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Tarts and Tubs

November 24, 2023 by Jaci Dawn

The main food binge is over, all that remains are the leftovers we will eat for days. This introvert could now go for days without seeing another human being, including my significant other. I am exhausted, and it was only us two and two of our friends. Oh, and Ruger, the dog. Ruger is the only extrovert in this household.

Don smoked a turkey breast after letting it sit in the refrigerator for three days soaking in his secret “dry rub”. (The only other person who had the recipe was our son although many have requested it. The truth is: I think Don mixes it up just a little every time he makes it so it is in that ethereal realm of recipes as his grandmother’s mincemeat – she had no idea how she made it but it was the best mince meat this side of Heaven, and I don’t like mincemeat for the most part.)

I spent Tuesday making up four little tarts for the Holiday: rolling out the pie dough, filling each one with either spiced apples from our garden or my own version of mincemeat* (which is meat-less. Maxine’s had elk meat in it). *Mine is really an apple-pear chutney with ginger that tastes strangely like store-bought mincemeat. So don’t get excited. I think I found it on All Recipes.com.

Wednesday, I went to the dentist and got my teeth cleaned. That’s neither here nor there (no cavities, Ma!) except whilst I was away the sourdough started decided to “explode” all over the countertop. My sourdough starter is another well-kept secret: it was handed down by Maxine to my mother-in-law who passed it down to me. I don’t know how old it is because my mother-in-law doesn’t know how old it is and Maxine took the secret to her grave. It’s easily 70 years old. And it sits in the refrigerator, unused, except for those rare times I bake bread or on holidays. Even the “explosion” was a minor accident to the starter. It just bubbles happily away.

Thursday was all about prep work before the turkey was done and guests arrived. Tablecloth, fine China, real silver: check, check, check. Not for anyone else but for me and my need to grasp onto Tradition. I found a Lego wrapped up in one of the tablecloths when I pulled them out of the chest. A Lego. It’s been there since last Thanksgiving when our daughter and her horde came down from Alaska and celebrated with us.

I had to pull the table out and set all the settings on one side as there is a cast iron claw-foot bathtub hiding under the table. Our bathroom is still in the throes of a remodel that is taking months to complete. The tub had to be removed to allow for the new flooring but now we have to adjust all the plumbing due to the new flooring and the new vanity is still sitting where the tub belongs, awaiting new faucets. (How’s that for a run-on sentence?) Anyway, there is a bathtub on a dolly hiding under our table, but the men who put it there were going to be the men eating turkey soon. And the tablecloth hid it well.

I pulled the tarts out of the refrigerator and set them on the counter under a towel to warm up to room temperature and await their turn in the oven. Everything else was mixing and kneading bread dough, selecting the ingredients for the stuffing and sautéing the veggies to add, and making the sauce to pour over the broccoli dish I would be serving. While doing some of that, I accidentally elbowed one tart and it went face down onto the floor. Ruger was excited about that, but I shooed him off and tossed the contents into the garbage (sorry, Ruger, you’re already chonky!). Now I am one tart short. UGH. Blood pressure is maintained, at least. I still have my sense of humor.

I decided to make another tart, but I am now out of flour and pie crust mix, and I do NOT want to go to the grocery store. We had graham cracker crumbs in the cupboard and blueberries in the freezer: blueberry tart! I also poured myself a glass of white wine, mostly because the sauce for the broccoli takes two tablespoons of the stuff. Wouldn’t want to waste it, you know. And it takes the edge off.

No, this is not a “then I had another glass of wine”, post, because I really did not. That was later in the day after the guests left and I needed to decompress.

I had to mix up a roux for the broccoli sauce, but Husband was in the kitchen (I do my best work without distraction) and he thought I was making the gravy. I don’t know why he thought I was making the gravy. That’s the last thing a person makes after the turkey is ready and the potatoes are mashed, and the table is ready for people to start sitting down. The guests hadn’t even arrived. He tried to help by getting the gravy packet from the turkey breast out of the refrigerator, which in turn distracted me because that was NOT what I was making, and I managed to both snap at him and spill the heavy cream all over the counter and onto the floor that I had just mopped. Again, sorry, Ruger, but you don’t get to lap that up. OUT OF MY KITCHEN, DOG. And I washed it up. Blood pressure is slightly elevated now.

Everything was ready to be popped into the oven, the bread and rolls were baked, and we had a break in the clouds. I wrapped myself in a coat and joined my husband outside around the Breeo smokeless fire pit to relax a little bit. Aaah. I was still sipping on that first glass of wine.

The guests arrived half an hour later just as the turkey reached the magic point in smoking: done. I started putting dishes into the oven while conversing with the female guest. The men sat around the fire pit. My guest asked what she could do and I said I thought I had it under control.

“You always have it under control,” she said.

Um… I’ve dumped one tart, spilled the cream, snapped at my husband (and the dog, but he deserved it), and dinner isn’t quite finished yet. Also, I am beginning to feel the ache of missing family members. And the dog is back in the kitchen, very excited because our guests are his favorite people in the whole world next to us and the dog next door that usually ignores him. Ruger gets pushed back outside to play around the fire with the men.

