The circle of life

I think a mouse has died in the wall of the staircase that leads up from our garage into the house. At first it smelled musty and moldy, like wet towels, and now it just smells, well, dead. Everything I've read online indicates that my options are a.) knock holes in the wall in an attempt to find and remove the unfortunate deceased, which may or may not be successful, or b.) wait it out until decomposition does its work and the smell goes away. Since I don't own this house and I have no idea how much it would cost to get a ripped-up wall repaired, I've been forced to go for option b, gross as it is.

The bulk of the smell is located near a large heating vent, so one of my friends has kindly volunteered to come over tomorrow, take the vent cover off and see if he can locate the offender that way. I know how to operate a screwdriver and could technically do that myself, but I'd really rather not (yuck), so just this once I'm going to take him up on the offer, and hope to God it works. The smell is minimal today because I've opened up windows and aired everything out, but when G and I got back from San Diego yesterday, it was a bit thick as we came in from the garage. (Not the sort of welcome-home you want to receive, let me tell you.) At least the top two floors, where we spend most of our time, are mostly stench-free; it's all concentrated in that stairwell, so we only have to smell it when we go in or out.

We had gone to San Diego because last month, as I was thinking about how depressing the last several Mother's Days had been, I decided that this year I was going to take preemptive action and plan something for myself. San Diego is only about a 90-minute drive from here, so I found a cute, reasonably priced hotel near the downtown Gaslamp District, and I made a reservation for Mother's Day weekend. Here are a few photos from the trip.

We stayed at The Bristol Hotel San Diego, and I couldn't believe how nice it was for the price I paid. It wasn't a bad location either, within walking distance of hundreds of shops and restaurants.

At the Ghirardelli Ice Cream and Chocolate Shop. G had the cone, I had the Rocky Road sundae. It was delicious, but I only managed to finish about a third of it. I'm not that much of a pig.

People playing giant chess at Horton Plaza. There were giant checkers too.

Outside the San Diego Museum of Art.  Yes, it was yet another cloudy day for an outing.

 Part of the sculpture garden and courtyard near the art museum. That's the bell tower and carillion on the left.

Museum of Man

Mayan stele inside the Museum of Man.

 Hall of Modern Humans. Each of those circles had a human invention or milestone and the year it happened. My birth year was the computer microchip; G's was the euro.

All in all, it was a pleasant weekend and a huge improvement over the last few years. One of the nasty little surprises of widowhood is that while you can organize all the major holidays on your own, no one is going to pick up the slack on the days that are supposed to be about you. It's taken me a few years to get there, but I'm finally in a place where I can arrange my own special event and not feel bad about doing it myself. I'm already planning a similar approach for my fortieth birthday next year -- not sure where we're going yet, but I'm going to make it as good as I can. Surely I must deserve it by now.

Her Majesty the Queen

Some photos from this weekend's trip to the Queen Mary.







In a part of the country that has 274 days of sunshine a year, you might wonder how we always manage to pick the non-sunny days for these excursions. So do we.













Pretty much all the corridors looked as if they ought to have a ghost or a floating candelabra or something at the end.













Our stateroom was about three times bigger and ten times more posh than the one we had on a Royal Caribbean cruise a few years ago. But when you consider how stinking rich the original passengers on the Queen Mary would have been (our tour guide said that a first-class ticket in the 1930s cost $1,000, or roughly the price of a house), it makes sense.













Water options in our shower: hot salt, cold salt, hot fresh and cold fresh. Why anyone would want a hot saltwater shower is beyond me, but people liked strange things in the past.










The supposedly haunted nursery.













Queen Mary herself.










Instruments in the wheelhouse. It was raining during our tour and we got soaked on the way up here, adding to the authentic crossing-the-Atlantic experience.













