Maude, Myrtle, and Me

Okay. So here is something I have been thinking on for a few months now. Thanks to the crazy ocean conditions around here, two wayward sea turtles limped ashore on nearby Oregon beaches, cold and a bit disoriented, just in time for Christmas. This was not, after all, the place that smelled of their birth. Fortunately no common folk attempted to move them illegally and a bevy of highly trained and certified professionals whisked them off to the Newport aquarium where they enjoyed hearing their tropical turtle tales over the holidays while spending lots of money encouraging them to quit hibernating by heating them up, naturally, with electric blankets. Apparently, the tortugas said, they had been happily swimming north on a nice warm current when said current disappeared on them, dumping them unceremoniously in 50 degree water.
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They named the olive ridley Myrtle and the green turtle Maude, perhaps not understanding their Spanish accents but sexing them correctly anyway. They hydrated them with your average sea turtle diet - dextrose, electrolytes, and IV fluids - and once they were swimming around they added sea turtle vitamins. Chewable? I wonder. Myrtle was "plagued by buoyance problems," not a very auspicious trait for a turtle, and Maude had a fractured flipper which, again, could be tricky for a swimmer. Once their repertoire of Under the Sea stories started to loop, it was time to go.
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Using the guise of "practicing getting in and out of a small airport and handling a unique loading exercise" the US Coast Guard landed in the hinterlands of Newport and loaded the chicas into a massive C-130 airplane, the likes of which they had last used here to "Free Willy," which was not ultimately deemed a success story as you might recall since Willy swam around in the wilds of Iceland waiting for somebody, anybody, to hand feed him. But back to the girls...

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This was NOT, and I repeat, NOT, a waste of taxpayers dollars so just get that cold-hearted notion right out of your pretty heads. As you may have already guessed, "The C-130, based at the Coast Guard Air Station Sacramento, was used to ensure a stable environment, with the cabin pressure kept at sea level and the temperature in the mid-70s." So don't you worry about the cabin pressure or temperature-related effects on the gals. And, furthermore, before the journey - in case you are wondering - the chicas were "slathered with petroleum jelly to keep them hydrated. They were then cradled into custom-made, ventilated crates that had ample padding and a little bit of extra room but not so much that they could flail around and injure themselves." There is nothing worse than a flailing turtle, after all.
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But after all that holiday bonding time and with the nostalgia of the holidays and all, Myrtle and Maude had become like one of the family. Who could ever see a Christmas tree again without thinking of Maude covered in her favorite afghan, clutching an eggnog in her "good" flipper with the other all bandaged up and propped up on a pillow? And what about the tears of joy shed by Myrtle as she unwrapped her little hand-knit flipper socks and the way she struggled to get them on? Oh, my, the memories... So, the aquarium folks ultimately had a hard time saying farewell. There was not a dry eye on the tarmac as that big military plane lifted off into the fog, flying Myrtle and Maude off to SeaWorld in San Diego which they had always wanted to visit. And wasn't that a tiny piece of yarn that drifted down out of the sky as they waved their little sock-covered flippers farewell?

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Once comfortably settled in San Diego they were to have a private behind-the-scenes tour with their little boondoggle in the sun, from whence "ideally" they will be released back into the wild, presumably with a bottle of vitamins tucked under each flipper. (The cost of caring for the sea turtles will be covered in part by a grant from the Kinsman Foundation - note to self, meet the Kinsmans...) So, sniff, Maude and Myrtle are on their way to being on their way.
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"OMG!" you are probably now wondering and rightfully so, "What the yurt has happened to Kelly with all that time on her hands to type her fingers off spinning tales of turtles, no less?" Answer: It is raining. And anyway, you have to admit, yurt makes a nice 4-letter word and there is that whole Yertle the Turtle thing I blogged about earlier. But some days I do feel exactly like Myrtle and Maude, or Maude and Myrtle if you prefer - like I was happily headed north on a warm current that suddenly dumped me into 50 degree water and now my flippers hurt and I find myself suddenly plagued by buoyancy problems. So, I am wondering, who are these Kinsmans anyway? Because I think I could fit my family very nicely in a C-130 with all of our cargo and even though the ample padding and little bit of extra room in our crates sounds dreamy, we could probably forego such a luxury and still avoid flailing around and injuring ourselves en route to the tropics.
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K3

Christiana Rocks WHS!

Feliz Cumpleanos Bella Grace!

