Monthly Archives: March 2009

‘Tis the wrong season for these lyrics. When the roads cleared I used a box from the car to get the snow off. Then I headed out to Walgreens for two car window scrapers.

I found them and cleaned off Jim’s car and put his present in the trunk. I moved both cars to plowed locations. I’m starting to be able to see the mountains again, a little bit.

Even the drugstore had put out its Spring display with Easter and gardening items. They didn’t expect this storm either.

Got a lot done today, not pretty stuff. A lot of organizing and phone calls. Moving stuff from cars, literally getting my feet wet in Utah.

We need to find a place to lay our heads at night that is not a hotel. That is my quest. As a pioneer I’m wanting.
When we crossed Wyoming there was a spot pioneers gathered on July 4th because they they could reach their destination before the first snowfall. We flew through there at 75 mph. There are wagon ruts in the stone five feet deep in some places. It’s our first time driving the checkerboard states, but can you imagine moving a family knowing it would take that long?

Then again, Nurse Margie would say that slowing the ascent would mitigate altitude sickness. So perhaps we should have taken two mules and a dog. And Sister Sarah and Clint Eastwood for good measure.

Hope you’re cooking the things I can’t on two burners and a microwave right now. Don’t make me write a book on how to live in an extended stay suite. No way. The Knights Who Say Ni would not approve.

Sunshine, still can’t see the mountains. Perhaps I’ll take a few photos tomorrow. Now it’s up to me to order pizza. We’re exhausted and Jim just got home from his first day of work. Cheers, Dee

They’re very small in OK, KS, CO and not in WY as we’re only 12 miles in. Very small and with a lot of verbiage. “Make sure you don’t do this because it’s against state law.” When you’re 1/4 mile away you see the sign, try to read it and miss most of it because you have to keep your eyes on the road.

Signage is bad, as in none from TX to I-35 North to OK City, and none whatsoever guiding one to true I-70 to Denver. I did pass one sign that said the next three exits would take one to the Pike’s Peak area, an area that my Aunt Lorna explored as a twenty-something en route from SF, in her Mustang. I thought of her today.

We had no time to loiter, however, as we need to get to our destination and find a place to live.

I had a dream last night that we had an additional box to pack, not a box, a drawer, a shallow drawer. And I needed to pick up jigsaw puzzle pieces. Think what a shrink could do with that one. There were other things in the drawer but I don’t remember.

I enjoyed driving a checkerboard state, as I’ve only seen them from 35,000 feet. As for Denver, we were tolled $7.50 each car to drive five miles. Smog, yuck, I never saw the City but what people go through to work there looks abominable and we hit the outskirts at 4:00 p.m. pre-rush hour.

Wish we could spend a bit of time in Cheyenne but we really do need to finish this endless journey. We did great on the driving, the packing and moving fell behind.

This hotel is lovely, and for the weekend it is populated by beauty pageant contestants and the “Border Queens” of the Ms. Wyoming Pageant. The Border Queens are here at the hotel tonight and it’s a sight to see. There are a few people I know who would like to take that title, but not in this venue.

It’s quiet, Jim and Zoe are sleeping soundly (it makes a difference when there are actual walls between rooms, which folks understood when this was built in 1911). Otherwise Zoe protects us from every voice, door opening, etc. in a hotel because she’s not used to the sounds.

Off to bed now. More at our final destination, no not THAT one. Dee

We’re moving. Two full cars, two adults, one dog. Not only do we need to watch our cars full of stuff, drive separately and travel in tandem, we find it difficult to find a place to stay that will allow our dog. Our places have run the gamut from a crummy place in a swanky part of Houston; to the best hotel of all, Jim’s parents’ farm; to a dismal Holiday Inn Express (we thought that brand was a standard but it’s not, at least out west); and tonight, a lovely 1911 hotel in historic Cheyenne, WY overlooking the Union-Pacific train station and Cheyenne Depot.

It has been an adventure, but too often as dog owners we’ve been placed with a view of the dumpster, and between the elevator and ice machine. So these hotels pretend to have a pet-friendly policy but have their worst possible room available for the sucker who dares take it.

