stretch of open, dusty road from Barstow to Bakersfield, I began to mentally wander.

Some idle thoughts: The Mojave is dry and dusty. It makes the word arid sound moist.

I talked to my son briefly, and he informed me I needed to say the word Mojave right. He contended that it was Moh-Jav. I’m not that gullible, Heff.

Not one hour after having our coach washed in Barstow to the tune of $52, we drove through a swarm of bees. We scored 25 direct hits and countless ricochets. The only thing that makes it worthwhile is that everyone has suffered the same buggy insult, including that annoying vintage T-Bird who passed me on the right and then had the nerve to honk at me for being in the left lane. I would have moved over, but there was an idiot next to me.

We pass a Frito-Lay truck and the driver is eating a sandwich. I think to myself, “I wonder if he’s having chips with that.”

This desert doesn’t look like my idea of a desert. I have a pristine vision in my head: miles and miles of white, sparkling sand, impossible to walk on without snowshoes, but great if you’re on a horse. I guess I’m Lawrence of Arabia. This desert is brown sandy dirt, with brown mountains on the horizon and scrub in all shades of brown.

(The next morning, another wanderer told us to take 99 North to Tahoe for some great scenery. Then he added the clincher. A two-lane road through the desert. Uh, I don’t think so.)

On passing Tehachapi, I think that the language of the Native Americans, with all its iiiii’s and breath stops between syllables is a lot like Welsh with all its consonants and braubrichthinwhichglaglydds that are equally impossible to decipher. So do you suppose the Navajo could learn Welsh faster than we not-native Americans?

Some seventy miles into the Mojave stands a sign that reads, “Land for Sale.” Why? Who would buy some desert? For what purpose? And have they experienced a drop in property values like the rest of us? Could you get it for a real steal?

We pass Edwards Air Force Base, and I notice brand-new tar roads on either side of the highway. What’s up with that? Why would anyone put a black tar road in one of the hottest places in the country? Today it’s 104 and this is Mid-October. When I was a little girl I stepped in tar in the Jones Beach parking lot and was burned so badly the whole car of us had to turn around and go home. Then I realize. This isn’t a road. It’s human fly paper, designed to catch and severely maim any terrorists who might be thinking they’d invade Edwards and stage a coup from there. I feel so much safer now.

After miles of nothing, we hit a town. Eighteen tin shacks, one stop light, and 468 truck, car and washing machine carcasses. What do they produce here? Rust? Then my appetite for the comic is sated when I spot the single store in town. A lean-to with a Coke machine out front. It called The Emporium.

Why do they close rest stops? All they are is a pull-off from the road. Are they trying to get us to rest less and exercise more?

In Tehachapi, amid the miles and miles of brown, there is a swath of green that is surrounded by 16 tall green cypresses. I was so curious at this anomaly that I went on line to find out. Nothing about the curious little park and how it got there. I did, however, learn that Tehachapi’s biggest industry is the California State Correctional Institution. The thought passes through my mind: free labor?

As we head through the last pass through the mountains, I leave the desert and head into one of California’s famous valleys where riots of nuts, fruits and wine grapes are happily growing. So why, I wonder, in the middle of all this lush greenery, is there a town called Weedpatch? Isn't that just a little counterintuitive? Would you want a beautiful orange from Weedpatch?

That thought has barely left my head when I spot two leathery looking men beneath beach umbrellas fishing in a man-made canal. What would they catch? Fish sticks?

Betty

Getting High in Albuquerque

2009-10-15T10:07:00.000-07:00

October 3-11, 2009

Now I don’t say this lightly.

Actually, I do say it lightly, because this is about balloons. Not little balloons. Big, no, enormous balloons. We were fortunate enough to get to the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta this year.

Oh what glorious blue skies they have in New Mexico. And to see them filled with floating, drifting, bobbing bacchanalia is to feel your heart burst from your chest and float straight up, untethered by life’s concerns. The fiesta producers called the 2009 Fiesta, “Mass Happiness.” They were right.

Imagine dragging yourself from your bed on a chilly desert morning, well before the sun, well before anything should be moving except the bedsprings. Imagine dressing without your usual shower because you just had to get outside. You put on jeans and a tee shirt, and then you add a long-sleeved shirt, socks, a windbreaker, scarf, gloves, earmuffs and you grab a cuppa joe because you won’t stay warm without it. What could make you do such a thing?

Dawn patrol, that’s what. In the dark of the earliest morning, two balloons would hoist themselves up to greet the rising sun. They would carry American flags, and suddenly the Star Spangled Banner would play over the omnipresent loudspeakers. Over 5000 people as crazy as you would clap wildly, as the balloons drifted overhead and the pilots took measure of the wind. That is the real reason for Dawn Patrol: to gauge the wind velocity and direction for the rest of the balloonists. Nevertheless, the moment always caused me to hold my breath.

Before long, the field, roughly the size of several football fields, would begin to develop a riot of lumpy, bumpy protuberances you hadn’t noticed before. Big mounds of colorful marshmallows, swelling and bobbing where before there had only been flat fabric, easy to overlook. Now they were demanding their piece of the atmosphere as they filled with gas and assumed their shapes.

One by one, they’d fire up, the heat of the fires causing the gas to expand and send them skyward in a slow aerobic ballet. Each balloon has one or two pilots and by my count about 20 handlers. Many are volunteers who come for the sheer joy of holding a guide rope in the freezing cold so the balloon stays in place until it is time to let go. Many get team jackets to wear. All are smiling. Now I understand what it is to be in a job whose only purpose is to make people happy.

At this point, you are probably imagining a sky full of colorful light-bulb shapes. But what is this that’s floating by? Pepe le Pew? A giant can of Pepsi? A United Van Lines truck? Two balloons, or I should say two bees, kissing? These are the special shapes balloons, wonderful variations that are generally bigger than the average balloon. Especially the Parthenon. No kidding. There really was a Parthenon balloon. And the space shuttle, a stagecoach, a huge chicken and a scarecrow (they usually flew together), the perfect clown head, and hundreds of other crowd-pleasers. There’s a competition every year, and this year it was won by the Creamland Dairy, whose entry was an enormous cow that dwarfed its competition and charmed the crowd. How they got that thing up every morning is still a mystery to me.

The biggest cheer, however, came when Darth Vader took off. The movies’ biggest villain always arose to a claxon of approval. “I am your father, Luke. And a balloon.”

Once you’d had your fill of fun, some two hours later, it would be time to venture down onto the field. We had VIP parking, high on a ridge above the field, so that our view of the skies was uninterrupted. But now it would be time to join the day-trippers for a stroll on the midway. Two facing rows of white tents housed vendor row, where people could get breakfast burritos, curly fries, mini donuts fresh out of the cooker, ice cream, chalupas, sopapillas, baked potatoes, free beer!, coffee, hot chocolate, funnel cakes, corn dogs and all the usual carny fare that is so bad for you and so impossible to resist.

There were tee shirts, sweaters, hats, mittens and gloves to be had. Jewelry, both real and fake, made in China, and made on the reservation. And pins. Oh the pins. The big thing at the festival is pin-collecting. Lapel pins, priced from $3 to $300 for the ones from years gone by. Most of the balloons were represented, and Darth Vader sold out on the first day. If you were nutty enough, you could buy a silly hat – a Cat in the Hat, or an oversized top hat, or a Viking hat, or a big Rasta topper – and cover it with the pins you’ve collected. Some jackets covered with pins must have weighed a hundred pounds.

And everywhere you went, any time of the day or night, all would be mellow. Can you imagine somewhere between five and ten thousand people all walking around with dopey grins, even if their kids were wailing, and saying “Excuse me, sorry” if they so much as ruffled the sleeve of your jacket as they passed? Balloons are a natural high.

Midway along the midway, you’d have taken off your jacket, because the sun had warmed the morning and unfrozen your fingers. You might venture over to the Balloon Museum, where you’d learn that ballooning originated in France in the 1700’s and was used commercially for a time. It was the first time ever that man had conquered the skies, so that in itself was a pretty big deal. Some more-industrial nations adopted ballooning fairly early on, but Japan never had its first balloon until 1969. Go figure.

The most famous balloon, of course, was the Hindenberg, but this is a happy chapter, so we’ll leave that alone.

Once your arthritic knee couldn’t take another drubbing, you’d head back up the hill to your motor coach for a hot shower and some down time. But of course, there are the Albuquerque sights to see, so you wouldn’t stay on the couch for long. Besides, whatever you had to do had to be done by 5, because that’s when the cocktail hour started, and preparation for the Glowdeo commenced. The Glowdeo is the twilight event, where the balloons are inflated but stay earthbound, and as soon as it is dark enough, the rodeo master commences the countdown and the fires are lit, illuminating all the balloons for about ten seconds and causing oohs and aahs that will be repeated at 9 o’clock, when the fireworks, as spectacular as any I’ve ever seen, start. You’d walk the field during the Glowdeo and see the balloons close up. They’re much bigger than you imagine and you can talk with the pilots, and ask about the balloons. Kids run around collecting balloon cards, like baseball cards, from each team.

I made the biggest gaffe of the week when I went up to one balloon’s crew and asked if the Koshare (ko-sha-ree) was a Japanese cartoon character. After some good-natured kidding delivered in a faux Asian accent, the pilot, an Albuquerque native, informed me that the Koshare was a Native American totem, a mischievous character who represented fun and good times. Ooops. Kachina, not Pachinko.

And so to bed. You’d retire early, because tomorrow was another day, because you’d now been up and about for 18 hours straight and because with all that heavenly wonder still rumbling around in your brain, the last thing you needed to do was to watch television.

You’d already made your own kind of magic, and Letterman just wouldn’t cut it. Not tonight anyway.

Betty

Be Careful What You Wish For

2009-10-15T02:53:00.000-07:00

Arizona
On the Way to Tahoe

For over a year I have been bemoaning the state of the yellowy-almond colored rug that covered the living area of our coach. It was nice on the toes, but it collected every bit of dust, mud, food spillage, dog tossup, and hair from at least one of the two humans and the canine that collectively live here. At least three times a week I’d have to vacuum, then clean the clogged vacuum, poking at the dog hair and detritus it had just inhaled. And it fit absolutely nowhere, so it was relegated to a corner in the bedroom where it sat, quietly turning us into asthmatics. At least twice a month, I’d be down on my hands and knees with the scrub brush and the bottle of rug shampoo. And for this I’d retired?

We came to a collective decision, although I can’t really speak for the dog, that the rug had to go. It was too dirty, too smelly, and way too much work. So we (I) set about finding the perfect flooring.

It didn’t take long to find my heart’s desire. At a recent convention of motor coaches, there among the many shining examples of coachly indulgence, sat a brand-new 2009 Beaver Coach with a BLACK GRANITE FLOOR! Oh did that shine. Oh did that look elegant! Oh this was the floor for me.

Never mind that the coach was a super suspension, designed to pull much more aggregate weight than my 2004 model. Never mind that granite is one of the heaviest of flooring materials. My sense of the rightness of that floor was set in stone. Unintentional pun.

At this self-same convention, I also walked the exhibit hall and met quite a few converters (RV renovators) who all had the same answer for me: impossible. Your tires will pop. Here, try this nice 1950’s style vinyl tile. It’s easy to keep clean.

I turned and fled that negativity. I was undeterred.

There were other naysayers. People with beige floors, people with rugs, people with envy for my decision. It’ll never be clean, they’d say. It’ll show every dog hair, they’d moan. You’ll be cleaning it constantly, they’d squawk. I’ll do the work, I promised myself, and besides, they don’t know how hard it was keeping that rug clean. Only one woman, forever after my new best friend, thought it was a cool idea. She hates her rug too.

Now here was the problem. I could get very light granite. It was made in Italy, split into thin sheets, cut into nice-size tiles and backed with a kind of foamcore. It needed special adhesive, a special underflooring and might scratch when the slides were rolled closed. And it would cost $24,000. For a floor the size of, oh ,say 240 sq ft. That works out to $100 a square foot, I believe. John, cranky old skinflint that he is, would not go along with this plan.

Would I have acceded to this madness if he hadn’t put his manly clodhopper down on my dainty little toes? I live in this thing, don’t I? Okay, I can’t lie. Of course I wouldn’t have.

So after ascertaining that my number two choice, porcelain, was just as damnably heavy, I unhappily took a look at the kitchen tile I so dearly had tried to avoid. Vinyl. Oh my goodness, they make beautiful vinyl tile these days. All I had to do was choose a nice, shiny black tile that looked like granite and I would be happy.

Not in style, the sales people all said. What you want is the tumbled marble look. In a nice white, or beige, with no shiny anywhere. No, I wanted black and shiny.

For months I looked and looked. I looked in Florida, New York, Texas, and Ohio. Everywhere I was told, “No luck, sister.” It was either the wrong color, the wrong weight, the wrong material, wrong, wrong, wrong.

I got very discouraged. Then one of the coach converters wrote me to say he’d found a company that makes elevator tile (A weight issue here too! Why hadn’t I thought of that?) and they had a granite-type tile that was actually a composite of granite chips, glass and vinyl. It was light, it was tough, and it was black. Not only that, it was $7.99 a tile. Forget that you can go to Home Depot and get industrial tile for 83 cents a square foot. This would be a $7000 floor and not a $30,000 floor – the Italian price had gone up in the months I was deciding.

I now have a beautiful black floor. It was shiny for about a week. I Swiffered it and it got dull. Nothing seems to make it shiny. Not only that, everything seems to make it dirty – walking on it, for instance. We have tried everything to clean it, from dishwashing liquid to shower cleaner to Fantastic to promising the dog a year of running free on no leash if he would only lick the floor with his magic tongue. Zilch. The little bit of shiny that’s under the driver’s floor mat is bleak reminder of all I had hoped for.

But I am not done yet. We bought a bottle of urethane-type finish that the sales clerk said Walmart uses on their floors, and Walmart floors are always shiny. We’ll put it on our floor and see what happens.

Truth is, no matter how it turns out, it’s still 100 times better than that smelly old rug, and six times easier to clean than the white bricks with grout that were in the kitchen area. I’m inordinately happy with how things look, as long as I don’t look too close.

Love can forgive anything.

My new g-string

2009-10-01T16:40:00.000-07:00

Cuba, Missouri
Don't ask.

Darling

I just wanted to tell you again how much I love my new g-string.

You’ll be pleased to know it’s had the desired effect.

It fell out of my purse yesterday and my husband looked at me with a question in his eyes.

Oh this? I said. It’s nothing. Just a g-string.

What would you want something like that for? he asked.

Don’t be silly, I said.

When did you get it? he persisted.

Yesterday, I said. When I was in the city.

How much does something like that cost, he said suspiciously. You know we’re on a budget.

I turned his annoying question aside. It was a gift, I said.

Really, he said, mollified.

This man doesn’t have a jealous bone in his body.

I put my g-string back in my purse and vowed I’d find it a good spot among my lingerie so I wouldn’t forget where it was when the time came to put it to good use.

Later that night, he said, so when were you going to tell me about it?

Oh, I said nonchalantly, I wasn’t.

He turned over and went to sleep.

I can’t wait to get my guitar out of storage.

Love
Betty

Big Rigs

2009-10-01T09:00:00.000-07:00

Effingham, IL
On the road to Albuquerque

This country, in case you weren’t aware of it, is truck-dependent. I’m so used to hopping over to the grocery store, or the mall, or the corner deli, I never even considered just how all those products got onto all those shelves. I mean, I’m not stupid. I just never thought about it much. But traveling as we have, back and forth, up and down, over and about, I have seen the light.

