Immeasurably More

 When I lived in England, I learned the saying - Start as you mean to go on . I thought about this as the hotel manager explained to me that he was calling because I had left my journal in the hotel room but he would be able to have it shipped back to me if I could provide a pre-paid shipping label. This was the second distressing phone call before lunch.   The first distressing phone call was to say that due to high winds expected across Lake Michigan, our ferry to Milwaukee was cancelled. I really like ferries and I had been looking forward to the ferry across Lake Michigan for weeks. We stopped at Panera for lunch and to discuss the situation. My lunch was a disappointing sandwich. And then there was a lot of highway south of Lake Michigan and around Chicago.  And Spotify kept slipping weird mellow folk music into my upbeat driving playlist. And then about 20 miles before Oconomowoc, the sky did this, and I think we will consider this the new start of the trip.

2:45 Bangor Airport, Maine A journey of a thousand miles begins with packing. I like to make packing lists so that I can check that I have all the things I think I am going to want on a trip. I didn't do that this time. Mistake. But years ago when I was stressed about packing for a trip, an acquaintance observed.... "You're not going to a third world country." And I try to remember that now. There's very little I need that can't be replaced at a Walmart or a National Park gift shop.  Which is why I was so proud of myself when I double checked my bag at the airport and had all the important stuff.... Passport. Wallet. Laptop. Laptop charger. Phone. Phone charger. And then I was early enough there was no line at security.  And as I was putting my shoes back on, I remembered my earbuds.  I have sincerely sworn to be available for work calls throughout my trip. I must have my earbuds!! My generous neighbor and housesitter agreed to find them and bring them to me. ...

 Dear Reader, Several years ago, my local library stopped collecting overdue fines.  This was good for me, but a loss of income for them.  From me, specifically.  It's not that I never bring my books back..... it's just that I tend to bring them back after I get notified about the cost of book replacement.  And then consider the library fines a donation to a good cause. Anyway, no more library overdue fines in this town.  And no caps on how many books you can borrow either.  So, I borrowed all the books on the US. National Parks that I could find.  Ok.  Maybe not all.  But enough so that the librarian who scanned my card asked "Are you planning a trip?"  I even borrowed the book with the National Park cross stitch patterns, which is very clever but also has very little value for trip planning. But, Yes, Madame Librarian!  I *am* planning a trip! I have invited myself along on my parents' cross-country trek to see the presidents...

Dear Reader, I have received three Christmas cards, so far this year.  There seems to be a theme. For me, 2018 has definitely not been a year characterized by joy.  Disappointment, frustration, anxiety.  There's a reason that people don't put those words on Christmas cards. Years ago when I was living in England, I used to joke about the freedom of having no house, no car, no kids and no debt.  Now I'm a single "mother" of two (dogs) with a car, a tractor, a house, (read: mortgage) and a very tall stack of consumer credit cards, all located in a place that is cold, has ridiculously high taxes and is a hassle to travel to and from.  In summary: through a series of well-meaning life choices, made for good reasons, I find myself with a life I never wanted. So I've made it through Denial, I've given up on Bargaining and now I'm working through Anger and Depression so I can make progress on Acceptance: I'm going to be in Maine for a while....

Dear Reader, LandLady likes to encourage me by saying "I hope you're writing about this." At least, I'm pretty sure it's meant as encouragement.  It might be private hopes that if I write the story well enough, I can sell the movie rights and she can demand a cut. After all, the whole plan to buy a house in Bangor and move Dog in with my friends and their three boys (7 and younger) was hatched under her roof. However, as yet, the whole situation seems very unreal.  It took 3 months from offer to closing.  I signed a lot of papers and took possession of a lot of keys. And then the plumber showed up and there was a lot of banging.  And I extended my lease at LandLady's in hopes that plumbing and heating issues could be resolved before I moved in. And this house is in Maine where it has finally snowed.  And the driveway has been plowed in.  Dog doesn't want to go outside to run or pee and when she is forced to, she holds each foot off the icy ground ...

