Notes from Garden Home

This is a fiction serial that will post every Monday, Wednesday, & Friday.
I hope you will enjoy it!

By the time they arrived in Ilwaco, Washington, Molly was in No Mood.  She felt sick to her stomach from the headache and lolling around on the bed in the shaking, bumpy bus.  The sunshine coming through the window had intensified the headache.  Every time she maneuvered herself out of the sunlight, the road would turn and she would be in full sun again.

Jake pulled into a campground and inquired if there was room for them.  There was, so he drove through the campground, chose the site he wanted, then drove back to tell the ranger which one they would be in and to pay him for a four-night stay.  Back at the campsite, he backed the bus into the space, turned off the engine, and went back to see how Molly was faring.

He sat on the bed and patted her hand.

“Where are we?” she asked.

“Cape Disappointment.”

She opened her eyes and stared at him.  “Are you kidding me?” she asked.

“Nope.”

She started to laugh.  “Well, all I’ve got to say, Jake, is you’ve picked a pretty appropriate place to start this journey of yours.”

“Yeah,” Jake said.  “It couldn’t have been Cape Hope, could it?”

Molly got up to use the bathroom while Jake found some medicine for her headache.  After she had taken the pills and had a glass of milk to see if that would settle her stomach, she laid back down on the bed while Jake read the brochure the ranger had given him.  After awhile, she fell asleep, waking every so often as she heard Jake moving around outside the bus.

She woke up late in the afternoon feeling quite a bit better.  The headache was gone and her stomach had settled down, although she was hungry now, not having had any lunch.  She got up and looked out the window but Jake was nowhere to be found.  She went to the bathroom and washed her face and hands.  Still no Jake.  She wanted to make some tea but had no way to heat the water.  Then she noticed that Jake had run the heavy duty extension cord out of the hole he had made in the wall of the bus and plugged it into the electrical outlet at the campsite.  She had electricity!

She plugged the little electric burner they had bought for the trip into the extension cord and turned it on.  It was only a one-burner, but at least they could cook and heat water indoors whenever they had an electric outlet available.  They had also purchased a water pitcher with a built-in filter to use on the trip.  She poured water from it into a pan, put the lid on, and set it on the burner to heat.

“Hey!” Jake said from outside the bus.  “You’re up!”  He put down the firewood he was carrying next to the fire pit on the ground.

“Where’d you get the wood?” Molly asked.

“I bought it from the ranger.  He’s at the wood shed at certain times of the day so you can buy wood.”

“How much?”

“$5 a bundle.  I bought two for now.”

Jake got out his hatchet and cut some small pieces off the split logs, then laid balled-up newspaper and the kindling into the pit.

“Jake, I’m starving,” Molly said, coming to the door of the bus.

“So am I.  I didn’t want to make a sandwich because I thought I’d wake you.”

“OK, I’ll get the stuff ready to cook,” she said.

Molly started cooking a pan of brown rice on the burner in the bus.  When the fire in the pit got hot, they put their wok pan over it and cooked up small pieces of lean beef, chopped onions, celery and garlic, a bag of ‘frozen’ (now slightly defrosted) mixed vegetables, and soy sauce.  The insects liked the smell of the food, too, and descended on them in droves so they opted to eat inside the bus.

Once she had some food in her, Molly looked around the bus and decided that this wasn’t so bad, after all.  She had had a rocky start today but perhaps, in the end, it would be OK.

After supper, Jake brought in the big pan of water he had left to heat over the fire while they ate.  Jake put out the fire in the pit so they wouldn’t waste the wood then they did the dishes together.  Once they were done, they closed all the curtains in the bus, including the big one they could draw across the front of the bus to block the view from the front window.  They washed up with the remaining warm water, got into their nightclothes, and sat down in their recliners to read by the bright OTT lamp overhead that they had plugged into the electrical cord.

“Thanks, Molly,” Jake said, after while.

Molly looked up from her book.  “For what?” she asked.

“For doing this with me.”

“I love you, you know,” she said.

“I know.”

The next morning, they got up and got dressed then walked around the campground before breakfast.  Several people greeted them with a ‘Good Morning!’ as they walked past.  Back at the bus, Molly made coffee on the burner in the percolator-style coffee pot then made some oatmeal with cut-up apples and nuts in it for breakfast.

That day, they visited both lighthouses in the area:  the North Head Lighthouse and the Cape Disappointment Lighthouse.  Molly really liked the broad black-and-white stripes of the Cape Disappointment Lighthouse.

“I wish I could draw,” she said.  “I’d love to draw this one.”

When they drove into town later in the day to buy some groceries, Jake stopped at several stores until he found one that carried drawing supplies.  He bought her a small drawing tablet, a big pack of colored pencils, and a white eraser.

“Give it a try,” he said.  “It might be fun.”

The next day, Molly drew the top half of the lighthouse.

“This is fun!” she said.

Over the next few days, they toured the Lewis & Clark Interpretive Center and visited the Long Beach Peninsula.  Long Beach stretched for 28 miles along the peninsula, they learned.  Jake bought a colorful kite and Molly laid on a sheet spread on the sand and laughed at his antics. Molly liked laying on her back on the beach with the wind blowing gently over her, leaving bits of sand on her skin and hair. They tried to eat sandwiches at the beach but were alarmed when they were immediately surrounded by large seagulls who had spotted the food from the air.  They quickly put the food away.