Dinner went well, actually. Everything timed out perfectly and nobody minded that the bathtub was hiding under the tablecloth. Ruger even settled down after being yelled at several times to “GO LAY DOWN”. (“But, but, but… there’s food. And Morgan! And food! And people! Aw, OK, I’ll lay down and TRY to be good…”)

Dishes were picked up and real silver separated from the stainless. (Yes, everyone let Ruger lick the juices off of their plates, but there weren’t any leftovers, only a taste. Poor, fat, doggo.) We relaxed for a drink and settled our tummies. Eventually, I heated the oven again and set about placing the tarts in to bake.

The rack in my oven has very wide gaps in it. Why is a mystery, but there you are. And one tart fell through, face down onto the oven door, apple juice pouring down into the broiler pan, and my husband (so helpful) saying, “You should put them on a baking sheet”. Now I need that second glass of wine. Or a third. And he can’t understand why I glowered at him.

We never ate dessert. We sent two tarts home with our guests. I washed and dried the silver. Everything else went into the dishwasher (I cook and clean as I go so pans were a minimum by evening’s end). I left the over cleaning for today, and it is still waiting for me. Baked on apple juice is not fun.

I will end with this: I think the bathtub had the BEST Thanksgiving, ever. I think it was happy to be included. It was better behaved than Ruger was.

And that turkey… Oh, my. Don’s Secret Dry Rub transforms everything.

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It’s Okay, It’s Not Okay

November 8, 2023 by Jaci Dawn

It is Okay to walk away from a toxic relationship. I have done it. And I have had it done to me. And that’s something we don’t talk about: what if YOU are the toxic person?

I will be brutally honest: the times I have been called a toxic person caught me completely by surprise and left me gasping for air not unlike a fish out of water. What happened? Why didn’t I see this coming? What did I say or do and how can I mend the situation? For me, that has always been the biggest question: what can I do to fix this? Because I don’t want to be “that person”.

I can think of three examples, and they all happened the same year. Only one of those came from someone I easily let go. You know the drill? “You feel like that? Okay. Good-bye. Have fun.”

Two came from people I dearly loved and valued. In one case, I will never know exactly why she decided it was time for our friendship of 40+ years to end. She picked something innocent as an excuse to tell me to go to hell: I didn’t see her “like” under a post I made on Facebook and that was “rude” of me. I tried, at first. Facebook has algorithms. You don’t always see all the comments under a post. A “like” is not even an acknowledgement: it’s just proof you spend too much time on the social media platform trying to affirm some other’s person’s feelings. It was for naught: she blocked me, quit answering my letters (I only wrote her one more), and that was that. Forty years of friendship gone over a missed “like” on a social media post.

I probably didn’t need that friendship anyway.

The third, however, still cuts me to the deep. My closest allies and friends tell me to “just let it go” but the pain is as deep as the loss of a child. It was the loss of a child. My youngest. She cut all ties to me and told me she no longer wanted any contact. I was devastated. I went through all the same emotions a parent goes through when a child dies: anger, hurt, sorrow, confusion, denial.

See, I lost a child to death, and I recognize grief when I see it. It’s lifelong. I will grieve that child and the one who disowned me for the rest of my life. The latter did tell me some of her reasons and I have to admit half of what she accused me of was true. I said those things. I did those things. I am guilty. She doesn’t believe I will admit to that, but there it is. Half of it isn’t true, and that is the half she will focus on and there is nothing I can do or say to change that perception. The damage was done and the damage remains.

My youngest is not my natural child. She came to me already traumatized by her mother’s untimely death. Her estranged father had been murdered. She came to me with all the trauma an adoptee comes with. I didn’t know that then and I only know it now because some of my closest friends are adoptees who are active in adoption forums. The loss of a mother leaves a child scarred deep within their psyche and even adoptees who have been raised by loving adoptive parents carry scars and traumatic pain.

I can’t say that even had I known this truth that I would have been a different parent. I treated all my children the same, never taking into account that the newest arrival did not have the familial sense of humor. She did not speak our language. It was cruel of me to assume she did and cruel of me to assume she would adjust. But the worst thing I did was to say she was my foster child when I should have simply kept my mouth shut and allowed someone to assume she was my birth child. She only wanted to belong to a family, and I denied her that in one stupid sentence.

I can’t turn back time. I can’t make it up to her. I just have to live with that memory. And I will forever feel the pain of the loss of a child with her name.

I have thought of arguments. Of countering her with her own faults. To what end? To add to her trauma? To prove to her that I am exactly what she has accused me of: a narcissistic, inconsiderate, insensitive person? “I’m sorry I made you feel that way…” No. I am sorry I said that. I am sorry I was stupid. I am sorry I hurt her. I’m sorry I can’t fix it.

I will strive to be smarter and more compassionate in the future. I will strive to be more careful with my words. I can’t fix the past, but I can be a better person today and tomorrow. And if you are in the same position I am in, I ask you to not try to deflect the pain but to do better. Accept the blame. Bow to the truth. It will hurt.

