Oh Lucinda

"...now I'm after that back highway

and the longest bridge I've ever crossed

over Ponchartrain."

 

No lie, I generally have a Lucinda Williams song running through my head.  I have loved her voice ever since my brother Doug told me her recording of Passionate Kisses (she wrote it, after all) was better than Mary Chapin Carpenter's cover.  So when I started looking at routes through Lousiana and Texas I knew there were a couple of towns we had to breeze through and a couple of lakes to cross.

 

"...I'm going to go to Slidell

and look for my joy..."

 

I thought Lucinda was born in Slidell, Louisiana, but she just sings about it; she was born in Lake Charles, which she also sings about.  Slidell is an eastern suburb of New Orleans - we drove through and got on I-10 only in order to pick up the bridge, south to north, across Lake Ponchartrain (no desire at all to tour New Orleans which we could see off to our left-we're just not city-folk).  So the "longest bridge over Ponchartrain" is 23 miles long - in the middle you lose sight of land on both sides.

 The causeway road drops out in Mandeville,

 

"...Mama lives in Mandeville.

I can hardly wait until

I can hear my zydeco

And lassiz le bon ton roulette..."

 



See what I mean? Lyrics, all the live-long day.  We drove across Lake Charles, entered East Texas around Beaumont (The Night's Too Long) got tangled in some Houston-bound traffic and escaped via a County road that turned into a Farm Road, saw some lovely Texas farms and lakes and stopped for the night in Huntsville.  This part of Texas is very nice, a bit hilly and lots of trees.  I would travel this route through this gigantic state again.  It gets rather dull and dun-colored west of Abilene, orange dusty fields full of wind turbines and/or oil/gas drills.
 

Excuse the squashed insects on the windshield.  Texas has bugs the size of chickens.

We headed for Roswell, New Mexico, making it the second time we've stopped there for the night on trips west.  We must feel drawn there for some reason -- ooooh, spooky! This photo below was snapped on our way into town.  Notice that strange silvery, elongated cloud just above the horizon? Hmmmmm???

 

Actually it is such a crazy-ass town with green space monsters painted on nearly every building and a spaceship in front of the McDonald's, and an alien tiled into the floor of our elevator.  We had to be in Salt Lake City by the following evening, so we stepped up the pace a bit, still primarily state roads, and diagonalled our way through New Mexico and Utah.  We buzzed through Moab which we had plans to return to with Jamie and the girls on the following weekend.  So gorgeous through that area.

 

So wonderful to see them all again.  I've realized I haven't posted any updates of the grandkids lately, so here is a preview.  Last summer, Evie and Bella:

 

 

Halloween, Evie was a zebra,

 

Isabella was some sort of huntress, I guess.

 

Christmas photos:

 

Evie's last year dance photos.  This year she's into jazz and soccer.

 



 

 

And the Vermonters!  Marcus and Ruthanne at Disneyworld in March of this year:

 

 Ruthie, Marcus and their friend (pink shirt-I forget her name).
 

 

Back soon.  --cds



Road Trip, Anyone?

I have decided to refer to our recent absence from Florida as our unintentional road trip.  Yes, we had plans to travel to Utah to visit Jamie and the girlies, and yes, we intended to drive (as we always do), but when James suggested we try to avoid all interstates and seek out the backroads and byways, the traveling there and back again got a bit more interesting (and longer naturally).  Here is a preview and map of the journey:

James probably knows the exact mileage, but that means nothing to me -- I need the visual.  From Lakeland, we drove state and county roads north through Florida following the Big Bend Scenic Byway -- very pretty.  This is along the roadway in Apalachicola:

Apalachicola was also the home of a store that I have been searching for ever since I moved south.  My first Piggly Wiggly store!!  I was so excited.  I mean how cool would it be to be able to say, "I need to stop at the Piggly Wiggly for some milk and bread."  Some people have all the luck.

 

We stopped for the night in Biloxi, Mississippi, right along the beach.

Biloxi is an odd sort of beach town these days, post-Katrina.  Driving west along Beach Boulevard, we passed lot after empty lot.  Sometimes a brick or stone wall remained, but mostly the only things left on the lots were huge old live oaks and For Sale signs.

Bye bye Mississippi.  On to Louisiana and my obsession with Lucinda Williams.  --cds


Farewell Pretty Palm

Our lightening-struck palm needed to come down.  It became dead-dead-dead. 

