Overheard at dinner the other night…a conversation between a beautiful blonde woman and a strikingly handsome young man:
Man: “I was reading in the newspaper yesterday that two Brazilian soldiers were killed in Iraq.”
Woman: (sobbing) “That’s so awful!! How many is IN a brazillion?”
Below is a letter from my sister, Diane.
January 2006
Dear Family and Friends,
Happy New Year to all of you! 2005 was a year that will not soon be forgotten. You may recall that last spring I became a volunteer area representative for a ministry called Aids Orphans and Street Children (AOSC). It was with Connie’s encouragement (if being called “Jonah” can be labeled as encouragement!) that I followed through on the opportunity. Never in a million years would I have imagined that I would be writing to you several months later to request that you consider making a donation towards a memorial for my sister-in-law Connie. WOW!
Connie had a heart for missions. She came to be part of our family through Teen Missions which is an affiliated ministry of AOSC. Connie met my sister Linda when they were 16 years old on a mission trip to the Philippines and China. At our bible study the Monday prior to her death she expressed to our group that she would like to be involved in overseas missions again someday. She and the kids spent several Easter vacations in Mexico ministering with one of her home churches, Hope Chapel.
Through AOSC we have an opportunity to raise money for a memorial Orphans Rescue Unit, church or church and parsonage. What a blessing it would be to raise enough money ($17,640.00) for all three. Here are the numbers:
· Orphan Rescue Unit $10,640.00
· Church $ 5,000.00
· Church & Parsonage $ 7,000.00
The goal is a big one, but nothing is impossible for our God!
Enclosed is a brochure regarding the AOSC ministry in Sub-Saharan Africa, a donation coupon and a self addressed stamped envelop. To make a contribution to the “Connie’s Heart” memorial please use the enclosed coupon. Make checks payable to AIDS Orphans and Street Children. Contributions are tax deductible.
If you would like to learn more about this ministry or to make arrangements for a presentation to your church, youth group, small group, women’s group, home school group, etc. please contact me.
Your continued prayers for Phil, Richard, Alaska, Jonathon and Avalon and all of the Christen and Norris families are appreciated.
Obviously there is not a enclosed brochure, coupon, or SASE. But direct donations can be sent to the following address (please note “Special Project #10 – Connie’s Heart” on your check as well):
AOSC
Special Projects #10 – Connie’s Heart
865 East Hall Road
Merritt Island, FL 32953
If you would like more information and don’t know how to contact the Norris and Christen families, please leave a comment letting me know what info you’d like. Your e-mail address will be provided to me, but does not show up in the comment itself. Or click below to be directed to the ministry’s web site.
Thirty six hours, four states (CO, WY, SD, NE), three national monuments, two and a half tanks of gas, one stiff body, and the endless beauty of God’s creation later, I am home again.
Yesterday morning we discovered that we had stumbled upon one of the only two hotels open in the Mount Rushmore area. So we were lucky to have even found a place to stay. In fact, pretty much EVERYTHING was closed “for the season”. We got up early and were at Mount Rushmore by 8:30. The sun was shining brightly, and although a brutally cold wind was blowing, it was the perfect time to see the monument. We were nearly alone there. Because we arrived so early, the morning sun gave us a nearly shadowless presentation of the faces of these four past presidents. A fascinating fact learned was that the sculptor (Gutzon Borglum) had not planned to use much dynamite in his creation. But his crew got so skilled at blasting, he ended up using dynamite for 90% of the carving!
I imagine that during the summer, the “Avenue of Flags” is crammed with tourists. I had to wait for ONE man to clear the area to take this picture. I’m not saying that the dead of winter is the best time to see Mount Rushmore, but we sure got lucky with this jewel-toned day.
All the park personnel assured us that the weather was unseasonably nice and warm. I don’t know, people. I always envisioned that this part of the world I now live in was buried in snow for half the year. We didn’t even hit any ice on the roads. So, I guess that means we picked just the right weekend. Saturday we only ran into a family of four visiting Devil’s Tower, and yesterday Mount Rushmore was nearly deserted as well. There was something about the desolate nature of these destinations that added to the beauty. I’m not saying the dead of winter is the best time to visit Devil’s Tower and Mount Rushmore, only that it turned out to be the best time for us!