Trucking is huge.

If I had a light attached to every big truck I see, it would show a pattern of lines up and down, over and under, here and there, coast to coast. Actually, some people have already done that with traffic at night. It makes a pretty picture.

If you separate out the big rigs from the roadsters, coupes, SUVs, sports cars, family haulers, RV’s, pickups and other types of small vehicles, and if you tracked only them, you would have a pretty clear picture of how this country sends and receives its things we cannot do without. And that’s not counting the government trucks, army trucks and other non-commercial big boys. Not to mention air transport. But that’s a whole ‘nother industry.

The movers-of-stuff-that-keeps-us-going seem to fall into a few categories: container corporations like SeaLand who use independent cabs, shipping companies like Crete who have their own trucks, and the corporate trucks with names like Walmart and Sunkist. Sometimes it’s hard to tell which is which. All of these are driven by truck drivers, men mostly, but increasingly women, and they come in all shapes, ages and sizes, including the cliché big burly guy, but also the petite little blonde who jumped down from a huge semi at a truckstop, much to the pleasure of the other drivers. I wonder if she carries mace. I would, if I were pulling a million dollars worth of cargo in a truck worth almost as much on a lonely stretch of road. Hijacking is a very real threat. I know of someone whose entire household contents were stolen when their moving van was hijacked on a lonely road between New York and Florida. But that too is a whole “nother story.

There’s even an industry based on just the logistics of getting one product from here to there. These people don’t necessarily ship; they facilitate. Consider a widget made in China that must travel by rail to Shanghai, then by cargo ship to England, be transferred to another cargo ship on a particular day and time, then arrive in Toronto and be transferred with the same accuracy to a trans-Canadian truck and transported, say, by rail, to Seattle and then trucked to Terre Haute.

Miss a connection and you’ve just blown all the profit that widget could have made. It happens. That’s why there’s insurance for just such a thing. And why I know about logistics in the first place, because I used to write ads for that particular form of insurance.

Just for fun, here’s a list of some of the big rigs I’ve seen when I’ve looked up from writing this blog. We see these same names every day, over and over. This does not count an equal number of unidentified cargo trucks, or all the ones pulling things like logs, cement, tractors, industrial pipes the size of houses, and other huge cargo. I mean, trucking is big. Really big.

Arnold
Autobahn
Bridge Steel
Butler
Carman
Carter Express
Celedo
Challenger
CHRIS
Con-Way
Crete
D&D Sexton
Dart Advantage
Dick Lavy
England
FEDEX
Freymiller
Frito-Lay
GDS Express
Glen Moore
Great Lakes
Gully
JB Hunt
Kewpoint
Knudsen
Land Span
Manfredi Logistics
Marten
New Century
Ohio Pacific Express
Old Dominion
Oliver
One Freight
OnLine
PAM
Panther
Penske
Prime
REM
Rex
Roadway
Scotlynn
Sherwin-Williams
Southern Cal
Stallion Express
STI Canada
Sunflower
TSI
Tyson
UPS
Walmart

The Perfect Retirement Home

2009-09-30T15:27:00.000-07:00

I just got an email from my good friend although I've never met him, Tim Gilmore,a real estate agent in the Hamptons, which is to say, the preferred vacation area for New Yorkers, New Jerseyites and other East Coasters.

I met Tim on line, when I was searching for a suitable retirement home, one that would allow me to park my bus, put my feet up, and watch the sun go down in cool climax to a lovely Hamptons afternoon.

Tim sent me an ad for a house in the Hamptons that said, “Excellent starter home.”

That was what was in my budgetary framework. An excellent starter home. Tim, I want an excellent ENDER home. Not a beginner. One that represents all that I have worked so hard for all these years. A home with a nice kitchen, a sweet pool, a place to entertain, a couple of bedrooms for the kids and their offspring, and as little upkeep as possible.

Starter home sounds like work, doesn’t it?

It sounds like somebody else lived there first and didn’t do a damn thing to make it prettier, cozier, warmer, or better electrified.

It sounds like the pool has green mold, bugs and leaves around the edges, the electricity is dicey at best, and the frame of the house has some evil inhabitants who have worked very hard to no be evicted.

It sounds like a starter, not an ender. Oh yes, that’s what you said it is.

But,Tim darling.

I don’t plan to put on my overalls and get to work. I don’t plan to evict mudhuts of yellow jackets, warrens of squirrels and nests of raccoons in the attic. I don’t plan to completely rewire this simple little ranch, this unpretentious nest of a darling hideaway.

I just want to kick back, sip my Bloody Mary and grill my steak in peace.

I want to go to a good movie, visit a decent library, and ride my bike from time to time so that I feel like I am truly taking care of my body, although I know in my heart that my body is beyond repair.

And forgive me for this peculiarity, but I don’t want to live in a retirement community because I have some silly idea that a neighborhood with children and teenagers and young marrieds is more my style. I envision myself sipping my cocktail of a Halloween evening, answering the door, acting terrified of the tiny marauders, and handing over my stash of candy. This would make me very very happy. I don’t want big events in my life. I’ve had enough big events, thank you very much. I just want small pleasures. Little children. Sweet evenings. Friendly dogs. Is that too much to ask?

I don’t want to replace the gutters and leaders. I don’t want to repave the driveway. I would love to redecorate somebody’s badly decorated house. I do think I have talent in that area, so that would please me at lot. And if I got stuck I could think of a few friends who have far more talent than I, who would be more than happy to give me suggestions and shopping help.

Once I had a pretty, pretty place, I’d invite my friends over, put out the hors d’oeuvres, turn the stereo to the jazz station, and give one of my very special parties. I was known for them, back in the day.

So Tim, what have you got for me? Have you got that perfect place, that inexpensive, small, but incredibly adorable place that I can call my ender and not my beginner? I’m not interested in starting. I only want to go out with a bang, a thump, a cannon’s roar.

Call me, Tim.

Betty

Errata Redux

2009-09-19T10:05:00.002-07:00

On Route 80
From Ohio to Pennsylvania
to Syracuse to Tarrytown

1. If you leave the bathroom window open in a motor coach, a brand new roll of toilet paper will unroll itself down to its cardboard core and you will have to decide if it is worth your time to a) reroll it completely b) reroll it until you are sick of rerolling and throw the rest away or c) toss it and feel incredibly guilty for wasting paper and cluttering the environment. I chose b.

2. Somewhere along Route 80 in Ohio, there is a tollbooth operator who hands out doggy treats. This is undoubtedly a dog lover, and the sweet gift is undoubtedly coming out of her own pocket. Makes you want to pay it forward.

3. There is actually a Rutherford B. Hayes Library in Ohio, but William McKinley has a monument but no library. Is it possible he couldn’t read or write? Even the hat salesman, Harry Truman, has a library. What gives?

4. Hudson, Ohio, looks exactly like Westport, CT. That’s probably because at one time, Ohio was a part of Connecticut. How amazing is that. It was called the Western Reserve and was settled by, of course, folks from Connecticut. That name also explains Case Western Reserve University, which isn’t in Hudson anymore, but the prep school is.

5. If you want a black floor in a motor coach, don’t try to buy granite. It will cause your tires to explode. But don’t accept that your floor has to look like a kitchen instead of a grand marble entryway. Look up the people who make tile for elevators. Aha! Elevators have a weight issue too. And if you do install this wonderful faux granite tile that they use in elevators, be sure to invest in a Swiffer. You’ll be using it every couple of hours or so. Especially if you have a white dog. But you will be inordinately happy with your beautiful floor, nonetheless.

6. Once someone has pulled your motor coach apart for a major installation, do not expect everything to work as before. You can expect that when you are 200 miles down the road, the electric pump that powers your slides and your levelers will give up the ghost and you will not see much of your beautiful floor until you can get your pump fixed after the weekend. Motor coaches, like people, tend to get sicker on weekends. I don’t know why that is.

7. I didn’t write this, but I wish I had: More often than not, when someone is telling me a story all I can think about is that I can't wait for them to finish so that I can tell my own story that's not only better, but also more directly involves me.

Do you Wanna Shipshewana?

2009-09-16T10:39:00.001-07:00

Shipshewana Indiana is known for its Amish and Mennonite heritage. It’s a tourist town, of course, and boasts lots of curio shops, restaurants and lots of homemade delights including noodles, jellies, jams, pies and other equally fattening and delectable goodies. There’s the requisite Christmas shop, of course, and a huge antique mall, but the places that most intrigued me were the ones that sold handmade signs, birdhouses, gewgaws, religious plaques, pictures and simple but exquisitely made furniture.

The trouble with living in a motor home is that you can’t just impulse shop. Everything you like takes up space, and that means I had to forswear the wonderfully painted tin stars (no outside to decorate) the gorgeous quilts (only one bed to cover) all those wise and wonderful semi-religious plaques (no walls to put nails in) the whimsical tin flowers (no garden) the bird houses (ditto) wagon wheels, handmade porch swings, various buckets, firkins (look it up) dolls, and most interestingly, the traditional white caps, sitting so starchily pretty in a closed glass cabinet so they wouldn’t gather dust.

I bought a potholder filled with spices that gives off a lovely aroma when you put your hot pot on top of it. And that was it. Nothing else would fit in the bus.

I did, however, spend a good deal of time touching beautifully rubbed cherry, maple and beech tables, admiring the shine, craftsmanship and aesthetics of each one. There was a young Mennonite salesperson on her cell phone. (I knew she wasn’t Amish because she was using a modern gadget) She wore the starched white cap, a long dress and no makeup. I was the only customer in the store, and couldn’t help hearing her side of the conversation. I expected a lot of thee’s and thou’s and shyly sweet remarks. Instead, as she hung up, I heard her say, “Cool! Catch you later. Cool! Will do. Buh-bye.” I know the strict Amish don’t use electricity, but I guess the Mennonites have TV. That was definitely a SNL conversation.

In another place, I put out my American Express card, and the Amish woman replied, “Oh we don’t take Amex, just MasterCard and Visa.” I had to smile. “I guess you’ve got to feel pretty much ‘in the world’ if you’re saying that.” “Oh yes,” she smiled ruefully, and we both laughed.

The Amish buggies are very much in evidence in Shipshewana, as are beards, flat black hats on the men and towheaded little girls in long plain dresses and little boys in ankle-length pants with old fashioned lace up shoes.

The other interesting item of haberdashery was one young girl’s lace mantilla. I decided she was either washing her white cap or a Jackie Kennedy wannabe, since that was the last time I’ve seen anybody in a mantilla. Unless she was Jewish and this was a yarmulke. Which would mean she was a boy and I was blind drunk. I leave you to decide on that one.

They ask you not to request the “plain people” to pose for pictures with you. I guess I wouldn’t like to be a curiosity in my hometown either. I did surreptitiously get a few of the buggies, which I found charming and sweet.

After the visit to Shipshewana, I went on line to have a few questions answered. I learned that in fact that both Amish and Mennonite derive from an earlier religious group called Anabaptists in Switzerland and Germany. Anabaptist means “born again.” Hmmm. Where have I heard that before? In the 1600’s, Simon Menno broke with the Anabaptists first and thus the Mennonites were formed, and the Amish split happened when a bunch of the Mennonites decided things were getting too worldly and went back to the earlier, stricter teachings, notably shunning, which is what they still do if a professed member of the community breaks the rules egregiously. They don’t baptize until between the ages of 16 and 25, and turn a blind eye towards the young folk who are expected to act up and misbehave for a while. To get it all out of their systems, I imagine, because once you are baptized, you’d better not mess up or you’ll be shunned, cut off from every friend and family member you’ve ever known. Oooh. That’s cold.

The Amish are amazing people. They live with no electricity and no education beyond the eighth grade, at which time they take up the farming that keeps the community supplied with both food and income. They all wear the same haircut: women with center parts and long straight hair, and men with what looks to me like a bowl cut, longish with bangs. But all this is just surface. I’d like to know how they live in the silence of their homes, how they are able to read by gas lamp, and most importantly, how they don’t all weigh 250 pounds from the food. Must be the hard work.

And how they can remain untouched by the world? Then again, maybe they can’t. Maybe it’s inevitable that they will soak up at least some of their surroundings, given the number of people who visit their little town, and the seduction of modern inventions. Maybe that little salesgirl with the cell phone and “Cools” and “Buh-byes” is not the only one who’s joining the modern world little by little.

And maybe, just maybe, someone is sitting by his fire, bemoaning these changes and planning a revolution of his own, back to the old ways. Maybe, this minute, the Amish are about to be born again. It wouldn’t be the first time.

City Girl in the Country

2009-09-11T15:12:00.000-07:00

Angola, Indiana
Three Weeks at Crooked Lake
While the Bus is Being Renovated

I’m a city gal myself. Believe me, if Tarrytown, where I have spent the majority of my life, were anywhere else in this country outside of New York or California, it’d be a city.

But this is Indiana, as middle America as it gets, and that means farm country. Northern Michigan, where I recently spent three weeks, is cherry country. George Washington would have had a ball with his little hatchet. Here in Angola, the crop they boast the most is corn. It’s everywhere. Even in little neighborhoods, every one of which has at least one mobile home among its ranks, people plant corn.

In Michigan you can’t go 6 blocks without a cherry stand: Clean! Sweet! Fresh Cherries! In Angola you don’t make two blocks without seeing those homemade signs, each inevitably claiming Sweet Corn! $3 per dz! Best Corn for Miles! And sporting varietal names like Obsession.

To me that’s a perfume. To the Hoosiers, that’s prime corn.

And by the way, here’s an instance of Mother Nature’s brilliance. Corn grows in the middle of the stalk, sort of hanging out there for you to see it and pick it. Good thing, because if it were at the top, the stalk would break from its weight and you wouldn’t have “Sweet Corn!” You’d have “Dead Corn!” So if corn is the seed of the corn flower – not to be confused with cornflower, which is something else entirely – then what are those wispy things at the top of the cornstalk? I’ll have to Google that one.

And here, I’ve twice seen cows in the corn. Is that a bad thing? Should Little Boy Blue come blow his horn?

I stopped at a Sweet Corn sign yesterday and as luck would have it, this was an equal opportunity home gardener. I picked up eight of the most beautiful vine-ripened tomatoes I’ve ever seen or eaten. We used to grow tomatoes in our garden when I was growing up, and remember my mother walking outside with the salt, picking a tomato off the vine, salting it and eating it like a fruit. Yum, she’d say, the luscious juice dripping down her chin. This, in spite of the fact that she was allergic to tomatoes, and by tomorrow would have little bumps all over her forehead. Some treats just cannot be forsworn, even if they have troubling aftereffects. Tomatoes, as you might guess, have both a gastronomic and emotional appeal for me. And these babies really delivered. I made a salad of one red and one yellow, dotted it with slices of avocado, and that was my dinner.

As Mom would say, “Yum.”

I Hear You Mom

2009-08-16T08:53:00.000-07:00

Hearthside Grove Motor Coach Resort
Petosky, Michigan

We are now at the end of our Michigan jaunt, and have enjoyed every minute of our two-and-a-half-week's vacation of sorts. I say that because if this is a vacation, then I don’t know what we’ve been doing for the past year. Everything has been a vacation.