Our tree-guy, Cesar, did a great job dropping it exactly between our two baby crape myrtles.  He is an interesting guy -- "when you happy, you pay," wears a huge gold crucifix around his neck, hates Donald Trump, and has just opened a restaurant downtown, which we'll probably check out in the near future.  He's a go-getter.
 

I've missed blogging.  Kid pictures tomorrow.  --cds

I'm Hoping For Superpowers

During an early season thunderstorm yesterday, I came as close to lightening as I have ever been when our palm tree out front, twenty feet from where I was sitting, was struck.

 

Aside from the horrendous boom and orange-yellow flash, five picture frames on that side of the room flew off the wall and others were set askew. A lot of bark was blown off the tree and the undersides of the palm branches look burned. Spotlights and other outdoor electric are fried as well as the garage overhead door. We were lucky, I know, because nothing electrical indoors was harmed.  The electrician will be here tomorrow - ugh $$$.

Anyway, since James is convinced his heart stopped from fright and our neighbor claims his hearing aids tingled all around his head and neck, I thought perhaps the strike might have bestowed on me a superpower or two. Already I've ruled out xray vision and mind-reading; likewise levitation and invisibility. I am holding out for time travel, though. I have questions for the ancestors.

So, yeah, I'm back to blogs. No excuses.  I just feel like writing again.   The Vermonters were just here for a visit so I have loads of new photos to sift through and post.  Back soon.  --cds

Friday Flowers

Just keeping communication open and ongoing here until I have something more interesting to post.  Since I had to completely toddler-proof my sewing room before the Vermont littles arrived - they slept on mattresses on the floor - it's taking me a long time to get it back in order.  Something I love doing anyway - I constantly reorganize my rooms and stuff. 

So in the meantime, yesterday my friend Patti in Vermont sent me this photo of Spring-time in Vermont --

So I sent her a snap of my pot of caladium and gerber daisies --

Not to be mean, just to remind Northerners that spring snow means pretty flowers to come.  Time to get busy, coffee's ready.  --cds

Blog Day

No joke! I am taking advantage of a brand new month to get in here and dust off the cobwebs from my poor neglected blog.  Just a quick little post to report that we are alive and doing well, still basking in the happy glow of a recent visit from our Vermonters -- a couple unedited photos here because I haven't had time to sort through them all --

 

I have done nothing in the sewing department since November, but I am itching to get back in there and begin working on some ideas that have been floating around my brain.  And speaking of floating, I must go now and pull on my swimsuit, hop on my bike and head down to the clubhouse.  Snowbirds are leaving daily to return to Michigan or Ontario, and I get to have my pool back to myself.  Too bad for them -- they're missing some of the best weather of the year.  --cds

Knitting and Sewing Therapy

Nothing like portable knitting and sewing projects to keep idle hands and brains busy during stressful times.  I feel a little sorry for people in waiting rooms who just sit and stare at TVs or continually swipe the teensy screens on phones.  I completed an entire knitted sock while waiting for my Mom on her knee replacement surgery day.  She is doing fabulous, by the way -- five weeks since surgery day and she's walking around great, a little slower and rests more often, but still plowing through her physical therapy sessions with high marks.  82 years old, people.  82 is the new 40, apparently. She's come a long way - we took a photo of her post-surgery knee when it looked like a ham (I won't share that one, don't worry), but now she doesn't even have all that much of a scar -- high stitchery marks to her doctor.

So, the knitting/sewing projects:

Marcus needed a little stuffed toy (not that they don't own a million already), but a handmade one,

 

because I was sew up this little kitty family for his sister Ruthanne.

 



Ruthie just loves playing "baby dolls" and changing their clothes, so when I found this really easy pattern for cat/kittens with clothes, I decided to make her a family with easy on/easy off clothing.

I had to improvise the DadCat's outfits because the pattern only included dresses.  Not too bad, huh?

I measured her poor naked baby doll when we were in Vermont in October and hopefully found a pattern of clothing that will fit the baby.  I tend to get a little fussy even making doll clothes and have to force myself to remember that Roo is only 4 and doesn't really care if the jacket is properly lined. 

So these were fun, and now my Utah girlies have put in orders for knitted tigers and mermaids and ballerinas.  All good -- thank God for grandkids. --cds