On our way out of the Black Hills, we drove past the new Crazy Horse monument. It hasn’t been completed. The face is recognizable, and the general form of the statue has been roughed in, but they’ve got a long ways to go. And frankly, I don’t have the highest of hopes for a positive outcome! If you are unfamiliar with what they are doing out there, they are carving a humonstrous figure of the Lakota chief, Crazy Horse, into the mountain. So far, they have done the face and roughed out the general shape of him, arm pointing straight out, riding a horse. I am very pessimistic about their ability to get that arm out there without blowing it off, or without the weight of it causing it to break off. Sorry, no pictures. Camera difficulties struck again!
On this trip we got to see herds of prong horn antelope, golden eagles, thousands of scurrying prairie dogs (they are soooo cute!), and white tailed deer. We’d hoped to see “tatanka”, but didn’t.
We crossed over the twisting Belle Fourche river about fifty times. We drove through a dust storm (weird!). We drove through myriad little towns with populations of hundreds or thousands that look like movie sets from many decades ago .
There is still so much more “up there” to see that we are planning a return trip when the weather is a bit warmer. There’s lots of caves, and there’s the badlands, and there’s still those tatanka!
But before I return to the Black Hills, there’s a trip to Amish country in Pennsylvania in my immediate future.
In my struggle to figure out how to get an archives and a list of categories incorporated into my blog, I found this horrifying page of explanations on how to customize my page. It appeared that I was going to have to WRITE CODE! I despaired! Write code? Oh, why didn’t I investigate better before signing up with wordpress??? I did come across a “feedback” button, but it was pretty clear that if the explanation for whatever question I was asking was available anywhere on wordpress.com, I shouldn’t expect a reply. And since OBVIOUSLY the answers existed there, I wasn’t particularly hopeful. But I shot off a “Pleeeeeze help me” e-mail anyway. Fifteen minutes later, some nice person responded and explained that I had “picked the one theme available that didn’t support archives”. So, I picked a new theme, and voila!, I have archives and categories listed! No work involved whatsoever! I clicked once and the whole page miraculously evolved into a much more friendly entity. And I like the new look! Check back later. Roadtrip Roundup is coming soon…..
The night my sister-in-law Connie died, her husband (my brother) wrote this poem…
Dance With Me
Dance with me oh maiden fair
Come dance with me awhile
I’ll show you love and tenderness
I’ll give you soft sweet kisses
Dance with me my lady true
Come dance with me forever
I’ll dance with you oh laddy fair
I’ll dance with you awhile
I’ll show you love and tenderness
I’ll give you soft sweet kisses
I’ll dance with you my husband true
I’ll dance with you forever
Dance with us oh darlings fair
Come dance with us awhile
We’ll show you love and tenderness
We’ll give you soft sweet kisses
Dance with us our children fair
Come dance with us forever
Dance with me my husband true
Come up and dance awhile
I’ll show you love and tenderness
I’ll give you soft sweet kisses
Dance with me oh laddy fair
Come up and dance forever
Alas alas
My lady true
I’m dancing still down here
But soon enough this dance will end
And then and then
I’ll dance with you my lady true
I’ll dance with you awhile
I’ll show you love and tenderness
I’ll give you soft sweet kisses
I’ll dance with you oh maiden fair
I’ll dance with you forever
Philip Norris
July 29th 2005
Six months ago, today
January 29th. Six months ago today my best friend and sister-in-law, Connie, died. She laid down for her usual afternoon nap, and didn’t wake up. I was at work in the emergency department at my hospital and one of my own patients was in critical condition. My sister Diane called and told me that Connie had been taken to the hospital and that she was “unresponsive”. Connie was a healthy 39 year old. There are very few things that cause “unresponsiveness” in healthy 39 year old. And I’m in healthcare. I’m an emergency room nurse. I recognize paramedicspeak when I hear it. I knew she was dead when I heard that. But in the grueling hour it took to go the 15 miles from the hospital where I was working to the hospital where Connie was, I tried to tell myself that there COULD be something that caused her to temporarily lose consciousness, and that when I walked into her room, she’d be sitting there, grinning and apologizing for causing such a stir. Pollyanna. When I walked into the room, she was lying there, peaceful and beautiful, still intubated but not breathing, and already getting cold. And my brother was at her side. It was a terrible moment which is seared into my memory. Hardly a day goes by where my mind does not drift to that scene. I imagine that as long as I live, seeing her there will be a part of my day. My life, all our lives, has been fundamentally changed with the loss of her. I didn’t ask then, and I haven’t asked yet. It doesn’t matter “why”, it only matters “that”. I worry that I will forget how much I love her. I worry that I will stop missing her.