Our tour guide outside the first-class swimming pool, supposedly the most haunted location on board. I'm not easily frightened, but this was one of the creepiest places I've ever been. I couldn't get a photo inside because there wasn't enough light (they all came out black), but imagine a massive vaulted room the size of a high-school gym, almost completely dark, and full of shadows and echoes and whispers. It was divided into two levels: a second-floor gallery, where we stood looking down, and a lower level with the drained pool sunk deep into its floor. At the opposite end of the room from us were a pair of staircases that came from left and right and merged into one grand central staircase (picture the sort of thing ladies walked down in the old Busby Berkeley films, and you'll have it), and to either side of those were dark openings leading off into unknown territory. Everything smelled of ancient chemicals and saltwater and damp, and you were afraid to raise your voice above a whisper.

The ceiling was tiled with thousands of shimmering milky quartz pieces, which, according to our tour guide, have been identified by psychics as the substance that absorbs spiritual energy and leads to all the haunting. Whether this is true or not, I have no idea, but I can tell you that the place freaked me right the hell out. The guide played the ghost angle up a bit by suddenly stopping his spiel and saying "I thought I just heard something over there," but he really didn't need to, because it was more than spooky enough all on its own. I actually did hear a noise at one point - like a single, hollow clap coming from the far side of the room - but neither he nor anyone else commented on that one. G was nervous and stuck very close to me, but it didn't stop her from recording the whole thing on her flip cam; will have to see if I can upload it to YouTube later.










View from our room's porthole around midnight. The portholes actually opened (I stuck the camera through to take this photo) which seemed really dangerous given the number of drunk people on the ship. They must have lots of insurance.










The same view at dawn. The reason I was awake to take this photo was because I had woken up abruptly at about six a.m. At G's request, I had left a few lights on when we went to bed, and as I was lying there, trying to go back to sleep, all of them abruptly went out, plunging the room into near darkness. I waited, and after about five minutes, the lights came back on, and I got up and went to look out the porthole. The city lights looked so pretty through the soft blue-grey mist that I decided I needed a picture, and here it is. (No, I don't think ghosts turned off the lights. I think the rain and wind outside knocked something offline for a few minutes. It gave me a shock, though.)

Anyway, we checked out around eleven o'clock this morning, bought a few souvenirs in the shops on the Promenade Deck, and then came home. G says she had a great time and is glad she chose this for her birthday - sounds like a success to me!

Partying with the spirits

For the first time ever this year, G did not want a birthday party. Her birthdays have gotten smaller over the last couple of years, from big kid-style parties to outings and sleepovers with a few select friends, but not wanting a party at all at made me suspicious. I asked all sorts of carefully calculated questions, trying to determine if there was some deep motivation for this (trouble with friends was my first thought, but no), and at last I shrugged and accepted her explanation that she wanted an "educational trip" rather than a party.

We kicked around a couple of ideas, and the "educational trip" she chose was to spend the night on the RMS Queen Mary, widely regarded as the most haunted structure in America. P and I did the regular tour of the ship years ago, just after the Titanic movie came out, and I didn't see any ghosts then, although some of the service areas and the engine room felt creepy as hell. It will be interesting to see if anything turns up* during our stay tomorrow night. G, for her part, is planning to bring her video camera and capture ghosts on film -- she wants to take the official Haunted Tour, even though you're supposed to be over 12 to do it, but I suspect she'll change her mind once the sun goes down.

Her actual birthday is on the 26th (we're doing the ship thing this weekend because it's almost 50 percent cheaper for some reason), so we'll celebrate then with presents and dinner at her favorite Italian restaurant. She mentioned wanting to take cupcakes to school, too, so I'll have to e-mail her teacher and make sure it's okay. I just can't believe she's going to be 11. It sounds so much older than 10 somehow!

*P asked me several times if I believed in ghosts, the last time not long before he died, and I always said I didn't have enough evidence to believe or not believe. Sometimes I wonder if he's spent the last four years trying to prove it to me and is getting annoyed with my stubbornness.

