Wet

Friday evening, my friend Skye (I know, right?) took me to her spa for a hydrotherapy evening. She has a membership to the spa that involves use of the hydrotherapy pools and massage. She gets one or two guest passes a month and asked me if I wanted to come with her this month.

The hydrotherapy set up consists of two pools and two saunas. You start in the hot pool. Then you move to the wet sauna where you scrub your body with salt (and you sweat and try to breathe the hot wet air). Shower off the salt, then out to the cool pool (which feels quite cold after the sauna), and finally to the dry sauna with cedar ledges. We did two full circuits, separated in the middle with a sit in the quiet room with tea and cookies, and then a final soak in the hot pool. Afterwards, I felt soft, smooth, loose, and relaxed. It was one of the most wonderful experiences I've ever had.

And we talked. We started out with the basic "what have you been doing lately" and, as we were there for nearly 3 hours, it just kept going deeper and wider.

I can be a chatterbox, especially if I'm feeling anxious or self-conscious. I realized later in the evening that I had forgotten my afternoon dose of Xanax, so that probably contributed some anxiety, but also I am still getting to know Skye and I am fairly insecure about my ability to make friends. Plus, I like Skye and want to create a solid friendship with her, so there's a little bit of anxiety there. (Hi Skye! I know you're there!) Because I know about this chatterbox behavior of mine, I remembered from time to time to specifically ask Skye about herself and to listen closely. Sometimes when I am in full-out chatterbox mode, I can forget to let the other person participate. I even apologized for babbling at the end of our hydro time, partly because I wasn't sure if I monopolized the conversation and partly because I was often chastised for talking too much as a child, sometimes by my parents and sometimes by teachers.

One of the topics that came up started with a discussion of fibromyalgia. In general, experts say that people with fibro should avoid exposing themselves to extreme temperatures. However, I enjoy heat a great deal. The few weeks when I went to a therapy pool for my fibro, I was completely grossed out by the body-temperature water. It felt dirty or greasy. ::shudder:: Heat doesn't seem to hurt my fibro any.

Days 3 and 4: Still Alive — Both of Us!

When last we left our intrepid heroes, they were contemplating doing away with one another. I'm happy to say that hasn't happened. Yet. But it's still on the table.

The first part of yesterday (Monday, Day 3) we spent in the Las Cruces area, in Old Town Mesilla. The buildings, even many of the residences, are either original or reproduction adobe-style, and the center of town has a village square with a Catholic church on one side and shops and restaurants along the other sides and down the side streets.

One thing I've regretted since I drove through New Mexico on my way eastward four years ago was that I didn't buy any turquoise jewelry, particularly that made by locals and nearby Native Americans. So this time I bought a turquoise and silver pendant and a silver chain.

I couldn't believe how much time we spent just walking around the square looking at the shops and occasionally talking to shopkeepers! We had lunch next to the square at an outside cafe and we didn't get back to the room until around 3:30. I was hoping for a nap yesterday, but instead I got kitted out and went to the White Sands National Monument with Steve. He was hoping for some good late-afternoon and early-evening photos of the dunes. (He hasn't looked at them yet to see how he did, so I can't tell you yet.)

I took photos, too, but when the sun was getting low over the mountains and we were walking up the ridge of a dune, I'd had enough. Not only was the ridgeline of the dune triggering my edge phobia, I don't have very good night or dim-light vision, so I knew I'd better get back to the car. So I walked back out to the car and waited until Steve returned from taking sunset photos. Then we drove back to Las Cruces, stopped and picked up some things from a store, and by the time we got to our room it was late (again) and we were exhausted (again). So I didn't even write anything for the blog.

Today (Tuesday, Day 4) bloomed brightly and even though we tried, we still didn't get out of town until 10:30 am. Then we drove onward across New Mexico and Arizona.

