Early Mother's Day

At five a.m. on May 5th, Carlene and I had a little Mother's Day party--since we both happened to have woken up at 3:00.

Opening her peace bell from San Antonio

And now the book of photos

After she got up and dressed, she donned the beautiful scarf that Day and Will and their families sent from Etsy.com.  Here she is on her front porch showing off!

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY,  Carlene!

Sign Painters

Before we pack up and head to Lawrenceville and watch the trains and silhouettes of trees and barns in the sunrise---

In a little town called Taylor, Texas, we met Norma Jean.  Mike scans everything as I do, and he spotted a beautiful old sign that led us to Norma Jena's Sign Shop.  Since the advent of vinyl lettering, hand painting of signs is rare.  She and Mike instantly connected over their shared love of hand-painting signs and making neon.  He bought a book in which she was featured--among other sign painters, and she signed it, "Meeting you was meant to be!"  (Exactly how I felt when I met him, but in other ways!) 

She told us about a movie based on the book--or vice versa--and we watched it last night on Amazon: Sign Painters.  While we watched it, we ate our gift cookie with strawberries we'd brought--and it was like eating the old Shoney's strawberry pie. 

Mike usually falls asleep when I put on movies, but he stayed awake to watch the whole show.

He has about 800 signs he's collected over the years and loves to go to sign shows.  He makes all kinds of things out of neon, even has a neon rainbow in his bathroom. 

When we left her shop, Norma Jean accepted his invitation to come visit in Hartwell next time she goes to visit her mother in Kentucky.  

East Texas Thursday Night

Hutto, Texas, is the first town on Highway 79.  The downtown is beautiful, but nearly deserted.  We love old towns like Hutto! (The town mascot is a hippo--and you see them all over town.)

We stopped in for a glass of tea at the Texas Cafe and had the hands-down most delicious slice of apple pie either of us has ever had.   We're wishing now we'd bought a whole pie.

Then we stopped at a vintage shop in Taylor--where I bought a poster for writing group and a vintage yard stick for my yard stick collection, out of which I'm planning to make something.

One of the saleswomen gave us a present from a customer who had just left--Isabel from the newspaper.  Mike had struck up a conversation with her and she bought us a cookie and had it gift-wrapped.

A few miles down the road, I said, "I wish I had bought two more yardsticks," and Mike turned around and went back and bought them for me!

We had boiled crawfish for dinner and Mike's fingers are tired from peeling the pound--but oh, my Gosh, they were delicious!

Both of us are exhausted from our month-long construction project, so we've stopped at a motel here in Jewett, Texas--a place Mike stayed in November and liked.

Tomorrow will be a long day on the road--and today has been wonderful!

Kate Mulgrew interview

http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2015-04-27/kate-mulgrew-born-with-teeth

So far, I've only heard a portion of this interview, but it was fascinating, and I want to hear the whole program and read her memoir.

Kate Mulgrew is the actress who played Red in Orange is the New Black.

It takes a village

Refurbishing a little garage apartment takes a village.

Thanks to Edward, the painter; Elver, the electrician; and Mike--the end is in sight. I can hardly wait to get back from my multiple trips to Lowe's to listen to their man-banter.  Until today, I thought conversations among men might be competitive, maybe even show-offy.

Edward does everything but electricity--due to seeing his cousin electrocuted once on a job site.  "I saw him die right before my eyes," he says.

"That's why you don't ever see any old, bad electricians!" Mike says--which makes Electrician Elver laugh.

When Edward sees the bright green-apple paint I've chosen for the kitchen, he asks, "Are you sure you're not tripping back on the Sixties?"  Then he tells Mike, "I know Linda--she likes bright colors.  I've been painting for her for years."

They tease each other and joke around all day.  When Edward sees Mike's collection of CDs. they talk about soul music.  Edward literally re-enacts (like a one-man show) the times he went to Black Baptist Churches when he was a boy.  "I was the only Mexican kid there.  Everybody asks, 'Whose kid is that?' and they treat me like a king.  I mean fried chicken, macaroni and cheese, pee-can pie, cherry pie, you name it.  When I hear that music I try not to cry, but I have goosebumps all over my arms."

We tell him about Greater Hope Church in Georgia and the music we love there.  Mike tells him that he's met B.B. King, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Elvis

Edward is about to cry just thinking about being the only "Mexican Catholic" in a little Black Baptist Church on the East Side.

They talk about wrestling, music, what it was like being young.  They talk about their parents, especially their fathers.  Every once in a while, Edward or Mike will just start dancing to the music playing on the Bose.  Edward and I talk about our friend Julianne who died suddenly in October, and how we miss her.

At the end of his wiring job, after working two days with Mike, the Columbian electrician said to Mike, "I love you, my friend" and they hug each other.

Maybe men's conversations are not as different from women's as I'd originally thought.  They part hugging and thanking each other for good work.  They aren't afraid to show tears or say, "I love you, my friend."

Tracks

The installation of electrical things slowed us down today, so we have another day of work tomorrow. We decided tonight to watch a movie Freda recommended, saying "It makes WILD look like a walk in the park."  True.

The book, Wild, I loved; the movie, not so much.
Tracks was a much better movie--the true story of a woman who hiked 2000 miles across Australia with camels and black lab.