“It’s like a scene from the movie, The Birds,” Jake lamented.

“Oh, don’t say that!” Molly said, looking around at the still-pacing, squawking birds.

“I think they’re saying ‘Mine!’,” she said.

Jake laughed.

They spent a long time searching the beach for two perfect sand dollars to send to their grandkids, Levi and Grace.  They decided they’d put together a little package for the kids once a month with treasures they picked up along the way.

They saved visiting the Columbia Pacific Heritage Museum in Ilwaco for Thursday, their last day there, as Thursday the museum had free admission, thanks to the Ilwaco Merchants Association.  At the gift shop, they bought postcards for each family member and that night they wrote messages on them at the picnic table.  They dropped them in the mail the next day at the little Ilwaco post office, then headed north on highway 101, up the coast of Washington.

Later, Molly referred to those first few days of the trip as the ‘Honeymoon Period’.  They had gotten along well and had a good time, kind of like when they had gone on vacations in the past.  But now it felt to her like vacation time was over and it was time to go back home.

The drive that day took them along the coast or inland for awhile, as Highway 101 meandered through western Washington.  As they passed through towns along the way, they stopped for gas, and an ice cream cone, and at a yarn shop Molly saw off the road.  The yarn was way expensive but way nice, too, so she bought two skeins and a pair of bamboo knitting needles.  They had a free hat pattern available and she picked up a copy of the instructions, figuring this would give her something to do while they were on the road.

Later, as she sat knitting while seat-belted into the recliner, she thought about getting in an accident while holding knitting needles and the images that came to mind were so distressing that she quickly put the knitting aside.

“Jake!” she called, irritably.  “Are We There Yet?”

“Not much farther.  We’re going to Aberdeen,” he said.  “They have a Walmart there!”  He smiled up at her in the big mirror over his head.

Great.  They’d be spending the night in a parking lot, then.

Once in Aberdeen, Jake wanted to drive around town and see what there was to see.  Molly just wanted to go home.  To her real home.  The one that wasn’t there anymore.  She grew more despondent as the day wore on.  Jake didn’t even seem to notice.

They stopped at a park and made sandwiches at a picnic bench there.  The wind was blowing like ice.  It cut right through Molly and she shivered, even in her jacket.

“You need to wear pants,” Jake observed.

“I don’t want to wear pants,” Molly said.  “I prefer dresses.”

“Well, that’s why you’re so cold, with your legs bare like that.  You should at least get something to wear under your dress, like knit pants or something.”

She didn’t want to wear pants.  Why didn’t he get that?

They found the Walmart and Jake picked a spot to park.  They went inside the store and signed up at the desk to stay in the parking lot overnight.  They wandered around the store for awhile but Molly didn’t feel like shopping.  She was in a bad mood.  She wanted to go home. Jake was starting to catch on to Molly’s unhappiness, she thought, but he didn’t bring it up to her.

He picked up a deck of cards and when they got up front to check out, he discovered postcards.  “Hey Molly, you want to get some Aberdeen postcards?” he asked.

“No, you go ahead,” she said, before wandering over to a bench to sit down.

Jake picked out the cards, checked out, and they returned to the bus.  Molly wanted to wash up but discovered that all the towels were dirty.  She ranted about that for several minutes, about how she hated taking sponge baths, and how they needed to go to a laundromat and get the clothes washed, and how she hated hanging about laundromats for hours on end and then she found a clean washcloth and took herself off to the bathroom to wash up with the cold water there.  She put on her nightgown, robe, and slippers, brushed her hair, and when she came out of the bathroom, Jake was gone.  She couldn’t imagine where he’d gone off to.

She closed all the curtains and plopped down in her chair.  It was getting dark and they had no electricity for the lamp.  After awhile, Jake returned with a big box of chocolates for her.

Molly was mollified.

In our quest to find a new place to retire to, Mark and I traveled a large loop in northwest Oregon and lower Washington.  We remain undecided, at this point, although we both feel we WILL be moving.  But there has been something else going on through most of this Quest.  I initially wrote a series of posts to run alongside The Quest posts filling you in on things but it all just kept changing so rapidly that I ended up deleting them.

A few months into our Quest, something very interesting happened.  Early last year, I had written the first four posts of a serial for Notes entitled, Off the Grid.  It’s the story of most of our family members reaching a financial crisis and moving in to the same house together.  One day when I first shared the story line with Christy, she got excited and asked if she had told me about her dream because she couldn’t remember doing that.

Her dream had been that the family was living together.  She said I had a clipboard where I planned out the activities for each family member every day.  We worked together to get things done and she said it was a very nice dream.  When she woke up, she felt there was something special about the dream.

Later on, I shared with Mark about how Christy’s dream and my new story line seemed to be the same.  Mark said, “Oh, that sounds like the dream I had just the other night.”  Unbelievably, Mark had dreamed that the family had moved in together, too.

