Can't Get Back to Where I Started From

Back to my girl-genius blogger days, I mean.

So, as I recall, I used to be pretty good at blogging.  My entries were funny, observant, sometimes moving and always an honest reflection of who I was and what I was thinking.

So that the hell happened?

Beats me!
I think I might be too happy to write the way I used to.
Or too busy.
Or maybe I suck. Or at least my writing does, because the flame of my talent has sputtered and died; and is now lying, limp and gummy, in a cliche-pit, half buried by trite metaphors.

I shouldn't credit myself with all that drama.  More likely it's because we only have hot-spotting for Internet, and the slowness drives me ape-shit.

Or because my job is trying to eat me.

Or maybe it's because I sleep at night instead of blogging which cuts into my writing time and also means that  I'm well rested and view the world as a more normal and less noteworthy place.  Yes.  I'll blame sleep.

Or maybe it's because I don't have a secret life in my own mind anymore.  I used to write from a place that doesn't exist now, because I tell everything to Chuck and then it evaporates.  No kidding. As soon as it leaves my lips, I don't want to blog about it any more.  I need to remember:  when Chuck asks, "What are you blogging about?" I need to say, "Nothin' much..."

Or maybe it's because I've been enjoying reading so much that I don't want other things to interfere.  I quit my book club, which means I can finally read the things I want to read instead of the mindless crap my fellow club members were always picking.  And never finished anyway!  Each book club meeting would be a chorus of, "I didn't finish. Me neither."  Geeze.  And they aren't even very nice people.

Maybe I am so hung up on whether I can write well that I choose not to write at all.

But I want to have this.  I want to write about life, as I have been doing in one form or another since I was 13.  Like my grandpa did, creating fascinating journal entries for his descendants to read, EVEN THOUGH THEY ARE SOOOOOOOOOO MUNDANE.

Why do I have to be so...performance based, anyway?  DO I have to be brilliant to have fun?

Today, for example.  Noting much happened today.  We got home from California last night, so I spent the day doing laundry, running errands, paying bills, and all the other stuff you have to catch up on when you have been out of town for a week.

The drive home was uneventful, except we listened to all twelve episodes of Season 1 of "Serial". Otherwise, the tedium was only punctuated by Chuck running out of gas between LA and Victorville.  This happens from time to time, as he pushes the envelope of his time / space / gas continuum.  The kids hardly seemed surprised.  We all just climbed out of the car and started walking.  This time, we were fortunate to make it as far as an off-ramp before the car rolled to a stop.  Unfortunately, the off-ramp was uphill, or we would've made it to the gas station / convenience store.  Which was called the "Extra Mile".

And I'm sitting here now in the recliner in front of the toasty wood stove, wishing I was not wearing workout clothes under my regular clothes.  I put them on like this in the morning, thinking it would make it that much easier to make it to the gym to work out.  Of course, it didn't and I didn't; and now I am sitting here roasting and blogging.

The recliner vibrates from some sort of chewing or pulling antic of Tobi the rabbit, who gets roaming privileges after supper.

Chuck is next to me in his matching recliner, browsing bicycle forks; Nathan is in his room playing video games; and Sara is out on a double date with her boyfriend, Ilan, at the climbing gym.  She sent me an "emoji"-filled text just now to tell me that she will be home at 10:30.

I am also texting with our friend / attorney,Chad.  I want him to come over tomorrow to eat spaghetti and watch "Sharknado".  He's the one who told me that there was such a movie and promised that he would watch it with me if I ordered it from Netflix.  Now he is resisting this plan, asking for a rain check.  I told him I would send "Sharknado" back, but return it straight to the queue; and when it comes up again, he had better be ready to watch it.

Is this mundane enough, Grandpa?  Grandpa would say it is only too mundane if I tell what I had to eat for supper or what the newspaper headline was for the day.

I would say that it's my New Year's Resolution to start blogging again.  But I don't believe in New Year's Resolutions.  And any time I try to commit to one, I always fuck it up.  Let's say the goal is to write in the blog two while days in a row.  Today and tomorrow.  That's a pretty low bar.

Six Word Saturday

Chuck's woodshed:
a work of art!

More Grand Canyon Photos

 There were talented photographers on our trip down Grand Canyon.  People with far better abilities and cameras than Chuck and I have.  So here are a few additional pictures, including some rapids shots.

Chuck, doing a little climbing

Granite Falls.  Chuck rowing, with Mark Smith and I punching up front.  "Punching" just means that, when we hit a wave, Mark and I lean way forward to hold the frontoif the boat down and hopefully stop it from flipping over.  

Two of the guys on our trip are professional sand sculptors.  People make a living at that?  Who knew!  So, we had works of art like this at a bunch of our camps.