But on days like today, when the tears come just as easily as they always have, I know I haven’t forgotten how much I love her, and I haven’t stopped missing her.
This morning, my cousin Julie and I hit the road. We headed north up I-25 until we reached Wyoming.
And after a brief photo opportunity continued to drive until we reached the Devil’s Tower. This is the monolith from the movie “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” (which I have not seen). Apparently, this is the very first National Monument and it was named such by President Teddy Roosevelt in 1906.
We watched the sun set over the tower. Quite spectacular. This oddity is out in the middle of NOWHERE. Well, pretty much everything in Wyoming is in the middle of nowhere, truth be known! Anyway, we had also planned to try to see Mount Rushmore, too, on this little adventure! So, since South Dakota wasn’t too much farther down the road, we decided to head there, eat dinner and find a hotel. That way we’d be just that much closer to Mount Rushmore come morning. We stopped in Belle Fourche (french, but “misprounced” by the locals as “Bella Foosh” - I guess it’s their town and they can pronounce however they want, eh?) at a local steakhouse and grill for sirloin tips. Never had those before. Yum! After dinner, since it was still early (7:00), we decided to get even closer to Mount Rushmore. We stopped at a very charming looking local motel called “Big Sky”. The big OPEN sign in green and red was apparently misleading! There was a smaller sign on the door telling any would be lodgers to “call ‘this number’ if you need a room.” So I did! And although there was only ONE car in the parking lot, the manager said he only had one room left available, but couldn’t get there for an hour. Nah, we decided to head farther down the road.
Hey, does anyone out there know just how tough it is to find anything, inlcuding hotels/motels/other lodging facilties open at 8:00 at night, in the dead of winter, in the middle of the Black Hills of South Dakota??? Ummm, pretty hard. But we found a place after not too protracted a search and are safely ensconced for the night. The faces open at 8:00 tomorrow morning, and I could just spit I’m so excited that I’m here and they are just two miles down the road.
Oh, we decided we wanted Dairy Queen. I thought they might be closed since everything else already was. Not only was it closed for the night, but per the hotel manager, it is “closed for the season!”. I guess in my heart I am just too Californian. I don’t think about things like “seasons” and “weather” when planning adventures. The good news is, the weather has been fantastic and we should have Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse to ourselves!
And how amazing is technology? I am sitting here on a hotel bed, with my laptop on my lap, not plugged in to anything at all, and yet I am on the internet and posting an entry in my blog.
If you haven’t done so already, you need to register your cell phone on the national “do not call” list.
You have until February 1st before your number is released and you are fair game for telemarketers. And they’ll eat up YOUR minutes by calling you. I registered my home phone shortly after the “do not call” program was started, and I had a dramatic decrease in the amount of phone spamming I got. So the program works.
If you haven’t registered your home phone number, make sure you do that, too.
Sorry to bore you all with tales of my kitchen remodel, but it’s just so exciting! For me, anyway. 
We (well, Rylie, Demetrius, and Herman mostly) accomplished MUCH today. All of the cabinets are roughed in. The old light fixture is GONE! New can lights now grace my ceiling. And I will get the pendant lights over the bar that I so very much wanted. The sink and dishwasher were relocated and replumbed. They also pulled water to the fridge so I can run my ice maker! And I got an emergency shut off valve for the kitchen water which I apparently was lacking! I won’t bug you with any more updates until it’s DONE! My homework now is to scrape the popcorn off the ceiling. YES! I should have done it before the cabinets went in, but I didn’t know that it was feasible (due to that pesky radiant heat ceiling) until the electrician figured out the system yesterday. He gave me the go-ahead! My cousin, Julie, has graciously offered to come over tomorrow to help me so that Rylie can put up crown molding on Saturday while Julie and I go to the DEVIL’S TOWER!!! A Close Encounters Roadtrip!
