Summer Vacation, part 2

So we got off the train, drove to Mom's house in Sequim, Washington, and got a good night's sleep after a long day of travelling. We spent the next week hanging out with Mom and Dad, seeing Bob for a few days, working (Doc has a huge job right now and worked all day every day and half the nights too... when you own your own business, the work is unpredictable), taking the dog for long walks in the forest, snoozing on the patio in the 65 degree sunshine, picking strawberries (44 pounds, from Cameron Berry Farm!), going in to town, going to the beach with the dog, buying fireworks from the Indian reservation down the road and shooting them off on the driveway on the 4th of July, eating lots and lots of Mom's delicious cooking and Dad's smoked brisket, seeing aunts and uncles and cousins and old family friends, shopping (thanks, Mom, for the new maternity clothes!), playing endless fetch with the dog, watching Jonny Quest with Doc and Bob, sitting wrapped in a blanket in front of the fireplace (yes, in July!), enjoying the smell of fresh fir trees and sweet grasses, and generally having a wonderful, relaxing time.

The weather was absolutely fabulous. We had a few days of rain and/or mist but the rest of the time was sunshine almost all day long. The temperature stayed around 60 or so on the rainy days, and might have reached 70 on the sunny days. Cool enough to need long sleeves in the shade!

I discovered that nonalcoholic wine tastes like grape juice that something has gone terribly wrong with. Lesson learned.

We got home late last night, and it was great to see our kitties but I really didn't want to come home.  Why do I still live in Texas? Sigh.

Summer Vacation!

I have been on VACATION!

Yay, vacation!!

Doc and I flew to San Jose, where we stayed with Arushi and Shyamal for a few days at their place in Mountain View. The fires in Big Sur were still burning and there was a lot of smoke in the air. It hung like a pink-brown cloud over everything, and made our eyes sting. We visited the redwood forest in Big Basin State Park in the Santa Cruz Mountains, went into San Francisco one afternoon, swam in her pool, did a little shopping, and went out to Napa County and ate at a fantastic place called Greystone Restaurant, run by the Culinary Institute of America, where i had the best piece of fish I have ever eaten in my entire life. It was halibut, pan-fried in olive oil with just a bit of salt and pepper, and probably caught mere hours prior. It was the most amazingly perfect texture all the way through, and served on a bed of morel mushrooms and tiny baby squash, sauteed in butter.

The weather in northern California is fantastic in the summer. I'm afraid that I underpacked for this trip, bringing along mostly tank tops and capri pants, when what I apparently really needed was long pants and sweatshirts!

We hopped aboard an Amtrak train, the "Coast Starlight," to head up north to Seattle. Train travel is quite enjoyable. It takes longer to get to your destination, but is cheaper and much more scenic, relaxed, roomy, and social than flying. Doc and I rented a small sleeper cabin instead of coach seats, and it was a huge improvement over our last train trip ten years ago, when Doc had a severe case of the flu in coach. The room was tiny, barely wider than the width of a seat, but we could shut the doors and fold down two beds and the privacy was worth every penny. Plus, all meals are included in the price of the room, and although the food was not awful (certainly better than you might expect on a train), the a la carte meal prices were quite inflated. We would have easily spent more than the cost of the room upgrade on meals alone, had we traveled in coach!

The route along the coast is very scenic and beautiful, especially through Oregon. The train huffs and puffs its way along the side of mountains through all this gorgeous countryside. You really can't beat morning sunlight sparkling down on a glittering mountain stream hundreds of yards below, and rocky rapids surrounded by tall fir trees.

The train was three hours late getting into the station in Seattle (11:30 at night!) because, sadly, someone had a heart attack on board the night before and the train had to stop in the middle of nowhere in California to wait for the Careflight helicopters to arrive. We also had numerous electrical problems onboard that resulted in the lights going out every now and again -- this is especially inconvenient when you are using the tiny airplane-style bathroom, which has no windows.

