Ouch!

No sooner had I sent out an invite for everyone to get together when we return to commemorate our RV, Rollin' Home, which had incurred no flat tires or bumps or dents or scratches or malfunctions or tickets on our entire trip, it got munched.  The only good thing about this is that I wasn't the one driving!

Tucson Pics



Cork and Alice (G'ma)




My uncle Andy and his wife Ann (Ann now has advanced Alzheimer's.  I love seeing Ann because every couple of minutes she looks at me and lights up and says "Who are you again?  It's so wonderful to see you!"  and I feel totally loved!) 




Chieko and Lily




Party on!



The first group of trick-or-treaters

Halloween

A word about Halloween.... Halloween is Lily's favorite holiday.  Since she was born, every Halloween we/she'd go trick-or-treating along 18th Street on Potrero Hill.  We've always had a pre-trick-or-treating dinner (my thought is let's eat something good before something bad) and a post-trick-or-treating glass of wine and wind down.  Almost every year since Kindergarten, Lily has gone trick-or-treating with her friends Mala and Tanima, and we've walked behind them with Mala's mom, Rebecca, and Tanima's parents Milan and Nanden and her little brother Aniket.  For the last 4 or 5 years Lily has made her costumes with Cork and the neighbors always look forward to what they've come up with. 

This year there was none of that and I had underestimated how much it meant to Lily.  She was brave about it, using eye liner to make scars and wearing the witch hat/wig that grandma got her in order to hand candy out to mom's neighbors, but after the first group of kids left she burst into tears and I witnessed the anguish that can only come from missing someone /some thing you really love. 



Lily as an end table




Mala, Lily (as a chandelier that has fallen from the ceiling) Tanima and Aniket



Tucson

I’m cracking up as I’m sitting here listening to Lily Skype with her friend Aivy, imitating Arnold Schwarzenegger and various other people from around the world.  Her favorite imitations lately have been something she picked up from MAD TV having to do with the East Side Locas (Esa Locas) and I have to remind her not to do it quite so loud as we walk through parking lots in Tucson filled with authentic Esa Locas…  Cork is cracking me up too, ‘cuz when he starts to act weird and I tell him he’s behaving just a bit autistic, he says uh-uh, just artistic.  We’re in fine form tonight.  It might have something to do with going and seeing our first movie since we left.  It’s the new Rowan Atkinson movie called Johnnie English.  It’s a spoof on James Bond, and the main guy is the guy who plays Mr. Bean.  We made Grandma go, too.  She loved it!  It wasn’t a great film but it was nice to sit in a theatre and see something on the big screen.  Then Cork and I came home to the little rental and made dinner for everyone while Lily hung out with G’ma and did her homework.  After dinner and a few rounds of arm wrestling (I won all of them…) we dropped G’ma off at home and here we are hanging out.  We leave Tucson tomorrow to Cork’s relief.  Although he has come to really enjoy my mom, the combination of the heat and the rather dead-end feeling that much of Tucson has, has left him rather pissy.  We’re heading out just a bit faster than we were planning because there is a dust storm warning for the direction we’re going and evidently these storms are nothing to fool around with.  High winds, zero visibility, lots of accidents, that sort of stuff. 

My brother, Clif, is the one who used the term “dead-end” in relationship to Tucson, and I have to admit it does have that feeling.  It’s like many places we’ve seen on our trip, where it’s as if people got here and ran out of money or their car (or wagon or horse) broke down and they just decided this was it.  There are parts of Tucson that are beautiful, but there are just as many parts that are, as Cork says, soul sucking.   My family moved to Tucson when I was a junior in high school.  My grandmother and my uncle had lived there much longer.  The Tucson I lived in then was small and slow with a lot of charm.  Tucson now still has charm in some places, like downtown and its surrounding areas, but in general is big and spread out with TONS of cars going really, really fast.

ANYWAY, there were many wonderful things about Tucson once we gave up our WorklMark accommodations and moved into a little rental a couple of blocks from mom.  I don’t know what I was thinking, but this WorldMark was about a 40 minute drive from Tucson, so each time we wanted to see my mom we had to really commit to going and staying for the day.  I think it took us one round trip to say forget that.  After spending some time on the VRBO website I found this great little one-bedroom casita with a foldout couch, all newly remodeled with a great little kitchen etc…  Joanne, the woman who owns it was kooky and wonderful.  It turns out that she spent many years at Rancho Linda Vista, the artists commune that my uncle started in the ‘60s in Oracle, Arizona.  A few minutes after meeting her we were finding all sorts of people in common that we knew.   Mom had a little catered party for us with some of my relatives and her neighbors.  It was interesting to realize that I was one of the “youngsters” at 51 years old!  Lily did an amazing job chatting with people and telling them about the trip.  I was thoroughly impressed with her ability to mingle.  Lily had a private ballet lesson with her Aunt Chieko, who is the Co-founder of Ballet Arts and the assistant artistic director of the Tucson Ballet.  Chieko stands about 5’10 and has always been a great role model for Lily.  The two of them get together and I just KNOW that half their time is spent chatting about life, which is a good thing…

It’s Friday the 4^th, my sister Alison’s birthday.  HAPPY BIRTHDAY ALISON!!!  We’ve left Tucson on our next leg home.  I guess I should still refer to it as the next leg of our journey, but now that I know home is only a week or so away, everything has taken on that hue.  I’m sad to say there is not one part of me that’s ready to return.  Maybe by the time we’re driving up to the studio I’ll be ready, we’ll see. 