And because I have things to “talk” about that are completely separate from this project, I decided to post twice…
Read on…
I am a dreamer. I dream in many ways. The kind of dreamer I’m referring to in THIS posting however, is the nighttime asleep kind of dreamer. I know this because I often remember these dreams. So, last night I dreamed about my sister-in-law Connie. On the 29th of this month it will be six months since she passed away and she’s been on my mind even more than usual. Last night she came to hang out with me as I slept. We went on an adventure in this dream. We found our way into what seemed like a soundstage, but looked like a Frank Lloyd Wright house (we both adore/adored his architecture). She kept telling me that she didn’t have much time to spend with me, but I kept urging her to stay. The longer she stayed, the more reality fell apart. My cell phone melted in my hand. It was like that chemical commercial where all the stuff made of plastic slowly disappeared. Walls crumbled away to dust revealing even more interesting things to see. We kept trying to get back to home, but each time we tried, the reality of home had changed. Melted or crumbled. So we just kept going further in. As walls fell away, we entered the new spaces revealed. New, architecturally fascinating spaces. And we laughed and laughed. It was a wonderful dream. I don’t remember how it ended. But I woke up very happy.
Today was the big day! Kitchen demo and cabinet delivery. I’m spending way too much money remodeling “my crummy little condo”, but I’m sure having fun doing it. This condo will be the carrot that I dangle in front of someone in my family to get them to move out here to Colorado, too! So it has to look really nice, right? Or else what kind of carrot would it be???
So Rylie, who I met on the way down to Pine (see yesterday’s post), is doing the installation and letting me help. The plan is “learn how to do cabinet installation so I can do it myself next time”. He’s a professional cabinet guy and professionals don’t usually let the ignorant in on the project. So I am lucky!
Out with the old, in with the new! My fridge is in my living room!
All the stuff from my cabinets is in my spare bedroom!
Had an electrician out to evaulate expanding my electrical capabilities and lighting options. My condo has what are called “radiant heat ceilings”. Which means you can’t just go drilling holes and installing can lights! And my current kitchen light will be in the way of the new over the fridge cabinets, so something MUST be done. But we think we have a plan so that I can have a few pot lights and even hang pendant lights over my new bar. We’ll see. They (Rylie, and the two electricals guys) are all in what used to be the kitchen speaking a language I really don’t understand. And they’ve talked me into believing that I can strip the popcorn ceilings myself, too. So that’s what I’m doing later today. I hope there aren’t any surprises.
THIS, however, was a bit of a surprise. I told them I’d be putting slate up as a backsplash, so if they needed to make holes, they could. This wasn’t exatly what I had in mind when I said “holes”.
Once the kitchen is done, I get to finish laying my wood floors and start working on the powder room. I’ve heard that putting a new toilet in can be tricky with the beeswax ring. Anyone have any words of advice for this??
How can an insect with such a sweet name be anything but sweet? And they’re kinda cute, too!
But I never saw them all sweet and cute sitting in a bed of flowers. I only saw them like this:
And they were usually in flight, mating. And they were in flight, mating, by the hundreds of thousands. I was introduced to the “love bug” when I spent a week down in Pine, Louisiana with my church after Hurricane Katrina hit. These bugs were everywhere. Clouds of them. They actually affected visibility they were so thick. And they were attracted to white surfaces. Here’s what we dealt with:
The locals said there’s two seasons for these bugs. And we were there in the middle of one of them. Only they (the locals) said they’d never seen them this bad. The upside? They didn’t sting or bite.
Don’t look for Pine on the map. It rarely makes it. But here’s where it is:
(In the bigger circle at the top. The large body of water pictured is Lake Pontchartrain. Sorry about the poor quality!)