A late train wouldn't normally be that big of a problem, except that my mom and dad had arranged to pick us up at the station and drive us back to their house... two and a half hours away. By the time we got to their place it was nearly 2 a.m. I was so tired from having barely slept on the train the night before, I just fell right into bed and don't even remember my head hitting the pillow.

I'm really tired now, in fact... I'm going to post some photos and then write more about the vacation later!

Beautiful rocky beach

Mom sent me some photos she took of a beach near their house in Washington. They took the dog and visited some friends out there last weekend. I grew up playing on beaches like this. Sand beaches are kind of weird to me!



Those are mountains in the distance, not just clouds!

Love Lou, Verene, & Mickie

Grandma lived on Johnson Point, a little peninsula of land north of Olympia. All the waterfront houses sat on a bank high above a rocky beach, with about 5 acres or so of woods behind them. It was a beautiful community of cute older hand-built houses, gardens, apple orchards, forest and beach. And when I say hand-built I do mean that. Grandpa (who I never met; he died in 1948) built the house. Mom has photos of the construction! In fact, they built the house around the wardrobe in the upstairs attic room! It was too big to fit through the door.

Lou and Verene, two outrageously sharp and funny older ladies, lived two houses away from Grandma, with their Sheltie dog, Mickie. I absolutely adored Lou and Verene, and for a while in the mid-1980s Lou and I wrote letters back and forth when I was in Texas during the school year (this was the Dark Ages, kids; no such thing as e-mail yet).

I found a stack of these letters in a box in my attic a few nights ago. I didn't even realize I had them. I am sure there were more; maybe they're at my mom's house in a box somewhere.

I'm going to post bits and pieces from several of them. For reference, Fran lived between Grandma and Lou & Verene, and was Grandma's best friend. Echo was Fran's huge slobbery basset hound. Alicia was the woman who bought Grandma's house after Grandma died in 1984. She was known as "Alicia the Awful" to the neighborhood, and completely changed the atmosphere of this wonderful little community of neighbors and friends by being nasty, cutting down trees and putting up fences and such. A lot of what Lou wrote me had to do with "the latest" on Alicia's antics. Lou's letters helped me feel like a part of me was still there with everyone, when I had to live 3000 miles away for most of the year.

For the life of me, I can't remember a whole lot about them, but I think that Lou might have been a writer. It sure seems like it from these letters. I wonder if she saw some spark of writing talent in me and maybe wanted to encourage that.

8/17/86

Dear Katie,
     Yesterday it was in the high 80's, and it hasn't rained for a month. I guess you know - - - Alicia the Awful had a rip-roaring fire going down where the treehouse used to be. Fran is climbing the walls. One of these days I'm going to write you a fable - even worse than those I write to Molly. I'll call it ALICIA IN BLUNDERLAND.
     We spent most of yesterday balancing Verene's bank account. She spent 13 years of her life teaching college math, but month after month her bank balance is a big, fat mess. I try to help her with my old Comptometer. To give you an idea how old it is, it came with the job when I first started working for the State in 1928! They gave it to me when I retired. It doesn't subtract directly, but it gets the same thing done by adding a gizmo called a reciprocal. A reciprocal is the number you want to subtract, subtracted from an imaginary string of "0's." You try it - - - 675 minus 373 is 302. 675 plus 999999999999999627 is 302. Of course you end up with a "1" way out in infinity. Infinity is half way between Johnson Point and Mars. If you don't believe me, ask your dad.
     We had Verene's revolting boyfriend out for dinner Saturday. He's tighter than the bark on a tree. We've been having him out almost every week for supper and send him home with a C A R E package for the next day. The only time he has ever taken her out for dinner they went Dutch -- she paid for hers! There was ham left over, plus potato salad, so we had Fran over last night to eat leftovers. She gets tired of fish and chicken, the only things on Stu's diet, so she lapped up ham like it was going out of style. Stu was in Tacoma playing bridge.
     Well, old bean, it's time to go watch a favorite program on TV.
     Hope you had a good trip home and enjoyed the redwoods.
     Lotsa luv -
     L V & M