Day trip

I've been meaning to write about our excursion to Santa Barbara on Wednesday. G had been on an overnight train trip before, as well as a shorter one, but she was three and a half the first time and six the second time, so she didn't remember either trip and was intrigued by the idea. Intrigued enough, in fact, that she was willing to forgo her preferred vacation schedule of sleeping in until 10 or 11 and get up at dawn to catch the train.













It was cold on the platform at 7:30 a.m.












Chilly mist and trees through the train window. See that bit of G's book in the lower right-hand corner? It won't be the last time you see it.










The ride to Santa Barbara takes just under four hours. For the last hour(ish), you're right beside the ocean.

We got off the train at about 11:30 in the morning and walked down to the waterfront, where we ate pizza and waited for the misty drizzle to stop. When it was over, we walked to the end of Stearns Wharf, admired the view, and watched a lone seal swimming in the ocean. On the sand, we also saw one of the more original approaches to panhandling I've ever encountered:










The sign propped against the table says "Just Plain Hungry" and the one below the donation bowl says "Make a Wish," inviting passersby to throw money off the pier. The creator of this diorama was about 10 yards away, working on an amazingly good sand sculpture of a mermaid. I gave him a dollar for creativity.

Add a caption

Chilly mist and trees through the train window. See that bit of Gillian's book in the lower right-hand corner? It won't be the last time you see it.

Next, we took the electric shuttle up to the top of State Street and walked down, stopping in various shops along the way. This photo was right outside Borders, where G used some of her Christmas money to buy the next three books in the series she was reading.













This was actually a bit of a problem, because all she wanted to do was read. Every time I turned around, she'd sat down somewhere and started reading again. We finally found a coffee shop and spent a long time there, having tea and cocoa and croissants, so she could get some reading in. They had a really cool machine that was roasting the coffee beans right out in the open, and I made her put down her book for two minutes to go and look at it. She wasn't impressed.

Eventually we made our way back to the train station to wait for the train home. The station was built in 1905 and had some interesting bits in it, including this random fireplace located in the women's restroom, which I imagine was probably in the original station and got built around during a renovation. There was a defunct iron radiator to the right of it, providing train travelers of the past with options for keeping warm.













We'd had a nonstop train on the way up, but coming home we had to change trains at Union Station in Los Angeles. G had finished her book and started the second one in the series at that point, and she spent our 45 minutes there leaning against a pillar, oblivious to the Art Deco architecture all around her, as she read on. I was exactly like this as a kid, so I empathize, but at the same time, I now know why my parents were always nagging me to "take your nose out of that book and look at [the Lincoln Memorial/the Empire State Building/those skydiving nuns]."

Anyway, it was a pleasant day, despite G being distracted most of the time. I think if we were to go again, I'd want to stay at a hotel - there are some nice-looking ones on State Street - and have more time to see some of the other sights, including the museums and the mission. G said she'd be up for that, so perhaps we'll try a weekend trip later in the year.

Home again

We're back from NYC! I'm too tired and have too much laundry staring me in the face to do a full recap right now, so here are a few highlights from our trip:

Worst smell: The homeless guy who had clearly crapped in his pants just before sitting down two seats behind me at the Delta baggage claim area.

Longest walk: 31 blocks from our hotel to my BIL's apartment in Chelsea.

Best $40 spent: The carriage ride G and I took through Central Park. Red and yellow leaves drifting serenely from the trees, the horse's hooves clip-clopping along -- it was like being inside a film about autumn in New York.

Most expensive cab ride: $18 to get from West 21st and Seventh to 92nd and Lexington.

Most postcard-like sight: The view from the picture windows on the third floor of the American Museum of Natural History.

Most fun had with G: Either the carriage ride or shopping on Fifth Avenue.

Most fun had without G: Seeing Waves at the Duke on 42nd.

Number of friends met up with: Three

Sight G wanted to see that we didn't get to: The Empire State Building

Cheapest meal: $6 for two slices of pizza and two sodas at one of the 2,948(ish) places named "Ray's Pizza."