Now, here’s the deal.  The Bible says that when God is telling you something, He will confirm it to you two or three times…

This will be the third time I am coming to you.
“By the mouth of two or three witnesses every word shall be established.”
2 Corinthians 13:1

We began to wonder if God was telling us to all move in together.  Hours and hours of discussion have occurred over the past several months.  There are benefits to living on the same property:

We would not have to move far away from each other, something that would bother us a lot
We could become more self-sufficient, savings lots of $$$’s over what we all pay in monthly expenses
We could HomeSchool Jasmine and Michael with various family members teaching their strongest subjects
We could grow a lot of our own food and preserve it
As Mark and I grow older, there would be younger family members to help us out

There were also a lot of concerns about living on the same property:

Could we get along with each other living in close quarters over the long term?
Would everyone be willing to contribute to the expenses and work load?
Would the other family members even want to do this?
Where would they get jobs?
How could we afford to buy such a property with our limited funds?
How hard would it be to find an inexpensive place that was already zoned multi-family?

We gave up on the idea.  We gave up on the idea over and over and over and over.  And every time we did, it came back.  It just kept coming.  The weird thing for me was that Ken and Mark and Susan, who are the down-to-earth, don’t-want-to-rock-the-boat members of the family, were on-board with this idea from the very beginning.  They did not Just Say No like Christy and I expected them to.  This time, THIS time, there was no No.  There were concerns but no No.

We have all tried to figure out how we can come up with the amount of money we’d need to make this thing happen.  But that’s the thing about money, isn’t it?  If you don’t have it, you don’t have it.  Period.  You can dream all you want but you can’t dream up real money in your bank account.  Reality is what reality is.

So, is it going to work out?  Will it happen?  Don’t know.  Don’t know how or when or if or nothin’.  All I know is that if God is behind it like we feel He is, somehow this thing will work out.  That’s the hard part.  Not knowing how, when, or if.  But faith in God is all about the unseen.  Life here is a journey of tests.  The tests strengthen our faith and trust in God so we are trying to trust Him to guide us in this.  We are doing what we can and then staying open to whatever door God may, or may not, open.

We have looked at all the cities around us, although you haven’t seen them all, as there are more ‘The Quest’ posts coming up on Notes.  Now we feel that we need to look more at specific properties and areas.  We’d like a semi-rural area–not too far out but not too close in–to a town big enough to provide the jobs we need.  We need to have a separate living space for each family, preferably a separate building for each one.  We need a lot big enough to grow a large garden and fruit trees.  It also needs to support projects such as wood-cutting and maybe even have room for a few chickens.  I’ve begun to peruse housing ads which now come with great online photos.  But the money thing is astronomical.  We don’t want to go into a mortgage situation and so far, no one is giving away their property.  So it all remains to be seen.

Unless the LORD builds the house, they labor in vain who build it;
Unless the LORD guards the city, the watchman stays awake in vain.
Psalm 127:1

Several times over the past few months, I have thought about giving up Notes.  At first, I thought maybe it was just a bad day or a passing thought so I gave it some time.  But I think I have come to the end of the road with Notes and that it is time to move on to other things.

Something else is going on in The Quest.  I actually wrote several posts about this sideline and then ended up deleting them and never publishing them because the situation is volatile.  Tomorrow, I will share that information with you here on Notes so you can see where The Quest for a place to retire has taken a turn in a new direction, so to speak.

Christy and I really feel that God’s hand is leading us down a road that will bring our family closer together not only physically, but mentally and spiritually, too.  But we can’t figure out the How? of it so we keep giving up on the whole idea only to have it brought back around to us.  An older Christian woman once said to me that when God wants her to do something, she’s learned to just do it and get it over with, otherwise she’ll just keep going around that same mountain until she does.  That’s kind of what’s been happening with Christy and me.  Because we can’t figure out the How?, we give up on it and keep going around that same mountain.

Maybe we’ll move where we live next to a mountain so we can remember every day: oh us, of little faith. ~_~

At any rate, we find ourselves longing for a simpler, less-connected-to-the-outside-world lifestyle.  This has been going on over a long period of time.  Christy was the first to give up on the internet, except for about ten minutes a day.  I have cut back further and further and now find that I may even be able to live completely without it. 

Over the past year, I’ve thought a lot about the Amish.  I’ve thought about their quiet, gentle lifestyle.  I’m sure they don’t have radio programs blaring most of the day, TV programs on during the evening, the internet devouring hours of time, and yet, and YET, they still breathe, and eat, and have a family life.

And so, there’s a change in the wind comin’ along.  And, really, it’s kind of exciting!  ~_~

But Jesus, being aware of it, said to them,
“O you of little faith, why do you reason among yourselves because you have brought no bread?
Matthew 16:8

I’ve continued watching that documentary called, Plastic Planet.  As I told you in my first Plastique post, the filmmaker had had a family in Germany empty their house of plastic and put it all outside on the lawn.  It was an enormous amount of stuff.  The mother said that she had had no idea how much plastic was in her house.