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Bella is six! Learning to read, write, loving pink and purple, wanting to be a Kindergarten teacher when she grows up, growing up, indeed, too quickly. Not a morning person, a gal after my own heart, but off to school each morning and home at noon. She is always happy and an expert skipper and such unadulterated joy! Still remembers some of her Espanol from last year and hoping she keeps it up, even tho there is no instruction at her school. Her classroom is like a revolving door with kids coming and going often, the nature of this rural community where parenting has become a lost art. And did I mention she snores? Loudly, like her adenoids need removing, again.
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Her room is a disaster with Barbies and impossibly small and yet painful-when-stepped-on-barefoot Polly Pocket shoes and assorted miniature accessories spread everywhere. I send her in to clean and she plays for hours with entropy as her constant companion. Her clothes spill out of her hand painted drawers in various half-open yawns, or are they half-shut? She could easily fill her own yurt with her Barbie and stuffed animal collections. And this is after we have downsized more than I care to remember. I vacillate between ranting and raving my threats to give them all away and my propensity to clutch the entire collection to my chest, remembering the Christmas when Hannah got that Scuba Barbie with the chattering dolphin sidekick and Christiana her dark-haired familiar with a trained but silent sea lion. Scuba Ken joined in on the bathtime fun at some point. And now they are all growed up and saving China. Christiana can scuba dive all by herself, just like her childhood doll with the built-in wetsuit. We still have the miniature mask and snorkel - how can I possibly part with the likes of these? Ouch.
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Bella loves to snuggle and finds her way to my leg or lap wherever I land. She began in the summer of aught three and swam across the bay with me before I fully realized she was on board. She grew in utero, slowly asserting her presence as we settled into our Portugal life at Casa Mocho (House of Owls), nourished by the olives and pomegranates we picked from the trees and the pain au chocolate and fresh blood orange juice from the Intermarche market where Andy and I struggled with the language and the metric system to order Jamon y Queso, um kilo media we gestured because we couldn't speak any fraction besides a half or a whole and coming home with 2.2 pounds of ham only happens once. Bella was rocked to sleep as we walked daily on the sunny Algarve beaches after tucking the other four kids in school, digging our toes into the ochre sand backed by impossibly orange hills while old men raked for coquinas and ameijoas and the fishing boats perched precariously on nearshore waves to capture sardinhas to be grilled on sidewalks. We inhaled the incense of ancient churches and admired the beauty of the flowering almond trees, learning their legend before Bella began her own storied life. Isaiah and I flew west with the night across the stormy Atlantic while a nor'easter raged around our fragile fuselage, threatening to birth us all in the tumultuous cold sea, but landing happily in the darkness.
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Bella tread water confidently while my aging body struggled to nourish us both and keep us whole as I lay in the hospital for a month. She gave the doctors two thumbs up six weeks early to get things started, then did a belly flip in labor, deciding for us both that cutting a new bikini line would be her preferred exit strategy. She was so tiny, like 2.5 kilos of jamon, but perfect and beautiful with her almond-shaped blue eyes. She was cold in that snowy week of Valentine's Day so I stuck her under my night gown and kept her there, skin to skin, radiating the heat from our hearts beating in unison down to her perfect toes and fingers - ten of each, count them, Mimi used to instruct - while we dreamed together and woke to feed each other. When she was warm and pink enough, first passport clutched in her tiny fist, we returned to Portugal in March before even her April due date and surprised the kids in one of the most glorious afternoons of our family history. Bella met her sisters who adored her and counted her perfection by tens and beyond while their combined tears of joy fell on her soft cheeks and her brother memorized her with amazement. The hoopoes cried their delight and the wildflowers bloomed in greater profusion to welcome our Bella to the orange blossom air of her new home, the smallest Mocho in the casa.
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She is a huge blessing, our Bella Grace, the final Willa award lost, the exclamation point at the end of our family!
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Mommy loves you and Daddy does too!
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K3

Feliz Cumpleanos Christiana!