We'd planned to stay at a nicer place in Blythe, California, tonight. Unfortunately, we are staying in a not as nice place just outside Blythe, still in Arizona, for two reasons. The first reason is that the Blythe Best Western was booked by the time I got around to making reservations. The second reason is the way this spring-time promotion of BW's is handled. The promotion states: stay three separate times and get one night free! I figured that meant that, since we've stayed at BW hotels three different times before today, that tonight's stay would be free.

Doesn't work that way. You stay three different times during the specified period. Then, a week or two later, you get a coupon in email that is good through June 30. I call shenanigans! The likelihood of my going on another trip before the end of June is low; I imagine it would be for most people who had managed three different stays during the spring! Stoopid corporations!

Today we mostly drove, stopped at rest areas to take walks, and stopped to eat. We did stop at one rest area so Steve could take pictures. The area is called Texas Canyon (it's in New Mexico) and the geological formations are fantastic! The rock is split horizontally and vertically, and sometimes diagonally, and it's all rounded on the edges. I don't know what caused such formations, but they were wonderful to see. When I eventually get some pictures put up, I'll include one of those, too.

By the time we got to Tucson, it was HOT. The weather app on Steve's phone said it was only 76, but I'd say high 80s or even 90.

By the time we got to Phoenix, it was rush hour. We made it through alive.

It was around 7:30 when we arrived at the hotel. The first room we had didn't have a working fridge, and we use our fridges to refreeze the blue ice and to keep other things cold. So they changed us to a different room. The fridge works, and it has a truly separate freezer compartment. The rest of the room is not so good, but we are here and checked in and tired. Steve has problems logging in to the wifi at the BW hotels, so he's informed me that we are staying at a different brand of place tomorrow. I pointed out that for what I'm willing to pay, we aren't going to get great internet access no matter what, but we'll see. He and I are kind of not talking tonight. We'll see how that goes tomorrow, too.

I really want to get more rest, but that isn't possible given our travel needs. So I will rest when we get back to the Seattle area. I may sleep for the entire following week. But that would be just fine with me!

I will get pictures for y'all as soon as I can, but it's possible that won't be until after the trip. If that's the case, I'll just do a couple of posts that are predominantly photos! That should be fun.

So, hoping tomorrow is a good day for us all, I am signing off now. Good night!

Day 2: Long, Hot, and Sweaty

And not in the good way!

We covered West Texas and landed in Las Cruces, New Mexico, tonight, a little after eight o'clock. We'd have been here sooner, but my alarm was set for weekdays only and we didn't actually wake up until almost ten! Luckily for us, check-out was noon!

Thunderstorms were forecast in the Kerrville area and westward and we ran into a doozy! I slowed down from 70 to 55 and had the wipers working overtime. Hailstones were coming down with the torrential rain, and for a few minutes, lightning was cracking every few seconds. Some people actually pulled to the side of the road to wait it out, something I considered doing. Steve called me a wimp. But we survived.

The geology along the first part of the trip was very cool: the highway had simply been cut through the hills, so the layering was completely visible. You could see the horizontal layers left from when Texas was an inland sea, and the occasional areas that had been compressed such that their layers were zigzags, or that had been uplifted such that their layers were more diagonal than horizontal. 

It was hot out and we are not yet using the AC, preferring to have the windows open some instead. Don't know why, because we end up getting overly warm and a bit sweaty. But it uses less gas to drive with the windows open than it does to drive with the AC on: the MythBusters proved it! And when driving at 70-75 most of the time, the gas mileage isn't what it could be. I can't complain really — I'm getting in the high 20s for mpg.

The sunset as we drove through El Paso was gorgeous in reds and pinks. There were several contrails that reflected the setting sun rather spectacularly, almost like fireworks threading through the sky. Unfortunately, the traffic through El Paso was less than gorgeous. Even worse, as we drove north of that city, we passed what must have been stockyards and the stench was unbelievable. Quite the contrast with the brilliant red sunset!

