Today Anja swam to the island and back while Caleb and I paddled the paddle boat. Sofie jumped on and off swimming and riding equal amounts as well as functioning as a human rudder to steer the boat in zigzag patterns. It rained, it poured, it thundered. There was lightning. The dog wore a thunder jacket, based on the idea presented by the autistic woman who allowed the cow restraining device to "hug" her into sedation. The dog, Rascal did not seem calm, but he did stop barking at every clap of thunder. We pulled the children with our pontoon boat on a tube. It went much faster this year thrilling Anja, and scaring Sof. We watched the lake go through a full spectrum of changes from placid to waves with white caps. The lake was not as full as one would expect Memorial day weekend thanks to the weather. The water is still too cold for me to swim. Maybe when we return from New York.

Traveling on

Traveling again in Michigan and soon driving to NYC to visit my new niece who is already almost five months old. It is stormy here and much has changed. My sweet father in law has passed away and I miss him terribly. I can't really fathom how his wife feels. I know Caleb and Anja, and even little Sofie are hurting from his absence. The memorial was held the day before our trip to Michigan so we could attend thankfully. I hope it wasn't too soon for anyone. He was/is much loved. The scent of Michigan is very different than that of California. Upon arriving I smelled something akin to fish, but then Anja informed me that it was the scent of Michigan and it changed to resemble Lilacs, which are in full bloom up north and damp soil. Then while walking I was able to partake of all the different tree pollens and sprouting leaves of spring. I have been here five nights and have slept in five beds. Day one I slept at my aunt Karen's house. Day two at Zehnder's Splash Village hotel. Day three was at my mother's by the lake. Day four I picked up Caleb at the Detroit airport at two a.m. and slept at Lynne's house in Ypsilanti. Day five we slept at Aviva's near Dexter. Tonight Caleb and I are back at Lynne's. The children are with grandma Janet by the lake and hopefully receiving lovely haircuts today. The weather is inclement and not so good for lake play, but they will find a way to have fun with grandma, whether it be make-your-own paper dolls, Wii, or card games. Caleb brought their homework that they conveniently forgot in California, but he hasn't been able to deliver yet. We will go back there on Saturday and then to NY Tuesday. Little Dana will be awaiting the arrival of her big girl cousins to show her the ropes no doubt. Bosco's nice, but he can't join in reindeer games, being a dog and all.

House Sitters

I returned home to find a furiously scubbing mad woman, a full litter box, litter strewn about the back yard -directly outside the back door where the children play- and various damage and mess. None of the animal goods, she took the money for, had been bought. Atleast some part of her realized what an atrocity she had committed, as she was still there, scrubbing, in fact she didn't even remove her stuff when she left. We thought she wasn't going to leave. I found her incense burners, my measuring cups, stashed in drawers and burnt with resinous herbs, her underwear, etc, and was able to simply move it to the pile of stuff she left in the garage, or the one she left in the front yard. Nice to have options. Though I eventually consolidated the two piles. When the garbage people wouldn't take all the garbage she had left, I thought I would try sorting it to get some into the recycling possibly, and voila, that is when I found my house keys. She is trying to 'make good' on the money she took. She bought some stuff for the animals yesterday, despite the fact that I was unable to take the "hundreds of dollars worth of energy work" she had done for me as compensation. Someone came in and fixed the broken towel rack, now we just have the floor to sand and re-finish, unless it goes so deep that we have to re-lay it. Last time we had a house sitter, we returned to a still warm crack pipe and lighter on our counter and a house full of cigarette butts, to find our identities even had been stolen. We got a call from the Santa Rosa cop shop a couple weeks later, when they found our marriage certificate, which we had failed to notice missing. It was the passports and account numbers we were concerned about. Now that was an odd one, and this one falls short, by comparison, but house sitters may not be the answer for us in the future. Travel less, scale back on the furry creatures. None of these are really options with my family living on the other side of the continent, not to mention our general wander lust, and we're aquiring new bunnies shortly, as Sofie needs a pet. One of our guinea pigs died while we were gone, so we may have to replace it, unless Anja gets a rabbit too.

A Little Pick Me Up

These pics are from the hour we spent on I-80 in Cheyenne the other day. I am probably talking to my friend, and massage partner Laura who happened to call, between calls with AAA and the local tow truck company, when we were in need of a little pick me up. The sky here in Wyoming has looked remarkably similar for the last couple of days, with interemittent thunderstorms, that don't really amount to a lot of rain as you can see by the dead looking grass. The garage ordered the wrong part and hopes to get the right one in tomorrow morning putting us out of here, at best, the morning of Saturday August eighth, the day after tomorrow. This has given me time to acclimate to the elevation which is over 6000 feet here. I am slow to adjust. We took a ride in a horse drawn carriage complete with tour of downtown Cheyenne today. We also managed to locate the used bookstore, and Safeway where we purchased some dog food. We thought Brutus was happy with the hot dog fare but as it turns out he was quite excited to receive the ole lamb and rice doggy chow. The town here has almost 60,000 residents of the about 400,000 in the whole state. Wyoming is huge, 402 miles across, 300 the other way, and largely uninhabited. This must be what the Europeans are talking about when they dreamily exclaim about how awesome it must be to live in this magnificently large land. Something most of the people I know, don't really realize, as we live in such highly populated areas of this gigantic country. Still, we are all looking forward to returning to our over populated part of the world soon. Our carriage driver didn't envy us in having to still travel through Utah and Nevada, neither of which he approves us, but wouldn't fill us in on the details of his angst, whilst the children were present. In the above photo (left), one might wonder, where lies Brutus. He is riding high in style in the front seat of the Volvo, as the tow truck does not accomodate dogs, with barely room for the family in the cab.

Halfway Home

Due to the huge number of people migrating by motorcycle toward Sturgis, South Dakota for the annual rally, we decided to take I-80 and avoid the actual rally itself, as well as Yellowstone. We were intending to spend a few days camping at Medicine Bow in Wyoming, but that will only happen if Zeus, the Volvo has healed in time for us to make it back to sunny Sebastopol on our regular ETA, August tenth. Besides mourning the loss of power to Zeus, we are also mourning our smallest and youngest guinea pig, Brownie. The only survivor now is the mother, Spot. What a bunch of inbred piggies they were. Spot was pregnant when we bought her. Brownie was the runt and longest lived of the litter of four. We are now in Cheyenne, Wyoming where the people are generous and the sky is hella large. Thunderstorms, mixed with intermittent sunshine, railroad tracks, paths through dead tall weeds crossing freeway on ramps to convenience stores mixed with cold outdoor pool and hours of media at our disposal. The kids have a cold anyway. The night staff at La Quinta put us up at the governnment rate, so Caleb wears his ipod like it's top secret during the day shift. They gave us the handicapped room to make life easier for us so we make Anja feign a limp. All kidding aside. That's twenty bucks off the regular rate per night, so we scored, just for the asking, in a situation, of course. La Quinta is my favorite hotel anyway. They always accept dogs for no extra fee, have free breakfast and wifi, a pool, and normally one can find a coupon at the truck stop. It's not medicine bow, but we can make quesadillas in the microwave and I was wondering how the rice noodles would taste out of the coffee maker. Actually, we have two lovely restaurants within walking distance as well, and being forced to take a big time out in a clean safe friendly place is not such a bad thing. We are sharing the motel with many friendly bikers who are dog and child friendly as we are still in the path of the northern traveling Sturgis bound crew. We are almost exactly halfway home.