As usual, we are dogged by mishaps, but that’s only the Universe talking to us and making sure we don’t take this retirement thing for granted. The latest was a missing hearing aid.

My little ear-speakers are extremely light, and I am usually quite unaware of them, until and unless I feel a sort of dead sound in one ear, and then I know I need to replace the battery. I hear sound pretty well, but I just can’t make out words. Teeth could be feet, for instance. And a pain in the toe is a lot different from a toothache, so I need these little buggers. And they are not inexpensive, so when one went missing I was, needless to say, concerned.

I have this big, fluffy, curly hair and apparently when I pushed it off my neck in an effort to cool off in the heat, I dislodged one and sent it flying. I started a search as soon as I realized it was missing, about ten minutes later. I checked the car and came up empty-handed, then the bedroom, then oh god my table with its thousands of little jewelry parts, computer, camera, paperback book and pens, etc. I scoured the mess and came up empty again. John backed the car out so I could search the driveway.

I said a prayer and asked for help in finding the missing aid. Of course I found it right away, on the driveway. John had driven over it. I laughed at the irony and said to God – Ooops, sorry, I forgot to ask that it not be crunched under the car wheel.

I laid it gently on the kitchen counter, adding up the additional bucks necessary to replace it. $2500 for two, so $1250 for one? Or maybe I should replace both with the new supersonic ones my pal Dan, my hearing aid specialist, had recommended on my last visit. They wouldn’t whistle when I picked up the phone. Maybe God was telling me I should upgrade.

I picked up the damaged, crushed hearing aid, slide the battery holder closed and listened. The darn thing was working! God had his joke and let me off the hook!

What was I thinking! That wasn’t God. I should have recognized my mother in that one from the very beginning. First of all, she was psychic, of that I am certain. She could find anything, anywhere. If anyone in the house lost anything, anything at all, she would think on it, then within two guesses, locate it exactly where it lay. Rings, keys, homework, you name it. She found it.

She was also the original make-do woman. Having grown up during the depression, she was a fan of re-use, recycle, before it ever came into vogue. My favorite coat growing up was a maroon wool and velvet charmer with hat and muff to match that she made from fabric she found on sale and lined with my father’s old wool coat. I wore it until my elbows were poking out of the bottom of the sleeves. That wasn’t just recycling, that was love sewn into a garment, hers and my father’s both. How awesome is that.

But back to the hearing aid. Of course my mother lead me straight to the spot it lay on the pavement. And even though it was crushed, it still worked. No one would see it behind my ear, so the decline of its former beauty was of no concern. It worked, for heaven’s sake. That in itself was a second miracle. Not to mention the saving of $1250. My mother was also good on managing the money. And she always enjoyed a good joke, especially if she was the prankster.

Yeah, it was her all right.

Not God. Goddess.

Betty

The Real Petosky

2009-08-10T16:13:00.000-07:00

Bay Harbor Motor Coach Resort
Petoskey MI

A few updates to my blog of the other day:

First of all, I never did find the Petosky Bowlarama. I did find the Bay Harbor Golf Club, the Bay Harbor Resort Village, the Bay Harbor Equestrienne Club, four other golf clubs with various high falutin’ names, six other resort villages, all gated so I was not allowed in, the Bay Harbor Yacht Club, the Crooked Tree Golf Resort, our own current homestead, the Signature Bay Harbor Motor Coach Resort, and … you get the message. Oops. Marylou is now Sunny, Fred is now Frederic, and the venue is the yacht club. Otherwise, the story remains the same.

Next, to borrow a bit from Gertrude Stein, Mackinaw is Mackinac is Mackinaw is Mackinac, and everything is pronounced Mackinaw. Something about Mackinac/aw being close to French Canada, claims to this land, and the variations on pronunciation, although I fail to see how a C can be silent, but it is. That’s not to say that Saginaw has a Saginac. No, that just didn’t happen. Phew. That’s a relief.

One of the sweet waitresses here told me that there is a parcel of land up north that is registered in England, France, Canada and the US of A, the last claim being by some “indigent” people from these parts. I’m pretty sure she meant indigenous. Although I would vote for the poor people if I had a vote. They deserve some consideration, don’t you think? And given how hot this area is in terms of real estate, it would be quite a windfall.

Land on Lake Michigan can get into the upper atmosphere, and the views are pretty dear too. And, by the way, it’s only a six-month town. Everything closes down for the “pretty cold” winter, according to that selfsame waitress. I’ll bet. These are the people that invented mukluks, I’m pretty sure. The people who wear animal fur and nobody throws red paint on them. That’s because the paint freezes in the can.

So Petoskey surprised me, and taught me not to make snap judgments. That being said, I have to tell you that there definitely is a Petoskey Plastics Corp. next to the Bay Harbor Yacht Club. And I’m pretty certain that they have a bowling lane for their employees in the basement.

Hey, I saw a Kia in the parking lot. So?

Betty

Bowling in Petoskey

2009-08-07T09:32:00.000-07:00

Friday Morning
Michigan, on the road to Petoskey

So who knew you were supposed to put lock nuts on a tow bar to ensure that the bolts didn’t come unscrewed and cause your car to roam free as you were driving. Obviously the mechanic that fixed our last episode of wandering Jeep, that’s who.

This time we were on an interstate, but fortunately pulled over in time to stop anything more serious than the car hitting a reflector to happen. Of course the reflector put a huge dent in the bumper, and the bikes on the back of the bus scratched the Jeep’s hood all to hell, but who’s counting.

So after dropping the Jeep for repairs and spending another $2000 to buy a better towing system, we headed up to Traverse Bay in Michigan for a lovely few days. Nice place, Traverse.

We’re back on the road now, and heading to pick up the Jeep before going on to Petoskey, which is actually the subject of this blog.

Petoskey. I have no idea what to expect, but I my mind’s eye, it has lots of bowling alleys. No particular reason, but I just think Petoskey Bowlarama is a likely building.

I suspect that the locals gather there of an evening, especially during the frigid Michigan winters. As I imagine it, there will be several red and black buffalo-check shirts over T-shirts and jeans. And that’s just the gals. They would, of course, be called gals and not girls, the kind of good-time, funny gals who play like guys and drink beer out of the bottle and are great to have around because they have hearty laughs and nice figures.

I can just see these gals and their guys on the alleys of the Petoskey Bowlarama. Marylou is saying, “Jeez, Fred, you’re getting that cheese from your fries all over the score sheet.”

Fred, being a good guy, scoops up the errant cheese with his finger and licks it away. “Humph,” she says, not really caring that there’s now a pale orange smear on the edge of the sheet. “Food coloring,” she thinks, idly.

Of course if the alleys are computerized, all this will have happened on a computer screen and not a sheet of paper. Now that I think about it, Petoskey would not be behind the times in this respect.

There are a total of seven kids at home, the product of the three couples, and they’re all at Fred and Marylou’s house for a night of movies and cheese popcorn under the care of the local babysitter. You’ll note that cheese is a minor theme here in Petoskey. It’s comfort food, you see, and Petoskey would have no shortage of comfort food.

In the next alley, a group of teenage boys is making a fair amount of noise as they bowl, a fact that annoys a few of the older patrons, but not Marylou’s group, who figure their kids will get there soon enough and if making noise is the worst thing they do, their parents will consider themselves very lucky.

Everybody will be home in bed by eleven, the noisy teens included, and naturally the old folks will have been in bed for at least an hour by then. It’s not that it’s a school day, or a workday. It’s just that the babysitter has a curfew. Marylou realizes that even though she’s a grown woman with children, she still has to abide by an adult’s curfew rules. How ironic.

She tiptoes quietly from the bedroom of her sleeping, cheese-fry-sated husband, checks on the kids, then goes through the kitchen to the garage, where she grabs her bowling ball out of the car, brings it inside, and using a damp dish towel, polishes the Bowlarama dust off, then puts it back inside the new blue Plether case she got for Christmas. Not good to have a dusty bowling ball in Petoskey, where everything is neat and clean and the people are nice and bowling is fun and life is good.

Or so I imagine.

A Dog on a Bus

2009-07-29T09:18:00.000-07:00

Long Island Expressway
Bumper to Bumper
On our way to Michigan

A dog on a bus will

Sleep until noon
Protect you from cows
Patrol the perimeter
Run away if possible
Lick your bald head
Sit in your seat
Smell everywhere
Scratch anywhere
Whine to go out
Play for ten seconds
Whine to come in
Know where the treats are
Prefer your food to his
Bury a bone in your shorts
Bury a bone in your pajamas
Bury a bone under your pillow
Rebuff your kisses
Beg for a cuddle
Steal your heart

To My Cuz in New Zealand

2009-07-19T06:34:00.000-07:00

Croton-on-Hudson, NY

Dear Jen,

I almost missed this email! It's been quite a month and I hope not to have another like it for some time.

As we headed to New York for Four Weddings -- and a Funeral, as it turns out -- and the irony of the movie title doesn't escape me, but I digress -- John began a major attack of kidney stones. I'm told they hurt more than childbirth. You'd think so, from the moaning.

We stopped at one hospital for morphine, another for dilaudid, and yet another for another heavy drug. Then he went into renal failure, so it was back in the hospital for a "simple procedure' to get the kidney working again. Well, that didn't work, so it was on to another procedure in another part of the hospital. Two surgeries in one day, that's a tough one. Two days later, he had yet another procedure and more anesthesia.

Between the drugs and anesthesias, he was one stoned puppy, in considerable discomfort, and grouchy as hell. There was a point that I considered throwing him under the bus, but I kept trying to channel my nurturing self. Trouble was, my nurturing was what kept getting me into trouble. He's definitely a hands-off kind of sickie.

Two weddings, a rehearsal dinner, wedding brunch, and one bridal shower later, some of which I attended solo, John is considerably better, although he has yet to pass the stones, which are at this point, more like sand than boulders, having been blasted into dust. I got to be in the observation room and watch them operate the computer that controlled the laser. It's against state law, but fortunately my doctor is a laissez-faire sort and let me in. My only regret was that the stones were pulverized. I was planning on making myself a major necklace, my recent hobby being jewelry design. Now that would have been a conversation-stopper.

So all this hoopla is why I haven't written, so I hope you two will forgive me. In fact, I'm going to take some of this letter and put it on my blog, another thing I have let slip for far too long.

We are thinking of buying a house somewhere, the housing market being so depressed as to offer us an opportunity we might not have again. And yet, we're not going to stop traveling. This year has been amazing and we've gotten to see this beautiful country in a way would never have been able to otherwise.

How was your trip to Wellington? What's the story on the house? Catch me up on the boys, all three of them. My own boy is still happily single at 35. Those California types are so laid back, most of his friends, girls and boys, are still single. Haven't they heard about aging eggs? Their babies, if they ever have them, will come out bald, with pot bellies, canes, and smoking cigars. They'll be Brad Pitt at the beginning of the movie.

Summer here has been incredibly beautiful. I missed the June rain, but July is balmy and blue-skied. We are in a park on the Hudson River, about 40 miles north of NYC. A dog is barking somewhere, and at 9:26 on a Sunday morning, that's about the only sound to be heard. I'm going to take my coffee outside in my nightgown and smell the fresh air.

The dog's not interested in coming outside. He has a tick-borne virus and is very lethargic. He's going to the doctor tomorrow for a shot. It's always something.

Kisses to you and the fam.
Love
Betty

Temptation

2009-06-18T08:27:00.000-07:00

Florida - Four Months Ago

Being an acclaimed interior decorator in my head, it didn’t surprise me at all when I decided that our 41’ mobile mansion was not up to my personal standards. The rug got dirty all too easily. There was a scratch on the wood where the lounge chair kept scraping it, the direct result of my husband’s attempts to push it beyond its recliner status and turn it into his personal bed. The flooring in the kitchen area was grouted fake brick which retained elements of dinners past and refused to give them up no matter how hard I mopped. Which I have to admit, could be a good thing if we were ever caught in the forest without food. We could simply lick the floor.

And so on.

I put a mental number to my to-do list and set off to find the perfect RV renovator. In Florida, in the middle of discussions with one RV dealer who also did upgrades, John, a creature of no change at all, suggested that maybe instead of pouring twenty to thirty thousand dollars into our old bus, it might make sense to put that money into a newer vehicle with more of the amenities I now absolutely had to have.

Was this my creature of the rock? The man who having decided he was comfortable, never wanted to move so much as a book on the table for fear of disrupting his calm?

At the sound of this, I turned my head so sharply my teeth almost didn’t follow. He was serious. He was looking over my shoulder. I was pretty sure he hadn’t developed a lazy eye overnight, so I knew he had spotted something. There on a mound of earth in the winner’s corner of the lot, poised like the Heismann trophy on Joe Namath’s mantel, was a brand new Beaver Coach, even longer than ours and bearing the wondrous message “Special.”

It was shiny, it was new, it was clean inside! It was $700,000. I decided to look.

The first thing that hit me was the entrance into the coach. These were not my bumpy vinyl rubberized safety steps. These were granite. Shiny, black and as slippery as a grape. They were gorgeous. Now that was an entry, and damn the safety issues. But wait! The entire floor was black granite. Oh how gorgeous. Oh how beautiful. Oh, my practical mind said, how easy to keep clean. Just a little Swiffer and I’d be done for the day. I was in love.

I stepped up into the living area. Everything glistened. No, everything sparkled. I was standing in the middle of a diamond ring, a limpid lake, the sun, even. Every inch of the inside was gelled to perfection. The wood had maybe fifteen hundred coats of urethane. I could see myself in the cherry sheen of every surface. And what wasn’t wood was brilliant black trim. And what wasn’t wood or black was mirror, oh help me Elizabeth I had died and gone to heaven.

There were two bathrooms, two. And a full-size shower with a sliding door. And a king sized bed. And a washer and dryer. And a dishwasher. And everything sparkled. Oh Lordy, my wallet was throbbing to be opened, its cash intent on near-sexual release.

And oh, it was indeed sexual, this castle-in-a-coach.

The ceiling was a cacophony of tiny little lights, swirling wood trim, and mirrors. No wonder everything sparkled. The reflections just kept bouncing from one shiny surface to another and back again. My eyes were bewitched, my senses heightened, my reason impaired.

And then I realized. I was in a whorehouse. All it lacked were the red velvet drapes and the fancy women. No wonder I was so mesmerized, so dry in the mouth, so … I don’t know … turned on.

That was the point. This was a rolling cat house. And like every customer who has ever patronized one of those pleasure palaces, I was going to pay through the nose to stay this high and this excited.

Oh dear.

Suddenly my softy, cushy rug – did I say dirty? How silly of me. It was just colorful. – seemed so inviting. My little shower, so cozy. My sink with its dirty dishes so needful of my tender ministrations. My fake brick floor with its greedy grout so like a grubby, adorable child. My bus, home.

I had almost traded home for a wanton woman. Whew. That was a close one.

My wallet, no longer throbbing, sighed in relief. So did my conscience.

Temptation notwithstanding, I am at heart a good woman. And don’t you forget it.

Slow Down!

2009-06-16T07:44:00.000-07:00

Lake Chautauqua
Western New York State

One of the consistent rules of campgrounds is a speed limit. This makes sense, because of the children who tend to roam free in these places. There are no stay-out-of-the-road-Tommy imprecations to be heard, because the road is where it’s at. This is not the big city, nor is it even the suburbs. This is the country, where kids are supposed to let go and go.