Later on in the documentary, and this one really got to me, he went to the slums in India.  There in the slums, the people had used odd pieces of wood, and whatever else they could find, to construct long rows of rooms with each family occupying one room.  The filmmaker talked to a family there and asked if they owned any plastic.  Then he convinced them to bring all the plastic they owned out to the path in front of their place.  They brought out an incredible amount of plastic for such a small room.  The mother stood next to it holding the baby and she said that she did not want to have so much plastic.

This film has inspired me to take a plastics inventory of my own home.  I started with the kitchen and after taking the photos, I became quite depressed and overwhelmed about the whole thing.  Just like the women in Germany and India, I had no idea I had so much plastic goin’ on. 

Now when I say the word ‘plastic’, I put emphasis on it.  It’s like my eyes have been opened and the scales have dropped away from my eyes.  My girlfriend’s mother was right.  There’s nothing worse than a reformed anyone.

A couple of the cupboards weren’t too bad.  Nearly all of our drinking cups and glasses are glass.  The travel mugs are partly stainless steel and partly plastic (in the lids).  The pill container is completely plastic, however.

(Clicking on the pics will enlarge them)

I had already converted all of my food storage to large glass jars…

…but as you can see, there’s still a lot of plastic going on in that cupboard.  Plastic bags around the 13-bean soup mix and the muesli, plastic Taco Bell sauce packets, plastic oil bottle and shortening container, plastic honey jar, plastic Ibuprophen bottle, plastic funnel and plastic basket to hold my plastic measuring spoons and cups..

The canned cupboard wasn’t too bad…

I mean, it’s just a bunch of cans, right?  But looking more closely, there’s another plastic pill container (we have his and hers pill containers), plastic bag around the sugar, plastic caps or shrink wrap on the jars and bottles, a plastic top to my most favorite lemon squeezer, and {sigh} the little food chopper is completely plastic.

The stuff above the cupboards was all right…

…well, the decal and parts of the electric skillet were made from plastic.

And on the counters below…

…yes, ladies and gentlemen, a plastic paper towel holder, a plastic breadmaker with a TEFLON bread pan, and a plastic ice maker–don’t let that fake silver finish fool you.  And, to add insult to injury, there gleaming at me in all its glory was a Christmas gift from Mark that only a couple of weeks ago I was so happy to get…

a PLASTIC toaster!

The other counter has mostly glass dishes drying in the racks…

…BUT there are a couple of plastic lids in the rack and there,
there lurking in the corner, is the plastic lid-taker-offer machine,
a plastic outlet with plastic cords & plugs…AND, oh no…

…my oh-so-excellent vintage 1950′s clock made in the USA {sob}.

Are silk flowers made from plastic?

And then over the sink was a whole bunch of plastic stuff…

It gets worse…

I was thinking, when I took this photo, oh, look, the dishes are all glass or metal, well, except for the lids to the water bottles.  And then I looked up and saw PLASTIC so-called eco-friendly laundry detergent, plastic bags, plastic Oxi-clean bottle, plastic spray bottle, plastic measuring cup in a plastic basket, and the paper towels were covered in plastic!  Then I looked below those shelves and found this…

…a plastic washing machine and a plastic towel hamper. 
The dishwasher was full of plastic parts and plastic-covered racks…

the microwave is plastic…

…and, no, that grocery list on the refrigerator does NOT say ‘plastic bags-assorted sizes’!
Above the microwave was a bit more plastic.

…OK, more than a bit.

Then I opened the freezer and I didn’t want to play this game anymore.

It just went on and on…

…like a bad dream.

Over vacation, Mark had broken my mixer and just the day before,
this had arrived in the mail to replace it…

…lovely blue plastic.

And I found myself asking, just how did we let plastic take over the world?  Where were we when all this was going on?  And, more importantly, just what was I going to DO about it?

I’ve been reading some more in that book Mark gave me for Christmas, Serve God Save the Planet: A Christian Call to Action by Matthew Sleeth, MD.  I thought this book would be about ideas for recycling and stuff like that.  I was wrong, at least so far.  Dr. Sleeth is an emergency room physician so he’s seen a lot of health problems on the front line. 

He points out that there are no good red dyes.  He says when trying to answer the question ‘what causes cancer?’ we can look to the toxins in our environment.  Could red dyes in food cause cancer?  I was guilty of giving my one-year-old red Kool-aid and red Jell-o back in the day.  I went to a meeting when he was 18-months-old and learned that they were linking food additives like dyes to hyperactivity in children.  This was back in 1977.  So I went off the Kool-aid and Jell-o.

Dr. Sleeth mentions red dye in hair color.  And I thought, do we really think that that stuff doesn’t get in through pores and hair follicles?  What are we thinking?  Or ARE we thinking?  Dr. Sleeth mentions the dyes used in paper plates and napkins.  We just had a slew of birthday parties in this family and every one of them had dyed paper plates and napkins that we ate our dyed cake from.  Dr. Sleeth mentions wearing a red dress.  A red DRESS?  Oh yeah, they use DYES to color cloth.  That’s why my new black slippers dye my ankles black for months after I get them, even though I’ve washed them several times.  Then Dr. Sleeth talks about the red dye that is added by the ton to home heating oil so they can tell if truckers are trying to use the less-taxed heating oil in their trucks.  As a result, homes are sprayed with red dye toxins whenever the heaters come on.