9/9/86

     ...The latest development in Alicia's war on the neighborhood is a six-foot-high solid redwood fence between her place and the Pilgrims'. She's completely cut of Betty's and Earl's view to the north. And to think of the stink she's raised ever since she moved in about Fran's laurel hedge. We were talking just yesterday about the development of our little colony. As each of us moved in we put in sidewalks and paths between the houses. She puts up a spite fence! When Fran and Betty want to get together they have to walk clear out to the county road and back or drive over.
     Somehow Echo and Mickie got over to the other side. Betty watched all this and told us about it. Mickie (sissy!) squeezed around the bayside end and ran home. Not so Echo. She lives by the principle that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points. When she collided with the fence she sat down and scratched her head for a while. Betty said you could almost hear the wheels going around. Then she calmly dug a hole under it and went on her merry way.
     I made a copy of the onion story to show to your dad [Lou typed out a story on half-sheets, illustrated it, and bound it with staples]. He might be under the impression that his daughter is carrying on a correspondence with someone who has all her marbles, and we wouldn't want to give him that crazy idea.
     Got a kick out of your mom's experiences at the Wharf. And then reading about your almost going into the ditch we could just read the headline: POLICE RUN DOWN NOTORIOUS T-SHIRT THIEF AFTER WILD CHASE.
     Hello to everybody. Gotta go now and watch Wheel of Fortune.
     L V & M

9/24/86

     ...Not much to add to the saga of Alicia the Awful except the chapter of the tree. A gnarled madrona tree had fallen down in Betty's Back 40, so she decided she'd cash in on it and work it into her landscaping scheme. There's that little on-and-off stream that runs through the back of all of our lots, so she and Earl had put in rock work around the mouth of the culvert to make it look pretty as well as useful. With the tree arched across the stream it looked like a Japanese garden. In fact she'd shown it to Alicia who agreed it looked nice. A few hours later Betty heard sounds down that way. Lo and behold, Alicia had her crew buzzing up the tree for firewood! We don't know what goes on in that gal's noggin. Ever since the night she and her guests danced and howled at the stars we've sort of given her a wide berth. Even Echo doesn't steal her onions any more.

10/30/86

     ....So you like school. I just hope you chloroform those poor little worms before you make small pieces out of them. Mickie cried a lot when we read about it to him.
     When I was in high school my current boyfriend had visions of studying to be a doctor, so the frog-carving department was right up his alley. Instead he married the daughter of the owner of a match factory in Tacoma, worked in the factory and hated every minute of it, never got to be a doctor, and inherited a few million when Daddy-O died. So if you don't want to be a doctor and don't want to inherit a few million just keep on cutting up frogs, but don't say I didn't warn you.

11/25/86

     ....Moving was the hardest thing we ever did. Fran, Marilyn, and Betty Pilgrim were angels. They lugged load after load of stuff over here and to the dump. They even fed us for the last few days. When we said goodbye nobody choked up, but the tears that fell inside almost drowned us. We'll just never find such wonderful neighbors again. This may be a place to stay, but it'll never be home as it was out on the point.

This Old Scan

Part one in my multi-part interactive online artwork series, cleverly entitled Random Stuff That I've Scanned From Old Boxes Of Papers And Photos. The interactive part comes in when you leave comments. :)

These first two photos are from Christmas 1992, Ginger's 21st birthday party. I can only assume we celebrated with alcohol earlier in the evening, because we came home to her mom's house and decided that it would be a GREAT idea to decorate the Christmas tree with socks and bras. Allllll kinds of bras and socks. I think they were all Ginger's dainty things.... or maybe we each contributed some, I can't remember. Her mom knew that we were all "artsy" types and was cool with having her tree decorated unconventionally.

This tree decoration was only topped by one Christmas when Ginger and I shared an apartment, when we made terribly naughty gingerbread people out of salt dough and hung them on our tree. Too bad I don't have any photos of that.