The other big reason, it seems to me, is the noise and dust that fast driving causes. Dirt roads are the standard in campgrounds, and the only place you see cement is under your rig. If you’re lucky. These slabs are only in the better places, and they mean that your vehicle tends to be more or less level, and less likely to sink into the mud on a rainy day.

But speed limits bring out the worst in people. Or I should say, the worst people. I call them the road captains. By this, I do not mean the camper-workers, generally retired people who work at the campground in return for free rent, and who generally drive around in golf carts being generally pleasant, generally helpful and generally stern about the driving limit.

No, I’m talking about those fellow campers who make it their life’s work to call out to you as you drive along, “Slow Down!”

This, I’ve discovered is a near impossible thing to do if you are following the signs posted along the way. They range from a nerve-wracking 10 miles an hour to a mind-blowing 2.5 miles an hour. Have you ever tried to go 2.5 miles an hour? It is near to impossible. Besides, the effort of keeping at this speed means you are constantly looking at your speedometer and not at the road, so you are inevitably going to plow down little Shaniekwa, albeit slowly.

Most recently we stopped a campground of season residents in Western New York on Lake Chautauqua. It was a nice place, with a lovely, if distant, view of the lake, cement parking slabs, few children since school isn’t yet out, and a fair smattering of porch police. The speed limit was 5 miles an hour and we were at the far end of the big place, which meant that at that speed I had a three-hour drive to the gate.

I was diligent about keeping to the limit. Even so, the minute my car decided it had better move along or it would die of inactivity, somebody would call out angrily, “Slow Down!”

No matter that my speed was now at 6 mph, the difference from 5 mph all but imperceptible to me. They had me dead to rights, and were letting the world know that I was a lawbreaker. How embarrassing. How belittling. How did they know?

I started to think of smart replies: What are you, a cop? Give me a ticket! I was not speeding! It’s Tuesday, fast Tuesday! And my best: Get a life! But nothing seemed either appropriate for the moment or sufficiently devastating. Besides, at this speed, they’d be able to go to their computers and Google “smart replies,” return and shout something equally devastating back at me before I was out of earshot. It was a no-win situation.

So I bore the humiliation with the quiet dignity for which I am known.

Then yesterday, the day before we were to leave, I had brainstorm. I brought my camera. Brilliant. I took a picture of the speedometer as I was driving along. Two seconds later, somebody called out, “Slow down, you idiot!” Even better. This was not just a finger-point. It was an insult, and I was ready.

I stopped the car, jumped out and rushed to the porch. Its occupants, an elderly couple in rockers, a jar of sun tea perking nearby, looked like the proverbial deer caught in the headlights. I’m sure no one had ever stopped and confronted them.

“Look!” I said with authority, “ Look!” I held up my camera. There on the screen was my picture, showing my recorded speed. Five miles an hour on the button. Not a whit more, not a tick less.

But I was not to have my satisfaction. “I need my readers,” said the woman. “I’ll help you look,” said her husband. They disappeared inside.

I stood there, righteous indignation making my heart race, proof that I was innocent in my hand. I had them. I knew it, and they would have to apologize and, hopefully, shut up, at least for the rest of the day.

Five minutes later, I got back in my car. They never came back out.
Betty

Lake Chautauqua

Just Outside of Davenport

2009-06-03T12:18:00.000-07:00

I'm not one to generalize. But.

In Iowa

All the views are endless.
All the fields are green.
All the skies are open.
All the towns are two blocks long.
All the names are familiar: Altoona, Brooklyn, Oakdale, West Branch, Moscow.
All the folk are friendly.
All the work is farming.
And all the cars are dusty.

Feels very American in Iowa, if you know what I mean.
Betty

More Iowa Pictures:

Famous Tourist Site that Built an Entire Town. Wall Drug made their success by offering free ice water to travelers on the highway. The complex comprises 25 different stores, including the original drug store and still offers free water. And a lot else, including a chapel for travelers, antiques, t-shirts, homemade fudge, two restaurants and lots of restrooms. We were there on a Monday and it was bustling.

An e-mail to Frank

2009-06-02T12:41:00.000-07:00

I had just hung up th phone with you when a large bump presented itself. We took it hard, the cabinet flew open, and all the dishes flew out.

Which is fine, since we now have all plastic.

Except that I also had two glass mugs filled with loose change which also came out.

They hit the counter, slammed into my microwave turntable which I had placed in the sink to stop it rattling and broke it into seven pieces.

All the coins went all over.

Of course I'll pick them up.

There's probably just enough there to pay for the turntable.

Love
Betty

Mt. Rushmore

2009-06-01T08:48:00.001-07:00

Yesterday, May 30th, we finally got to one of our premier destinations. Mt. Rushmore in the Black Hills of South Dakota. The weather was perfect – 72 degrees doesn’t get any perfecter. The sky was in full blue and the clouds were white and fluffy.

Rushmore was the brainchild of historian Doane Robinson who proposed the sculptor Gutzon Borglum. The memorial was championed to Congress by President Coolidge in 1923. Its work took from 1927 to 1941, when Borglum died and his son oversaw the wind-down of the project. Borglum did no fewer than seventeen designs, and even into the blasting had to make major adjustments when it was discovered that the rock to Washington’s right, originally intended for Jefferson, was unsuitable for carving.

The original model shows a much more complete depiction, but Congress refused to allocate any more funds to finish the project. I think it looks pretty wonderful as it is, but I found a picture to show you its original intent. This is one of his final models in his studio, but you can see it’s not even the last one he did. Congress spent all of $989 thousand dollars, a puny sum these days for something so magnificent.

Washington depicts the founding of the nation, Jefferson its dedication to the rights of all, Lincoln the solidarity of the union, and Roosevelt its leadership in the world. Susan B. Anthony was supposed to have been added, but Congress decided in its wisdom that only the heads that were started should be finished. I guess they figured she had laundry and cooking to do.

Another group similarly offended were the ones who were here in the first place, the Native Americans. Oh yeah, them. Currently in progress is the Crazy Horse monument, about 20 miles away in another part of Rushmore Park. Just the head is in place, but I hope Congress doesn’t wimp out and cut out the horse under him. It should be awesome when it’s completed.

The Most Beautiful Boy in Kansas

2009-05-31T08:40:00.000-07:00

Passing through Kansas, we stopped in Lindsborg for lunch and met this heavenly, beautiful boy. I just had to take his picture. My own nephews, of course, are equally beautiful, but they don't live in Kansas.
Betty

Recycling tip

2009-05-31T06:36:00.000-07:00

This actually appeared on my Gmail page this morning:

You can make a lovely hat out of previously-used aluminum foil.

Memories

2009-05-30T11:56:00.000-07:00

It's Memorial Day and it's early in the morning. There's something different about today -- oh! We jump out of bed. Are those drum beats we are hearing? Daddy's gone and that can only mean one thing: the parade is almost here. We dress quickly. Shorts and a shirt. Shoes and sneakers -- the Keds kind; Nikes haven't happened yet.

Eat something! Mommy cautions. No, no, too excited. Okay, but bring a sweater. It's chilly outside, she says. She never once in all those years missed saying the sweater thing.

We breeze out the door on Dale Avenue and head for the corner, past three houses and the vacant lot where we play, making forts and once even making a trap we hoped to lure Jackie Fennelly into, a playmate/enemy long dead now in a motorcycle accident.

At the corner, we claim our spot. We crane our necks down Greenwich Street towards Roosevelt. Nothing yet. Across the street is the Bartender's Union building, a converted house with a new facade. Our neighbor Mr. Leckie was head of the local union until some nefarious doings by unnamed union members cost him the job. This is all speculation on our part. We're kids; what do we know? It's just gossip but we love the story. It makes the building we are facing scary. We don't walk on that side of the street.

Mommy joins us. She has our dog on a leash. Skippy, first. The later, Kelly, a dolorous Bassett Hound Daddy surprised us with one day. Daddy was always bringing home strays. Even with five kids, home wasn't home until there was a dog firmly in place.

Then we hear the sound. Drums! The parade has arrived! Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, the Hempstead High School Band, the Our Lady of Loretto Knights of Columbus with their capes and swords and plumed hats. But the highlight of the parade every year was at the very end, when the Hempstead Fire Department marched and the highlight of the highlight was Truck 2, of which Daddy was a member.

There he was! Resplendent in his blue uniform, he was the handsomest fireman of them all. Daddy, we screamed! He teased us, didn't look, but then turned his head and waved. Oh heaven! What a day! What a parade! What a great beginning to what promised to be a perfect day.

Reluctantly we turned away from the parade, from the vendors with their birds on a stick whose feathers would turn in the wind, the pinwheels, pins, medals, plastic-headed dolls that bounced on rubber bands and so flimsy their heads would be crushed before the day was over, cap guns, balsa swords, and of course flags of all sizes. WE longed for these prizes, but there were five of us.

We came back home, bellies grumbling. It was now almost eleven o'clock and we were ravenous. Mommy always managed to have the bacon cooking as we entered the door, and Daddy often left the parade before its conclusion, so he'd walk in on our heels.

Happy Anniversary! we'd all yell together. Then we'd proudly present them with their gift. The strawberry shortcake we'd chipped in for and purchased secretly at the bakery in the Bohack Shopping Center.

Breakfast and dessert. I told you Memorial Day was special.

Betty

The Tetons & Yellowstone Park

2009-05-29T15:11:00.001-07:00

On the road to the Tetons -- look hard. They're in the background.

Oh. My. God.

A view from the Colter's Landing Marina

Left to right: Middle Teton, Grand Teton, Mt. Owen, from the Marina

Close up of Grand Teton

Still there the next day as we head to Yellowstone.

The Snake River with the Tetons in the far background.

The South Entrance to the Park. The guy in the blue car took 20 minutes to pay.

The first of many beautiful waterfalls and gorges.

Female elk. The males don't socialize. Our first wild animals in the park. Note the many dead pine trees. The mountain pine beetle is deforesting much of our most beautiful land.

Male buffalo, also a solitary type.

Females crossing the road! Check out the dog in the car ahead of us.

Is that RV trying to sneak ahead? That's a no-no.

The women are very social, obviously. Lots of little babies in this picture.

Coyote crossing the road, calmly, and in broad daylight.

The approach to Old Faithful. It erupts every ninety minutes. In the interim, it blows steam. As it gets ready to erupt, the steam gets denser and bigger.

Cameras ready?

The first eruption of water in the middle of the steam. 3:06 p.m. precisely.

At its peak. Right in the middle of the picture. It's 90 feet high. Measure against the trees in the background. The ground is covered with hardened minerals from below.

I've learned since not to turn the camera when I take a movie.

The anticlimax. Cigarette, anyone?

Well of course we hit the gift shop!

There are over 300 geysers in Yellowstone. Here I am at the approach to one of the best groups of gushers. The steam in the background is the water flowing into the river. Way hot meets icy cold. Check out the colors in this next group of shots.

Leaving the park. This is the way it should all be.

This is the way it is in a lot of the park. Sad.

The Moth & the Badger

2009-05-24T17:24:00.000-07:00

Rock Spring, CO

When I was a little girl, I remember these big brown moths that seemed to have nothing to recommend them. They weren’t pretty, they were kind of dumb, and they left a powdery smear if you tried to hold one of them. My mother told me they were Miller Moths, and I haven’t thought about them in years, although I have seen them pretty often. I ignored them, and they ignored me.

But two nights ago, we held a party in the camper for Miller Moths. I let one out the window, and his twin brother appeared about fifteen minutes later. John zapped him with a rolled up magazine, and we continued on with our evening. We had dinner, we watched some TV, we checked our e-mails and we headed for bed.

No sooner had I created my nocturnal cocoon – one pillow under me, another propped up as a book rest, my current favorite novel, my book lamp adjusted just right, and my covers snugged around me and covering my recumbent self up to my ears – than I was dive-bombed by another Miller Moth. Yikes, I screamed.

What, what! Said John.

Another f*#king moth, I said. My ladylike demeanor deserts me when I am physically threatened.

So kill it, he said.

With what? I said. I only have my book.

The moth continued to dive-bomb me. I turned off my book light and plunged the room into darkness.

Kill it, I said in my little-girl voice. I won’t be able to sleep if I know it’s in this room. I covered my head.

John put the overhead light on, and went forward to grab the fly swatter. A fly swatter, in case you were wondering, is one of the RV necessities that nobody tells you about, but which you buy pretty soon after you get your RV.

Our fly swatter is a wuss. It’s soft and pliable, effective only if you can flick it so that it whips the insect to death. After about fifteen ineffective swipes at the now-terrified moth, John grabbed a towel and started swinging. Actually, that worked.

We were both pretty wide awake after that, so we once again created the read-a-book-in-bed scenario. Muscles began to relax, eyes began to droop and we headed towards dreamland.

Then the second squad entered, heading straight for the book lights. Three of them, this time. Oh no, I yelled, get them!

John jumped up, grabbed his towel and beat those suckers into submission. Are you counting? That was five moths so far.

What did I do? I got up and Googled Miller Moths of course. We had no bug spray, but I wouldn’t have used it anyway. It smells horrible. According to Google, Miller Moths are the Spring scourge of Colorado. The larvae burrow into the ground in Kansas and Nebraska and hatch in the Spring, at which point they head for the Rockies. They navigate by the moon and stars, which is why they are attracted to the light. They get into anywhere there is light, including towns, including homes, including, obviously, motor homes. Then they desperately try to get to the Rockies, where there are succulent flowers for them to dine upon.

Google's advice on how to get rid of them once they are in your house was this: You suspend an electric light bulb above a bucket of water. They come to the light, drop into the bucket and drown. Right. This sounds like one of those it-might-work solutions. And anyway, we don’t have a light bulb on a cord. We do have a bucket, but we weren’t inclined to set up this death trap, especially at eleven at night.

The total number of moths we got that night was an amazing fourteen. It was like they emailed each other and decided our bus was the place to meet. You should have seen John with his terrible towel and his wussy fly swatter. Me, I was under the covers, playing the delicate maiden card.

Finally we gave up and turned off all the lights.

Then came the smell. What is that horrible smell? I asked on returning from my Google search. It was definitely coming in the window right over my pillow. Right into my delicate little Irish nose. It was not something anyone could sleep through. I tried, believe me.

The last time I smelled anything this bad was in the monkey house at the Bronx Zoo. But I seriously doubt if any monkeys were hanging around our camper. Coyote? Wolf? Bear?

No, I learned the next morning, it was a badger. And in case you are wondering, badger smell is almost as bad as skunk smell. And it was strong, then it was not so strong, then it was strong, then it was gone, then it came back again, then it stayed around ….

Do something, I said to John. I won't be able to sleep.

I already did, he replied. I killed fourteen Miller Moths. This is your baby.

So I did what any smart woman would do. I got out my Pueblo Bonito Spa home spray, which I purchased in Mexico. I doused us both with its lovely scent. I closed the window. And I went to sleep.

Of course I did. If I wasn’t going to confront a moth, there was no way I was going to confront a badger.

Betty

2009-05-23T09:36:00.000-07:00

Just posted the pictures of our Kansas breakdown. Check out Marooned in Kansas.

Lulled by the Laundry

2009-05-20T15:46:00.000-07:00

Salina - At the Laundromat

The size of our washing machine – miniscule – and the capacity of our water tank – challenged – led me to choose to drive to the laundromat, always an interesting experience.