My eyes have been popping open, more and more.

I’ve continued on with the Plastic Planet documentary.  The filmmaker interviewed several scientists who are studying the toxic effects of plastic and learned that any plastic made of polycarbonate (like plastic water bottles and plastic BABY bottles) puts off something called Bisphenal A (BPA).  They have found that BPA mimics estrogen and invades the cells, which leads to infertility in men, obesity (and thus, diabetes), brain disorders, and cancer.

Just prior to learning that, Christy and I were discussing canning our own produce down the line someday.  I started looking up canning jars online and was distressed to learn that all canning lids made today contain BPA.  I found an alternate canning jar, very expensive, made in Germany.  I emailed them and asked if their lids contained BPA, too.  They wrote back ‘yes’.  Mark did extensive research and finally located a company that used rubber rings that do not contain BPA that we can purchase when we are ready.

So, even if I want to can my own organic food to make sure I am eating healthy, I would have been adding BPA to my jars as I boiled them in their canning bath.  And I wouldn’t even have known about it if I hadn’t read some of the reviews by people who pointed out the BPA because the descriptions for the jars don’t say a word.

One night as I laid in bed thinking, I wondered just how many chemicals I put on my body every day.  I mean, I’ve been trying over the past year or so to buy products with less chemicals and all, but how many do I still put on my body?  If I started with the bar soap in the shower, the shampoo, conditioner, body creme, toothpaste, mouthwash, toner, face cream, lip balm, deodorant, hand cream, and topped it off wearing fabrics that are dyed, how many chemicals would I have exposed my body to that day before I even left the bedroom?

I looked at the ingredient list on a favorite bottle of fragrance:

Alcohol Denat, Water, Fragrance, Aloe Barbadensis Leaf Extract, Propylene Glyco, Butyl Methoxydibenzoylmethane, Ethylhexyl Methoxycinnamate, Ethylhexyl Salcylate, Benzyl Benzoate, Benzyl Salcylate, Citral, Citronellal, Coumain, Eugenol, Geraniol, Hydroxycitronella, Hydroxyisohexyl 3-Cyclohexene Caboxaldehyde, Limonene, Linalool, Butyphenyl Methylpropional, Alpha-Isomethyl Ionone, Blue 1, Ext. Violet 2, Green 3, Yellow 6.
CAUTION: Flammable

I spray all of that on several spots around my head and arms, it goes in my pores, and I breathe it into my lungs.

This is a fiction serial that will post every Friday.
I hope you will enjoy it!

Painting the bus turned into a real trial for Jake.  Painting anything in the Pacific Northwest in late winter or early spring was going to be problematic.  The sun would be shining one minute, all beautiful and nice, and by the time Jake got the paint out and the brush wet, storm clouds had rolled in and the rain had started.  Once the spot on the street next to their duplex opened up again, Jake moved the bus back up from down the street.  He ran the electrical cord out the back door and hooked it to an oscillating fan to help dry the paint on the outside of the bus quickly as he went along.  When the weather turned damp, he turned the fan off and went inside the bus to paint for awhile until the sun came out again.

He found the whole endeavor exhausting.

Molly finished sorting through the apartment and cleaning all the cupboards and whatnot.  She got bored with waiting for the bus to be painted.  The only furniture they had left was what they would be taking on the bus and Jake’s bed, which he was giving to Betsy and Joe when they left.  Molly grew pretty despondent as time went on and one afternoon, Jake came in to find her crying.

“What’s up, Molly?” he asked.

“I just hate that we have to take those horrid plastic dishes you bought on the trip,” she said.  “But we have no choice because the glass ones will break.”

Jake looked at her like she had lost her everlastin’ mind.

But, being the good husband he was, he promised he’d find a way to make it work for her.  And he did.  He cut pieces of cardboard to put between the plates in the cupboard and nailed a board on the cup and glass shelf with muffin-shaped wood chunks on it to keep them all separated and in place.

Molly was mollified.

But still bored.  So she took down their maroon drapes from the dining room and living room that she had been planning to leave there.  She cut them up and made ruffled curtains for each and every window in the back of the bus.  Jake fastened wooden dowels above the windows and they hung the curtains from them.  Molly could tell he wasn’t too happy about the ruffles and the color but he wasn’t saying anything.

They discussed where they would go on their adventure.  Molly said maybe they could write travelogues about each state they visited.  “Something like Grumpy and Granny visit Alaska, then another one for Grumpy and Granny visit Colorado,” she said, “and we could have pictures and write about all the places to visit in each state.”

“Uh-huh,” Jake said.

“Only we should do it alphabetically.”

“Do what alphabetically?”

“The states.  So the books would be in order as they are written.”

Jake looked at her like she had lost her everlastin’ mind.  “Do you mean to tell me we’re supposed to go to Alaska, then Arizona, then Arkansas, skipping all the states in-between?”

“Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, and Arkansas,” she corrected him.

“Oh!  Excuse me!  All the way from Oregon to Alabama, then back to Alaska, down to Arizona, and over to Arkansas.”

“Right,” she said.

Jake looked like the top of his head was going to explode.  She could tell, because he had no hair there.

“I’m just pushing your buttons, Jake.”