I decided I wanted to stay in the same hotel that I stayed in the last time I was here: a little over four years ago. So I made reservations over the phone while Steve drove. I'm running into higher prices everywhere, but I guess that is just to be expected four years later. But it boosts the cost of the trip back a bit. Just a few moments ago a train passed by. It blew it's horn. A few times. I do not remember that, and I would have remembered being woken by the loud blast of a train's klaxon. I hope we don't get trains like that all night.

The room is every bit as charming as I remember. The hotel is the Mission Inn and everything is done in Spanish Mission style. Behind the beds runs a deep shelf; the top is tiled in cobalt blue tiles. The white ceiling is punctuated by dark wooden beams and the furniture is all a heavy, somewhat rustic wood. 

Today my traveling companion and I fell back into old ways a bit. His idea of fun is to irk me until I almost blow a blood vessel. I react. I know that it spoils his fun if I don't react, or don't react in the way he wants me to, so I'll have to try harder at doing so. Unfortunately, like the boys on the playground in my childhood, ignoring him only makes him try harder. I told him at dinner that if I didn't need him for the drive home, I'd give serious consideration to smothering him in his sleep. This is only Day 2, people. Day 2 of what will probably be seven days, due to a couple of stops we want to make (such as spend tomorrow here so we can go to White Sands). And then I am going to live in the same house as this guy and his much more civilized companion. Cross your fingers that a) we both survive this trip, and b) I find a really fabulous job very quickly.  :)

Well, I am exhausted. I'll post this tomorrow, when I feel like playing with photos and all that. Thanks for the good wishes and I'll talk to you again soon!

***Late addition: Didn't have time to do photos today, or even post until this evening. So now I'm a day late. Crap. Oh well, I'll catch up as I can!

It's Hot

It's hot out — 102-plus this afternoon. I'm learning to be like the natives and stay inside during the hottest part of the day. I still haven't developed the habit of getting up and out early. It's the habit of the unemployed: stay up late and get up late.

I'm taking a trip back to the Oregon Coast in a couple of weeks, where it's still not hit 70 degrees even once this summer and sometimes doesn't get out of the 50s during the day. Unless the weather changes substantially, I will experience a drop of 40 to 50 degrees over the course of an air trip and a shuttle trip. In fact, I'll probably hit 90 degrees temps in Portland. I'm pulling out a pair of shorts and a couple of tees and the rest is jeans, a sweater and some long-sleeve shirts. Thank goodness for layering! And staying with someone who will have sweaters.

I wouldn't mind being a snowbird, because I love my temperature range to be between the 40s or 50s in the winter (I like sweaters) to the 80s or low 90s in the summer (I like shorts). But I'd need to be able to work anywhere I lived, either having a job that existed in two places or having two jobs or being able to telecommute. 

My friend Thea told me I need to live in San Diego. My BFF and a handful of other folks want me in Seattle. I have some people who think I'm in Houston forever. And I have a compulsion toward living on the Oregon Coast. 

I feel as if I were a kid wondering what I'm going to be when I grow up: I don't know what I want in specific. It's all just dreams right now, dreams of heat and cold, light and dark, here and there.

What climate do you prefer? Would you be a snowbird if you could? Where do you want to be?

Important Safety Tips

Apparently it's possible to get too much sun and too much heat down here in Houston-land. Who knew? Okay, I just forgot. I figured it out halfway thru my first summer here (after making myself ill several times), but last summer I was in much cooler climes and forgot I guess.

So today it hit triple digits and I went for a walk in my park. I was under the trees. I had 3/4 of a bottle of water.

Not enough. About 2/3 of the way thru my walk, I was feeling kind of ill and tired and like I didn't know if I could make it to the car but knew that I had no other options. And I felt silly. I'd drunk a lot of water — I could hear and feel it sloshing in my stomach as I walked. But it wasn't enough.