I had a blog to write, so I took my computer along, and planned to stay the whole boring time instead of returning to the Bus-On-Blocks. I’ve been to laundromats before, but I never stick around. I don’t watch grass grow, wait for pots to boil or sit around until the ice melts on that lake in Goshen – which, by the way, is an actual, annual event in those parts of Connecticut.

I loaded my four machines, dropped in my obscene number of quarters, soaped up, pushed the button and got to work on my blogging. Almost half an hour later, I put my head up and realized I had done the impossible. I had finished a chapter on getting marooned in Kansas, and I had also gotten my white pants clean of the oil that was a by-product of the breakdown that got us here in the first place. Talk about your full circle.

Then I noticed that the two other people in the place had not moved in half an hour. Both of them, a “man of the fields” by his appearance, and a “mom of sixteen” by hers, were staring fixedly at their respective washing machines and had been doing so the whole time I had been there.

I folded my fluffy towels, neatly arranged my shirts in a flat pile for their future hangers, tucked my undies into my purse, and started on the job of taking my pristine piles out to the car. Of course, I didn’t go directly to the car. I took a left and detoured around the aisle to see what was so darned compelling about the machines on that row.

I stood for a few minutes staring at the two busy washing machines. Soap, suds, duds. Yep. No cats, dogs or other errant items of non-wash that might have landed in the basket by mistake. No strange behavior of soap, like color changes or oversize bubbles. No odd behaviors of laundry, like unacceptable shrinkage or dangerous shredding. There were no laundry events of note, of any kind. And yet they sat and stared.

Uh. Okay. I finished stacking the back seat of the car and decided to re-dry the jeans, always the rebels of the load who demand extra attention. I returned to my computer for another half hour.

I finished another blog, turned to the dryer, pulled out those jeans, snapped them into shape and folded them neatly along the press lines. I was done.

Field man and mom were still there. Neither had moved. I took the long way around again, and discreetly held a mirror under each nose. The mirror fogged, so I knew they were alive. But maybe they were under a spell put on them by the evil light-bulb changer who had been up on the ladder when I arrived but who’d beaten a quick retreat once I got going with my laundry. Whatever.

More likely they were just using the time to relax and chill, lulled into an hypnotic state by the slosh slosh of the water and the thump thump of the clothing. Maybe this laundry time was the only time they got to themselves. Just maybe, it was keeping them sane and helping them to deal. Maybe it was a New Age technique. Why not. Kansas isn’t Oklahoma, after all.

All I know is, they looked really peaceful just sitting there and watching their stuff go round and round. Maybe next time I won’t bring my computer. Maybe I’ll just join them in their pleasant fog. But first I’m going to have to get some more interesting laundry. I need the intellectual stimulation.

Betty

The Wetness of Water

2009-05-20T15:20:00.000-07:00

Almost six days into this enforced vacation in Salina Kansas, I am reflecting on the relative importance of those things necessary to survival in the wild. And by wild I mean someplace without a decent restaurant.

I would say that the basic three are food, water, and electricity. Food is a no-brainer. When the zoo’s deviled eggs make you sick, and the Mickey D food begins to taste like the cardboard it is, you need some decent food in your refrigerator. Lettuce and tomatoes, for starters. This simple salad can taste like manna from on high if you’re sufficiently deprived. Yogurt. This acidophilus-containing tummy filler will combat those nasty zoo eggs and get you regular in a pinch, if you get my drift.

Electricity is another no-brainer. How else can you watch the Idol finals if you don’t have electricity?

Water, of course, sustains all life, washes your dishes if you’ve been dumb enough to run out of the paper variety, cleanses your body and your clothes, and is an important part of that which will not be mentioned in the water closet. Which is why, of course, they call it a water closet.

But get stuck in a tow yard and even if your water needs are met courtesy of the hose they so generously have hooked up to their faucet, you end up with other life-altering decisions to make.

I have already been told not to abuse the electric by using the iron, hair dryer, microwave, and curling iron. Sheesh. All the fun stuff.

And now it appears I may not be able to do something else unless we are fixed and mobile very soon.

Here’s the deal with the water. It comes in, but it doesn’t go out. You have your holding tanks – one for fresh water, one for grey water – that’s the effluence of your showers, washing machine, kitchen and bathroom sinks – and another for “black” water. Which of course is that which shall not be mentioned.

There are gauges that tell you just how full or empty each holding tank is. Our grey water tank was 95% full, so John crept out at midnight last night and pulled the plug on our soapy, skin-cell polluted grey water and let it flow down the driveway of the repair station. By morning all was dry, and nobody was the wiser.

But you can’t empty a black-water tank just anywhere. So I’m sitting here waiting for John to tell me my bathroom privileges have been suspended. In which case, you may reach me at the local Best Western. It won’t have all the comforts of home, but I can wash my hair, and if I’m lucky, the TV will work and I can find out if it’s Kris or Adam on Idol. As if. Adam will walk away with it. He’s the bomb.

Betty

So Marooned We’re Almost Purple

2009-05-20T13:59:00.000-07:00

Salina Kansas

It’s five days after the turbo event, and we are still parked on blocks in front of the Auto House Towing & Car Repair garage. The world is going on around us, but we are stalled here, at the mercy of the gods.

First there was the weekend, during which only emergencies were attended to. We were triaged, but didn’t make it to emergency status. After all, we were still breathing and we had water and electricity. No matter that the high-end restaurant in Salina (Sal-eye-nah) was a tossup between McD’s and a Sonic. No matter that there was no movie theater, library, museum. There was a zoo and we could damn well go see some wildlife yah.

To be fair, we did discover a movie theater out of town at the obligatory mall, so life wasn’t as tough as I’m making it out to be. But we are down to our last can of clams, and unless I can Google a Walmart in the immediate area, dinner tonight may well be clam dip on rye bread.

We thought we’d get our part on Monday, but there were no turbos in the area, so it had to be Fedexed for Tuesday delivery. Then the part arrived, but the mechanic didn’t. Turns out that while we were bemoaning the fate of our home on wheels, this poor guy took a sharp stick in the eye, literally, and being a tough, homespun Kansas type, ignored it until it turned into a threat to his sight. So he had to see the doctor, who wasn’t available until Wednesday (talk about emergency service!) and might have to have an operation to save the eye, after which god knows how long, he could fix our bus.

Is there a second mechanic in this town? Apparently not. So we held a private prayer service inside the bus, making even Zeus get own on his knees with us, and petitioned God for his speedy recovery.

It must have worked, because he’s supposed to be back on the job tomorrow. Meanwhile the weather is amazing. Even when it gets up past 80, it’s fabulous because the wind blows constantly, and although my hair has assumed some very interesting positions as a result, it is wonderful to be outside and enjoying things like… the zoo. Yes we did go, and while we both got really sick from the deviled eggs we had for lunch (never, ever buy egg anything when you are at the zoo) we had a good time. We took ourselves to Abilene and visited the Eisenhower Museum and family home, which was very well done and incredibly interesting, especially Mamie’s jewelry – look, you research what you like and I’ll research what I like.

Later, we’ll go back to Abilene for dinner. There’s a restaurant there that is said to have the best fried chicken in Kansas. So what if it’s another 50-mile round trip. It’s either that or clam dip on rye. What would you do?

Marooned in Kansas

2009-05-15T13:50:00.000-07:00

Ellesworth Kansas

It’s 3 in the afternoon on Friday, and we’re stuck in the middle of nowhere with a burned out turbo.

I had almost completed the second leg of our 4 hour trek from Oklahoma to Kansas when, wonder of wonders, there appeared before me a slight rise in the road, what in Kansas would be termed a hill.

I put the bus into a lower gear and proceeded forward, watching with concern as the speedometer went from 65 to 45 and still headed downward. A pedal to the metal didn’t make an ounce of difference. We crested the hill; I breathed a sigh of relief and put the van back into drive gear. Then I looked in the mirror.

The entire road was filled with white smoke, our tow car was invisible, and it seemed to be coming from the bus. Oh God, I cried, we’re on fire! Either that, or we just elected a new pope. It sure looked like we were on fire. I pulled over and John grabbed the fire extinguisher and went to investigate.

The good news was, we weren’t on fire. The bad news was, we were spewing oil and smoke from our exhaust, and the car, newly washed yesterday, was covered with oil. I mean it was black!

A kind motorist pulled over and asked if we were okay and said his wife had called 911. The fire trucks arrived, several other cars stopped, and the police were not far behind them. Everybody stood around looking at the tail pipe. We were encouraged to drive two miles further to an exit and safer parking at a local gas station.

We caravaned: bus, car, two fire trucks and one police car. But for the smoke, you could have figured it for a giant drug bust with extra help in case there were also contraband fireworks in the evil bus.

I have never seen so much smoke. The road was blanketed on both sides for the whole two miles. The Jeep, bad enough at first, was now one big oil slick. We pulled in to a parking lot next to the gas station to wait for help. Gas stations, let me inform you, do not work on RV’s. You need an RV mechanic. Fortunately, the cop had a friend who showed up and diagnosed our turbo as deceased, so at least we knew what it was.

Now we just had to wait for the Good Sam Club rescue guy to show up. John spent a good 45 minutes with them on the phone, telling first this one, then someone else, all our information – our VIN number, date of purchase, place of purchase, etc., plus his weight, social security number and years of military service.

With nothing else to do, we filled a bucket with dish detergent (a great suggestion from our friend Geno) and set to cleaning the Jeep. Half an hour later, we’d gotten most of the oil off the car… and onto my new beige pants and shirt. John’s new shorts were ruined as well.

I changed into clean clothes, got as much of the oily dirt off my hands and face as I could, then decided, apropos of nothing, to take a bike ride. It is a beautiful day and I could use the exercise. I got on my bike, drove into a curb and fell into the dust and gravel. I gave up.

My clean clothes are dirty, my dirty old clothes are soaking, my hands are scraped and I’ve decided never to drive a Jeep, RV or bike again. I’m going to get an elephant and one of those little houses (howdahs?) that sits on its back and I will employ slaves to lift me in and out of it.

I wonder if they even have elephants in Kansas. And do they come with VIN numbers? John’s giving the VIN to our would-be rescuers for the seventh time in an hour. I’d better go give him some moral support, like, for instance, a cold beer.

Betty

Oklahoma. Yow!

2009-05-13T16:37:00.000-07:00

Cedar Valley RV Park
Guthrie Oklahoma

If Texas is cowboy country, Oklahoma is even cowboyer. We weren’t three miles across the border when I saw a horse farm. Then another. And another. This is truly horse country. And while I didn’t see one cowboy hat in Houston, I have seen three since I got here. Including the one on the old geezer sitting behind the desk at this campground. I’m only calling him that because he stuck us next to the dumpster. Ornery old cuss.

The corn isn’t as high as an elephant’s eye, yet, but it’s here and growing. And I’m sure that tomorrow morning there will be a bright golden haze on the meadow.

This is very pretty country. Rolling hills, lots of green, little wildflowers by the side of the road, fewer road signs than I’ve been seeing, thank goodness. And the temperature is in the 90’s but the wind is so strong that it feels more like a luxury spa than a sauna.

Just outside of Oklahoma City, I passed my very first ever Horse Shoeing School. The building was red, the campus was big, and the horses were numerous, and presumably in need of shoeing. I wonder if it’s a four-year accredited institution. Do you get a degree in shoe? What other courses might they offer? Something to consider.

We’re on our way to Yellowstone in Wyoming, so these are just one-night stopovers. Nevertheless, there’s something new and different everywhere we go. And if there isn’t, you can just make your own fun if you feel like it.

For instance, I just nailed the dumpster shut. Should make for an interesting evening, don’t you think?
Betty

A Bison in the Backyard

2009-05-10T12:19:00.000-07:00

Houston, Texas
On the road to Austin

This is Texas, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. And this is life, so I guess I shouldn’t be impressed, appalled or amused by the things people keep in their yards. Like gnomes, signs warning adulterers off, dead cars, airplanes, junk, grottoes, goats and children, all of which I have seen on this great exploration by bus.

But a Texas Longhorn as a pet? That’s a new one on me. Near the campground we last visited, on a block of suburban homes featuring the usual two-car garages, neatly tended lawns and gardens, little white fences and the like, there is another well-tended ranch home, different only in that it has a huge bale of hay in front of the garage, several impressive mounds of poop scattered here and there, and in the middle of the lawn, as disinterested in my honking as ever a bored mammal could be, the biggest cow I’ve ever seen, with the biggest horns I’ve ever witnessed.

And on looking, discreetly, I discover that it’s not a cow at all, unless there are boy cows. No, this giant is a steer, most definitely. And each of his horns is the length of one of my legs. Which means that he’s about my height, sideways. And he sleeps on his back or his belly, unless he’s got one heck of a flexible neck.

How did he come to be a suburban pet, I wonder. Did the dog die and the people decide to trade up? Did Junior happen upon him in Petsmart and throw a tantrum until Mom and Dad relented and dragged Mr. Horny, as Junior has already named him, through the checkout? Did he have a barcode on his hide instead of a brand?

Is hay cheaper than KenLRation? Do they even make pooper scoopers in behemoth size? Did he come with a leash?

When he gets a bath do they put his hair in a little topknot with a pink bow? Does he get a bandana for around his neck? Does the vet give him a little bison bone when he’s finished his exam?

And most importantly, is there a Cesar Millan for him? A bison whisperer? Because otherwise, those folks are in for a rough time if he isn’t taught some proper behaviors like sit and stay. Heel, I wouldn’t worry about. A person could get poked if this guy walked too close.

Check it out. Swingset, trampoline, and longhorn steer.

Suppose They Gave a Flu ... And Nobody Came

2009-05-09T12:00:00.000-07:00

Houston TX
Rayford RV Resort

We just spent seven days in Cabo San Lucas, which is at the very bottom of the Baja California Peninsula in Mexico. It was notable for two things: the absence of both people and swine flu.

Swine flu is one of those nasty bugs that originates among animals, mutates and jumps happily to humans, in this case from pig to person. It has occurred before, most notably in the mid 70’s, when a vaccine was developed to combat its spread. Some 40 million people including President Ford were vaccinated then, and a bunch of them died, not from the flu but from the vaccination.

(Ironically, the 1918 influenza epidemic, which had a devastating effect on the population, killing, among others, my own grandmother, appears to have jumped from humans to pigs and not the other way around. I’ll bet those pigs were annoyed.)

In 1998, there was another outbreak of swine flu among pigs, this time from a strain that combined both human and bird viruses. It begins to beg the question: who is more of a danger to whom, pigs or people?

So here we are in 2009, with our vast array of medical knowledge and tools to combat illness, and what are we doing? We’re once again freaking about a pig virus that appears to have originated in Mexico and is busy visiting countries around the world. A virus, by the way, that ends up to be milder than we ever expected. Have you seen the pictures of the guys in hazmat suits taking people’s temperatures in Japanese airports?

People! We’re talking about a virus! A teeny eeny weeny virus, so small it can walk through the weave in a 600-thread-count sheet! What is a big white suit going to do except make it hard to walk, talk and pick up the pen you dropped? Nevertheless, I’ve seen people with masks walking around the airports in both Cabo and Houston (more masks in Houston). Are they trying not to get it? Or trying not to spread it? Hard to say. But I myself definitely used the hand sanitizer more than once.