Ginger, Bonnie and myself wearing some of the tree ornaments. Apparently this was before I discovered the  magic of eyebrow plucking, and letting my hair go naturally curly.



This is one of my favorite photos ever taken of myself, at Tyler State Park. I think that I am trying not to throw up due to the liter of wine I drank the previous evening.



Dear baby Jesus, Allah, Buddha, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster: 
Please make my belly look this good again some day. And let me appreciate it that time around.
Thank you. 
Love,
Katy



Aww. My old driver's license. I looked so young!! I suppose that's because I was.  Note the fancy eyeliner and blood red lipstick. I do believe I am wearing a Cure shirt.



One of my best friends when I was little was a boy named Jesse. He was the grandson of my grandma's next-door neighbor/best friend, Fran. Fran's family and my family might as well have been blood relatives, we were so close. I only saw Jesse in the summers when I would get to visit Grandma for a month or so. We had all kinds of fun driving his go-kart, building hammocks, exploring the woods, swimming in the sound, setting off fireworks, and building crab traps (and taking out the leaky rowboat to set them, and actually catching crabs!) (not in THAT way, we were like 8 years old, get your mind out of the gutter!). During the school year we'd write each other letters, often in "secret code" so my little brothers couldn't decipher them. Our secret codes were like a=1, b=2, c=3 and so on, but we sure thought we were being clever! You can click the letter below for a larger, more legible version.



Oh. My. God. We looked so YOUNG! This is me, Margret, and Kathryn on Earth Day 1991. We were 18. What the hell did I do to my hair? Good lord.

Memories of Washington

I mentioned in a previous post from my recent vacation that I saw one of my cousins for the first time in years, and initially thought that his becoming a father had mellowed his angry energy. As it turns out, he's not actually interested in assuming the responsibility of being a father and is instead "allowing" his wife to do all the work of raising their two young sons, ages 3 years and 5 months. The wife is overwhelmed and cries daily. My sweet generous mom offered to babysit the kids one day a week while she's living nearby, so the wife can go have some time to herself or with friends.

It's so sad how self-centered he has turned out, because he was always such a caring, responsible kid when we were growing up. He is the oldest of the cousins; two years older than his brother and me.

I listened to an episode of This American Life recently on the subject of summer camp, and the differences between "camp kids" and "non-camp kids." Kids who go to camp seem to have a shared understanding of this amazing experience, and it can be the most important thing in your young life. They look forward all year to summer. Its a very emotional response, a feeling of belonging to something special that other people don't understand.

I felt that way too when I was young, only it wasn't about camp; it was about going to Washington State each summer to see my grandma and hang out with my cousins John, Reed, and Lissy for a few weeks. I cannot even find the words to express how much these summers meant to me, how much I looked forward to them. I belonged to a special group of kids who got to stay with my amazing Grandma in her house in the forest above the beach, far away from civilization. It was magic.

Grandma died from ovarian cancer in 1984, when I was 11. That was the end of summers in Washington. My mom and her brother and sister had to sell Grandma's house, I think because they didn't think they could afford to keep it, something about taxes (one of the biggest regrets in her life, she now says). I was fast approaching the age where I might not have wanted to spend summers away from my friends, hanging out with my little brothers, so I'm glad in a way that my memories remain as magical as they do, untainted by the bad attitudes of adolescence.

Grandma's house
Grandma lived on Johnson's point, a little peninsula of land north of Olympia. Her house was a little one-bedroom A-frame with a finished attic, painted red, on 5 acres of wooded land. It sat about 20 feet back from the edge of a bank that, in my memory, was hundreds of feet high, but was probably in reality more like 30 feet above the beach. She had a small deck out the front door that overlooked the water, and a carport and shed in back. Behind the house was a small garden, and beyond that, the 5 acres of wild ferny fir-filled forest.