He sighed.  “Why do you do that, Molly?  One of these days, one of these days, Molly, Bang! Zoom! Straight to the moon!” he said, quoting The Honeymooners TV show.

In the end, they decided to concentrate on the lower 48 states, especially since Jake wasn’t sure how well the bus would perform on the road.

“Breaking down near civilization is one thing but hiking through Grizzly Bear country is a whole ‘nother thing,” he said.

One day, Jake got a large flat packet in the mail that he didn’t want Molly to open or see.  “It’s a surprise,” he said.

A few days later, Molly slept in late.  When she got up, Jake was gone so she figured he was out working on the bus.  She poured a cup of coffee and was about to sit down when he came in.

“Come here, Molly, I want to show you something,” he said.

“Outside?  I’m not dressed Jake.”

“I don’t care.  And why should you?  You won’t be seeing these people again.  We’re leaving soon.”

Molly decided he had a point.

Jake opened the door and she saw that he had pulled the fully painted bus into the parking lot and parked it right where she could see it when she came out the door.  He had put vinyl decals on the side of the bus.  They said:  My Wild Irish Rose.  That’s what Jake always called her, My Wild Irish Rose.

He hugged her.

“That was a nice surprise, Jake,” she said.

“How about we load it up, have dinner with the kids tonight, and hit the road tomorrow?” he asked.

They spent the night parked outside Betsy and Joe’s house and got up the next morning in time to say good-bye to the grandkids before they left for school.  Molly gave them each a three-ring binder with plastic sheet protectors divided into postcard-size holders.

“We will send you lots of postcards,” she said, “so you can start your own postcard collection.”

Still, saying good-bye was the hard part.  Tears were shed.  Then they climbed into the bus and Jake fired up the engine.

“Where to?” he asked, looking at Molly in the wide mirror above his head.

“Second star to the right and straight on til morning,” she said, quoting Peter Pan.

“Right, then,” Jake said, grinding the bus into gear.

Jake got on the freeway and said he was going to head over to the Washington coast.  “We’ll travel all the way up the coast, south to north, then go inland and zig zag down through the state, and see what’s what,” he said.

Molly muttered something.

“What?” he yelled, over the din of the rattling bus.

“We’re starting in Washington,” she yelled back, “a W state!”

“Oh, don’t even go there,” he said.

“If we had started with Wyoming, we could have worked our way backwards through the alphabet.”

“I’m not lis-ten-ing to you,” Jake sing-songed.

Molly was sitting in her recliner with her seat belt on.  She had insisted on a seat belt in the back.  Jake thought she was nuts, but then, that was nothing new.  She didn’t relish being flung about the bus in case of an accident.  Jake had bolted the recliners to the floor but they probably wouldn’t hold up well in a crash.  The seat belt was probably just an illusion. Still.

She took a sip of coffee from her travel mug, just when they went over a bump.  Coffee spilled all over her front.  She mopped it up with Kleenex then tried again, just as Jake swerved across two lanes to take the exit he had almost missed.

“If you’re going to drive like a crazy man, you can just take me home right now,” she yelled.

“This is home!” Jake yelled back, grinning at her in the big mirror.

Oh, poop, she thought.

She leaned back in the chair, popping open the footrest.  She lay there for quite awhile, looking at everything jiggling around her.  She could hear the dishes clinking in the cupboard with every bump in the road.  The curtains were swaying back and forth.  Her dresses hanging at the back of the bus were doing a dance on the wall hooks.  There was nothing to look at outside the windows except sky.  The bus was up high enough that she couldn’t see the cars zooming past.  Occasionally, a big truck would go by and sometimes she would make eye contact with the truck driver.  She found that way uncomfortable.

She opened a book and started to read.  The words jumped about on the page like nobody’s business.  She pressed on, thinking she’d get used to it.  She got a headache instead.

She unbuckled her seat belt and made her way unsteadily to the bed.  As she lay back on the pillow, the sun glared in through the window, right into her eyes.

“Jake!” she called.  “Are We There Yet?”

I spent the last week in December getting started on the diet and exercise program.  I was quite distressed at my initial weigh-in to discover I had gained SIX pounds in December.  Oh my goodness.  Or my Badness, as the case was.  Mark said not to worry, it would just look more impressive in the # of pounds lost department.  He’s too good to me.

So there I was the first week in January, all pre-conditioned in the diet and exercise department.  Or so I thought.  I had cleared my daily plate of extraneous stuff and jumped in with both feet.  Oh yeah, did I mention I had decided to start cooking everything from scratch?  I mean, EVERYTHING?  Like tortillas, buns, refried beans, etc?

That first week went badly.  When I watched the reality show, Ruby, about a woman who was losing weight, her nephew said that there were two Rubys.  1) Ruby and 2) Ruby-on-a-diet.  I was Mona-on-a-diet.  Snippy.  Irritable.  Ready to take Mark’s head off.  Well, more than usual.  In addition to being very hungry, everything HURT.  My back, my knees, even my ankles and wrists.  I’d exercise for awhile, then have to sit for twice that ‘while’ with either ice packs or a heating pad on. 