To all those dear and wonderful family members and friends who warned us not to take this vacation, I send my thanks and love for their concern. I was a little concerned myself until I went to the CDC page on the Internet and got the real story, devoid of media glitter and rant. The flu, it turns out, is not that big a deal.

But poor Mexico is taking the rap big time. There were all of 27 people on the plane coming down. This despite the fact that Cabo is across a big stretch of water, the Sea of Cortez, from mainland Mexico. There have been no cases of flu there, and everybody seems to be in the best of health. You would be too, if you slowed down, adapted the Mexican rate of respiration, worried less, slept more and spent whole days in the warm and nurturing sun.

Cabo was deserted. No tourists. No cruise ships. Nobody but the Fittermans and a couple of expats who seemed not to have heard the buzz about the bug. It was heaven for us, but hell for the Mexicans who derive 98% of their income from the tourist trade. The pool was quiet, the restaurants were empty, the shops were reducing their prices by the minute. In one place, the owner reduced his price twice after I said I’d buy his $8 shell necklace. I ended up paying $5, but only because I insisted that his $3 counteroffer was too little. I got out of there before the poor guy ended up paying me to take the darn thing off his hands.

On one particular night, a good-looking and jovial fisherman approached us with, “Tourists! Thank God! Thank you for coming! We appreciate it!” We all laughed and continued on our way, but it struck me that this flu fear has really hurt both the Mexican and the US tourist business at a time when we can least afford it.

And now, having thumped my chest in commiseration for all those financially hurt by what is turning out to be a big to-do about a little bug, let me honestly tell you this: that week alone, with nobody bugging us, with restaurants begging us to take a seat, any seat at all, with the quiet, the sun, the weather, and especially with the empty airport and easy pass through security, my friends, that was one of the best vacations of my life.

Call me a swine, but I had a ball.
Betty

Cowed by a Dog

2009-04-29T09:43:00.000-07:00

On the Road to Houston

When we got Zeus some four years ago, he was a very mellow Jack Russell, which means that he could be nuts on occasion, but generally, he was a sweet and somewhat obedient dog. He would charge out the door if we weren’t cautious, but he’d always come back.

Except for the time a caring driver lured him into his car and dropped him off at the pound, affording us an anxious and sad night. We stood in the field across the street calling his name and imagining him hurt, lying wounded in a ditch, prey for the coyotes that held regular deer parties there. Maybe he’d serve as a side dish.

But we found him, cooped up and whining his heart out to be released and allowed to return to his castle on the hill where his servants anxiously awaited his arrival.

Then we discovered Cesar Millan, the Dog Whisperer, a true genius with animals. Now Zeus doesn’t pull on the leash all the time, escapes but will stop if he decides you really mean it, and generally has aged into the kind of dog that’s a pleasure to travel with. People seem to think he’s adorable, despite the fact that my business partner Frank always thought he was a rag-tag little pain in the neck, and of course Zeus adored Frank and never left him alone.

He still has a penchant for seeking out the most dog-averse person in the room and jumping on his or her lap to smother them with wet kisses, while his victim invariably calls to mind the last place Zeus’ mouth was.

There is one small habit that Zeus has acquired, though, that I have yet to break him of.

Cow alert.

Now I can understand a dog woofing at the occasional stranger outside the door, or at the itinerant doggie who crosses his boundaries, which is to say, the immediate world. But cows? In a field at least half a mile away? What does he want them to do? Run? Cows don’t run. Moo back? Give milk?

But bark he does, and bark he continues, until they are well and gone from his personal movie screen. If I try a Cesar technique and gently poke him to distract him from the cows, I can interrupt the barking, but not for long. He’ll look at me, then bark right in my face as if to say, look at all them big dogs out there. If I poke him again and again, or if I hold his snout closed, he eventually stops, but I can still feel his coda of bark ‘n rumble, so quiet as to be almost inaudible, but definitely there, a last growl or two to let them know he wasn’t a dog to be trifled with.

The other day I was driving, and Zeus was parked on John’s lap, one eye closed in pre-sleep. Suddenly John spoke up: Look Zeus! Cows! Ruff ruff! And of course Zeus went on the alert, barking until the cows were tiny dots in the rear view mirror. Now I know why it’s been so difficult to break him of this peculiar behavior. He has an accomplice.

Is there a Cesar for humans? Am I going to have to start poking John in the ribs when he misbehaves? Does he too need a Gentle Leader, that leash that goes over his nose and pulls his head down when he acts up or strains to be the pack president?

Can I teach this old dog some new tricks? I'll let you know.

Betty

WD40 and the Love Bugs

2009-04-28T09:01:00.000-07:00

Mobile Alabama
Route 10 to Baton Rouge

When you drive a bus with a flat front, you spend a lot of time looking for the perfect product to clean the bug splat off your windows.

Our good friend Tony, a master of the Internet and keeper of obscure solutions he finds there, told us that the best thing to unstick the sticky entrails that glue themselves onto your windows, obscuring your vision and making you drive off bridges, run through yellow lights, or hit small people on motorcycles, is WD40.

WD40 is a water-displacement product. I have no idea what that means or how it works, or why displacing water will remove dead bugs, but it was worth a try.

Last night, as we spent a romantic and starry night among the dead transmissions and used oil cans in the repair shop parking lot, John got out his newly purchased WD40 and went to work on our filthy windows. He returned inside an hour later, sweaty and breathing heavily, and announced that as a solution, WD40 isn’t.

Now all of this wouldn’t be as catastrophic if we weren’t in a Gulf State, the geographic home of the Love Bug.

Last I’d heard of a Love Bug was in the 70’s, when it was a movie starring Herbie, a classic VW. I’d never experience real Love Bugs.

For your information, these are small insects of the fly family who spend their entire lives mating. They were, in fact, genetically engineered--in the 70's, coincidentally--by the brilliant scientists of the University of Florida, to kill mosquitoes. Unfortunately, since mosquitoes are nocturnal and love bugs are active during the day, it isn’t quite working out. But even if a few of them decided to stay up late, they still couldn’t do any good because they lack the mandibles (jaws), grasping legs, speed and pugnaciousness of predators. Of course, these mild mannered sex machines managed to escape the lab somehow, and mate and mate and mate until they now cover the entire Gulf area from Florida to Texas. And they have no natural predators. Ooops, somebody’s bad.

The body fluids of lovebugs are acidic and will dissolve automobile paint. If you wash them off within 24 hours, you’re safe. Like everything else they do, they’re slow to acidify. They are attracted to houses. They like light colored paint. Of course they do; they're totally black except for a red thorax. They leave such a lovely smear, don't you know.

These are the stupidest bugs I’ve ever experienced. I’m sure it’s all the sex. If you had sex for two days straight without a break, you’d probably crash into windows too. I was getting out of the car and six of them flew into my shopping bag. That’s 3 couples. Maybe it was a death wish. Maybe they just did it as a “Will you get off my back!” statement. I choose to label it basic-stupid, since I’ve seen them caroming off of the dog, bumping into trees, and perching in pools of Windex.

This morning, with John working the windshield wipers and me aiming the Windex at the smeared WD40 streaks from the outside – and drenching myself in the process- we managed to clean two small patches so that we could be on our way.

Fifteen minutes later, there were 8 sets of lovers pasted on our briefly-clean windshield, and god-know-how-many-more below it, baking their way into acidic harmony with our paint. My guess is, they were attracted to the smell of the WD40. Sex can do that to you.

Betty

Trailer Trash Tess

2009-04-27T16:58:00.000-07:00

Mobile Alabama
Monday Evening

After four straight days of no-makeup and no blow dryer, I believe I have reached a new low in appearance, the next rung down being the no-shower level, but I pray I do not go there.

First of all, we’re in Alabama. People here are unpretentious, and many live the simple lifestyle. Which is to say, there is fertile ground for the “What Not to Wear” show, and face painting appears not to be a priority. So when in Rome…

Also, it’s damn hot here. Two days ago I watched from the inside of our air-conditioned coach as the outside temp danced around 100 degrees in the one-day-it-will-be-luxurious-but-right-now-it’s-dirt Gulf Coast Motor Coach Resort and Golf Club outside of Foley. I should have known that something was afoot when the owner invited us to spend three free nights. Nothing is free. Sure enough, six sites were habitable, but the other 250 were just a dust mote in the eye of their creator. The pool was a hole, the clubhouse was a pile of bricks and 2x4’s and the plants were still on order from Burpee. So we parked and sat inside and watched the backhoes do their thing.

We were there and not in Mobile because the coach was hiccupping and burping so badly at speeds above 45 that we were pretty sure we wouldn’t make it there. We hoped against hope that a day or two of rest would perk our transmission up and we would forget we even had problems.

Wayal. We made it as far as Mobile, finally, but Buddy of Buddy’s Transmission told us he was amazed we’d gotten this far. So, tonight we’re sleeping in the repair station parking lot and maybe tomorrow we’ll get repaired. Or maybe not.

Would you bother with makeup or blow-drying your hair in my situation?

So call me Tess. That’s my idea of a trailer park name, and don’t ask me why. Maybe it’s the alliteration.

Yesterday, when I stole the Jeep to take a forbidden ride to the outlet mall – I NEEDED those white pants! -- I was assisted by a lovely African American woman who probably outweighed me by 50 pounds, but who nevertheless made me aware of the frump I’d become. She had on a lovely white skirt, all flowy and cool-looking, a fuchsia tank top, (fuchsia being a word I rarely spell correctly and I didn’t this time either) pretty sandals and tasteful jewelry. Her hair was skimmed back in a neat French twist.

I, on the other hand, had … hair. Clean, definitely, but air-dried instead of blown straight, which meant that with the humidity, it was now sticking out from my head horizontally, not curly, not lush and wavy, more like crimpy and frizzy. I had also not bothered with even so much as mascara, which meant, given my blonde proclivity, that my eyes had receded into my head and gotten lost, my eyebrows, barely noticeable on a good day, had disappeared, and my lips, always “delicate” were now non-existent. In other words, I was a giant dandelion puff surrounding one of those yellow happy faces, but without the black magic marker.

I was so embarrassed to be in the presence of this gracious and perfectly groomed woman, I took out my brush right then and there, swept my hair back and put a rubber band around the mess. Sorry for looking so untidy, I said.

Oh no, she said, I just thought y’all had been to the beach.

Then she added, hastily, but you looked fine before.

Right.

I got into the car and looked in the mirror. I promised myself I’d never go out again looking like this. Like myself. How sad is that. Once back in the bus, I fired up my computer and comforted myself with those pictures of Goldie Hawn, Katherine Heigl, and that one who’s getting killed off on Desperate Housewives, whatsername, Nicole somebody? Without makeup they all look as bad as I do, which is to say, human, normal and with some years on them. Reese Witherspoon I won’t comment on, since she looks perfect no matter when the cameras catch her. She’s probably an alien. As is Nicole Kidman who is taller than most humans, a dead giveaway to her extra-terrestrial roots.

All of this hurry, by the way, is because we have to be in Houston by Thursday in order to fly to… hello … Mexico. Which, as of this writing, our Harvard-educated and therefore presumably brilliant President has recommended we avoid like the plague.

Yes, there is irony in that last statement. Also an incredibly clever pun. I may have ugly hair and absent features, but neither heat nor dead transmissions nor swine flu can dampen my keen sense of the ridiculous. Especially when the ridiculous one is Tess herself, yours truly.

Betty

Putting Down Roots

2009-04-08T08:09:00.000-07:00

12 Oaks RV Resort
Sanford, Florida near Orlando

An amazing thing happens here in Florida when people find a place to park their recreational vehicles. People stay. The don't come in for a day or two or a week or two. They come in, park, make friends, hang around, walk their dogs and become social within the social confines of the campground. Which makes for pleasant living, and accounts for the bulletin board notices like Pot Luck Supper Tuesday Night at 5:00, Healthy Dishes Suggested. And Come Say Goodbye to Doris as she heads to her grandchildren's house in Minnesota.

And another phenomenon occurs concurrent with the expanded social life: the RVs, meant for mobility and scaled for simplicity, begin to grow roots.

Here, an example of the early stages of rooting. Note the gracious pathway, tended lawn, mulch (!) and American flag. Then note the shed with handsome plant masking its cold, hard aluminum corner. Remind you of your garage?

Stage Two: Exterior Enhancement
There is a very limited amount of space inside an RV for decoration, but the outside is virtually limitless. Note the storage shed, boot bench with side storage units, small wrought iron table in the rear, various wire sculptures, hanging things and I'll let you count the plants yourself. And of course some do it better than others. But that's just my opinion.

Stage Two and a Half: Car Port and Unique Signage

Stage Three: Vehicle Proliferation
You need a truck to pull your house, a car to drive around, and of course a golf cart to ride within your new community. Plus maybe a bike if you're young enough.

As I said, some do it better. And some are ... well, relaxed.

Stage Four: Root Development
Like that darned avocado pit that sits in that paper cup for ages without doing a thing, then overnight throws out first one protuberance, then another, RVs have their own growth cycle. One day they're mobile, then next day they sprout these little fences, designed to cover up those ugly wheels and anchor their homes into the earth, as homes were meant to be anchored. Do you think Adam and Eve settled into the mobile life after Eden? I'll bet they built a little lean-to just outside the gate and over time refined it into a two-story Cape Cod with maybe a little pool in the back. Definitely a barbeque anyway. Witness:

Yes, that is a hot tub.

Final Stage: Expanded Landscaped No Longer Mobile Home

And so the cycle is complete. Having set out for a simple, unstructured, move-at-will life, we finally achieve our goal: a complex, rooted, I-belong-here existence. Roots. Love 'em or hate 'em, we never can leave 'em.

Betty

A Man and His Dog

2009-04-08T07:27:00.000-07:00

And now you know why I often ask, "In this relationship, who is the man, and who is the dog?"

Religious Messages

2009-03-28T09:40:00.000-07:00

While John was attending a shooting event in Odessa Florida, I was left to my own devices, so I took more than a few rides in and around Port Richey, Tarpon Springs and New Port Richey, which by the way didn't look any newer than regular Port Richey. But I did see some interesting signs in front of the many churches that dot the area. Here's a sampling:

1. If God seems far away, guess who moved.

This was in front of a temple. I imagined it being said with a Yiddish accent. Then I looked again. It was Bethany Temple, an uber-Christian church, one of many that abound here in the South. Not that their God was any different, or the message any less apt. But the accent was definitely not Brooklyn Jewish.

2. All Saints. It’s All about you.

Now here’s a marketing strategy. I thought church was about God and you were to deny yourself before him. Suddenly the strategy has changed. I’m not sure it’s a good idea, but if it brings them in, who am I to argue?

3. Don’t be a Sunday saint and a Monday ain’t.

Obviously in these parts people speak proper English on Sunday. Hey, it’s a start.

4. And finally, my favorite: God’s Tag Sale. Saturday 10-4.

The economy must really be in bad shape if God himself has to sell off stuff. Of course, the next thing that comes to mind is the stuff that He’s selling. If it’s not the Grand Canyon, and since he built it, I would assume he feels some sense of ownership, then what could it be? Feathers saved from old angel moltings? White robes, unused inventory? Used organ, some pedals not working, needs TLC? Lot, religious badges from all those who believed at one point that they were the only ones allowed inside the pearly gates? Seems to me we ought to be dumping a little more change in the basket on Sunday. Not because I feel sorry for God, but because there isn’t a heck of a market for his cast-offs. Even Lucifer wouldn’t bring that much of a price these days. Not unique enough.