Most expensive meal: $27 for a grilled cheese sandwich and kids' pasta from the Hilton New York room-service menu.

Most unappetizing restaurant name spotted: "Hot and Crusty"

Cutest dog: My BIL's eight-month-old Corgi puppy, Max. We spent last night at his place, and Max tried to sleep between me and G with his ginormous head next to ours on the pillows. Aww!

Worst "we're screwed" moment: Coming out of the Met at 7:30 at night and discovering that it was pouring rain and there was not a cab to be had anywhere.

Biggest triumph: Figuring out how to get back to our hotel on the bus instead.

Greatest regret: Not staying an extra day.

On our way

Yet another item to add to the ever-growing list titled Strange Things My Child Has Caused Me to Say:

"Stop tying your legs together and finish packing your suitcase!"

... Yeah, I'm not sure what she was doing either.

Anyway, as is no doubt apparent, G and I are getting ready to leave on a trip. She's old enough now to be helpful (when she's not busy lashing her limbs to each other) in that she can pack her own suitcase and carry-on bag. However, I still have to come in afterward and inspect her work to make sure she hasn't packed shorts for 40-degree weather or thrown in 10 shirts and no underwear.

She's also been known to try to pack things that are, shall we say, unnecessary. I feel for her -- when I was her age, we moved from Texas to California, and I whined and cried until my dad agreed to let me transport my papier-mâché Thanksgiving turkey craft all 1,560 miles in the hatchback of our car -- but I'm not letting her stuff her bag with random items until it's so heavy she can't carry it, either.

(I know. I am a mean, mean mother. So mean that I'm taking her on a thrilling trip to the world's greatest city, where she'll be ice-skating at Rockefeller Plaza, riding in a horse-drawn carriage through Central Park, and getting her own American Girl doll. Oh, the humanity!)

On another note, I don't know about anyone else, but every single time we go anywhere, I reach a point in the preparation process where it all seems like too much work and I wish we were just staying home. It doesn't matter how far we're going, how long we're staying or how much fun we're likely to have. We can be driving 90 minutes to spend the night at my mother's house or flying across the country for a week, and sometime in the last 48 hours before departure, I will still look around at the chaos and think Wah, I don't want to! I thought that at about eight o'clock last night and we're taking a red-eye flight this evening, so things are pretty much running par for the course. At least I'm consistent.

Over the hills and far away

What's that you say? Weren't G and I supposed to be on vacation last week? Well, we were, and here's the abbreviated report.

Saturday, Aug. 23

After an unplanned three-hour delay, courtesy of a dead car battery, my dad, G and I dropped the very unhappy cats off at their prison lovely holiday accommodations and hit the freeway. By three o'clock, we were at the iconic train-depot McDonalds in Barstow, which has expanded since I was last there in 1994 (!) to include an entire mini food court. There, we all ate, visited the restroom and bought gas, and within 45 minutes, we were back on the road and heading for Arizona.


This was somewhere between Kingman and Flagstaff. It was raining in the distance and the sunset turned everything purple and rose.

It took forever to get to Flagstaff, which was where we intended to stop for the night, and when we arrived it was long past dark. We got rooms at a Motel 6 and ate dinner, and then the altitude caught up with me -- Flagstaff is at 7,000 feet, and I felt like I was wearing concrete shoes. I'm embarrassed to admit what time I finally woke up and told G to turn off the laptop and go to sleep, so we'll just say it was late and leave it at that.

Sunday, Aug. 24

Quote of the day from my dad:

"Hurry up and get dressed! We have to get to Denny's before the Baptists do!"

I LOL'd.

We did beat the Baptists to Denny's, and after breakfast, we were back on the road. Here are some photos:


Now leaving Flagstaff, home of the only trees in Arizona.


The first sign you're entering New Mexico: an invitation to buy Indian souvenirs.


Red rock cliffs from far away.


And from close up.