When I got into the car, my face was brilliantly red (about as red as my hair is currently) and I thought I had a world-class sunburn, despite my having sunscreen on and being under the trees. And no color on my non-sunscreened arms.

After about 10 minutes in a highly air-conditioned car, my face was almost back to normal and I was feeling a little better. A large iced tea helped. But I stayed queasy most of the evening, despite the tea and two or maybe three more bottles of water. Ugh.

My BFF chewed me out. So from now on: carry my sun hat in the car; carry a couple of extra bottles of water (I have a small cooler and can put blue ice in with the water); don't go for a walk in triple-digit weather.

Now that I've learned that lesson, I'm heading back to cooler climes for a couple of weeks. Of course. But I think I'll remember this time when I return. I really hate feeling that ill.

Insectoid horrors in the woods

Cicadas live here, in Humble, Kingwood, and Atascocita. In all of the south. And parts east and even the Midwest, from what I've. But not the Pacific NW, as far as I know. I'd never heard them before I moved here. I don't like them.

The sound a group of cicadas makes is the sound you would hear if you were in the middle of a horror flick that involved insectoid entities — or maybe electrical ones — just before they caught you and ate your brains. Or maybe ate your internal organs, but without killing you first.

My walks in the woods when I first heard the beasties were eerie at best. I knew I shouldn't run, for two reasons. Firstly, because if they were entities out to have me for lunch, then running would only call attention to me. Secondly, if they weren't, then I would look like a lunatic running through the park. I'm used to looking foolish, but seldom for insects. Except for when Bugzilla was in my apartment, of course.

The cidadas were so loud, I could hear them as I drove down West Lake Houston Parkway, with my windows closed and the AC on. Such a thing seems horribly wrong.

I remember reading a story years ago that featured cicadas. The book said they got louder as it grew hotter, and I believe it. In the book, the heat peaked just as the story peaked and I remember only this, as the tension reached its highest pressure: "The cidadas were screaming."

Not like that would lead me to an association with cicadas and terror, of course.

The cicadas just continued and continued to sing, all summer long, reaching their peak in early to mid-August. Right around the time I ventured back to Oregon. When I returned to Houston, the noise had subsided a great deal. It was not long after one of the infrequent rain storms we've had this summer than I finally got a look at one of the bugs, and I have to agree with a friend of mine: they are ugly creatures. Every bit as scary as their sound suggests. If I were able to see the mass of cicadas it takes to make the amount of noise I heard this summer, I probably would leave the state for cooler wetter climes. Brr. Even imagining the sight is enough to give me chills.

Everyone around here tells me about 17-year cicadas. Certainly that is the kind one hears about. But Wikipedia's table of periodic (13- and 17-year) cicadas doesn't list either 2009 or Texas for them. The rest of the cicadas are annual. And yet, one woman told me that her son asked her what the noise was, and he was 20 years old. So apparently he had not heard these in his memory. I have to assume that Wikipedia doesn't have all its facts. And that everything is flexible. After all, the climate is changing, and both flora and fauna are moving northward in the northern hemisphere. I wouldn't be surprised if the cicadas have been interrupted in their usual cycle by the changes. Or that we were now getting the insectoid horrors from Central and South America.

According to Wikipedia again, the beasties are not a threat to humans or other animals. Just to trees. Then again, who is to say what is more correct: Wikipedia, or a horror story?

Do you really want to find out?

The Texas Skye in Summer

I'm living in the land of summer. The land of sunshine and heat. The land of warmth in temperature and warmth in people.

The land of tropical storms and hurricanes and killing levels of heat and humidity.

I worry about summer here. I worry about August and September, which are supposed to be the killer months, the months that could send me running for the PNW without so much as packing my bags.

I mean, it's not like the temps will faze me. I've been happily roasting (in limited amounts) in 97-degree weather (heat index 101-103). I walk outside from the extremely cold newspaper office, where I have to wear a sweater, and toast myself until I feel warm. Then I walk back into the ice cube of work. And about half the time, I don't turn on my AC in the car, preferring to warm myself as I drive (once the 140-degree heat leaks out thru the open windows, of course).