They always say “We’ll put you on the first floor so it’ll be easy to take the dog out” and in code that means “Stay off the elevators and out of public areas. Stick to the back where no-one can see you.”

Forget about eating. We’ve had more delivery pizza and drive-in Sonic burgers than one should eat in a lifetime in the past week. No-one will even serve us on a patio. It’s been too warm to leave her in the car, and she freaks out being left alone in a hotel room.

Tomorrow, as we reach our final destination, we’ll have a good place to stay, I hope. It’s been booked and we look forward to a relaxing evening before finding a place to live and starting work on Monday.

For those hotels that treated us well, you’ll hear from me. The opposite is true as well. Gone is the day when a hotel lives in a vacuum. I’m fifty and have my first blog. I have a plethora of electronics that connect me to the world for free. Does a hotelier really think that pretending to have a pet-friendly policy will make it these days?

Pet owners spend a lot of money in the US. When only 2.5 star or lower hotels are available to us that’s an insult. We’re used to staying at three-star or better and are willing to pay the price, but not to be treated as “steerage” once we get there.

I walked Zoe tonight, while Jim ordered take-out because we weren’t allowed near a restaurant. I actually wish we could spend some time here because it seems like it has an interesting history. But we have to go on. I arranged for a six-hour travel day tomorrow so we can finally rest.

Zoe doesn’t know who I am anymore. I’m just the lady that feeds her and follows her place to place. And tells her to be quiet as she humpphs and growls whenever anyone opens their hotel door. Jim pulled up by me today and Zoe looked at me and knew me and the car. All I can think is that she and Jim are running away and I keep catching up to them every evening! Hey, I never got the Aerobed/vacuum cleaner connection in a dog’s mind…

Cheers, Dee

First, thank you WordPress, for giving my entries top posts on the Editorial blog. Also thanks for creating new blogs just because I wrote something esoteric that you thought fellow bloggers and readers might like. You just created one for my Aunt Lorna’s Smith-Corona portable electric typewriter, and others. It’s not an Oscar, but a reward for work whose only remuneration is the work and readers and that is much appreciated.

As I sit at a small typewriter return desk already packed for moving, with a book reader lamp as my light, there’s another topic I’d like to cover.

Pyrex. Of course I’ve a couple 8X8 baking pans and lasagne pan. But it’s the bowls. Aunt Lorna gave me the blue bowl, the smallest one that always breaks, from her grandmother. Then Jim’s mother gave me one from her family, yes we have two blues now.

Then it steps up to a red, a green and a yellow is the icing on the cake. If this set fits into the cars that would be fantastic. I love these bowls and may have written about them before. Jim’s mother got me everything but the blue for a great price at a country antique store. As Dallas moves into those areas I hope they raise their prices!

I don’t have a photo for you but may get you one shortly as it’s very late and Jim and Zoe are asleep and I don’t want to use a flash because everything’s pretty open here.

I believe the bowls were made in the fifties, perhaps before then. They are a joy to have and know their history and the people who used them. These things matter to me. Anything that came from family matters to me, like the cutting board I used tonight to cut up a pot roast of Wobbly, the fattest calf on the farm who became dinner. It was tasty, with egg noodles. The bowls, Wobble and a lot of stuff we have are family legacies, like the cutting board made from the grandfather who died two weeks before I was born.

A box from my mother arrived today. I don’t have time to open and close it again so its contents will remain a surprise for 1-6 months. It’s quite light and I hope it contains her 1950′s Revere Ware potato masher. Will let you know when I open it.

Probably 2-3 days packing left then movers to storage. Then we get on the road, visit Jim’s folks and Nanny and head out with both cars, the dog and fully-packed cars.

I don’t think my putting a label “CAR” on the Pyrex would work. We need too many other things but it’ll be well-packed and safe in storage. Just looking at them makes me think of days past when we ate cherries from the farm stand down the street or baby strawberries down the path to the creek.

The midnight hours when I’m sweating the move and all is the only time I can write and writing helps me get tired enough to go to sleep, so that’s what I’ll try to do. You take care now, Dee