Just how do you get there? You follow the signs:
Perhaps in the future I’ll share more about what we did while we were there, but love bugs are on my mind today.
…
While there is something slightly disturbing about Bruce Jenner in purple crushed velvet bell bottoms, you gotta give props to this way past his prime decathlete who is willing to strap on a pair of ice skates and twirl an equally past her prime Tai Babilonia across the ice! Skating with Celebrities is a car wreck of a TV show with an odd appeal. I thought the “stars” who signed up for “Dancing With the Stars” were brave! But they aren’t on skates! One of the skating “judges” is an old coot named John Nicks, who brilliantly points out the fact that Bruce and Tai aren’t exactly in their prime anymore. I felt like shouting at him…..”and why do you think YOU are here? At least I know who THEY are!”
The reason I watched this show is because Jillian Barberi is on it. I’m used to watching her be fresh on FOX’s Good Day LA, not doing camel and layback spins. She must have skated when she was younger. Not a wobble in those ankles. Besides Jillian and Bruce, the other “celebrities” brave enough to put on the skates are Dave Coulier, Deborah Gibson, Todd Bridges, and Kristy Swanson. While I tuned in for Jillian, the big surprise was the delightfully engaging performance put in by Todd Bridges (Diff’rent Strokes)! He was great! I watched outtakes from last week’s performance where he could barely stay up, and tonight he was doing synchronized foot work. Well, he got voted off the ice anyway, so I won’t be watching the show anymore. Not even for Jillian.
I just watched a GREAT movie. Starring one of my favorite actors. “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” with Jim Carrey. If you haven’t seen it and are planning to, stop reading, cuz I’m going to wreck it for you.
“Today is a holiday invented by greeting card companies to make people feel like crap” (sorry, Doris). This was said in the opening scene by Joel Barrish, the main character, about it being Valentine’s Day. I agree with him. All of my significant boy-girl relationships have fallen in between Februarys. There’s one man whom I’ve known for a very long time who often sends me lovely bouquets on the day, but it is never with the promise of things still to come. He does so out of love for me, but it’s not loooooove, you know what I mean? So I’ve never had a really “satisfying” Valentine’s Day.
“Eternal Sunshine” is an allegory of sorts for what most of us do to one degree or another after a relationship ends. We try to erase the memory. Some people collect photos, notes and mementos and pack them away so they are out of sight. Some people collect that same box of stuff and burn it or otherwise dispose of it. Some people immediately jump into another relationship. Some people drink, or take drugs. Some even commit suicide. But it’s all in an effort to erase the memories that now seem to mock us and cause us pain.
Joel finds out that his girlfriend, Clementine, has erased him from her memory. He decides to undergo the same procedure. Most of the movie follows his thought processes during the procedure. The procedure starts erasing from the end of the relationship and then erases backwards in time. At one point in the process, he starts to experience the memories of when things were wonderful, and he has second thoughts about wiping her out. He attempts to hide his memories of Clementine in other areas of his mind where the procedure can’t find them. But ultimately, he fails, and all memory of Clementine is finally erased. However, he has a compulsion to return to the place where he first met her (planted there, just before the last shred of memory is erased when Clementine whispers “Meet me in Montauk”).
The morning after his erasure, while on his way to work, at the last moment, he runs from his train and jumps on a differnt train, the one headed for Montauk. And there on the beach, in the middle of winter, he meets this amazing girl, and they fall for each other. The girl is Clementine. It’s not smooth sailing as a disgruntled former patient and worker at Lacuna (the erasure clinic) finds out she was erased, and returned files and tapes to other clients. Both Clementine and Joel receive their files and end up hearing the awful things each said about the other. But they have started anew already, and they take the chance that they can get it right the second time around.
A simplistic message to be taken away from this movie as that through the process of loss we find out how we truly feel. While the movie is a little strange, and at times a bit hard to follow, the director used the frequent changes of hair color that Clementine underwent to help you follow the timeline. I don’t know what real critics said about this movie, but I give it a 9.