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Well, a picture is worth a thousand words... Christiana turned 18 yesterday and I am happy to report that she did not exercise her new privileges by enlisting in the armed services nor by rushing off to Rays to buy cigarettes, porn, or lottery tickets at lunchtime. She went to school instead, both high school and community college, and last night she was feted at her final home basketball game. It was Salute to Seniors Night so all the seniors are traditionally introduced to center court with their families where they are showered with balloons and flowers and candy. Christiana was the final player introduced and her friend above - Mighty Maddie - led the crowd in a rousing round of singing the birthday song with each side alternately chanting boom, rah, after each line followed by Christiana shaking it to "cha, cha, cha." Ahh, the benefits of life in a small town. She handled herself admirably. If that had been my high school and my birthday and my town focused on me, me, me, I would not be here right now to write about it. I would have died a thousand deaths.
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So, my hat is off to Christiana! I learned in the handout they produced that Christiana's nicknames are Optimism Prime and Night Hawk and have not had a chance to probe any further on either of those. Her favorite foods are sushi, ice cream, and cheesecake, which we had after the game. If she was a music artist she would be Prince and her most prized possession are her rainbow suspenders she just got a Buffalo Exchange in Portland on Saturday where everyone had an armful of tatoos and a spandex jump suit with go-go boots - everyone but Bella, Xana, and I that is. She would like to visit Malaysia and Ethiopia and she loves grocery shopping. So, that gives you a starting point in case you were wondering what to get her...
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Christiana was my first but not last candidate in the delivery room for the name I still like - Willa. So I am giving her my own private Willa Award. When Andy prevailed by naming her Christiana after the town where we lived in Jamaica I figured she would have to become a pretty good speller and she has, never one for nicknames and not shy about saying so. Our friend Peter from JA said, upon hearing the news of her birth and her name, "But it is such an ugly lickle town." So I guess she has fared better than her namesake. She arrived at 420 in the a.m., not my favorite time of day, but we induced her so who knows what hour she might have chosen left to her own devices - Miss Night Hawk. She had threatened to be huge and at 8 lb. 12 oz. was the biggest baby I pushed out so hesitate to imagine the scenario if we had not forced her to join us two weeks early. Ouch.
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Xana was a colicky baby and cried for three months until we thought we would go deaf and mad, especially after her perfect sister who made us feel like we were A+ parents. After a rough first year of sleeping mostly in her battery operated swing - and yes, thankfully that flat spot on her head did fill in like the doctor promised - she became the happiest child and is still wearing her winning smile. The day she turned one she forsake all things baby and heaven forbid you gave her a baby spoon or plate or anything of the ilk because she was done. with. that.
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Xana is sporting a few battle scars from her journey thru childhood between chicken pox and stitches but has otherwise emerged on this end in fine form. She was always a keen observer with her big brown eyes and would gaze straight into your soul, as my mother often said. She could tune into people's emotions and was known to say what others were thinking. Back now where she began, she does not necessarily feel like an Oregonian. Although she does not mind the rain, still she craves the sun. She is currently committed to eating for her blood type and a stalwart example to those of us who fall short every morning first thing with our coffee AND cream, both of which are on the list of prohibited foods. Alas. So, might as well have another donut... She wants to go to Stanford! Pray for her. She will do just fine wherever she goes, no doubt. She has always marched right on up to the ice cream counter and ordered what she wanted and slowly I learned to trust her instincts even when she was only knee high and ordering bubble gum in neon pink with unwavering confidence because she would, indeed, eat it.
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Happy Birthday Christiana Elizabeth! You go, Optimism Prime... Mommy loves you.
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K3

Happy New Year 2010!