And cooking was proving to be incredibly time-consuming, especially since these were all new recipes and procedures for me.  I was spending three hours a day in the kitchen cooking, making a giant mess, and then cleaning it up.  The only good news was I decided to start washing the large pots and bowls in the dishwasher to cut down on the amount of dishes I had to wash by hand.

I was falling behind in writing for Notes.  Getting the HomeChurch lessons lined up was hard.  The wee washer was driving me COMPLETELY MAD with its incompetence.  I have to hop up and down constantly becuz it just won’t spin like it should.  And if you don’t jump up, it just keeps loading more and more water into the machine in an effort to get the clothes more evenly distributed.

Snippy.  Irritable.  Unhappy.  Despondent.  My life was beginning to Suck Big.  Then on Monday of the next week, I hit the wall.  Just couldn’t do it.  Went to bed at 6 pm.  Woke up at 9 pm and had a talk with Mark.  And Mark, being Prince Charming and all, came to my rescue.  He said, for one thing, he’d take the clothes up to the laundry room every couple of days and run them through the bigger machines up there.  Because, having been home on vacation for two weeks prior to January, he was more than disgusted with the wee washer himself.  The next day, he agreed to help me cook in the evenings.  That night after dinner, we put together a casserole and made egg salad for his lunch sandwiches.  It was AMAZING how much faster cooking was with his help.  He is a Master Chopper of Vegetables.  He’s so fast and he does a much better job than I do.  He peeled the eggs in 1/3 the time it takes me.

Maybe I’m just a bad cook.  Hmm… there’s a thought.

At any rate, these days I wake up to a destroyed kitchen, no kidding, look…

(Clicking on the pic will enlarge it)

…but no cooking.  Once I’ve got the bigger things loaded into the dishwasher, it becomes a lot more manageable.  I’ve had time to write Notes, to prepare HomeChurch lessons, to think.  Life is good.  I’ve even become less Snippy.  I think.

The diet has gotten easier over time, too.  I don’t eat during the day except for when my sugars start to drop.  Then I’ll have a few crackers or a handful of nuts or a glass of milk.  Those snacks have gotten less and less over time as I’ve figured out the insulin components in the morning.  And instead of thinking I need to exercise 2-3 hours a day RIGHT NOW, I’ve set a more realistic goal.  For the month of January, I’m exercising 40 minutes a day.  That’s usually two bouts of 15 minutes on the recumbent bike, plus two 5-minute bouts of either the hand weights or the Gazelle.  And I don’t even have to use ice packs much these days! ~_~  I’ll increase the exercising by ten minutes every month.

Mark has noticed a difference.  He says my face looks thinner.  Well, what he ACTUALLY said is, “You look like you’ve lost weight in your face.  I can now see the outline of where your face used to be and I haven’t seen that for years.”

I’m still trying to figure out if that’s a compliment, or not.

Total Weight Tally to Date ~ Minus Four Pounds

OR this much in equivalent weight:

Awhile back, I posted a Rants and Raves post thinking it might make a good ongoing thing here on Notes.  Then, for a long time, I couldn’t think of any rants and raves.  Things were going along pretty OK, I guess. ~_~  But never fear.  A few things have begun to pile up.

Rant #1 ~ I try to buy organically grown meat.  One local store carries that kind of meat exclusively, other stores carry meat that is ‘all natural’ or ‘without hormones’ but fall beneath the label ‘organic’, and still others carry no organic meat at all.  So it’s been a bit of a trial for me as I prefer to buy organic but the store that carries it is some distance away, I don’t drive, and I have a tiny freezer that holds only just so much.  So, I sometimes break down and buy regular meat.  Which brings me to the Rant part. 

I bought a turkey breast that I figured would make a good meal with leftover meat for sandwiches.  When I opened the package, there was a large envelope of turkey ‘gravy’ inside.  Yuck.  A completely germ-laden envelope of turkey gravy.  Does anyone actually use those?  I’m afraid to.  But here’s the deal:  I paid turkey meat prices per pound on that so-called gravy.  Then I noticed that the meat was covered with a stretchy net thingy.  When I finally pried it off, it was holding a big slice of disgusting something (turkey fat? I don’t know) up against the meat.  The whole purpose of putting whatever-that-was on the turkey with the netting was to run up the poundage so I could pay more. 

Diverse weights are an abomination to the LORD, and dishonest scales are not good.
Proverbs 20:23
Shall I count pure those with the wicked scales, and with the bag of deceitful weights?
Micah 6:11

Rave #1 ~ Last month, a United States spy drone was shot down and captured over Iran.  The Iranians were gleeful about capturing the technology and about foiling the U.S.’s spying.  What I find worthy about this to rave about is: The U.S. asked Iran if they could please have their spy drone back.  Can you believe THAT???  I mean, seriously???  ~_~

Rant #2 ~ At one of the Republican Presidential Debates last month, the candidates were asked to pick one of their competitors on stage and say something positive about them.  Rick Santorum picked Newt Gingrich but quickly morphed it into about how great he, Rick, was.  Michelle Bachman picked Herman Cain who had already dropped out of the presidential race and then she, too, morphed it into about how great she was.  Sometimes you’ve just got to wonder, yes?