Although I’m not giving it “Unpaid product endorsement for the day” status, recently Static Guard has been elevated to life necessity status. I have a cat. You’ll hear lots more about her I’m sure, if this blogging thing holds my attention. Okay, so my cat is named Mew Ling. Princess Mew Ling Calico Star to be exact. She is a dilute calico Maine Coon mix and has this fabulous long coat. Which, in this particularly dry climate, gets very staticy(?), staticky(?), statickey(?), full of static electricity. I touch her and she crackles and sparks. It’s disturbing to me, I can’t imagine how it makes HER feel. Lately she has started to recoil when she sees my hand heading for her, so I thought I’d best do something about it. The stuff smells terrible, but works like a charm! Spray a little Static Guard on your hands and pet cat thoroughly. Repeat as needed. Don’t look for these instructions on the can. I don’t think it falls under “normal household use”.
Hi Mew!!! 
Isn’t she just presh???
And just one more! My house has radiant heat in the ceilings, which by default, means radiant heat in the floors upstairs! Mew can often be found lounging in one of these “hot spots”!
http://mathforum.org/alejandre/applet.mandlebrot.html
A totally cool website. If you like math, or art, or color, or thinking about the infinite smallness of things, you’ll like this! You can play with this fractal.
http://images.google.com/images?q=fractals&ie=ISO-8859-1&hl=en
Amazing fractal pictures.
When I was 18, I took off for college. Although I’d traveled much by then and had seen snow, I’d never actually SEEN IT snow. (It just doesn’t snow that often in El Segundo, California, and we weren’t a “winter sports” kind of family). Well, the college I took off for was in upstate New York, about an hour south of Buffalo. Houghton College, in Houghton, New York. On a cold December night, I believe it was around 11:30, I saw my first snowflakes come out of the sky. I was so excited that I ran down the hallway of my dorm wing knocking on doors, waking everybody up who wasn’t still awake to “look at the snow!” I was met with groans and sighs of dismay. Apparently once it started to snow, it didn’t stop for five months. What did I know? I was the only kid from west of the Mississippi at that school! But, I didn’t let that stop me from enjoying the thrill of my first snowstorm. Eventually I was able to get many of my dorm mates to don bathing suits and go outside to play! This is us, in snow boots, winter coats, and bathing suits, in the dark, in the snow….They were game, but didn’t understand why I was I was so excited!
Just to give credit to those who were brave, although they’ll probably never see this, that’s Sue Budz (Blue Sudz), Linda Roberts (Bob), Patty Hall (Pete), Me (Lou), Mary Durling (she never really got a good nickname), and Ramona Ranalli (Mo). I think they all have new last names now, so sorry not to give the most accurate credit! Thanks girls, for humoring the wierd chick from California.
Which brings me to today. It started to snow at about noon, and after six hours, we’ve got about two inches of accumulation. And it’s still snowing. Each time it snows here, it makes me happy! It’s just so darn beautiful. And speaking of beautiful, on my way home from my job interview this morning I drove past the Garden of the Gods. A huge deer buck ran across the road in front of me and leaped over a six foot wall into someone’s yard. I slowed to watch. He just looked at me. I was able to count 10 points on his huge rack of antlers. But my digital camera is out of commission, and I missed an amazing photo opportunity.
And in the spring, back in 1984 in Houghton, the campus was “jolted awake” by a 3.8 earthquake, which of course, I didn’t even feel. (It’s got to be a 6.0 to wake me up). That day, those girls were as excited about their first earthquake as I was about my first snow.
For my 40th birthday (which unfortunately falls smack dab between Christmas and New Year’s), my sisters (Diane, Liz, and Whitney), along with my sister-in-law (Connie), and friend (Donna) decided to surprise me, in June, with my 40th bash. They tried to keep it a big secret, but I received valuable information as to the nature of the surprise in an e-mail that was forwarded to me. So I knew we were going to Catalina.
I’ll skip over the night on the Queen Mary, the 911 call and trip in the ambulance to the emergency department the next morning (I’ll share THIS story at a later date), and the limo ride to the private dock. I’ll pick up the story there.