The Rally Experience

2009-03-13T10:44:00.000-07:00

Music & Memories Rally
Beaver Motor Coach Convention
Moultrie, GA

Here’s what you do at a motor coach rally.

Arrive. Find the coach with “Rally Master” displayed across its front. Get assigned a parking space. Set up. Be told you’re late for the meeting. Rush to the meeting. Enter a roomful of strangers and be told you’re late. Be told to wear your badge or you’ll be fined.

This sounds like fun!

Stand in the back of the meeting and be told you’ve missed all the important things, but not to worry. Worry.

Go back to your camper and swipe a washcloth across your sweaty face and rush off for social hour. Meet people there whose names you immediately forget. Get free drinks. Okay, things are looking up.

Sit down to dinner at 6:00. Good thing we passed on lunch. Stand up and recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Sit down and wait until your table is called for dinner, then cheer like you did in high school because you get to the buffet line before other people and will therefore have more to eat than they will. Watch as the free drinks are stowed and the iced tea is offered. Shucks. So that’s why that lady whispered that I should order drinks two at a time.

Meet your tablemates and swap bus and hometown information. I actually met someone who went to my high school. Since the majority of the people in campers are not from my neck of the woods, this was something of a miracle. She wasn’t that interested in swapping stories about old times. Mustn’t have been one of the cool kids. Then again, neither was I.

After dinner, listen politely to the announcements, then to the two-songs-too-long concert by the local high school’s jazz band. These kids were pretty good, if you want to know the truth.

The next day, pass up the opportunity to make “sleeve pins” and/or attend a Red Hat Luncheon. Sleeve pins, for your edification, are pins you put beads on and then use to hold your sleeves up. Since I don’t anticipate long sleeves any time soon, I didn’t go, preferring to stay home and write about Lamar Keck. You can read about him in the blog I did yesterday.

I didn’t go to the Red Hat Luncheon out of respect to my Ladies’ Night Out friends, with whom I have made a blood pact to never ever admit to being over 50, which automatically precludes wearing a red hat to any gathering of any kind. I found out later that nobody wore a red hat, so I could have gone, but I didn’t.

I will attend the Texas Hold ‘Em Lessons this afternoon and the Prime Rib Dinner afterward. I may be a snob, but I’m no fool. The entertainment following dinner is by the “Nawlin’s Po Boy’z.” I’ll stay for that, if only to see who would deliberately misspell three words in a row if they’re not related to Toys “R” Us.

So there you have it. Rallies are mostly about meeting like-minded people and enjoying talking about this life we have chosen. They’re also about rules, of course, and being typically middle-American, they are about loyalty to god and country too, and patriotism, which if you think it’s lost its glow, it hasn’t. They’re about fun activities you can take advantage of, walking the thousands of dogs that seem to be traveling so much more these days, getting your rig washed, dumped-out and tuned up, line-dancing, karaoke, making sleeve pins and learning about motor maintenance.

I haven’t discussed plays, books, movies, concerts, music, the Times Crossword puzzle, or even the Internet with anyone. We don’t have any of that here and even the phone service leaves much to be desired. Still, it’s fun of a sort I haven’t had before. I’ve met some nice people, and even remember a couple of names.

Which will serve us in good stead tonight at dinner, when we announce we’ve lost our heating system and can anybody give us the name of a good mechanic.

Betty

Lamar Keck

2009-03-12T13:34:00.000-07:00

Beaver Motor Coach Annual Convention
Moultrie, Georgia

Lamar Keck.

This is my favorite name ever. I keep saying it over and over in my mind. Lamar Keck. Mr. Lamar Keck. Mr. Keck. Lamar. La Mar. Keck.

Lamar Keck owns a Beaver Motor Coach, the same as I do, and he is presently attending the Beaver Rally here in Moultrie Georgia, as I am. I was familiar with Lamar from his writing for the Beaver Journal. While I am a newbie, Lamar is a long-time member and past President of the Beaver Ambassadors Club, which is holding this rally.

I have a bolo tie with my leather Beaver name tag, a First-Timer Ribbon and one little leather extension for this "Music & Memories 2009" Rally, while Lamar has so many rallies attached to his name tag, he has tied them up with string so as not to trip over them. I'm not kidding.

Oh yes, we are a social little group, we Beaver owners are. Seventy-nine of us, parked in an airfield in Southern Georgia, side by side, from every part of the country. And with the exception of yours truly and our next-door neighbor from Los Angeles, no one here is from the big city.

Which kind of explains Lamar Keck. What an interesting name. What is its provenance, I wonder? Was there a Lamar Keck Senior. And a grandpa Lamar? And before him, great grandpappy Lamar? There had to be, don’t you think? You just don’t get to be Lamar Keck without some sort of bloodline originating back in the way-back of time.

Lamar Keck. Why do I love this name so? I love the L of it. The M and R of it. The way it rolls off your tongue and slides right into that stone wall of a last name.

Keck. When it’s over, it’s over. Don’t let’s even discuss it. That name finishes your sentence. Maybe your whole paragraph. Nothing left to be said, no sirree. Once you’ve closed that last K, you’ve finished and let’s get on with business.

Lamar Keck doesn’t come from Brooklyn either, that much you may have intuited. He’s from Branson, Missouri. A handsome gent of a certain age, his most striking feature is his head full of that Keck wavy white hair. Lamar will take that mop to his grave and look damn fine in his casket, that’s for sure.

He is not a musician, he assures me, but he is one heck of a soundman, and did a fine job the other night when the high school jazz band entertained, despite a tricky microphone that threatened to turn the evening into an acoustic nightmare.

Similarly, when the Four Aces, the pre-rock and roll group from the 50’s (Three Coins in the Fountain) whose collective age is somewhere around 300 years old, performed, Lamar was right there giving them the sound and the power to belt it out like they did 50 years ago. Amazing.

So here’s to my new friend and latest name-crush. You can keep your Mistys, your Latoyas and your Kanye’s. As fun as they are to pronounce, they do not come close to the joy of Lamar Keck.

I defy you to say it just once.

-

Puzzling Behavior

2009-02-27T14:39:00.000-08:00

Flamingo Lake RV Resort
Jacksonville, FL

I just took four Advil. That’s no surprise. I am a classic overindulger. If two will make my back feel better, just imagine how much faster and how much more effective four will be.

I have my son to blame for this backache. He gave me a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle for Christmas, which I have been bending over for four hours straight. John quit sorting at about 45 minutes. He’s much more of an immediate gratification type and I guess the task I had assigned him – finding edges – was not doing it for him.

The weather here in Jacksonville is gorgeous. It hit a high of 81 today, but a dry and breezy 81, so I was lured outside with my puzzle and the new felt roll-up puzzle-saver I just bought.

I labored on creating my border for most of the afternoon, stopping only when I realized I could put the stripey building together in short order. Immediate gratification. I’m not immune.

The whole time I thought I was doing a San Francisco skyline, but when I consulted the box, it turned out to be New York. What’s with these puzzle makers? They take every pretty building in a city and squoosh them all together next to the waterfront and you’re supposed to recognize your home city?

Last time I looked the UN wasn’t pink. Nobody was fishing in the East River. Trolling for bodies, maybe, but not for something you might possibly eat. And I defy anyone to photograph Lincoln Center from the Brooklyn Bridge. It’s on the other side of town, guys!

When you can’t recognize the city you worked in, played in, loved and hated your whole adult life, that’s not a picture of your city. It’s a nice picture, a colorful picture, and a fun puzzle to do. It’s just not my city.

All of which is why, having blown an entire afternoon trying to get started, I’m still not finished with the border. I do have the stripey building, but god knows where that goes. (Or where it is in Manhattan, for that matter.) For now it’s in the middle.

At five, I called it a day and rolled up my green felt cloth, stuffed it into the tube that was in the box, then read the directions and realized I should have rolled the puzzle up with the tube inside the felt to keep the pieces in place.

So it looks like I’ll be doing the border over the next time I take my puzzle out to spend a lovely day in the out of doors, with the sun and the breeze and a Diet Coke and nothing but nothing else to do but have fun. Ah well.

Upgrades

2009-02-27T07:32:00.000-08:00

Flamingo Lake RV Resort
Jacksonville, FL

All the behaviors you practice as a homeowner come into play when you live in an RV.

At home, if you go to bed with the dishes undone, it’s because you forgot to turn on the dishwasher. When you do that in an RV, you wake up to a sink full of smelly dishes.

If your recliner breaks one day, you consign it to the basement and let the kids jump on it. In an RV, you get out the gorilla glue, turn it upside down and try to mend its sorry guts. That’s what I’m staring at right now. An upside-down recliner that’s leaning on a counter trying to recover from my ministrations. Lovely.

If your rug gets dirty you can clean it yourself, or send it out. Here, when the dog regurgitated a hairball, or whatever dogs regurgitate, we didn’t see the spot until the stain had set permanently. Then we noticed another we’d overlooked. So now we have to rip up the rug and completely redo the interior of our coach. Putting a plant in the middle of the rug is not an option.

You’d think I’d be upset about this, especially given our recent bill for a new bumper for the car, but actually this works right into my house-behavior theme.

I love to decorate, and changed things in the house with some frequency. But RVs nail everything down. Every piece of furniture, except for the afore-mentioned broken lounger, is permanently installed. The rug is wall-to-wall, extending up the wall in places, a style that went out in the fifties. Everything is beige or gold or brown, none of which is my color, not that I dislike the combination for somebody else. It’s just not me.

In fact, this not-decorating is not me. So now I get to re-do our new home after only eight months. Heaven!

I’m going to rip out the ugly rug, tear up the brick-shaped white tile in the kitchen and bath area, and put in a tile floor. Speckled black, if I get my way. No matter that every dog hair will show. I’ll just get out the damp mop and tidy up. And it will be shiny and reflective and make us look like those $3 million Newells. The ones with the gold faucets and mirrored ceilings. And what are those mirrored ceilings for anyway?

John wants to replace all our window screens with sleek black motorized screens. Ah, one more remote to misplace. I love this idea, since as I look up from the computer screen, not one single shade is plumb. They’re all at odd angles, and I feel like I’m living a scene from Gaslight where Charles Boyer tries to convince his wealthy wife Ingrid Bergman that she's crazy by tilting all the pictures. If that technique really worked, I’d be a lunatic at this point.

Next up comes the bathroom, with its Sanitas wallpaper. How great would some marble tile look in there? And it would be nice to replace the folding coffee table that I “repaired” with some extra-long screws that are now poking through the top of the table. Please, don’t judge me too quickly. The newspapers don’t slide off anymore.

Can I find an excuse for replacing the bed linens? I’ll figure something out. I always do.

This redecorating is fun. We haven’t spent a dime yet, and I’ve already mentally wiped out our retirement nest egg. We’ll be saying “Welcome to Walmart” sooner than we expected.

Maybe I shouldn’t do the marble in the bathroom.

Granite could work.

One More Time

2009-02-26T02:22:00.000-08:00

Sun City Hilton Head SC

It seems only fitting that I resume this blog with a tragedy, since that’s how it started, and especially since my misadventures apparently make you all chuckle out loud. (I can only imagine how hilarious you thought granny’s funeral was, or how Uncle Hiram’s bum leg made you weak with laughter every time he fell down.)

In any event, we’ve been in New York briefly, then in Mexico for two glorious weeks, then back up to Syracuse to pick up our newly repaired motor coach after only 7 months of delays. Turns out the subcontractor was holding up sending the doors to the body shop because the maker of our coach owed them money. We paid the subcontractor directly, and the doors showed up three days later. Go figure.

We hooked up our Jeep to the RV and took off again for more adventures. The drive south – believe me, the only place to head when it’s nineteen degrees everywhere else – took us through Tennessee, where we stopped for a rest, enjoying the 60 degree weather, shucking our coats and even contemplating riding our bikes. Not riding, just contemplating.

We got up the next morning to snow and a 22-degree freeze. Brrr. We put the coats back on, then another coat on top of that and decided to wait until the sun melted the snow. It didn’t, so two days later, we slipped and slid our way out of Tennessee.

We stopped overnight in Charleston, SC, and had dinner with our good friend Jimmie Moreland, then proceeded towards Hilton Head. We decided to have a look at one of Del Webb’s Sun City retirement villages and were going along a lovely palm tree-lined street, at 5 mph I swear, when John suddenly announced, “The bumper’s gone.”

Hello, what? What bumper? Gone where? From where? I hadn’t heard or felt a thing, and believe you me, you do get tuned in to trouble when you’ve had as much as I have.

I looked out the front window of the bus. “No," John said, “Not the bus, the Jeep.”

I jumped out of the coach and ran to the rear. There, trailing along behind us, was the Jeep’s bumper. To be more correct, the bumper wasn’t gone. The Jeep was.

Almost. It was holding on by a shred of plastic and in another five seconds would have been on its merry way, alone.

No sooner had we assessed this latest catastrophe than four men appeared out of nowhere and offered to help. “No face plate,” one intoned. “Bad installation,” said another. “Gimme that, “ said the third, taking the sledge hammer out of John’s hand and proceeding to tap out the connecting bolts.

Now this is a fact. I’ve seen it more than a few times in these eight months. Retirees are the most willing, helpful, generous people in the universe. It’s as if they sit around waiting to put all the skills they ever learned in life to good use. Have a breakdown and they fight each other to be first to offer assistance. Got questions about life in this community? How much time have you got to listen? Need directions? Hell, they’ll take you there, buy you a meal and wash your car while you’re eating.

Of course, they won’t hesitate to tell you why what you’re doing, or where you’re going, or how you were doing something is wrong, but that’s because they’ve done it all before, many times. It’s just the price you pay for the expertise.

We paid it gladly. They had the bumper shored up, the tow bar removed from the RV, and the Jeep ready to roll in a matter of minutes. Then they gave us directions to the Jeep dealer, information on where to park the RV for the night, and a baloney sandwich.

Okay, I lied about the sandwich, but you get the idea.

The RV park turned out to be a boat and RV storage lot, but it’s quiet, at least, and we do have water and electricity. And just because we love spending the big bucks, we’re going to rent a car while the Jeep is in the hospital and go see Hilton Head Island.

What, one little tragedy and you think we’d sit here in dry dock feeling sorry for ourselves, doing crossword puzzles, eating potato chips, and calling our friends to complain?

Actually, that sounds like fun. Talk to you later.

Mehico.

2009-02-05T17:10:00.000-08:00

After six months of traveling around the country in a motor coach, with its tiny shower and cozy bedroom, its efficiency kitchen and mini living spaces, we left our coach in Syracuse and headed in our little Jeep back home to Westchester.

We spent a night in the glorious and welcoming comfort of our dear friends Maggie and Fred’s’ home, then headed for their getaway on the lake in Goshen, Connecticut, for two wonderful days of doing nothing: sitting by the fire, watching TV, drinking Cosmos made by Fred and eating wonderful meals made by Maggie. We spent a night out at our favorite haunt, Amalfi’s in Briarcliff Manor, then were treated to a delicious meal at Kathy Higgins’ house. I spent a day by myself in New York City, getting my poor neglected head of hair righted, seeing loved friends and dropping in at the office.