We finally got to my grandmother's house in Albuquerque around 3 p.m., and then spent the rest of the day going out to dinner and watching the Olympic closing ceremonies on TV. Quiet, but nice.

Monday, Aug. 25

On this day, my dad, G and I went shopping in Old Town. I loved it there when I was G's age, and she enjoyed it too, picking out souvenirs for herself and presents for her cousin and three of her friends. After the shopping we went to the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science, where we watched the "Living Sea" IMAX movie and saw loads of fossils:





Tuesday, Aug. 26

Got up at 5 a.m. -- it was still dark outside, ouch -- and drove 200 miles to visit my great-uncle and aunt, who live in a little town called Portales. There's not a lot to see on the way to Portales, but here's a nice abandoned farmhouse for you:



There are similar houses everywhere you go in New Mexico, many of them almost completely ruined. Whenever I see one, I always wonder about the people who lived there, and what made them decide to leave. Were there too many bad growing seasons in a row? Did they hear of a better opportunity someplace else? Or could they just not bear the sound of the wind through the prairie grass any longer? How did they feel when they closed the door for the last time and drove away, never to return?

I know. I think too much.

Anyway, we arrived in one piece, spent a few hours having lunch and visiting, and then turned right around and drove another 200 miles back to Albuquerque. ("Well, I'm not going to do that again," announced my grandmother when we arrived. We all agreed with her.)

Wednesday, Aug. 27

Not much happened, as we were all still tired from the day before. We had lunch at a soup-and-salad place called Sweet Tomatoes, and my dad, G and I did a little more shopping and visited Borders, which, as you might expect, is exactly the same no matter where you are. Aside from that, I washed clothes, packed suitcases, and tried not to think about the next day.

Thursday, Aug. 28

We all got up at 5 a.m. (again ... sob) and my dad and grandmother dropped G and me off at the airport to catch our 7:35 flight home. To say that I was not sanguine about the prospect would be an understatement; "crawling out of my skin with nerves" might be a better description. But I'm a good actress when I want to be, and G had no idea that anything was going on. In fact, G thought that she was the nervous one and I was completely calm and cheerful. (You can just put my Oscar right over there on the mantelpiece, thanks.)

What ended up getting me through the flight, when I wasn't sneaking on my earphones to listen to a few minutes of my buddy "Edward"'s reassuring voice, was giving G a running commentary on everything I know about airplane travel: "And now the pilot's opening the flaps to slow us down ... and in a minute you'll feel a bump when the wheels touch the runway ... and now he's putting on the speed brakes so we can stop." I'm sure the lady next to us wanted to smother me with her airline-issue pillow, haha. All in all, G took the experience really well, and after we landed, remarked that it had been "like riding a big flying bus." ("Yep, nothing to it!" I said as my legs slowly stopped shaking.) However, she refused to let me take her picture while we were on the plane, so her first flight will forever be comemmorated by photos of the back of her head, or her hand held up in the classic "no paparazzi" pose. I don't know what was up with that, but I was too glad we were both alive to care very much.

And that was our Big Exciting Adventure in the American Southwest. Next on the travel schedule: New York in November. Woohoooo!

Spinning

The last seven days in a nutshell:

Thursday
Thanksgiving. Early-morning church, followed by cemetery visit, followed by dinner at two separate houses.

Friday
After morning of frantic packing, leave on Royal Caribbean cruise to Mexico.

Saturday/Sunday
Cruise. Eat lots. Hang out in stateroom to avoid being hit on by drunk men. Occasionally slip outside to enjoy ocean breeze.

Monday
Come home, have computer/network problems. Do not unpack.

Tuesday
Drive to San Diego for workshop, drive back. Still do not unpack.

Wednesday
Try to catch up at work. Finally unpack. Start laundry.

Thursday
Continue trying to catch up. Go to early holiday party. Eat lots. Put Wednesday's laundry in dryer. Realize that Christmas is in 25 days. Panic.

Someone wake me up when it's January.