There are times when you and Life are walking along, like good friends, and you think you know where you are going.  You think that you and Life have agreed on a direction; that there is a plan; that you understand each other. And then Life decides that despite all the trees you have already visited, you really must see this new one.  This tree is different from all the other trees and if you don't see it, you simply won't be the person you might be if you DO see it. And so Life changes direction. Except you don't notice.  Because you talked about it.  And there was this plan . And then you trip over Life.  And Life LOOKS very indignant because you weren't paying attention and kneed her in the ribs.  And you ARE very indignant because this is a stupid tree that you had no interest in ever seeing and you would chop it down and burn it if you could. Stupid tree.  Stupid Life.  Stupid little bits of gravel stuck in your palms. B...

Dear Reader, Has it really been 3 months since I last wrote to you?  My apologies.  Dog, Pony, LandLady and I have been busy.  We have had house breaks (Pony found an open door) and growling (Pony stepped on Dog and Dog was not  amused).  There have been many stuffed kongs of happiness (peanut butter & bananas, frozen peaches, yogurt) and learning moments ("See Dog, when Pony quietly lets me cut his nails, he gets treats.  Why don't you try it?") and romps at the dog park. And then, as life was starting to get a bit routine, Dog turned to drugs. Actually the drugs were an accident.  She was really after chocolate brownies, and it just so happened that they were pot brownies*. In a scene reminiscent of the Toast Snatching Incident , I found Dog munching her contraband brownies in LandLady's sitting room.  It takes a lot of chocolate to kill a dog of Dog's size, so I, being unaware of the brownie's active ingredient, had no immediate co...

Dear Reader, Dog and Pony have been resident with me and LandLady for 4 weeks now.  The local dog trainer asked me yesterday if we were bonding.  My ability to read dog body language is still weak, so it may be...or not. We are having some long heart to heart chats.  This one happened in the car on the way home from her stay at the boarding kennel last weekend. "Dog?" Dog, in the back seat of the car, whines. "Dog it's very important that you listen to me." Dog turns to stare out the window. "Dog, I don't have to keep you, you know.  I can send you back.  If you want to live with me we need to come to an understanding." Dog turns to stare out the other window. "There can't be any more gate jumping.  No more sticking your tongue in the peanut butter jar.  Less restless pacing." More whining. "And you owe LandLady an apology for taking her toast." Dog lays down, rests her head on the seat protector and looks at...

Dear Reader, Dog has a way of expressing sad resignation when she is confined to her crate against her will.  She sighs and lets her head fall against the crate door so it clangs on its hinges.  The more frequently she gets in trouble, the more frequently she gets sent to her "room" and the more frequently I hear ...Sigh...Clang. The most exciting incident of this week was on Tuesday.  LandLady likes to start her days with coffee and toast, and on Tuesday morning, she took the European approach to this classic breakfast by warming the previous evening's Italian bread and adding plenty of butter. Dog, baby gatted in the TV room, watched these proceedings with interest. Dog watches all food related proceedings with interest.  She knows where her food is kept.  She knows where the human food is kept.  She knows where her treats are kept in two different rooms.  And she knows that LandLady uses Pony's crate as a table ...

Dear Reader, LandLady sent me a video of Pony chewing on a rope chew stick.  It's not especially funny or unusual.  Just a big happy dog gnawing on a chew stick. I was not grateful to see this video, because I had bought the chew stick for Dog;  I wanted her to have something non-consumable to chew on since the bits of blanket and squeaky toys she had enjoyed chewing seemed to have unfortunate consequences for her digestion.  But Dog shunned the stick, presumably for the very reason that it is not-consumable.  So it was re-gifted to Pony, who is delighted by it. Dog is, in fact, resisting all of my efforts to keep her busy with non-food based entertainment.  But she is inventing her own games.   Games like "stand quietly just out of line of sight and see how long it takes for MyPerson to come looking for me".  Since I have reasons for not trusting Dog, she usually doesn't have to wait long.  So, fun times for everyone!! One reason I ...