The living room had a large picture window overlooking the deck, a wood burning stove, and an open kitchen area. Upstairs was a large open room, and the peaked roof made the whole thing a big triangle. A large wardrobe separated the room into two halves (it was so large that the house was built around it; there's no way to get it out!) and a bed was on the side nearest to the beach. My parents slept there. Us kids slept on Japanese futon mattresses in the little angled spaces under the eaves.

Mattress Rides
The stairs were located near the back door, with a door at both the bottom and the top. We loved to take one of the futon mattresses, position it at the top of the stairs, and take a flying leap, stomach first, sliding down the stairway and tumbling out into the hallway at the bottom. Or, knocking head-first against the door at the bottom of the stairs if we had it closed, which was more fun than it sounds now.

At the top of the stairway, when you turned right there was a small bathroom (toilet and sink only), and when you turned left, you met up with the door to The Attic Space.

The Attic Space
I absolutely adored this little attic space. Through the door, down a tiny hallway, around the corner, and then BAM! Books galore. Boxes of old clothing, magazines, and newspapers. It smelled like a library. It was here that I discovered Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, Japanese story books, and dozens of back issues of Reader's Digest. I would pick a book, lie on a braided rug on the dusty wooden floor, and read for hours until the daylight coming through the small window faded away. I never thought of Tom Sawyer as a book that we were forced to read for school; it was a fantastic story that I discovered in Grandma's house.

The Madrona Tree
To get to the beach, you had to carefully pick your way down a series of mossy wooden steps laid on narrow tracks cut horizontally into the bank, surrounded by tangly trees and blackberry vines. A few yards away, the stairs met up with another set from next-door neighbor Fran's house, and from there proceeded practically straight down, ladder-fashion, until they reached the beach.


(apologies for the poor quality of the photo; it was taken in 1996 on my very first digital camera, an Apple QuickTake 200, with 640x480 @ 72dpi resolution!)

Each neighbor owned a little parcel of the beach, but it was a really friendly community and everyone knew everyone else. Nobody minded other peoples' kids and grandkids playing on their section of beach. Near the Vavers' property to the west, a madrona tree grew practically horizontally out of the bank at beach level. We loved to climb in, up, and through this tree. Madrona trees have very smooth bright orange flesh and thin green bark that easily peels off. And we LOVED to peel. We also carved all our names into the big branch of this tree one year, and for years and years afterwards we could still see the impressions.

One of our favorite things to do was have a "weenie roast" on the beach. Hot dogs, potato chips, sodas, sitting on a blanket under the trees, trying to avoid the sand fleas. I never did like hot dogs, no matter how hard I tried, and would often just eat cheese and mustard in a bun without the hot dog messing things up. Sometimes for dessert we'd roast marshmallows and make s'mores. I wasn't much into the marshmallows and would rather just eat melted chocolate on a graham cracker!



Fourth of July
Fireworks were legal where Grandma lived, and so every year around the first of July, Uncle John would take all of us kids to a fireworks stand in town, where we'd blow our hard-earned allowances on black cats, jumping jacks, snakes, tanks, roman candles, sparklers, and such. Uncle John would go to a nearby Indian Reservation and pick up the "grownup" fireworks — bottle rockets, M80s. We were never allowed to touch those, only to watch.

So on July Fourth, we'd have a weenie roast on the beach, and when it got dark we'd set off all our fireworks. One of our favorite things to do was to enclose a lit Jumping Jack inside an empty clam shell and toss it into the water. We also had our own little family "urban legend': Supposedly when Uncle John was a boy, he shot off a roman candle but instead of digging it down into the sand like he was supposed to, he held it in his hand while it was shooting off. He dropped it and realized in a sudden panic that he couldn't see, so he ran screaming back to Grandma that he was blind! Until, of course, she told him to open his eyes.