Rave #2 ~ But at the same debate, Mark and I got a big kick out of Mitt Romney’s choice.  He chose Ron Paul because he said whenever they pulled up to an event, there were ALWAYS Ron Paul supporters out there with signs, no matter how cold the weather was.  How cute is that? ~_~

Rant #3 ~ Mark and I watch a lot of documentaries and the ones about nature are particularly beautiful.  What gets me, though, is when they say stuff like “464 billion years ago…” and I have to turn to Mark and say “four hundred sixty-FOUR billion years ago?  Why not 465 billion years ago or 463 billion years ago?”  I mean, come on.  Does it just sound more official to use a not-rounded-off number?  And, really, how do they KNOW how long ago it was?

Rave #3 ~ If you spend any time at all at your desk, I would like to recommend one of these:

This is one of those non-essential luxury items that make a person very happy.  First of all, it’s an elevated foot rest which helps you feel more comfortable when sitting for any length of time.  Secondly, it’s a HEATER.  Yeah, a footsy-toesie heater for those really cold winter months when no matter HOW thick your slippers are, you feet are just plain cold.  Ahhh…..  Thirdly, for those too-hot summer months, there’s a fan to blow cooling air all about your feet and legs.  I mean, what’s not to like about this thing????

OK, that is all.
Have a great day today and
may your rants never outnumber your raves!
~_~

It seems like I have been finding mostly kitchen things in the thrift stores lately.  But they are all things I need and really like, so I’m happy.

Like this…

…with this new stainless steel pan on board, I feel like I can finally get rid of the Teflon baking pans that are not good for us.  I have been looking and looking for stainless steel cookie sheets but so far I haven’t been able to find any.  This one was only $3.

The metal rack we use to cook meat on in the roasting pan had begun to rust and needed to be replaced, so I was really happy when we found this one for $1…

(Clicking on the pics will enlarge them)

Two of our three soup bowls got broken recently, so this was a great find for $3 total…

Then one of these got broken almost immediately.
Mark helps with the dishes sometimes. 
He says it’s not him but if it was me, we’d have no dishes at all.
That’s my story and I’m sticking with it. ~_~

I thought this was SUCH a great buy to give Michael something else to play with when he’s done with his paperwork during the adult HomeChurch lesson…

…this was shortly before The Great Plastic Debacle.

Mark found a stainless steel electric skillet at our favorite little thrift store for $5.  I agreed it was a great buy but I had no use for it, really.  Plus I’d have to find a place to store it (space is always at a premium around here).  He reluctantly put it back on the shelf.  Two weeks later, we returned to the shop with Susan in tow.  Mark immediately rushed to the kitchen shelf to see if the skillet was still there.  I heard him asking Susan if she wanted to buy it, which she didn’t.  So I went and got it for Mark…

He has made a POINT of using it every time he cooks ever since.
~_~

One of the things I decided to do this year to save money is make my own homemade cards.  I go through a lot of cards with a family of twelve~Anniversary, Valentine’s day, Get Well, Congratulations, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, and Christmas.  About the only ones I don’t use are Birthday because I give a gift instead.  Mark found this on a table for $1…

It’s a wallpaper sample book.  Perfect for cardmaking!

That’s it for this month.
Have a great day today.

As I told you last week, I’m trying to lose weight (again).  Mark decided that he was going to exercise a lot this year, too.  I’ve been pretty impressed with him because he works with the Wii FitPlus program every night for about 45 minutes.  He likes working with the Wii because it makes exercise more fun.  By standing on the Wii balance board and then ‘walking’ on it, the little guy on the screen bicycles along through a myriad of scenery.  By holding the Wii remote (Mark says it’s called a Wiimote), Mark guides his bicycle guy through the perils along the path. 

Mark also does a step program on the Wii that involves watching the pattern on the screen and then either stepping on/off the balance board, stepping off to the sides, or standing and exercising your arms.  It’s pretty fast-paced and it’s kinda funny to watch Mark try to get that coordinated.

Mark had not been on the Wii for a long time before he began again this month.  When he logged onto the program, it said it had been something like 275 days since he last exercised.  Oops.  Then it told him to stand up the balance board while it weighed him.  Whenever he stands to get weighed, the Wii says, ‘Oh-hh’.  Then it tells him his weight and adds, ‘That’s obese.”

It is possible to have a Love/Hate relationship with the Wii.

The good news was Mark had lost 1.9 lbs since the last time he had exercised 275 days ago.  So Mark started exercising in earnest every night and he gained a new pound every single day.

Go figure.

At HomeChurch last week, during SharingTime, we were talking about the Wii.  Ken and Christy had just bought a used gym set and a rowing machine which they have been using for their New You selves.  Susan asked Christy why she wasn’t using the WiiFit program.  I was curious to hear, because Christy’s enthusiasm for the Wii program is what inspired us a couple of years ago to buy it.

“I just can’t take the comments the Wii makes anymore,” she said.

“I missed one day over the weekend using the WiiFit program,” Mark said.  “Susan was over so we used the Wii to play tennis and bowling together and I figured I got my exercise that way.  Then the next day when I logged onto the WiiFit program, it said, ‘Too busy to work out yesterday, Mark?’”