I buried one child. I lost another. I have one that has switched roles with me and is now my mentor and conscience. I gained a bonus daughter (in-law) who thinks I do no wrong. Three of those I can see and speak to at any time (yes, I speak to the dead and I can visit his grave). The fourth wants to cease to exist in my world and I have to find a way to let her go.

It is Okay that she let me go but it is not Okay.

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The Big Name Change

November 6, 2023 by Jaci Dawn

Well, things are about to change: the AOS (American Ornithological Society) decided to change the common names of most American birds. What you thought you knew is not what you know now. I should be used to this: birds I grew up with have changed their identities several times: the rufous-sided towhee is now the spotted towhee, the sparrow hawk is now the kestrel, and Oregon junco is now a dark-eyed junco. Oh! And lest I forget, a bird I have commonly known as a scrub jay now is a California scrub jay. Apparently, it is a sub-species to the scrub jay.

The reasoning given by the AOS has to do with easily identifying birds by their markings: the red-breasted nuthatch and the white breasted nuthatch, for example: the common names describe the bird you are looking at. Another reason is that sometimes these birds were named after the person who first identified them, like the Audubon’s warbler. Oops, I’m sorry: that changed years ago to the yellow-rumped warbler. Apparently, Audubon fell out of grace. Now it’s names like Leach’s this or Wilson’s whatever that are heading toward the cutting block. And I get that: birds don’t care a whit about the name of the person who first identified them: birds were already aware of their own presence.

When I led my first snipe hunt, I had a Peterson’s Field Guide ready so I could prove that there really is a bird called a snipe, never mind that it is a coastal bird and we lived far inland. They could still fly into a paper bag if you sat and yelled “Heeeere, Snipey-snipey-snipe!” long enough.

I have not heard what the “new” common names will be, so what follows is a lot of conjecture.

Brewer’s Blackbird – Parking Lot Blackbirb; Starling’s Friend

Swainson’s Thrush – Invisible Melody Birb; Evening Song Thrush

Bewick’s Wren – Eyebrow Wren

Steller’s Jay – Screeching Jay; Peanut Thief

Anna’s Hummingbird – Ruby-headed Nectar Sucker; Angry Hummer

Cooper’s Hawk – Greater Stripey-tailed Hawk

Sharp-shinned Hawk – Lesser Stripey-tailed Hawk

Wilson’s Snipe – Here Snipey! Or Paperbag Snipe (Would certainly help when you’re trying to convince someone to go hunting them)

Swainson’s Hawk – Not Red-Tailed Hawk

Ferruginous Hawk – Rusty Hawk (because no one can pronounce “ferruginous”)

Ferruginous Pygmy Owl – Rusty Owl (see above)

Flammulated Owl – Fire Owl (I have no idea how it got its name in the first place as it does not resemble fire or flames)

Turkey Vulture – Baby Condor; Garbage Birb

Downy Woodpecker – Baby Pileated Woodpecker

Hairy Woodpecker – Teenage Pileated Woodpecker

California Gull – French Fry Gull; Parking Lot Gull

Canada Goose – Poop Birb

Townsend’s Warbler – Black-eyed Warbler

Prothonotary Warbler – I really don’t have a name for this birb, but it definitely needs a name change. I mean, they could have just shortened that appellation to “Notary Warbler” and assigned it a stamp and a ledger.

I did get my panties in a wad when I first heard about the Big Bird Name Change. I won’t run out and buy a new Field Guide just to be able to correctly name a birb I already know under another name, so I will be sentenced to forever misidentifying birds. At least I won’t call any little grey bird in my backyard “a common Yard Sparrow”.

As one birder on a forum I follow said, “As long as we still have tits and boobies, I’m okay.” I’ll just add, “And dickcissels.”

*this is all tongue-in-cheek and I am open to even better names for common birbs.

All photos are mine. Lead Image is a bushtit.

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Grief Comes Sneaking

August 21, 2023 by Jaci Dawn

I sat down to write a different post tonight. I had good intentions and the post started out well, but it mired in the mud of my words about halfway through. I saved it as a draft and turned to do something else, like sorting through our son’s guitar music and miscellaneous papers, things I didn’t deem important enough to take to his children in July.

I recycled the music, and set aside the books on World War 2 (he was very interested in the subject of the Pacific theater: the airplanes, the carriers, Midway Island, and so on). A folder with some Boy Scout awards was all that remained. And a photograph.

His fourth birthday. The cake was John Deere green. I don’t remember taking the photograph or anything else about the day, but I remember that cake and how excited he was.

He wrote a message on the back of it in yellow highlighter. He was trying out cursive. The letters are strained, but the words are clear enough. I ran the photo through my scanner with adjustments for contrast and brightness.

i Love you mom Love Levi P

A gift of passage, perhaps? A note from the past, certainly. A stab to the heart, yes. Because I love you, too, Levi.

I didn’t cry much when I was in Florida visiting his children and his grave, but tonight the tears just flow. It can’t be real. He can’t be gone. His fourth birthday was just yesterday.

What should be his 37th birthday is looming on the calendar. He lived just thirty years after that photo was taken and it just can’t be.

Damn grief. Pour me a shot of Jameson’s and let me sit in the dark with it. Let me remember his laugh, his smile, his hug.