Treehouse
About halfway between Grandma's house and the road, down her long gravel driveway through the forest, was a most magnificent treehouse. It had been built some time in the 1950s, I think, and I'm really not sure who built it, actually. But it was completely falling apart, totally dangerous, and quite off-limits to us kids. So of course we spent as much time as we could in it without getting caught. It seemed so far up in the tree, up a little rotting ladder of planks nailed to the trunk, but most likely it was only 10 or 15 feet off the ground. Inside was a little kid-sized sofa, a real glass window, and some plates and silverware on a little table. I think it was even carpeted. Everything was dusty and covered in moss and lichens, but we absolutely loved it. A pulley on a metal cable ran from the trunk near the treehouse door down to the base of another tree a few yards away. None of us were ever quite brave enough to haul the pulley up to the top and use it as a zip line, but we all sure thought about it a lot.

Auntie Fran
Auntie Fran and Uncle Stu lived next door to Grandma, in their own wonderful house overlooking the beach, complete with an acre or two of apple orchards. They were not blood related, but might as well be, we were all so close. I think we spent as much time at Fran's house as we did at Grandma's, especially when her grandson Jesse, who was about my age, was in town.

Fran also had a pool! Why would we want to swim in a pool when there was a perfectly good beach just yards away? Well, when the water in the Sound is around 50 degrees, it's hard to swim in it for long without going numb! Fran's pool was large and rectangular, and surrounded by large glass panels on north and south, the house on the east, and the poolhouse on the west. The poolhouse had a little room with a pullout sofa for guests and a bathroom with a shower and a closet that had pool toys and extra swimsuits in it.

TRON and Dilly Bars
When we weren't in her pool, we might be watching a movie on her VCR. Not many people had VCRs in the early 1980s. I first saw one of my all-time favorite movies, TRON, in Fran's living room. Sometimes she would take a few of us kids into town in the back of her little blue Toyota pickup (these were the days before it was unsafe to do so!), and we'd stop at the electronics store to pick up a movie (these were the days before Blockbuster, when you rented movies out of a little room at the back of appliance stores that sold VCRs). Sometimes we would stop off at Dairy Queen for some Dilly Bars, which Fran always kept stocked in her freezer for us.

Jesse
Jesse was one of my best friends, and during the school year we would write each other letters in a secret cipher code that we invented. Jesse and his little brother Jeff had a gasoline-powered go-kart! Under adult semi-supervision, we were even allowed to drive it. We had great fun tearing up and down the long gravel driveway out to the road, and back again. Once my cousin Lissy, when she was probably only six years old, panicked and forgot where the brake was and almost ran full-speed into Grandma's house. The semi-supervision increased to full-on overprotectiveness after that.

Once, Jesse and I got ahold of an old hammock somewhere. We cleared out a little space in the forest behind Grandma's garden, tied it between two fir trees, and decided that we would make a little money by charging for hammock rides. (Who we planned to charge, I have no idea!) We needed something announcing our new business, so I got some magic markers and a sheet of paper and made a sign to tack up to a tree in front of our shop. Being practical, we realized that we probably needed to put a weight limit on the hammock, so we did what any reasonable 9 year olds would do: we asked my mom how much she weighed. We were just thinking, well, adults are adults and they probably all weigh the same, so we'll just ask the closest one. My mom, on the other hand, was probably thinking, "These kids think I'm the biggest person around!" She decided to have some fun with it and told us "I weigh 379 and 3/4 pounds!" Having no concept of scale, or even any idea how much WE weighed ourselves, we took her at her word and wrote, "Weight Limit: 379 and 3/4 pounds!"

*****

I guess I don't have a really good closing to this whole story, other than to say that these few memories are only the first ones that popped to mind. I have so many others. These were some of the most amazing and wonderful times in my childhood.

Roadtrip Days 8 & 9: Redmond

Saturday we spent mostly with Mike. We ate breakfast at what is apparently the only bagel shop in the entirety of the Seattle area (with Mike, as usual, not eating). Then we went with Mom to an appliance shop where she is ordering her new kitchen appliances for the new house. Good thing, too, 'cause she changed her mind about all of them once she was able to see them in person and talk to a salesperson. She picked a dishwasher, stove, oven, refrigerator, range hood, and microwave oven.