SOOO, I was actually surprised to learn that we would be taking a leisurely cruise over to Catalina in a private boat piloted by a friend of my sister Whitney’s. She’d had her captain’s license for decades and was very familiar with the waters between Newport and Catalina. We were instructed to be there by 3:00 or we wouldn’t be able to make it over before dark. We got there at 2:59 (after nagging doctors, nurses, and anyone who would listen to us to get us out of the hospital). And we loaded all our bags onto the spacious boat. “Bags” included too many overstuffed suitcases, and grocery bags filled with fruit, cheese, champagne, noshes, etc. Lots and lots of bags. We placed them on the bed in the bedroom suite in the prow of the boat and excitedly sat down in chairs and on benches up on deck looking forward to a wine and cheese “reception”. And we were instructed by the captain “make sure you have everything you think you’re gonna need out of those bags, cause once were out in open water, you can’t go down there again.”
Our delight was palpable as we slowly worked our way to open water. And that’s when the trouble started. Well, unless you count all the trouble we’d had up to THIS point, but again, that’s a story for a later date. The swells were a little too big for us to do much more than sit. There’d be no crystal glasses filled with bubbly until we reached our destination. But we all laughed and talked, and the captain and her co-captain passed around Nacho Cheese Doritos. This detail serves no purpose except to show you the relaxed state they were in.
And then the first light spray came over the prow. Lots of giggles, and a comment by the captain that she probably should have snapped the plastic windows and windshields on. BUT she’d wanted us to enjoy the view, as it was an unarguably lovely day. The handheld GPS device showed that we were right on track and headed straight for the island. The captain mentioned that she wished she’d “replaced the batteries because” she “wasn’t sure how old they were”. Then she reached over and tapped the onboard GPS and said “because this one’s not working at all”. And she instructed us to turn the GPS off to “save the batteries”. Are you getting an idea of where this is going?
By now the swells have grown significantly and the water is crashing into the boat with a bit of ferocity. Seeing that things were deteriorating rapidly, Liz wants to know how a mayday call is made. “I can’t pilot this boat AND make a distress call at the same time!” was the angry reply. ”And besides, the radio isn’t working either”. So we all check our cells to see if anyone has reception, “just in case”. Well, of course we don’t, we’re out in the middle of the ocean. We are starting to see that the captain is becoming increasingly nervous. I ask the “co-captain” (turns out she’s not really anything except a friend who has been on the boat a couple of times before) where the life jackets are, cause we need to put them on. The boat is breaching out of the water and slamming down and we are taking waves from the side as well. So the “co-captain” tells us they are under the bench in the back of the boat. “NO. They’re not!” said the captain sternly. “They are under the mattress of the bed.” We all quickly did the math. Life vests are under the mattress, under 1,357 pounds of girl baggage, below decks, where we aren’t allowed, and wouldn’t go ANYWAY because we’d probably be killed by head injury! Great.
So what did “she” say next? “I hope you can all swim.” I suppose this would be a good time to mention that my sister-in-law Connie was so seasick (no vomiting thank God) at this point that she would have been green had the deep gray color not been masking it. So, she wouldn’t be swimming if she got thrown in the drink. My sisters were hanging on to her so that she wouldn’t be tossed over since she couldn’t hold on.
Okay, so now I’m starting to formulate a plan to make sure that we were all going to stay alive. (Tell everyone to kick their shoes off. Tell everyone to take their jeans off and blow them up and turn them into flotation devices. Assign Whitney custody of Connie since she’s the strongest swimmer. Tell everyone to try to grab a buddy so that no one is by themselves….) Okay, NOW the captain just said “I wonder if we’re past the point of no return.” HUH???? So, to determine if we WERE in fact beyond the point of no return, we were allowed to turn on the GPS to see if we were more than 13 miles into our journey. Well, of course, because it was a handheld device, and because we were being thrown about the ocean like so much flotsam and jetsam, it couldn’t triangulate, and therefore, was completely useless. (Later Whitney tells us that, while I am formulating a SURVIVAL PLAN, she is quietly singing the theme from “Gilligan’s Island”!) By now I have found (empty, mind you) red plastic fuel containers and a length of rope, so I was feeling like just maybe we would be able to float and stay together if we should end up in the water. But then I got in trouble for having the cabinet open. I mention that the fuel containers were empty, because it was at about this time that the captain said THIS: “we’re using alot of fuel fighting these waves. I hope we don’t run out.” Why couldn’t she just keep her mouth shut??