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And Martin Luther King Day. And while I am at it, let me be the first to wish you all a Happy Valentines Day too. The new decade took off without me and I have been running to catch up ever since. This year I have decided to put my holiday greetings on my blog here and will provide you with a succinct synopsis of our lives over the past 12 months. For those of you yearning for more, more, more, you can scroll back through the other 33 posts I have written since last January when I started this new form of written regurgitation, intending to post one per week which, for you math lovers, would mean that I somehow missed about 23 weeks. Not bad for my first year.
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Well, as I sit here feeling rather chilled in our new yurt, up the river and then up the creek from the Oregon coast, my thoughts turn longingly back to last year this time, when I might have been sweating in my bikini while walking the white sands of Playa Conchal, heaving a coconut into the warm waters for Duncan to fetch every now and again. (See photo from March 18 post.) Do we miss Costa Rica? Si, you bet. We miss our amigos y amigas a few thousand miles south down the coast. (And those a few thousand miles to the east of us as well...) We miss the warm sunshine and the blue sky and the palm trees and the mot mots and the howler monkeys and the leaf cutter ants and the playa. Bella and I just read "Slowly, slowly, slowly said the sloth" and reminisced about swimming each evening before dinner as the sun descended and the air glowed orange with the bats swooping the pool and our heads. We had a great year and hope to get back there soon. Micah got a ticket to Tamarindo for his March break from Santa. Lucky boy.
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Hannah is back in the US after living the Rio life in Portuguese for 6 months - running the sands of Copacabana and sipping Caiparinhas. She returned to her second semester as a Junior at Georgetown, struggling with three advanced physics classes and whipping herself back into shape for the rapidly approaching varsity crew season.
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Christiana took on Waldport High School for her senior year with her usual aplomb and adaptation. She played her first season of volleyball and is in the midst of her second season of basketball and second semester of taking classes at the community college since her class of 61 does not merit much of an AP roster. She has been in the throes of college apps and fingers crossed for an ambitious list of choices, hoping to continue her Spanish and Portuguese studies and major in Marine Biology.
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Micah is in the fifth form at St. Georges in RI and we miss him. My birthday present from him was joining the swim team where he has made great strokes and plans to swim the bay with me again this summer. I will be lucky to see his wake. He was happy to be back on the gridiron this fall but misses CR very much, as do we all.
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Isaiah is loving the fourth grade at his new school and is looking to be a great fan of reading, yahoo. He was also happy to play football again and is currently tearing up the basketball court after all the days he spent after school in the open air gym last year with his pal, Jackson. He misses hockey and will hopefully get to play again some day.
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Bella Grace is loving Kindergarten and learning to read. She gets home at noon daily and we are going agate hunting on the beach today with our west coast UB - Uncle Buster. She is dancing ballet and learning to jump rope.
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After last year's letter, a good friend heeded Andy's siren call for employment and he is now busily engaged as the General Manager of Silke Communications in Eugene where he toils away most days and nights of the week. He spent the fall building the yurts (see archives) and is happy to be back on the left coast again.
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Me? Well, I am writing. I finished my book, for the fourth time, and am seeking an agent or a publisher if any of you know anyone in the industry. I am the new Co-Hag of a local writer's group and we host authors monthly for our workshops so I am networking and meeting interesting people and loving that. I have just dug out my old fish biology hat and will manage a restoration project for coho salmon habitat through our local watershed council.
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Andy and I are on the steering committee to get the high school moved out of the tsunami zone. With the Cascadia subduction fault about 50 miles off our coast a massive earthquake is building that will generate a tsunami of freezing cold water, inundating our town within minutes sometime between now and the next 50 years. Time to move the kids to higher ground.
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With three thin layers of high tech fabric separating us from Mother Nature we are getting to know her ways intimately. The whistles of the elk, the hooting of the owls, the winds that threaten to blow our house down, and the many sounds 70 inches of rain can make on a vinyl roof all surround us with intimacy. The ocean here is mighty and majestic to behold but not something to take lightly or turn your back on. The hills are alive and the trees and rocks pushing each other off in a constant battle of rock, paper, scissors which encourage watchfulness. We are paying attention.
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I hope this finds you all happy and healthy through the wonders of cyberspace. Give yourselves a chocolate-covered kiss from us here on the edge of the continent. Happy Aught-Ten from our yurt to yours.
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Beisos - Kelly, Andy, Hannah, Christiana, Micah, Isaiah, and Bella Grace!
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You Better Watch Out...

Yes, so we did see Santa way back when. I took the kids nostalgically to the old Meier and Frank in downtown Portland where the first four used to sit on the old guy's lap. They always had the best Santa and there was a wondrous village set up complete with a monorail the kids could ride that was suspended from the ceiling. Unfortunately, the store is now Macy's and Santa's floor is no longer. Santa has been relegated to the basement and the monorail sits resignedly on the floor, alone and stationary, the sad little so-called "monorail museum," boo hoo. But we made the best of it and Micah even posed with Santa and Bella asked for a Barbie and Isaiah requested that his whole family to be together and everyone got their wishes and they were filmed by a new crew but we have no tv so never saw it. And, as an added bonus, we watched the mounted police arrest a homeless guy out in front of the store. HE should have called for Santa...
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And then there was the Nutcracker. Bella was an angel and a bon bon but she did not get to be the "naughty" bon bon at any of the three performances and I am not sure if she should be congratulated or straighten her tights and work harder. Mostly she was just happy to be wearing makeup.
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We have five noble fir trees lining our
driveway of staggering sizes so the kids each decorated their own live tree with different colored lights. It got very frosty for the week before Santa came to eat his cookies and every morning we awoke to a winter wonderland with everything coated in a heavy load of white. No snow. By the day after Christmas we were playing on a sparkling sunny beach with the girls running in their sports bras - quite a temperature fluctuation but no complaints, especially from Hannah who was still tan from the sands of Copacabana.
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The propane heaters were finally hooked up and running on Christmas Eve, in the nick of time, and we all slept in the yurts for the first time that night. We slept in our caps reminiscent of 'twas the night before xmas' - and Santa found us! We had a little live tree under the central domed skylight, the focal point of our round room, and Bella and Isaiah made ornaments at school to decorate it. We have a 'frig and a toaster oven and a crock pot and a coffee maker and that allows us to eat pretty well. Hannah brought pastries from Brazil and we had cookies Santa left us and a wonderful Christmas morning. Everyone got a new hat. Ho! Ho! Ho!
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K3
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Sea Lions, Sea Lions, Everywhere...