To everything there is a season… Turn, Turn, Turn

I want to say something profound about this cycle of grief, but there are no words left in me. I urge anyone suffering from the loss of a loved one to look up The Compassionate Friends on Facebook or on their website: http://www.compassionatefriends.org. If you are grieving a military loved one look for TAPS (Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors): http://www.taps.org. You are not alone and you are normal.

Now, where’s that shot of whiskey? (j/k – alcohol is NOT the answer.)

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Why Does Oregano Hate Me?

August 18, 2023 by Jaci Dawn

I didn’t sleep well last night. I am currently sipping on a cup of coffee (the real stuff, not decaf) and waiting for the caffeine and acetaminophen to go to work. Lifting my right arm is difficult until the pain killer kicks in.

One week ago, on a warm Thursday morning, I set out to conquer some of the weeds that had started in my flower beds. I missed a good deal of blooms while I was away in Florida, so there is a great deal of dead-heading to be done as well. I dove right in and was making good progress around the largest flower bed. I did a little edging, pulled out errant evening primroses and thinned out their bed as well. I crawled under the Hawthorne and dug out some bothersome wood sorrel and a lot of errant oregano.

My oregano patch is large and unruly, but bees, wasps, and other pollinators love it. This time of year, the air around the oregano hums. But I only allow it to grow within its confines or, like the evening primroses, it would take over the entire yard and choke out all my other beautiful flowers and herbs. I believe this is what triggered the main body of the herb.

I stepped around my weed bucket to leave the area and move on when the oregano wrapped around my left foot. It wouldn’t let go and I was thrown forward. These things always happen in slow motion: My body tipping forward, my hands reaching ahead of me for the ground, my body twisting away from the dreaded oregano plant and the weeding pad looming up to catch me.

It looks harmless. Kindly, even.

I slammed into the arm of that with my armpit and the momentum of my top-heavy torso. BOOM! AHHH! I rolled over in agony, tears on the verge of flowing. My husband came running. I ran into the house and applied arnica.

But I am brave. I brushed it off, said I was all right, and proceeded to work some more in the garden, but away from the oregano now. Ungrateful herb! I worked for maybe half an hour before I realized my right arm was NOT beginning to feel better but was, in fact, hurting more. Of course, there was no bruise to see because: Arnica. But it sure FELT like a bruise throughout my armpit and into my right breast.

Ice. And – oh! I had hydrocodone hiding in the house, a remnant of breast cancer surgery that I never needed to use. I’m not saying the pain went completely away but it certainly eased off considerably. Until nighttime and bedtime. My arm and chest stiffened up, I couldn’t roll over, I could barely get myself back out of bed… You know the kind of pain that just dogs you? Yeah, that.

My husband drove me everywhere. I insisted on going to the big city wide yard sale and the art festival by the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center. I was fine, fine. We even stopped and had a beer at one of our favorite haunts (I was careful not to mix the meds). Then night came on again.

I started to worry: had I dislocated my shoulder? It didn’t look like it. I could use it. Visions of a doctor putting in back into place frightened me (more pain?!), but it was now obvious I had DONE SOMETHING. I convinced myself to go to the Urgent Care (rather, have my chauffeur drive me to the Urgent Care as I was now unable to hold the car door open long enough to get seated).

She poked and prodded gently. No, I hadn’t dislocated anything. Of course there was no bruise (Arnica). Nothing appeared to be broken but they didn’t have an x-ray tech available until Monday. She didn’t think anything WAS broken, however: she posited that I had cracked a rib.

And it all made sense. I’ve “been there done that” before. I cracked two ribs on a crate thirteen years ago, almost to the date. I know when because our son was visiting with his first born, and we celebrated Justin’s first birthday here. Justin just turned 14.

I didn’t go to the doctor. I had a stash of oxycontin left over from dental surgery. I knew that even an x-ray wouldn’t help because there is nothing the medical field can do for cracked ribs. You just have to suffer it out. It took nine weeks to heal.

The Urgent Care physician just nodded and smiled. “That’s pretty much what we have here. We could do an x-ray but it probably isn’t going to show anything beyond a cracked rib. I can prescribe some muscle relaxers to help you through the night.”

So now my house mocks me as the dirt, dust, and dog hair pile up. The garden is overrun with dead flower heads and weeds are bravely flourishing. I only travel places if someone else is driving. And sleep eludes me, especially when the dog feels the need to cuddle up against my back and prevent me from finding a more comfortable position. You move a seventy pound mutt in the middle of the night? HA!

I’m trying to learn how to do things left-handed, but it isn’t happening very quickly. I’ll dust and dust mop today – I can do those things with my left arm. The garden is just going to have to wait along with all my plans for the end of the summer.

I managed to type all this and sip my coffee. The acetaminophen is kicking in. Nice weeding weather outside teases me, but I know better. A cracked rib takes a long time to heal. And I am out of the good drugs and down to the Over-the-Counter ones. By my calculations (and prior experience) I have six to eight more weeks of this.

But I have no outward bruise!