The best thing about writing a blog is

The emails from those of you who are reading it--recommending related books on dreams, finding that you, too, (Lea) are reading old journals, getting links to other blogs, hearing ways my journey intersects with yours.  Kate wrote, "Morning...just read your 1992 blog post...are you sure you weren't living my life?
💖 love you,  Kate "

Nellie and Betty want a picture of the bed, and I plan to post one tonight or tomorrow when it's finished.  Today is a frenetic day, getting everything finished for our departure, tomorrow hopefully.

This blog is such a random thing--like the way my mind works, part email to friends, part journal, part scrapbook to look back on in the future.  This has been my only journal since I began blogging what was intended to be a month-long travel journal of my solo trip to California to celebrate my 65th birthday.  I love hearing from my friends in California: Roné (my jewelry-making friend); Dr. Linda J (who worked on my aching road-legs and made them better); and Bonnie--who writes about her success running the Air BnB in which I spent four days in Santa Rosa.

For those of you interested in dreams, Linda Kot recommended this book: The Dreams of Women - Exploring and Interpreting Women's Dreams by Lucy Goodison.

For those of you interested in expanding your writing life, getting published, or blogging, Diana recommended this site: http://thewritelife.com/?utm_source=The+Write+Life&utm_campaign=8167a0c743-Dedicated_bloggingjobs4_12_2015&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_ae07a22b59-8167a0c743-106464409&mc_cid=8167a0c743&mc_eid=48599f3d1c

Thank you all for traveling along the bumpy road with me!

La Casita Report

The electrician, Elver, is coming today to wire for lights in the bed roof that Mike is installing this morning.  Mike is also installing a new air conditioner.  (My writing groups and I will enjoy the quiet and efficiency of a new cooler--as the old one was neither)  Yesterday, we put the refrigerator back together and I filled it with drinks; hung the mule on the front of the bed; created and installed a mailbox; went to Lowe's for the umpteenth time.

I will be painting some old chairs, running errands, and washing clothes for our trip--which begins tomorrow or Wednesday, depending on how long it takes to finish up here and pack the truck for lift-off.

We also have to find a box for Bones--as he is traveling to Brown Mule Farm to join Kitty, Mo Jo, and Copper.

Originally, we had planned to do some sight-seeing along the way, but due to being behind schedule on these projects, we'll be driving straight to Georgia on the Interstate this time, arriving at Carlene's most likely on Thursday night.

A dream: April 26, 1992

I found this dream recorded in my journal:

I was with two friends.  They were inside buying a ticket.  I was outside on the pavement, wearing denim shorts, a gray T-shirt, a red silky belt.  There was a group of teenagers standing in a cluster listening to good music, good beat.  I started dancing with great joy, abandon.  I didn't care how I looked, didn't care if anyone was looking. 

We were on a roadway of some sort.  I was lost in the dance, alone.  I noticed then that there were three women on a bench.  One was black.  She stood up, smiling and told me I looked lovely dancing.

I became conscious then, briefly, of myself--thinking I must look ridiculous in shorts, legs too fat.  Then I began to feel very happy.  I ran down the center of the road, still dancing, feeling light and buoyant.  

When I stopped, a little black girl was sprinting down the same road.  She was barely old enough to walk, yet she was running unbelievably fast.  She froze, suspended over the yellow line.  I asked the woman, "Your daughter?"

"Yes, she's an Olympic runner."

I looked at the little girl and said, "You move as fast as light.  I'm going to call you Light Beam.  Sun Bream."

She stayed there in suspended animation.  Everyone was happy.  "Hug your mother every day," I told her.

Reading this dream, I think of the way Jungian analysis treats characters in a dream: everyone represents some aspect of yourself.  The old woman and the little girl might represent old and young aspects of my psyche in 1992.

Black suggests a soulfulness that I've always sensed in people of color.  Some older version of me, the most soulful self, seemed to be telling the self-conscious "fat" young woman that she had a certain beauty when she moved--and maybe that her younger self could run way faster than she knew?

Finding an old journal

While I was moving around books in the casita, a 1992 journal fell into my lap.  On the cover, it said "Winnie the Pooh Journal"--on top of each page was a quotation from Winnie and friends.

As Mike was inside the house showering, I sat down and read it, cover to cover, struck by how many things I'd reported I no longer remember.  But it evoked a sense of that year, much of which I do remember.  It was a difficult, sad, weepy year.  It made me sad to read it, as I heard the voice of the younger woman who used to be me.  It was the year of my 25th wedding anniversary, un-celebrated.   It was a roller coaster year and I was plagued with physical aches and pains, emotional fog, and an overriding sense of loneliness.

As Mike and I drove to get our morning coke and donut, I told him about what I'd read--that, at 135 pounds or so, I wrote almost every day about how fat and unattractive I was.  My dreams hinted at secrets I wasn't ready to see in my waking hours.

Mike said, "Every girl should be encouraged to keep a journal.  It helps to know where you are going when you take a look at where you've been."

Mike has always preferred the friendship of women, and many have told them the secrets of their pasts. He sees a pattern in the lives of women who came of age in the sixties and seventies.  "When they get older, they do everything they can to break out of their cages," he said.

Women, he believes, are more programmed than men are--to be pleasers of other people, to put themselves last, and to keep secrets, often secrets about abuse in their childhood homes or marriages. While we girls were preparing ourselves for marriage, young men were more free to be who they were.  I don't know  many men, so I'm taking his word for it for now.

He was scandalized when I told him that a high school counselor once told me, "You should go to college just long enough to get your MRS degree."  Good grades, a high IQ--those he admitted I had. But the real goal was matrimony.