"Well?" you may well be wondering and rightfully so, what happened to me after the very pregnant pause following my birthday which post was considered to be highly inappropriate according to one very special adolescent, He Who Shall Not Be Named, since it contained several questionably controversial "p" words? Well, having birthed seven babies and shredded most of my anatomical self-consciousness in the delivery room, that is not, alas, the reason for my long silence. It was more like the end of the year got away from me and the new year began before I was ready and I have been running to catch up with "aught ten" ever since. So, this is a catch-up post, better late than never.
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And here, on the beach by Heceta Head - a few miles south of where I sit happily typing in my yurt, live and online in person for the first time from my lovely life in the round since we finally have internet service to our barn even tho we have no indoor plumbing (or outdoor plumbing, so I guess we have no plumbing, to be clear...) and so you can see by that where our priorities and other things lie but I digress and will pick you back up here mid-sentence - yes, here, en masse are the missing California sea lions that once sank the piers of San Francisco with their halitosis and gas-eosis and exuberant mating behavior and blubbery bulk, the same lions of the sea which had everyone wringing their hands with frustration as they flatulated in a most uncivilized manner and openly displayed their affection for one another, causing the well-heeled urban ladies to cover their eyes with kid-gloved hands, fingers nevertheless parted with unconfessed curiosity, until the tourist dollars flowed like so much saltwater into their palms and they threw their arms around their marine mammal friends, embracing their slippery skins which recently slid out from their clutches, leaving them scratching their heads and fingering their empty wallets with wonder. (No, I don't really intend to catch you up here all in one gigantic sentence..)
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"Where did they go?" our neighbors to the bankrupt south of us yodeled in fake Austrian accents with tears matching the salinity of the waters around their shores which now lapped uninterrupted by barking except as emitted by proud pampered poodles being walked by their pooch-sitters and doing their duty with propriety in several different languages. And no, they did not call over their little shoulders in perfect imitation of their governor, "I'll be back..." Or at least not so anybody heard. But it is fun to think about and certainly something a sea lion seems capable of.
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But, anyway, not to worry your permed little heads about it any longer as here they all are, right here in Oregon, safe and sound like so many other economic refugees from the Golden State. Eureka! Perhaps they are enjoying the temperate rainforesty weather for a change, tired of all that sunscreen application, perhaps they are simply following the herring who have done the same, their little fins tired of traipsing off to Rite Aid to stock up. Nobody knows WHY, but the amazing sight we beheld on our Thanksgiving trip down the breathtaking Oregon Coast was thousands of them soaking up some, ahem, rays and catching waves en masse. They looked and sounded to be enjoying their stay and who knows, perhaps they will tarry awhile. Hopefully you can tell that those brown blobs in these photos are, in fact, the missing Californicators, as folks in these here parts have been known to call those who try to take their motto across the border with them crying Eureka! (tr. "I have found it!")
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So, we headed south along the edge stopping briefly to remember ourselves to Paul Bunyan and Babe, the big blue ox with the big blue testicles - never mind, Micah - that Andy had to pose holding up, irresistible to males of all ages. But I will leave you to your own visual imaginings on that one and keep right on moving through the last vestiges of the oldest things on earth, Sequoia Gigantia, which we stopped to admire immensely and on under the Golden Gates of the city where Hannah was born and where we began our happily wedded life together and still keep on going a bit further south to where we ate turkey and celebrated the holiday of my Mayflower ancestors, hosted by Henrietta the chicken and her lovely caretakers, our friends from our days in Costa Rica which seem like yesterday but are fading quickly into the past. Too quickly.
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And what better to do after eating all that pumpkin pie than to walk over the famed Golden Gate. So the next day we did. And I won't bore you with all the dramatic details of how our nephew was married the weekend before in Seattle but chose not to invite us to witness his nuptials because, well, that goes along with why we celebrate holidays with our friends vs. family out here on the left coast, but I might just drop a little reminder about the bitchiness of Karma because who do you think we ran into strolling under the Golden Arches but said nephew and his lovely new bride on their honeymoon. So remember fair reader, as I told him, you can run but you can't hide. And as an added bonus he got to meet Bella and Isaiah, his first cousins, for the first time even though one of them has been on the planet for over a decade now and the other for a half. His blushing bride remarked how much Bella resembles Dakota Fanning, asking, "Has anyone ever told you that before?" "Why, yes," I replied in my perfect Scarlett O'Hara imitation. But then I missed my golden opportunity to add, "And don't you think she would make a perfect flower girl?" Darn it...
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K3