I brought a nasty bug home with me from my short visit with the kids. 

I haven’t meant to be away so long. In my head, I’m here all the time rambling on. Life has taken so many  turns and every time I think to sit and write something I am overwhelmed and like that phone call I mean to return, I keep putting it off and off and off and it grows larger and more difficult to make the call because so much time has passed.

But here I am.

The children have moved and the compound is quiet. Most of the toys are gone from the yard and the house is a shell littered with boxes. I am in the process of wading through a lifetime of “stuff”. Toss, donate or keep. The keep pile is very small since the plan is to sell the house and go on the road in a trailer. I am being ruthless. The few things I can’t part with and can’t take with are going into a couple of bins to be stored in some one’s garage/home/attic.
My once massive wardrobe of beautiful clothes is now down to a very few practical pieces and I expect will be cut even further once we get under way. I may yet adopt some kind of nun’s robes. First I’ll have to invent my religion. It’s on my list of things to do.
The other is to knit a trailer cozy.

Receiving a chance to win a prepaid cremation from the Neptune Society did not help.

Neither did going to the new market in town. $13 for a jar of tahini. Really? They had some great stuff like ceramic water bottles $30, and a camping stove for $130. A bakery and a deli with delectable looking food. Young, scrubbed fresh looking smiling faces working the counters and old affluent white people shelling out their dough for gluten free, gently farmed, free to roam, organic goods.

The place used to be called the Hamlet. It was an old restaurant with sticky floors and nasty food but they had jazz every Sunday afternoon and there was a spectacular garden made up of giant old and rare cactus. They tore them all out and planted a mostly edible landscape which I think is grand but I also hated because of the tearing out of the old cactus.

See what I mean?

Meanwhile, I made this yesterday.

 And I came home to this…

My grandson’s Harley festooned with sourgrass.

I am home safe and mostly sound. I feel as though I have not fully arrived. That Mexico crossing was long and difficult. Over 2 hours to get across the border. Two hours of peddlers selling candies, ices, trinkets of all kinds. After spending every dollar and peso in my bag, I had none to give when the maimed started begging the closer I crept to the border. It was a heartbreaking experience that is still haunting me.

I drove two full days to get home lickety split. My trusty steed did not let me down. I rode it hard. Thank you Helen Hellenbach!

My grand babies are bigger and louder. Mr Chips is talking in sentences and his words are clearer now though there are some we still cannot decipher.  Dear Leader Baby is thinning out and exploring his world but not with the vengeance his brother did. Baby is quieter in nature, a little shy. He is a careful observer.

I am landing here…

and here…

I’ve gone and left Quartzsite. I spent the last two days looking at rocks. It’s an amazing array of gems and I was so out of my league. This morning I found a vendor that took me by the hand and showed me his “million dollar suitcase” filled with the most astounding strands of opals and garnets and such. He wore a cowboy hat and was smoking a big cigar. He told me how he started cutting stones when he was 17 at some hippy shack in West Virginia. It was more than I could absorb. I bought an Orbicular Jasper pendant that caught my eye and wasn’t too dear.

I paid $1.97 for a gallon of gas on my way out of town. Up 8 cents since yesterday.

I drove 86 miles south to Yuma. Drove through the US Army Yuma proving grounds where Colonel Randy Murray is in command. Of what? I couldn’t say. There were signs everywhere to watch for the wildlife but the only wild things I saw were the Canadians zooming past me on the two lane highway.

I drove straight to Q, the casino right on the border of Arizona, California and Mexico. This is our meet up place. A group of us are crossing the border on Friday and heading to San Felipe on the Sea of Cortez. I don’t think driving 175 miles for a fish taco is too crazy. Do you?

I thought I’d go in and throw $5 at a machine but wound up spending $11 on a martini and watching everyone else gamble instead.

I’m huddled here in the parking lot between hundreds of million dollar rigs! This is THE stopping place for Americans on their way to Algodones Mexico where one can get a million dollar smile for less than half of what it would cost here in the USofA, only 2 or 3 miles from the border. I’m guessing there aren’t too many dentists making big bank in Yuma.

Scenes from Quartzsite…

I moved camp yesterday. My spot was great but it wasn’t terribly level. I didn’t mind it much but the water in the shower wouldn’t drain unless I righted the ship.

I moved closer to Lesa and Evelyn two solo nomads. Evelyn is a retired cowgirl/dog groomer who drives a big old truck with a camper and has a black standard poodle named Charlie.  Lesa is by her fire every morning making cowboy coffee in a big black enamel coffee pot. This morning she had an amazing apple crisp and yesterday she baked bread. On the fire. Yea. She can cure what ails you.

At night there are lots of small fire rings with small groups sitting around them talking story under a star filled sky. Primal.

The free pile continues to be the best place for a nap…

And when camp gets too boring…

https://embed-ssl.ted.com/talks/thandie_newton_embracing_otherness_embracing_myself.html

I do not cease swimming in the seas of love,
rising with the wave, then descending;
now the wave sustains me, and then I sink beneath it;
love bears me away where there is no longer any shore.

Al Hallaj