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Homeward Bound (part 3)

August 17, 2023 by Jaci Dawn

We did a lot of driving one our first day out. We wanted to get as close to Fort Worth as possible. Our second day out included a short but sweet side trip into Fort Worth to see our cousin, Chuck, and his wife, Kathy, but especially to see Uncle “Mike”, our last standing uncle on the Wilcox side. We were treated to a little Texas style barbeque (the pulled pork was great, the sauce was ho-hum).

Uncle “Mike” is a wealth of family history and has been passing that knowledge down. Chuck printed a handful of old family photos for Terry and I and I can’t wait to return the favor with photos he requested that I might have.

The nicest La Quinta we stayed in was in Lawson, Oklahoma. I wandered down to see what was left of the breakfast (nothing). Fort Sill was hosting a graduation that day and all the young soldiers and their families had grazed through and cleaned out the area. A tiny woman in a La Quinta uniform was standing there, contemplating closing down the buffet. We struck up a conversation, mostly about young soldiers, young people, and the challenges they face today.

Miss Betty stood about four foot eight, had dark curly hair tinted with a shade of orange and bangs that curled over her forehead. She was thin, frail, spry, and sharp. She told me a story of how she once gave her last two dollars to an immigrant couple because they had a toddler with them that needed something to drink. She was so touched by their response and thankfulness. We held hands and prayed together, and the last I saw of her was her face peeking around the door to wave good-bye to me. Miss Betty.

That day we saw more wildlife. The heat index was dropping and creatures were stirring, particularly birds of prey. The country we drove across was the southern edge of The Great Dust Bowl and one could see how the dust and dry shaped the landscape. Scrubby trees were planted in an effort to hold the soil, but the land is flat, dry, and baked. We pulled off the road in Duke, OK, to look at some of the houses. A pair of locals started following us (who’d blame them: Florida plates, driving slow through a small town?) and we stopped to yak with one of them. He was a sweet old guy working for the public water system, but he didn’t have much knowledge on the older homes (except there was a rumor about a movie to be made in one of them).

Next stop was Memphis, Texas. The streets are paved in brick. Real brick, not cobblestones.

Picturesque and quiet, the county seat of Hall County. There was a bank on every corner, or at least some buildings that had been banks at one time. A quaint little spot that deserves more investigation!

Driving from Pueblo through Grand Junction was a long and difficult day for me. Memories. My husband and I drove that route one summer on our way to Colorado Springs to meet our first granddaughter. Our son took us along part of that route to see Royal Gorge. Levi haunts these places. He was just beginning to fall in love with Special Forces then and was stationed out of Fort Carson. He joined up with 10th Special Forces Group and was deployed to Iraq for a short time. He lived, loved, got divorced, remarried – all in Colorado Springs. I’m thankful we didn’t go into CS.

On to Provo and one of the worst Days Inns we stayed at. My brother booked it on a promo where it was advertised as a “new” motel. It was not new. It was not easy to locate. There were permanent residents who stared off into the distance and talked to themselves. One stayed busy rearranging rocks. Another paced the balcony after an apparent nightmare, muttering and casting out demons in the middle of the night. The bathroom was too small to turn around in and the water only heated to lukewarm. The coffee maker was missing pieces. The mattresses probably had bedbugs. We left as early as possible the next morning. Pretty certain my brother gave it a minus 5 rating.

It rained sometime during the night and the playa shimmered in mirages.

I am endlessly fascinated by mirages. There really is a mountain in the photo; there really is not a shimmering lake surrounding it. The playa is salt and alkali, alkali and salt. Emigrants to California passed to the north of these flats, camping near City of Rocks in Idaho before dropping down to the southern route through Nevada (which is alkali and brush, brush and alkali, but at least has the Humboldt River meandering across most of the state until it sinks into the ground and disappears altogether.

We decided to take a side trip out to Bonneville Flats where there really was water on the playa – and some racing even was happening. Or not – they were still deciding if there was too much water on the surface or if they could go further out and race.

Next stop was the old Wendover Army Air Base (Utah). I didn’t know this existed.

The museum was overpriced for what little it offered, but we paid anyway and wandered through the displays. I was most impressed with the history of the Enola Gay. I missed something in history classes or they simply did not teach this: the Enola Gay was housed at Wendover Army Base. Of course, we were never taught much about the history of Wendover, excepting that half of the town is locate in Utah (Mountain Time) and half of it is in Nevada (Pacific Time).

We paused in Elko, NV, to find the little house we lived in when our sister was born. It looks so tiny now: a standard white US Forest Service residence. There is a full basement underneath it: we kids had our bedroom down there. In Winnemucca, we paused to snap a photo of the haunted house we grew up in. It was an ungodly pink then, and all one residence. Now it is black (!?) and split into a duplex.

That green space between where I stood to take the photo and the house used to be an uncovered dry ditch full of milkweed and Monarch butterflies in the 1960’s. They buried it the year we moved away and I still hear the echoes of Joni Mitchell singing, “They paved paradise and put up a parking lot”. I have a rant on that strip of land and I may never forgive those who were in power who decided that Monarchs weren’t worth protecting. My 12 year old self looked into the future and knew. I’d like to subvert the city’s nice lawn and sow some milkweed seeds in that grass!