This is Chrystal, legendary for its difficulty.  Look at Chuck.  He looks like he's driving a car down the freeway.  That's because, after scouting Chrystal for a long time, he decided to go down the rapid on the right side of the river.  He went so far right that we kind of missed the action altogether.  We didn't even get wet.  Right after this picture was taken, he  let go of an oar and waved to the camera.  I felt ripped off.  He made me wear a helmet for THAT?!

Chuck and Bill building sand castles

 This is a hanging garden caused by a spring coming out of the canyon wall above.  We thought this one was cool because of the minerals that had been deposited by the spring.  Water is showering down inside of all that travertine.

Granite Falls

The next three photos are taken in Lava, the biggest, meanest rapid.  The water is chocolate-colored with sediment this far down river.  Mark and I are punching again this time.

We amused ourselves in camp in any way we could think of.  Music, bad jokes, shadow theater with a flashlight held up behind a tarp, beer-pong, And king-of-the-mountain battles on the overturned inflatable kayak.

Desert bighorn

I Don't Speak Their Language

Just in from the hot tub and cozy in my jammies.  Before I came inside, I smiled to hear the coyotes doing their thing.  I can't call it howling.  They don't howl.  They yip, bark, squeal, shriek...it sounds to me like a complex conversation.  What are they talking about?  Who gets the dead thing they have just found? The sexy aroma of that bitch in heat?  Who scared the neighborhood dog?  Or are they just making noise because its fun?
For the last week, they have been hanging out in an old dump, about 200 feet from the house.

I waited until they had finished their session,then joined in

OOO...
          OOO...
                      OOOOO...
                                    oooooooo...
                                                ooooooooo...
                                                              oooooooooooooo......

Since they don't howl, neither did I.  I just made a siren sort of noise.  I remember when I lived in the suburbs, there was a nearby vacant lot with a couple resident coyotes.  It used to crack me up, the way they would carry on when a fire truck screamed by.

Sure enough, there was a moment of startled silence, followed by renewed yipping, hollering and shrieking.  I flipped the lid of the hot tub shut and came in to bed. 

Six Word Saturday

Finally!  Photos of the Grand Canyon!
*******

I'm cheating!  I know!  I'm about to write a lot of words.  But I have some photos collected from my trip and I have a little time.

SO!  An old friend of my husband's got a long-awaited and wished-for private permit for a river trip on the Grand Canyon.  If you have money to spend on it, you can go down the Grand Canton any time, as part of a commercial trip.  However, if you are on a budget and want to go down  on your own, you apply for the annual permit lottery and pray to be chosen.  Chuck and I had been applying for years without being picked; so when Bert Adams got a permit, we were so, so excited to be asked to join him as two of the 15 people he is allowed to invite.  Chuck is an experienced boatman who has been down the Grand Canyon three times before.  I am good at cooking for a crowd and organizing food.  So Boatman and Quartermaster Brainerd were part of the adventure. I won't waste valuable verbiage today on describing what it is like to plan, shop for, pre-prep, store, organize and run a camp kitchen for 16 people for 20 days. Especially when one of those people is allergic to soy, wheat and lactose.  Oy... Suffice to say that I am enjoying grocery shopping with just one cart.  I'm getting over my Post Traumatic Shopping Syndrome. And I now have enough river karma that I should not have to do a job that big again for a looooong time!    It was successful though.  I should write a cook book.  Maybe I will...

In the meantime...

Here I am rowing Chuck's boat. Check out the umbrella Chuck installed to keep the sun off his white little wife. I started off rowing just flat water; then little riffles; then worked my way up to medium sized rapids.  When it was time to row the big stuff, though I handed the oars back to Chuck.

Rigging

Rigging was a big part of our day , especially at the beginning of the trip.  Everything needs a place and has to be tied down.  After a while, it got easier; but in the beginning, we spent a lot of time fussing over rigging.

Lunch break

Lounging in camp after a long day of rowing

We got lucky with music on this trip.  Two guitars, a mandolin and people who are really good at playing them.  We had some good singalongs.

Tom, the "doctor", bandaging yet another pair of feet

These aren't my feet:  they belong to my friend Stefanie.  The most typical injury on the trip were with people who wore water shoes that didn't flush out very well.  The sand would stay in there and scour the bottoms of their feet and make open areas.  Four or five people had a lot of foot trouble.  Other than that, no real injuries.  Chuck was stung by a scorpion;and three of us were stung by Harvester ants.  Nothing more.

This is breakfast.  My kitchen was made up of three tables and a tarp to catch food scraps as they fell.  I had a military surplus medical supply box as a kitchen.

Great star and moon watching

So, when we weren't rowing down the river, we did a lot of side hiking.

Dry canyoneering

I learned some skills!

And wet canyoneering...