People are amazed by my tolerance and joy in the heat. They know where I've been. And I've dealt with 100+ degree weather in Eastern Washington (a LONG time ago) and occasionally in Seattle or in the Willamette Valley. Last year May, it hit 103 for a freak weather day in Lincoln City.

But the humidity: I worry about tolerating 110 degrees with 98% humidity for 2 months. I worry about the fact that I have things in my apartment that I want to keep. I worry about the fact that I bought a really nice couch last weekend (to be delivered next week) and would need to move that sucker if I fled.

Then there are the storms; it is now officially storm season.

I worry that maybe I can tolerate neither the NW nor the South, but I cannot afford the northern California coastal or near-coastal areas. (Because that would be the ideal climate for me.) I've made a couple of friends here. I might be on the way to making one or two more: this is so quick for me! :) What if I feel the need to leave?

I worry about money: unemployment ran out and I'm now living on my savings, which represents all the money I have in the world. Well, that and the bit of money I make at The Tribune, which pays for my health insurance, plus a little more. Maybe dinners out.

I don't mind being alone so much anymore. A friend from back "home" asked me how I was when I was a child, what did I do when I was alone. And I remembered that I was mostly solitary as a child, too.

So what did I do? Solitary things, things that occupied me; I rarely felt lonely. I read books. I wrote, I drew, I painted. I rode my bike around and around the cul de sac when my mom wouldn't let me ride out of it. I skated around and around, too. I played with my "dangerous" things: Fun Flowers when I was a child, a toy that could burn you pretty good and that I never had adult supervision when using, never hurt myself with; and my chemistry set when I was a little older, ditto for supervision and never hurting myself (even when I broke a test tube). I climbed a tree and I made my own detective kit to pretend with.

I guess it's time to let myself free of expectations. And just enjoy me, enjoy my life and the sunshine and the heat.

And to create: I've started a creative crochet project (picked up a couple of books); I have a painting sketched out and the supplies ready; I am working on not one, not two, but THREE novel ideas; I have a blog (obviously), and I have a website that desperately needs Search Engine Optimization (SEO) so that potential clients can find me---my site doesn't come up in the first two or three DOZEN pages when you search on "Houston writer/editor" or "Houston freelance writer" or "Houston technical writer." That has to change. And I need to add some other things to my site.

All and all, there is no reason for my solitude to be difficult.

Only the summer heat, and the summer humidity.

Only the expectations and fears floating around in the Texas Skye.

Unanticipated heat effect

It's hot, and time to check for effects and mitigations.

Dehydration? Check. Get the water.

Exhaustion? Check. Get out of the heat.

Sunburn? Check. Get out of the sun.

Melted climbers' putty? Ch ... What?

I have this stuff called climber's putty. It is blue and resides in a plastic fist-shaped container and looks kind of like The Blob. It (the putty, not the sci-fi monster) is made to help strengthen climbers' hands and I have used it in the past for strengthening when my hands were weak.

I have been feeling a bit too weak and delicate, so I dug around, found the putty and pulled it out.

Mistake. It's rather sticky. A lot sticky. A "how the hell do I get it off all my fingers and put it away?!" kind of sticky. I really didn't see that one coming.

We wrestled.

We pounded on each other!

It wrapped itself around me!!

The clamor and the mess were horrific!!!

But, finally, I won.

And got all of it off my hands and into the little plastic fist. Mitigation? Put it in the fridge.

That is one blue Blob won't be eating a human for dinner tonight!

One last thought: will storing the blue blob in the fridge work? In the movie, freezing the blob didn't kill it (maybe), but the blob solidified. Will my blob still be useful for hand-strengthening? I am sure my readers are breathless in antici ... pation! (Quick! What's that reference?). So I will update y'all on this topic again soon.