Dear Reader, They say that dogs don't have great memories for the mundane.  For example, you can't punish a dog for a mess made on the floor earlier in the day.  By the time you get home and step in it, he's already moved on.  But for Greyhounds, trauma sticks around.* People are like that, too.  We filter out the unimportant stimulus and information in our lives (what did you have for breakfast last Sunday?), but we remember the details of things associated with strong emotional reactions.  (Where were you when you heard about 9/11?) I'm not sure how the memory thing works for rabbits.   I know that when I was a kid, I had a pet rabbit.   (Cottontail, cuz she was black with a white tail.  Clever, huh?)  My parents swear that one day they heard her scream when a loose dog attacked her hutch.  I wonder now if she had flashbacks of that day when, on a day years later, she met her end at ...

Dear Reader, Of course, I should have taken a photo, but Pony doesn't belong to me; he belongs to LandLady and when he jumped the baby gate, I panicked and didn't think to reach for my camera. But I'm getting ahead of myself. As previously mentioned , before I moved in with LandLady, she had agreed to let me adopt a dog. But not just any dog - specifically, a retired racing greyhound.  Because they are quiet and gentle and sleep about 18 hours a day.  Kind of like cats, but you can teach them to do useful stuff, like "come".* Over the course of my first two weeks here, as we discussed arrangements for the dog - Where to poop?  Where to eat?  Where to sleep?  How to train? - LandLady got more and more interested in the breed and increasingly excited about having something to pet.  I suggested that she could get her own dog, but she demurred, claiming she preferred to use my dog as a test of her own emotional and physical preparedness for dog ownersh...

Dear Reader, Because I have a second and unexpected summer in Maine, I would like to begin introducing you to the people who are likely to be mentioned in future posts. It seems proper to begin with my LandLady. I met LandLady last summer when I rented a furnished apartment from her.  When I needed to extend my stay in Maine past the end of my rental period, she let me stay in her spareroom for 2 weeks free of charge in exchange for watering her plants and making coffee in the morning.  She generously shared her fascinating circle of friends with me, one of whom greeted me today with cookies and the remark, "See.  I told you you'd be back." LandLady rents out her apartments as a form of income, but also for the opportunity it affords her to meet interesting people.  She seems to think I am one of these.  She herself can certainly be considered an interesting person.  She is a sculpter and writer.  Also a licensed hypnotherapist, and she told m...

Dear Reader, A friend stopped laughing long enough to suggest I should blog more about my adventures in online dating.   "But they're not funny!" I protested. "Oh, they are!" She insisted. Upon consideration, I realized that most of my readership probably has no firsthand experience with online dating and so may in fact find some of my anecdotes to be novel and amusing though they no longer seem so to me. Hence, I have selected the following opening line from my archive of "strange things to say to strangers." This is also a good opener for sharing the news that Jesus and I left Tulsa on Saturday and arrived in Maine last night.  We are currently debating my options for the future and as yet have made no long term plans (other than, "Let's stick together!").  We are currently still working through the implications of showering after breakfast instead of before.  Once that question has been answered and we have u...