The last stop was Reno, of course. I met up with an online friend for a quick lunch on Monday, the 7th.I’ve met her before and we always seem to hit it off in person as well as online. I left the restaurant happy but tired – and decided spur of the moment to load up my car and drive home that afternoon. It was ten thirty at night when I arrived home, but I’m glad I went when I did: there was little to no traffic, even on I-5. And to top it off, when I pulled in to the gas station in Klamath Falls, I got an attendant who pumped my gas for me.

This moppet was so excited to see me that he barked and growled at me. “WHO are YOU?”

Gee, thanks, Ruger-puger. I’m your hooman mom and I missed you, too.

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Road Trip 2023, Part 2

August 16, 2023 by Jaci Dawn

106 degrees (Fahrenheit) with a “heat index” (“real feel”) of 120 degrees. That’s 41C and 48.9C. Miserable, in any world.

I love the heat. Bring it on. Ninety and up. Problem is, my body no longer regulates my temperature and heat melts me. I blame this on a heat stroke I gave myself the year we went to get our first Wirehaired Pointing Griffon from Idaho. I have never recovered. I’m also in my mid-sixties and slightly overweight.

Florida was hot. Oregon is hot right now. I am already sweating at eleven AM (Pacific Daylight).

But the trade-off in Florida was getting to see all six of our son’s children in one place, a first for me since his funeral in December of 2020. They have changed so much, yet not at all. Funny, mischievous, nerdy, righteous, smart. See my son’s gestures and facial expressions displayed in their young faces was cathartic and joyous. They are beautiful people.

Our daughter, Arwen, Kaysie, Justin, Erin, Myself. Korinne, Nolan, John, Micah, Miss V (Arwen’s “mini-me”). And only two of the five dogs.

There are also a tortoise, a monitor lizard, and (at the time of my visit): untold number of Fowler’s toads courtesy of the two younger girl cousins.

We spent part of a day at Emerald Coast Zoo (https://emeraldcoastzoo.com/). Justin and I burned out in the heat. The big hit was (as always) the parakeet cage. If you ever are in that part of Florida, you must take the kiddos!

A highlight of the day was getting to see my nephew, his partner, and their four children.

We visited Levi’s headstone and left him an offering of Key Lime Pie and a bottle of whiskey.

The rest of that day was spent “chilling” on Pensacola Beach. the water was warmer than most swimming pools, clear, and calm. The beach was not as crowded as I would have expected and everyone I observed picked up ALL their garbage when they left. All.Their.Garbage.

The coastal birds were not exactly what I was looking for, but they were quite friendly. (Okay, there were Laughing gulls and brown pelicans, but the rock dove was the one who posed for a beach photo.)

Most of our time was spent inside the house with the television on and children sprawled about.

I had four days to spend with these miscreants. Too little time. School has already started for some of them, football practice, cheer practice, music, theater, and those boring “three R’s”. Birthdays have already come and gone and time marches forward, ignorant of our losses, our joys, our pains, and our accomplishments. Time spent with family is the most precious time of all.

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Road Trip 2023. (Part 1)

August 14, 2023 by Jaci Dawn

I had a brilliant idea back in early March (before I knew I had breast cancer): instead of purchasing airplane tickets to fly to Florida and see all my son’s children together, I would ask my brother if he was up to a road trip. After all, his son had just moved to within two hours of our daughter-in-law and we haven’t been on a road trip together in 14 years. That road trip was to Colorado to see my son’s first born.

I don’t mind flying, but it’s very expensive right now, there have been a number of cancellations and complete mix-ups in the news, and I thought a road trip might be a little cheaper than a solo flight out (and a lot more fun). In the end, I think the road trip cost nearly as much as the flight would have but it *was* a lot more fun – and we saw a lot of the beautiful country contained within the borders of the United States.

I have been living in the State of Oregon for 46 years. No sales tax and no self-service at the gas pump. I pumped gas briefly during the winter of 1978 but someone else has done it for me since then.. This was about to change as our legislation went around the vote of the people and passed a bill allowing self service at most pumps beginning the 5th of August. I figured I had a couple weeks on the road to relearn how to pump gas on fancy “new” (to me) machines.

Also, we had five boxes of “stuff” in my attic that belonged to our son that probably needed to be delivered to his heirs, and since they were all six going to be in one spot… I could easily haul all those boxes in a rental car. Long story short, breast cancer was dealt with and the road trip was on. All I had to do was drive myself the 8+ hours to Reno and home again. And, meantime, my brother unloaded a couple of boxes of his son’s belongings to deliver to Florida as well.

I left home on the 23rd of July. That went smoothly, but getting the rental car on the morning of the 24th was a two-hour ordeal. We only made it as far as Ely, our high school home town. I haven’t been there since 2012 when we finished cleaning out our father’s estate. Ely had a stop light then. Today it doesn’t. (There’s a stop light in East Ely.)

We got serious with travel on the 25th. A short stop in Pioche, NV, to take photos.

We decided to drive through Cedar City, Utah, and down through Kanab, over the Glen Canyon bridge, and on into Flagstaff. The drive from Cedar City to Kanab is a spectacular road through winding canyons formed by sandstone and granite. The walls of the canyon are pink and white with an occasional dusting of coal deposits. Iron is mined near Cedar City. From Kanab to the Glen Canyon Dam, the road takes one over mountain passes and smooth meadows carved out by ancient glaciers. The views can be breath-taking.