...in slot canyons with leftover rainwater pools

Havasu Creek

There were a lot of things to see along the way as well.  This cave, Red Wall Canyon, is big enough that you could hold a concert in it.  We were satisfied just to jump around in it.

Sometimes, the Little Colorado River is clear and blue when it runs into the silty water of the Colorado.  But, if there have been any storms in its drainage, the water is thick with sediment.  That how we found it, so we got naked and played in the mud.  After a while, you stop noticing people's nakedness.  In this kind of situation, you can't pee in private too well; everyone knows who has gone to visit the poop can; mostly, people just sleep flopped out on the ground.  Not much privacy.

It's hard to bathe.  In the early days, when the water has less sediment, it's not hard to fill a solar heating bag and make a warm shower at the end of that day.  But as the river travels farther into the canyon, it picks up more and more silt.  To bathe in silty water, it first has to be settled in a bucket overnight, THEN warmed in the solar bag.  After a while, it just started to seem like too much trouble.  Here are Chuck's shorts, standing up on their own.

On the eighth day, the river passes Phantom Ranch.  This is the spot people hike to when they are venturing down from the rims in Grand Canyon National Park.  They can walk or ride mules,and there are cabins there for overnight accommodation.  It is a really strange thing to encounter when you have been off on your own for eight days; and plan to go off on your own again for another twelve days. There is a little shop there.  You can get lemonade, check the weather forecast, buy Band Aids.  I bought myself some Oreos and wrote postcards, because they are marked with a special stamp:  "Carried by mule from the bottom of the Grand Canyon".  Look how brown my shirt is.  It was white when it was new...

With Stefanie in the rain

We had a rainy day.  Another reason to love Chuck's umbrella.

So, rowing in the rain is not a lot of fun.  BUT!  Check out the water falls!  I found out later that there were torrential rains in Utah and Arizona, sending flash floods crashing down the Colorado Plateau and into the Grand Canyon. 

Here's my helicopter.  I had to leave the trip at Day 15, because my boss freaked out at the idea of me taking three weeks off.  There is a place called Whitmore Wash from which you can be picked up, so I arranged the helicopter ride out to a ranch on the north rim, then a light plane to Las Vegas.  I was not happy to leave early.  It was my first ever helicopter ride, though.

Six Word Saturday

I love sauerkraut.
Kimchi?  Less so.

Kate Brainerd's Wild Kingdom

I have been missing my blog for the past two months!  The trip down the Grand Canyon was such a bitch to get ready for; and a long trip in itself.  I am a pretty good camper, but I think 17 nights are the most I have slept out in the open in a row, ever.

I planned the food for the trip:  20 days for 16 people with no outside food sources available, plus one lady who is gluten-, soy- and lactose intolerant.  I'm still suffering a little PTSD when I walk into he supermarket.
Chuck is still down in the Grand Canyon.  I had to leave the trip at Whitmore Wash, because of work.  The others will be back on Saturday.  Photos in abundance when he returns. 

When I made it to the airport in Las Vegas, I got myself a burger and fries and ate them very slowly, savoring meat, fat, abundance.  Upon arriving at home, I looked upon my bed with lust and passion surpassed only by the adoration I felt for my shower, after at least a week without washing.

Sleep has been a problem, though.  The house has been overrun by wildlife.  Chuck and I love animals and it's hard to be mean to a cute little bat, for example.  They swoop in and out of our bedroom all summer long.  One guy, though, seems to have taken up long-term residence inside and is roosted high  in the beams above the head of the bed.  In the wee hours he wakes me up as he stirs, makes his little static-y noises and poops onto the bed by my head.  It's a little gross and it's just.... startling.  He is getting on my nerves.
Not as much as the fucking bushy-tailed wood rat, though. 

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Look how adorable!  Not!  He's a hassle and he's going to find himself in a lot of trouble.  We have tried many times to capture him in our live trap, but he's a crafty one. While we were gone, he ate all of my home-grown garlic.  I'll bet his breath is lousy now, and I don't give a shit.  He roams the house as if he owns it.  He paid me a very noisy visit in the wee hours - I actually thought he was a  human intruder.  Since he has jumped up onto Chuck in the bed in the past, I hollered at him and scared him off.  I discovered the attraction of my room this morning when I tried to put on my black boots and found them filled with cached birdseed he's been pilfering.
 
After dealing with him, my sleep was gone for the rest of the early morning hours, so I turned my attention to my pet finches that Chuck bought me for our anniversary.  I started to say hi and saw that one of them has laid an egg!  That's cool, but instead of laying it in the little nesting basket, it was smack in the middle of their food bowl.  They seem to be ignoring it.  Poor parenting skills.  I have no idea how I'm supposed to handle it.  Any advice on what to do when the finches lay an egg in the food bowl? 

Falling asleep as I edit.  Good night!