In the daytime, we got our health checked out by the doctors in Mt. Kisco, dropped off one bag of dry cleaning, the sum total of six months of on-the-road living, and bought shoes and sweaters for ourselves.

At the end of the week, having lived off the generosity and kindness of Mag & Fred, we took off for Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, with Marty and Joyce Kaplan. We’ve now been in Mexico for five days, and I’m sitting on the veranda of our time-share, watching the sun go down, drinking a glass of wine and planning the next visit to the spa, where I will have another wonderful hot-stone massage.

If you’ve never had a hot-stone massage, let me recommend one to you. I am as limp as a half-cooked noodle, my muscles singing from the gentle, warm treat they just enjoyed, and trying to keep my eyes from closing. John is snoring in the bedroom, Marty just gave up on his book, and Joyce is still in the hot tub back at the spa. How decadent can one vacation be.

Cabo is one of the most beautiful places in the world. The people are welcoming, kind and friendly. You can walk the streets at night without worry, and the sunsets are not to be believed.

The whales are here, but they’re not close to shore, as they were last year, when I had a junky litttle camera that never caught them as they danced and pirouetted near the shore. The whale show was the reason I asked for and received a fabulous Canon camera for my birthday, but it looks like we’ll have to move our lazy selves off our terrace and into a motor boat to see them. That’s okay. We have all the time in the world, and it’ll be an adventure. I only hope that I get some decent shots.

Cabo is growing exponentially, and the prime seaside homes are going for over a million, and some are in the ten-million-dollar-and-up range. It makes me very grateful that we spent the money we did seven years ago to buy a timeshare here in one of the prettiest places around.

For all its newfound sophistication, and despite John Travolta’s fiftieth birthday party which brought it into the headlines big time, Cabo still has some of the aspects of a small town. There’s a paper called the Gringo Gazette, which this week carried a paid advertisement that read “DAVE ANDERSON, DEAD BEAT. Sponge painter, owner of Baja Finishes. This is a small town, you need to pay your bills! Aren’t you running out of people to rip off yet? We see you can afford to pay for sex at Mermaids, why can’t you pay your bills?

I guess ad space is pretty cheap. A couple of pages back, another ad reads “Cross Roads Country Club Doesn’t Live Up To Its Name” You’d think it was a slam at a place that disappointed some would-be golfer, but no. It’s a paean to the food, the owner, and the services. As far as I could see, there is no connection between the body of the ad and the headline. Not even a play on words. But they did get me to read it.

The publisher of the paper, identified as one Carrie Duncan, H.H. – now what can that mean? –is a California blonde of a certain age, who also owns a restaurant in town. Everybody here also owns a restaurant.

This week’s editorial talks about a plane trip she took up to California, where she purchased some t-shirts to sell down here. Returning to Cabo, she was radioed by the border police and told to land, which she did. As they were searching her plane for contraband, they discovered a Home Depot tool box which she told them had “cat shit” in it. The guard reached into the box, and came up with a handful of “cat shit,” which of course infuriated him, but she was allowed to continue on her way. Cat shit, as humorously reported in the local newspaper, as a good way to transport taxable goods across the border. Not exactly New York Times kind of language. I doubt they would even allow “cat poop.”

And so, the sun has set, my wine is low in the glass, my hair needs drying and my husband needs to be wakened before he spends the night in his bathing suit, his dirty feet sticking off the end of the bed.

It’s a low, slow Mexican kind of night, and I am having a wonderful time. All too soon it will be over and we’ll head back to Syracuse to pick up the bus and continue on our other kind of vacation.
MEHICO
It’s been a lovely interlude. Gracias, universe.

A Three-State Day

2009-01-12T10:12:00.000-08:00

Route 10 Eastbound
Arizona

It’s a three-state day today. We left Benton Arizona at 9:30 this morning, and got onto Route 10 Eastbound. After about 100 miles of gorgeous desolation of desert, we stopped for ten minutes in Willcox for McDonald’s coffee, which tasted so much better for my having waited.

I don’t know if I will be able to go on without these incredible views. Miles and miles of desert everywhere you look, and forty miles away in every direction, mountains in cowboy-movie purple and grey and red-brown, a rustic picture frame set against a sky of Blessed Mother blue. I never thought I’d love this part of the country as much as I seem to today.

My take on the desert has always been dust, scorpions and rattlesnakes. No thanks.

But instead of eeeyew I am in aah mode. Our vocabulary has suffered from the overuse of words like: incredible, magnificent, oh my god, so beautiful, and holy cow. We're going to have to consult a thesaurus for some new descriptors.

We’ll be in New Mexico in about a half hour, and we’ll skim the Mexican border, passing the border patrol stations, where we’ll inform the officials that while we are Americanos, our dog is a Chihuahua masquerading as a Jack Russell and should therefore be deported. So far it hasn’t worked. I loved New Mexico, so we’ll have to come back one day and explore some more of it. For now, however, it's a passageway to our next layover.

In a couple of hours we’ll roll into El Paso for the night. Texas is wide, really wide, so it will take us three days to cross it. Then onto Louisiana and north.

The body shop called today and said our parts were shipped this morning from Oregon to Syracuse. This time, somebody may actually be telling the truth. We’re on our way.

A Junkyard Tale

2009-01-11T17:51:00.000-08:00

Benton, AZ
January 11, 2009

I’ll bet you think that by now we’re old hands at this RV stuff. I’ll bet you think that with six months of driving under our collective belt, we’re not only road-savvy; we’re the Unsers, Knievels, Pettys, Newmans of the big rig. That we glide around obstacles; we ace bridges, dirt roads and skyways; we back up, in, and out with ease, never breaking a sweat the whole time.

Okay, maybe you don’t think that. Maybe you’re waiting for the other shoe to drop. Or the other fender to fall off, to be a bit more automotive about it.

Actually, we've been doing pretty well. Aside from the occasional bay door that pops open as we drive along, giving our fellow drivers apoplexy, and causing them to gesture frantically to us that something is amiss. (We pull over and close it; no biggie.)

However, and of course there was bound to be a however. Today, we made 260 miles from Phoenix to Benton, Arizona, safe and sound, thank you very much, until it was time to pull in to the campground.

Our Tom-Tom is really a wuss. He panics when we don’t follow orders. He said to turn in 300 yards, so since he’d been nice to us for three whole hours, we obeyed, even though it really didn’t look as much like a campground as it did a junkyard.

To be sure, there were some RVs there, but these rigs looked like my grandfather might have built them, and my grandmother might have said, “You’ll never get ME in that thing!” Once we were past the gate of no return, we realized: it really was a junkyard.

Okay, we’d go in one gate and out the other. No problemo. Except that the second gate was locked. Now I ask you, why lock one gate when the other is wide open?

John looked for an escape-turnaround and found none, but there was one skinny road that seemed to loop around, just behind that dilapidated old truck carcass. There was also some unidentifiable tent of metal rods that we’d have to get around, but otherwise it looked negotiable. We went for it.

Scrittttcccch. That was the right rear-view mirror as it scrunched up against the cyclone fence on the right. Crrrrunnnnch. That was the sound of the left side coming into contact with the metal teepee thingy. I got out to investigate.

Well, the mirror scratch wasn’t too bad. It probably could be polished off. I walked around the back to investigate the other side of the coach.

The teepee, as it turned out, was a tent of rods protecting some sort of underground/overground pipe. Hmmm. The coach hadn’t hurt it, but it had ripped off the cotton batting and vinyl cover on the pipe.

Which also revealed the gauge. Which showed the gas pressure. Slowly, it dawned on me: we were sitting on a gas pipe. Now what? “Don’t move!” I screamed.

John got out the sledgehammer and banged on the connectors that tied the Jeep to the RV. With each bam, I flinched. Was I about to fly skyward? And what about John? At least I was in the Jeep. On the other hand, the Jeep and I were both prisoners of the car’s gas tank, weren’t we?

John finally got me separated from the death van, and I scooted backwards and out of the way of impending shrapnel. Now all we had to do was get the RV off the gas line without incident. Or course, we were sandwiched between it and the fence, which would make maneuvering problematic.

I took charge. Running to the back of the RV, I yelled into the backup camera, “Watch me! Turn up the volume! Listen to me! Don’t do anything until I tell you it’s okay.”

What a responsibility! On the other hand, what power! What control! I was the one! I put on my metal bra, my steel tiara and my thigh-high boots. I was Wonder Woman! Only I could get us out of this! Only me! I clicked my metal bracelets together! I would do this with all the exclamation points in my arsenal!

I forgot to be worried. I forgot everything except my charge – get us out of here, whole!
(I still had another exclamation point in my bag, obviously.)

“Watch me, watch me! Are you listening? Listen to me!” I yelled. I pointed right, I pointed left, I signaled come back straight, now turn, now pull those wheels all the way to the right, now straighten up, now stop, now pull forward, now get the hell out of here.

I’m typing this, so you know I was successful. We had a couple of small scratches on the left side where we broached the gas line and almost blew ourselves up. We probably have a scratch or two on the back of the mirror, but I didn’t even bother to look after the first quick glimpse.

Why should I? I was the hero of the hour. I didn’t need to sweat the small details.

Forty yards to the left of the junkyard, we pulled in and found a lovely campground. Maybe it was my imagination, but I swear the Tom-Tom blushed.

In the reception office, the sweet lady in charge greeted us with the usual, “Welcome, how was your trip?”

“Terrific,” we said.

The Pleasure of Nothing

2009-01-09T08:49:00.000-08:00

Ben Avery Shooting Range
Phoenix, AZ

For the past six months, whenever anyone has asked what I did in my other life, I have answered, “I’m a writer.” This gave me a present-time occupation and station in life and put to rest any notions that I might be one of the idle retired.

Not that I’ve seen many of those in my travels. I’ve seen lots of retirees, to be sure, but they’re usually on the golf course, or batting a ball around the tennis course, or shooting at clay targets, or working in stores in pleasant part-time jobs, or riding bicycles and motorcycles, or on top of their RV’s with the hose, saving the $100 it costs to have someone else wash your rig. Nobody is just sitting around.

But as my son pointed out over Christmas, my bike chain is rusted. My tennis racket is in storage. I haven’t written a thing since my Christmas blog, and then it was mostly pictures anyway. And there’s no way you’re going to find me on the roof of this rig with a hose. Put that notion out of your head right now.

So what have I been doing?

Nothing. Just being.

I’ve been reading, and driving, (and cooking and cleaning, okay, but that’s my choice, okay, it’s not but I do get hungry and you can’t eat dust). I’ve been playing Scrabble on line, and solitaire too. And I’ve been thinking about life, and the passage of time, and the death of one friend, and the stroke and heart transplant of another long-ago friend. And I’ve reconnected with another old friend, and made a new one. I’ve spent a precious two weeks with my son.

I’ve watched people dealing with the state of the economy. I’ve seen closed stores and talked with struggling business owners. I’ve seen a friend dump everything not essential out of his motor home to save on gas, and store his big car for the same reason. I’ve seen empty restaurants and deserted malls. Everywhere except in Dallas, where the oil business seems to be still profitable for most.

Still, it strikes me that we are really adept at coping. Life, at least to this observer, goes on.

I’ve also been looking at the recap of 2008 in pictures and realizing it’s mostly about war and maimed children, the economy notwithstanding. How sad. We have so much to learn.

But there is hope and joy in the things we haven’t managed to destroy with our human meddling. The mountains of the West, the majesty of the oceans on both coasts, the sight of a jackrabbit scuttling among the saguaros. Some of the funnier signs people put up by the side of the road. I thank god and the Internet recommendation for my Canon G9 camera, which has recorded many of these magic moments despite my bumbling photographic skills.

I’m going to send my nephew the pictures of the industrial cranes in Oakland that were the inspiration for some of Spielberg’s alien monsters in Star Wars. And my Christmas card next year will carry a special collage for all my friends, but that’s all I’ll say about that. And if I ever do write that book, I’ll have a visual record to jog my memory. Of course it makes John nuts when I drive with one hand and take pictures with the other, but once an opp is gone, it’s gone, I say.

And what, in all this doing-of-nothingness, do I plan for today? I think I’ll get my nails done. They’re getting a little long for typing and making the “I’m a writer” thing harder to believe. Although I have to admit, I may just answer the next query about my usefulness in the world with these words: What do I do? Nothing. I’m retired.

Now how ballsy would that be.
Betty

Christmas Day

2008-12-25T10:38:00.000-08:00

The tree before the "schwag" got opened.

Opening presents in our PJ's. That's my orchid in the lower right corner. Big, huh.

Keith in the NY shirt Jeff gave him.

Christmas Breakfast. Keith's programming the music.

Baloo. The world's most perfect dog.

The tree post-presents.

I'm stealing these stars. Jeff got them at Sam Flax.

Kiss the cook. Keith and Tina.

John tries to solve a puzzle.

December 26 - View from the Bus

To Jane

2008-12-23T09:12:00.000-08:00

Today, on what would have been Jonathan’s 38th birthday, I learned of the death of my dear friend Jane Parker Heath Donohue. She was 64, and she died June 9, a year and a half ago, and I didn’t know.

We arrived in San Francisco a couple of days ago, and planned to call Joe and Jane, and spend at least a day with them, reliving old times and old memories. But the phone number didn’t work, and I finally found her on Google. But it wasn’t the news I was prepared for.

Jane and I were writers at Young & Rubicam in the 60’s. We were the same age, and we married about the same time, and we were very much alike … and very different.

Jane was 6’2”. The tallest girl I ever knew. She was funny and smart and real and assertive and kind and clever and … tall. She was very, very tall. And she introduced me to California. She showed me San Francisco, the Russian River, Stinson Beach, Sausalito and Wine Country. Before that, living in New York, she showed me how to lob an egg out a window, but that’s a story about a much sillier time.

On one of our visits to San Francisco, she took care of Jonathan when he was just 6 months old. We hadn’t had a break in all that time, and she said go, leave him with me and have some fun. So we went out for dinner, and when we got back we learned that he had fussed intermittently for all the time we were out, because we had brought pajamas that were too small and they were uncomfortable.

But Jane handled it all, and he did get to sleep, the feet of his too-short onesie now cut off and in the garbage, and we had our night out, and she was a gem for dealing with our unhappy baby.

She introduced us to her San Francisco friends, took us to the beach, and showed us around her new town. We were enchanted.

Jane was the kind of friend you could call and start a sentence with “And so I ….” And she would laugh and get it and continue the sentence. She always knew my voice. She always got my silly sense of humor.

She kept a bucket in her shower to save water for San Francisco’s water shortage. She recycled before it was fashionable. She had dogs and cats and animals she loved unconditionally. She taught Down Syndrome kids how to swim. She was a committed volunteer for good causes. She would have campaigned for Obama.

She always worked, never took life for granted, and always had a point of view. A Vassar girl, she was generally smarter than anybody who tried to challenge her opinions. And I remember, too, that because she was tall and athletic and no pushover, she was an object of lust around the office. Interesting in a time when the dumb blonde was supposed to be the sex symbol and brains and brawn weren’t thought to be attractive. All the short guys thought she was hot.

Jane, I will miss you. You taught me to play King’s Corners, cook with Le Creuset, say f*&k when it was called for, challenge fools, drink Black Russians and try new things. Like lobbing an egg out a window and onto Fifth Avenue, just to see it explode.

And when I see you again inside the Pearly Gates, I’m sure you’ll greet me with, “And as I was saying …”