We paused to watch a storm build over Arizona.

Glen Canyon is intense. The water in Lake Powell is extremely low. The architecture of both the bridge over the canyon and the dam are a marvel or engineering.

July 26th found us on the road with hopes to make it to Amarillo by evening. HaHaHa. We made it to Tumcumcari, New Mexico, in part because we had to dawdle a little in Winslow and we stopped to see The Crater (Barringer Meteorite Crater). I was not impressed with Winslow, but they do have a bronze statue of Glen Frey near “the Hitchhiker” and that’s pretty cool.

The Crater, on the other hand, is impressive. You can see where it churned up earth long before you reach the site. It was formed around 50,000 years ago, is over 4,000 feet across and over 700 feet deep. You can’t see into the crater bottom without a telescope (or a 300mm camera lens).

It was far too hot to go on a guided tour and we didn’t stay long, but I count it as a highlight of our trip.

We caught up with a storm as we hurried on toward Tucumcari: lightning lit up the sky ahead of us for miles, culminating in this:

We finally arrived in Tucumcari where I booked us a room. An old man and his dog sat outside the lobby in the shade. Charlie, the dog, wanted chin scratches, so I obliged. When I came back out from the lobby, the old man was in a very agitated state: TARANTULA! I don’t think he was amused by my reaction: I hurried to get my camera and tell my brother to get his before the spider moved on. THEN we ushered it off the sidewalk. Texas Brown Tarantula, very common.

We decided we were running short on time, so the leg on the 27th was pretty much a straight drive through to Paris with a couple side trips to drive on the original Route 66. We spent the night in Paris, TX.

The first image is actually in Tucumcari, but the hat on the “Eiffel Tower” replica is ALL Paris, Texas.

July 28 – Our date for arriving in Florida. And we did drive straight through, except for a slight detour in Vicksburg, Mississippi, to tour the area where the battle of Vicksburg happened. Vicksburg is a sobering reminder of a young Nation torn in two, brother vs. brother, nephew vs. uncle, and trenches dug within feet of the “enemy”. It was a bloody siege. The North prevailed with General U.S. Grant defeating Confederate General John C. Pemberton. The day we drove through and looked at the monuments of the different units that fought (and died), the air was close and musical with the song of cicadas. I could imagine the screams of men and horses, the boom of cannons, the smell of gunpowder, blood, and sulphur, and the fear that must have prevailed in those trenches. The battle raged for 47 days.

That was our last tourist stop on the first half of our trip. We arrived at my destination after ten PM on the 28th.

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Aboard the Starship BS Round 5 Rad

June 22, 2023 by Jaci Dawn

The room is sterile. You are guided to a gurney and instructed to lay down on your back, hands over your head. There are pegs there for you to hold onto, but not because this will be painful: it is only to keep you from fidgeting. Look to the right and keep your head turned, you can see countless cupboards on the wall. A blue light comes on as the interns adjust your body to line up with the tattoos. Above, there is a skylight, except you know it is not real: the buds on the trees are out of season, the clouds don’t move, and birds don’t flit around. Also, you are in deep space and there is no sky.

The interns leave and a machine begins to whirl around you: a large disk with a square screen looms over you, then a rectangle with a screen, and last, a dull gray arm of the AI machine. It is working on you now. Healing your wounds from the inter-galactic war; healing the wounds from the inside-out so there will be no scar. OR it is working on the wiring in your body: you are an Android and have malfunctioned during the night. The latter is most likely: why else would they need your tattoos?

The machine reverses and you notice your skin looks like blue scales under the light. Perhaps it has turned blue, with scales, and you have not been warned. This repeats, slowly. Remember to breathe normally.

Then it is over. Ten minutes in, not long enough to create a story line as to why you are here in this science fiction tale. The techs return on silent feet and help you sit back up. The drive to get there takes longer than the actual radiation treatment.

Radiation is painless, for the most part. Today, I noticed a small spot of burn on my left breast where the radiation has been concentrated. It will get worse before it gets better, but it is tiny, like the cancer we are committed to destroying (we: all the staff at oncology and myself). The radiation has been concentrated on the spot where the cancer was. The only other treatment is using a prescribed lotion to keep the skin supple and healing.

I understand now why my friend, Diane, mentioned the “special” cream her other friend had to use. It’s not particularly “special” but there are a limited number of over-the-counter choices you are given to use. Unscented and manufactured without certain ingredients: a list is handed out before radiation, and they encourage you to apply it two to three times daily.

The scenario(s) in my first three paragraphs are fictionalized, of course. You are not in deep space, and you already knew it was a fake skylight: the same mural is in many exam rooms in hospitals. The interns are trained technicians. You do appear to have blue mottled skin, but that is the lighting from the machine. It’s not AI, but a complicated piece of hulking machinery that can shoot radiation precisely at a small spot inside your body, cooking and killing any stray cancer cells that may have been left behind in surgery. In my case, it is unlikely anything was left behind, but I have opted for the radiation to lower my chances of a recurrence to 4% over an 8-year period.