It only looks like Lily is winning....




The "Look"




Spooky!




Spookier!!!





Lily, G'ma and Gille the dog





The girls




Lily and Chieko



More Marfa and Ozona



City Hall in Marfa, Texas







Eveything's big in Texas!  The night before we visited Marfa we stayed in another middle-of-nowhere town called Ozona.  We got to Ozona on a Saturday and started our stay by walking around this historic town.  Ozona's claim to fame is the Davy Crocket Museum.  We walked for about 30 minutes and did not see more than 2 or 3 people.  All the businesses were closed or out of business.  It was weird.... The houses were well kept and the lawns perfect but there was no one around.  There were NO grocery stores and we hadn't shopped before we got there so we had to go out to dinner and the dinner choices were Dairy Queen, Sonic Burger or the Hitching Post.  At least the Hitching Post had a salad bar, so we went there.  (The woman at check-in said "You go down to the next light, take a right and then a left."  So we decided to walk 'cuz it was a small town.  She neglected to mention that the Hitching Post was about a mile out of town making it a round trip of about 3 miles.  It totally creeped Cork and Lily out walk that far in this deserted town.  For  some reason it didn't bother me as much.)  At dinner we ordered a side of onion rings.  Yup, this is a Texas sized "side"!



Squeeze Marfa!

Marfa, Texas

What can I write about Marfa, Texas?  Maybe that after two days of slogging across the state of Texas, Marfa gave us a reason to be?  Maybe that after a night in Ozona, Texas, Marfa made us feel better?  Maybe that when you’ve been traveling for eight weeks and are now heading home, finding a place that feels like that, home that is, in the middle of nowhere (really, really in the middle of nowhere) is an amazing thing?  

Marfa, Texas is a little town about 8 hours from Austin, I think even farther from Houston and about 4 hours from El Paso.  If you’re traveling west along Route 10, you drop south from Fort Stockton for about 1 ½ hours and you’re there.  Marfa is/was built around the arts and has attracted a small community of people wanting to build a larger community of artists.  There are galleries and shops and a couple of 4-star hotels and restaurants.  Unfortunately we were there on a Sunday so many things were closed, but we did manage to have lunch at this place called Squeeze Marfa.  From the moment we stepped into Squeeze Marfa I couldn’t stop thinking of our friend Martha.  Martha is the BATSNABF in the world and I could just here her with her Tennessee drawl saying “Squeeze Marfa!  I just love to be squeezed!”  Squeeze Marfa was maybe 600 square feet total, including the patio, and is owned by a Switzerland/Houston transplant named Sven.  After moving to Marfa about 10 years ago, he loved it so much that he convinced his parents to move there and they opened the business together.  His mother was in the kitchen making the best “rustic” sandwiches we’ve had on the trip; perfect proportions, perfectly toasted.  Lily and I both had a hummus/black olive tapenade/tomato sandwich and Cork had a smoked turkey sandwich.  We followed those up with the best espresso we’ve had on this trip (I don’t think we’ve had any since) and a bar of Swiss chocolate.  AMAZING!  We would like to stay in Marfa longer, but tomorrow is Halloween and we promised Lily we’d be in Tucson in time for her to at least hand out candy at Grandma’s, so off we go.

Lily outside of Squeeze Marfa!



Inside of the Paisano Hotel, refurbished within the last few years.  The hotel also has a 4-star restaurant that I soooo wanted to try, but they're only open for dinner.



Scattered Pics

We're in Tucson right now with lots of family stuff going on so there's no time to write right now.  In the meantime....

The beginning of Fran's birthday celebration

 




One of the many great bands throughout New Orleans




Tree of Life at Disney




Swamp



My favorite part of the swamp tour was airboating down these canals



Airboat





Winter Buns
One day I was having lunch with a group of girlfriends.  We were asking my friend Cheryl, whose boyfriend had just moved to SF, what kind of job he was hoping to find.  Cheryl said that he was really interested in winter buns.  As we all sat there nodding politely, I was thinking what the heck are winter buns?  I couldn't help imagining these beautiful baked goods that were specifically made in the winter. I finally asked her just what winter buns were and she said "Oh, that must be my Kansas accent coming through.  He's interested in wind turbines!"  Needless to say our family now calls them winter buns, one of the most constant sights we've seen along our trip.  These winter buns were along a pier in Kitty Hawk, NC