Then we accompanied Mike to the liquor store for a bottle of his favorite tequila (which, I worry, serves as his dinner on many nights). Don't let it be said that my family can't drink. I'm the odd one out, it would seem, as far as alcohol habits; one or two drinks per week is more than enough for my tastes.

Mike seems to be opening up a little as the days wear on, and by that I mean he's not responding entirely in monosyllables and occasionally you can actually hear what he says. I really feel bad for him and feel like I should be a good sister and do something to help him, but I think he's still at a point where he doesn't want help and doesn't particularly even want to feel better, and I totally understand that. So I've been giving him his space, not forcing conversations, trying to make him smile on occasion, and talking with him about things that interest him (food, wine, migraine).

His house is in such disrepair it's depressing. All the renovations that he and Vanessa started (actually I think it was entirely Mike doing the work) just sit half finished. He has no motivation to complete them, and I don't think I would either in his situation.





We sat around the house in the afternoon, working on our computers or watching the TV. In the evening, Mom and I drove out to a place called Triple XXX Root Beer Drive In in Issaquah to pick up dinner (burgers, fries, root beer floats). The place was a retro-nostalgia 50s style drive in diner, with 50s music on the loudspeakers, people with their classic cars in the parking lot, and 50s memorabilia plastered over every square inch of the place. Mike asked us to bring him some insanely large super special burger that was at least 8 inches in diameter.

Last night the moon and clouds looked particularly pretty, so I took some long exposure pictures after it finally got dark enough, which was about 10:45 p.m. (the days are longer here in the summers than in Texas because of how far north it is).





Today we drove out to Sequim to show Mike the house and get his opinions on things that might need to be done, such as reinforcing the floors underneath the kitchen and bathroom. Mike has done a lot of renovation on his house and he does beautiful work, so Mom wanted to see if he thought that they needed to make any changes. I told him that he could get a second job as a contractor.

That drive to Sequim is LOOOOOONG. It's about 140 miles from Mike's house to there, each way. I've done it 3 times now. I think, all told, I've probably been in the car for 3500 miles in the past 9 days. I'm really tired of it, but the funny thing is, these drives back and forth to Sequim seem MUCH longer than the 650 mile days we were doing to get here in the first place.

At least on the way back we stopped by John's (about the halfway point) so Mike could try to get Mom's outgoing e-mail to work (no dice), so it was nice to have a little break. I laid under their cherry tree outside and called Doc. I can't wait to see him tomorrow.

This evening we went to a nice Italian place called Grazie's (in Factoria) for dinner. The food was nice, and I even tasted Mike's CALAMARI, if you can believe it! Not the little deep fried rubber bands that a lot of places serve as an appetizer, but a calamari steak. It had a nice taste, but the texture was a little odd and smooth. I could probably dig it if I didn't think about what it was. And for dessert: the most amazing thing in the world, a taste I had no idea existed. Flourless chocolate cake – not too sweet – and a glass of port wine. Oh. My. God.

Tomorrow I go home. My flight gets in to Dallas at 5:30. I have had a nice time but am looking forward to my cats, my own bed, and especially my Doc.

Roadtrip Day 7: All Over The Place

This morning I got up early again and went walking in Gig Harbor with Mom, Aunt Sue, and family friend Yasuko. We walked around the harbor and marina and through the downtown area, then stopped for coffee and scones. Yasuko is a bit older than Mom and Sue, and as a teenager Mom babysat her kids.

It turns out that her daughter, Christine Wada, works in Hollywood and was the costumer for one of my favorite movies, O Brother Where Art Thou. She's done costumes for a lot of movies, including a few Coen Brothers films.

We drove up to Sequim with John and Sue so Mom could meet with the plumber and get the fixtures and tub choices finalized. We walked around the property for a bit first, and it had rained earlier in the day, so everything was wet. It was cold, too! I would say between 50 and 55 degrees.

Later we ate lunch at a little cafe on the waterfront, more of a dive really. It looked like a place where old people go to sit all day and smoke cigarettes. The fish and chips were excellent, very lightly battered so not too heavy. I really and truly love malt vinegar on my fish and chips. Who needs tartar sauce?