Oh, did I mention that our friend Donna, who was up in the front with me and the “crew”, and who was just a couple of hours ago discharged from the emergency department after a cardiac emergency, let go of the railing she was clinging to just brush the salt water out of her eyes at the precise moment when we hit a wave? No, I didn’t. Well, she was literally launched into the air, and we all watched helplessly as she was vaulted backwards and was headed for a swim. Fortunately, she landed on the deck (inches from the back of the boat and the propellers) with a sickening thud and was immediately grabbed by all unused hands. By now, we are all soaked to the skin. We had temporarily lost one of the engines when it was lifted out of the water. When THAT happened, the captain said “I hope I can get it started before another wave hits us”. She did, but when the next wave hit us she said “one more of those and we’re going to capsize.” Why can’t she just keep her mouth shut???
And I realize, with just a little bit of horror, that every woman and mother in this generation of my family was on that boat. Now Liz has again joined me up in the front and we have been assigned the task of “watching for rogue waves”. Like we KNOW what rogue waves are. Of course we assumed, they were bad. And we were to watch for other ships. We thought it was to make sure we didn’t hit them. Turns out the captain wanted us to find one so that they could see if we went over or down, or whatever you call it when a ship sinks. Good thing it wasn’t whale migration season, cuz I’m pretty sure we would have hit one.
So, it’s about this time that we think we see the island on the horizon, the sea seems to have calmed somewhat, and the GPS triangulates us and we’re still seven miles out. The trip has now taken twice as long as it should have and it’s getting dark. But I’m thinking “I can swim seven miles”. Those last seven miles still took about an hour to traverse, but at least we could see land. Once we got within about 2 miles, the seas, though still fierce, were no longer frightening, and we knew we were going to have to survive, that we’d be okay. We limped into Avalon harbor. The captain asked for the “spriest” one of us to help pull the boat to the dock and tie it off. We all kind of laughed, because the “spriest” of us, was currently in a state of shock and lying on the deck. I couldn’t believe how fast Liz was up and leaping from the boat to the dock and grabbing ropes and hauling the boat in and tying things off! We unloaded that boat in about 30 seconds flat and dragged all those bags up onto the pier where we planted Connie on a bench in the sun (she was ice cold, too cold even to shiver). And we flopped down and started to nervously laugh. We’d made it.
Back – Donna, Whitney, Connie, Diane Front – Lou (me), Liz
For the trip back, we took the Catalina Express catamaran. The sea was like glass, and we could have balanced chairs on our noses the trip was so smooth. By now we were thinking “maybe it wasn’t as bad as we think it was”. But a number of the cat passengers who had been on the Express heading over to the island at the same time WE were in the middle of the perfect storm, told us how bad it was for them, too. So, we’re convinced. It was bad. But we survived.
On January 29th, it will have been six months since I’ve officially worked. And it will be approximately five months since I moved from the L.A. area to Colorado Springs. So, I am thinking it’s time to find a new job. Well, find a job, period. I have taken some time to enjoy my new surroundings: trips to the Garden of the Gods, Helen Hunt Falls, the Royal Gorge, Buena Vista, the Van Briggle pottery factory, Wilkerson Pass, and the like. I’d talk about how gorgeous it is here, and how the weather is amazing, and how the sky is humongous, and how the clouds put on an amazing show just about every day, and how the sunrises and sunsets are BRILLIANT, but then you might want to move here, and the people here think it’s too crowded already. And I’ll just be in trouble with my new “neighbors”. So I won’t tell you all those things.
I had thought that I could enjoy retirement for the rest of my life, but my dad thought the same thing, and he returned to work three or four times after officially retiring. And I am my father’s daughter, to be sure. So, I am trolling the internet looking for something to fill a few days and put some coin in my pocket. I have an appointment for an interview on Thursday morning. Woo Hoo. I’ll let you know how it goes.