Today is my fifth and final round of radiation. I hop off the gurney (slight exaggeration there: I lower my aging body off. I say good-bye to the techs and exit the science fiction room. On my way past the nurse’s station to the changing rooms, I am presented with a Certificate of Completion. This is perhaps the most humorous part of this: a Gold Star for completing what I hope is my final round with breast (or any) cancer.

If you followed the story this far, congrats. And get the damn smoosh-smoosh-squash-squash done. I hate them, too.  

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Saturday, June the 17th, 1995

June 16, 2023 by Jaci Dawn

Twenty-eight years ago. I remember some things clearly, but other things are muddled. For instance, I remember the fight down to Reno and where I sat on the airplane coming home from Reno. I remember my father, my brother, my mother, and the hospital, but I don’t recall much of my brother’s family (or the fact that I stayed with them and slept in the living room – that’s all a blur). I remember where I was when we got the call, and much of what we did over the ensuing two days. Father’s Day, the 18th, was a road trip for three of us.

I flew down in an MD-83, if I recall correctly. The series of airplanes had been grounded for several months following a deadly airline crash that had been determined to be a fault in the plane itself. They had only recently started allowing the model to fly again. I figured I was in a safest airplane around since it had been thoroughly worked over, right? I remember I sat in the tail section going down and coming home; coming home I didn’t even have a window, only the roar of the engine in my ear.

I don’t remember when I arrived in Reno or much of what happened that first night, was it Thursday or Friday? I don’t recall. My brother might: the events of Saturday the 17th impacted him as hard as it did me. We lost our best friend and family advocate that horrid Saturday.

Mom was hospitalized due to yet another round on pneumonia and the impacts of the disease on her weakened lungs. Mom had emphysema (they call it COPD nowadays). I don’t know how many times she had been hospitalized in the past because our parents were very good at concealing things from us kids. Sickness was only one of the many things they hid from us and we had to find out from other sources that something huge had happened, like our sister’s pregnancies.

I remember how she looked, lying in that hospital bed, tubes in her nose and oxygen doing the breathing for her. Morphine made it hard for her to pay attention to anything or respond to us. She pulled at the tubes in her nose, irritated. She held my hand for a moment.

There’s a moment in your life when you have to make a decision you don’t want to make. The nurses pulled me aside, the last of the family members to arrive (my sister couldn’t be there: she was pregnant and I didn’t know she was pregnant until then). Did I agree with my brother and father to take my mother – my best friend – off of oxygen and all other life support? My heart screamed, “NO!” but my mind knew what Mom wanted.

Dad said he couldn’t do the “death watch” – he’d done it too many times before in his life and Mom was the love of his life. We were going to go out for lunch, away from the hospital. I held Mom’s hand and spoke to her, telling her that I didn’t want to let her go or lose her, but – in the end – “you will do what you want to do”. I knew the Scots’ blood in her would stubbornly go down the road she wanted no matter what the rest of us felt.

We were looking at some “art” car on the street when we got the call. Mom had made her decision. In the elevator, Dad seemed shrunken and old. He pounded his fists on the wall. My brother entered the room first and gently closed Mom’s eyes before Dad or I could see her. Not that she was there. A shell was there, a fragile casing that once held my mother. I had the strange feeling that she was still in the room, in another, happier, dimension. Somewhere we couldn’t see into, but which existed parallel to us.

That night we sat in Dad’s motel room doing – what? I don’t remember. What I do recall is my brother was on call with the Washoe County Sheriff’s Department and he got an emergency call. How Dad and I managed to tag along, I don’t know. Terry had to hitch up the trailer with the flood lights and we headed north on SR-447 in the dark. A trucker hauling cardboard for recycling had rolled on a corner north of Gerlach.

Once, on the loneliest stretch (and that is a lonely highway), Terry briefly turned on lights and sirens for us. We made jokes. Dad asked Terry about the afterlife. It snowed. Dad and I pretended we were undercover cops and “real bad honchos” while we stayed out of the way. We felt sadness, too: it was a fatality and the trucker had family somewhere in Texas.

Father’s Day. We loaded up in Dad’s Buick and took a road trip. Terry and I argued about the wildflowers we saw along the way. We stopped in Portolla, California, at a family friend’s house. Dad wanted to speak to them alone: old friends from our early childhood, and a mortician by trade, Dad needed reassurance and advice on how to go forward. From there, we circled over to Donner Lake. Parked about the azure lake, One of them asked, “What is that blue out there?” Eager to prove myself an expert in wildflowers, I peered out the window.

“I don’t see anything blue,” I complained.

“I think it’s called ‘Donner Lake'” one of them dead-panned. This is how my family pranks each other.

We laughed most of the day. I was the butt of more jokes, but that is the only one I remember. It was a jab at the fact I live in a state with plenty of water and they lived in Nevada – and I am no expert in wildflowers. We ate somewhere in Truckee, California. Mom would have loved the day: all the expensive little shops to wander through and browse. It was bittersweet, full of laughter, and one of my favorite memories of family.

*Photo of Mom with a lampshade on her head. 1952

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