While Mom was at the plumber's shop, the rest of us went to a few antique/junk shops to see if they might be places Mom would like to go to search for old doorknobs and other authentic house accessories. Then we got blizzards at Dairy Queen.

Note to self: Never eat fish, chips, and ice cream for the same meal. Ever. Again. You will regret it.

Traffic was awful coming back home; a bad accident had shut down the highway. We exited and tried to take back roads. John was driving mom's car and knows the ins and outs, but as it turned out, so did everyone else. It probably would have been quicker to stay on the highway.

I took a few photos at John's, of his house and the surrounding forest.









Later, we left John and Sue's as they had to pack up for their monthlong vacation at their Alaskan island cabin, and drove back to Redmond to Mike's house. I was not feeling well at all (again: fish, chips and ice cream are a bad combination) and so I pretty much laid around for the rest of the evening, reading and feeling sorry for myself.

We'll spend tomorrow with Mike. No idea what we will do.

Roadtrip Day 6: Seattle

Not a whole lot to report for today. We came out to my Uncle John's house this morning and hung out here all day, talking, having cheese and diet Pepsi on their patio, running errands. Brittney calls him "the flip off uncle" because I have a photo of me and my brothers and my mom and him on the sofa in my house on the night before my wedding, and he has a huge grin on his face and he's flipping off the camera.

Late afternoon I took Tilly and went running up and down the HUGE hill on the main road near their house. We didn't go very far, partly because there was not much of a shoulder to the road and I was afraid she would get into the street, but mostly because I don't do 20% grades very well. Texas is FLAT and that's what I'm used to!

This evening my cousin John Evan and his wife and kids came for dinner, along with family friend Yasuko, whose kids my mom used to babysit for in the early 1960s. The Richardson kids seemed to get all the energy in the family while the McCormack kids are much calmer. It took a lot out of me, to be "on" for that long. John seems a lot calmer than he used to; not as much angry energy. I think being a dad has helped him a lot.

Tomorrow we go back to the property in Sequim for Mom to meet with the plumber. She was hoping that would happen today but he needed to meet tomorrow instead. Hopefully we will also be able to take Tilly to the beach to play in the water.

I know I've only been gone six days, but I feel a little homesick for Doc and the cats and my own bed. Actually I am VERY homesick for Doc... it's really hard to not be with him for this long. I've loved spending a lot of time with my mom but I really wish he was here too.

Roadtrip Day 4: Washington State

We made it to our final destination! I cannot believe we drove 2500 miles in 3-1/2 days, especially with a dog and cat along for the ride.

Mom and I are now staying with my brother Mike in Redmond, just outside of Seattle.

Too tired to type now. Will recap in the morning.

Okay, I am now a bit more refreshed than I was when I started this post yesterday.

We had breakfast in Couer d'Alene, Idaho, with Doc's mom this morning. We ate at a lovely ritzy resort restaurant on the lake. Not that the restaurant was that ritzy, but the resort sure was. It was really great to see her, and now that she's moving to Derby, Kansas, we'll be able to visit more often.



Our drive was mainly uneventful. Eastern Washington is surprisingly plain and flat.



The Columbia Valley Gorge is somewhere in the middle, and it is quite beautiful.



Western Washington, however, is much more interesting.



We got to Mike's house in the early evening and sat out on his back porch for a little while until he got home from work. Then he took me for a ride on his new motorcycle. I cannot believe I got on the back of a bike! The last time I was on one, I was an infant in a cardboard box on the back of my dad's motorcycle in the early 1970s.



My brother's girlfriend of four years recently left him and it's like all the life has gone out of him. He won't eat, he barely responds when you talk to him, and doesn't smile. I know he'll pull through it eventually but he's in a bad place right now, and it makes me really sad that there's nothing I can do.

Tomorrow Mom and I will go to Sequim to see her new house in progress.