Dear Reader, Jayne and I were recently discussing the possibilities and hazards of meeting men at bars.  One of my most recent dates told me that our last conversation made him uncomfortable and he was no longer interested in seeing me.  Another friend encouraged me not to take this rejection to heart,  though he (the friend,  not the date) teases me about his first impressions of me as the "scary American woman".  And I have always thought it unfair that men's watches come with more interesting faces than women's watches. All that on my mind when I came across this cartoon by Jamie Goodman in Watch Journal (Nov 2015). Well done, Jamie. Yours, LeAn

   It is a sunny afternoon in Tulsa.    I go out to wander the mostly deserted streets.    I cross the street and pass one of many Mexican restaurants. On the opposite corner is a theater with its New Year's Eve advertisement still on the marquee.    I walk away from the theatre and stop to look in the window of a violin shop with four bass violins on display and a bicycle leaning against the counter.  Through the next window I can see a instruments in pieces on the luthier's table.    Along the next block I find two coffeeshops I have never noticed before.    I turn the corner and discover a glass blowing school also with a bicycle visible through the window.  I wonder about these bicyles.  Does anyone ride them? I have seen fewer cyclists than pedestrians in Tulsa.    As I walk past the green, I see a homeless man asleep on a bench.  He looks young and I wonder how he came to be in Tulsa...

Dear Reader, Yesterday a box was delivered to my door, a gift from a friend.  Assembly required.  I was delighted, not just for the gift (a coat rack.  Thanks, Friend!), but also for the chance to assemble something.  I had forgotten until recently how much I enjoy putting together flatpack furniture and that I'm actually pretty good at it.  Perhaps because I always read the instructions. My mail order flatpack coat rack and the counter stools I picked up from Walmart last week are certainly not heirloom furniture.  The aren't going to stand up to 100 years of daily use.  But they have other virtues. I can lift the boxes. The boxes will fit in my car. Until you've spent time on craigslist considering the weight and dimensions of various used furniture listings, these virtues may not rank high on your list of desirable qualities in furniture.  But after confirming that the Tulsan women of my acquaintance do not drive trucks or lift weig...

Dear Reader, At one point years ago, back when I was doing a bit of freelance audio, video and film production work, an idea came to me: I should write a book and call it 101 Things To Say Into a Microphone .  The idea was likely brought on by hearing some production assistant or other saying "Check...check 1.... check 1, 2, 3...Can you hear me?...... Check...........check....check....1...2...1.......2...check...3...4..." and so on for a period of time much longer than he wished to repeat it and everyone else wished to hear it.  Why not, I thought, write (or rather, compile) a book of relatively short, funny or interesting poems, quotes, stories, jokes, etc. which can be easily memorized and repeated by production assistants everywhere to the benefit of everyone on set or stage? This idea came back to me recently when I needed to test the recording quality of a microphone I purchased to record super-interesting-technical-stuff for work. Let's make this a collective...

Dear Reader, I disguise my tendencies toward retail therapy by buying practical things that will enhance my life.* This week, after listening to the twitterpated stories of two good friends and seeing my cousin's engagement photo on Facebook, I decided the best thing I could do for myself was to accept the fact that I'm going to continue to be single for a long time.** And having accepted this as fact,  I knew I MUST IMMEDIATELY have an appropriate cookbook, one that wouldn't leave me eating the same leftovers every night for a week. I walked with purpose to my favorite of the three local bookstores.*** I told them I was there for a cooking-for-one cookbook. The proprietress thought they used to have one. The proprietor thought they had sold it. The proprietress thought she would just double check.  She remembered seeing something over here... What she found was The Complete Cooking For Two Cookbook. I considered:  I've liked some other America's T...

I've never NOT lived in furnished housing.*  But "furnished apartment" means someone else is going to decided what you sleep on, where you put your clothes and what you cook with.  And every time you move, you sleep differently, fold your clothes to different sizes and re-consider your recipes. To minimize the amount of stuff I'm hauling around the country, I restricted myself to two cookbooks - one specifically about cakes (hooray!) and the other a bound year's worth of Cook's Country magazines**.  After a week of eating dinner out (or eating leftovers from dinners out), I sat down with Cook's Country to find a recipe for the weekend.  A few pictures caught my eye, but the recipes were disheartening; first, brown on the stove, then transfer to the oven. While I have no complaints about the basic equipment in my current kitchen - all major and most minor appliances are provided - it's certainly fair to say the intended lodger is here for short s...