Road trip memories

This donation to our garage sale last summer (thanks Susan-but I kept this one for myself), prompted a belated posting regarding the Family Road Trip. It's amazing to me how this one thing prompted so many membories.

My parents used to take my brother and me on one or two road trips a year, either to stay with Texas relatives in Ingleside or Fredericksburg, or to Colorado in the summers once we were a little older. I remember stopping at two different retail outlets whose very existence depended on the Family Road Trip. One was Nickerson Farms and the other was Stuckey's, and one had a blue roof and one a red one (I don't remember which was which). Stuckey's sometimes had a snack bar, and Nickerson Farms had restaurants attached. I remember getting the BEST burgers there, old school style with thick bread slices instead of buns, and grill marks all over, and dripping with grease. Yum.

My brother and I were also allowed to spend a very thrifty sum on crap for the car at these establishments, and we took our role as consumers very seriously. I remember spending quite a bit on books like the one above. I also remember turning little cows and pigs upside down to hear the very unrealistic noises that were supposed to be moos and oinks, kitschy salt and pepper shakers, road trip bingo cards, every rainbow color and flavor of candy cane you can think of, lots of things to write on and write with, and alot of glass and ceramic items that I guess were meant to be gifts for whoever was waiting for you at your destination. (I always looked at that stuff as extra stuff to dust, and not much more).

I don't remember if Philip and I fought in the car very much. I remember we sang, as a family, early on, before I thought it was very uncool to do so. My parents bickered from time to time. I remember one particularly stressful trip to Colorado where my Dad got lost for awhile. We were all very hungry and apparently in the middle of nowhere in New Mexico. We accidentally drove onto an Indian Reservation somewhere around Taos where they were having a festival of some kind, but we were not allowed on the property. We finally stumbled on an old and not very well-stocked grocery store where we at least bought beverages and snacks to hold us over until we found civilization again. I think my Mom started speaking to my Dad again once we got to the Colorado border.

But I mostly remember fun times, especially on the way to the destination.

(posting from Belle Vernon, PA, where we're having a wonderful time)

Illness, injury and airline travel

The last few weeks have been a little rough around here. I got really sick (from bad allergies to a cold to a sinus infection then to bronchitis). I had a bad visit with a nurse practitioner who didn't prescribe the right medicines-she said antibiotics are overused and people are starting to develop immunities against them. I agree, except that I NEEDED antibiotics to get over it, and finally got some after I was close to coughing up a lung. Luckily, though, Gabriel didn't catch anything.

Around this same time, Jav started having pain in the back of his shoulder. By the end of the weekend, he was having major pain in his right arm and numbness in his fingers. Not good. I thought he might have pinched a nerve in his shoulder picking up Gabriel wrong or something. He got into to see a shoulder-specializing orthopedic surgeon, who said it looked more like it might be a problem with Jav's neck. So then he had to wait for an MRI, wait some more for the results and an appointment with a neck -specializing surgeon, who confirmed he had a herniated disc in his neck. 80% of the time the pain can be taken care of with a combination of steroid shots and physical therapy, so that's where Jav is headed, once all the doctors get back from their Thanksgiving vacations. In the meantime, he's trying to cope with some pretty bad pain and frustration with the medical community's general lack of concern.

In spite of all of this, we are bravely leaving for Pennsylvania tomorrow to spend Thanksgiving with our dear friends Dave, Barbara and their three kids. Dave and Jav met and were roommates at UT for graduate school. Jav's been for Thanksgiving almost every year for the last ten years (and I started joining him four years ago), but we didn't make it last year since Gabriel had just been born. I can't wait to get there, but the plane ride is worrying me. Gabriel is supposed to sit on my lap for three hours. HAH. He just wants to walk, walk, walk. We hope to tire him out at the airport before the flight leaves, which will help. Our magical and wonderful main solution is the purchase of a portable DVD player and several Teletubbies and Sesame Baby DVD's. We'll cook all day and have our huge midday meal Thursday, go see our annual Friday afternoon movie (The Bee Movie - yay!!), and head to a mall with all the kids on Saturday. And maybe have a nice kid-free dinner out Saturday night, if I can summon up the courage to leave Gabriel with their outstanding babysitter (they've had her for 5 years), and get over my worry about him falling down their basement and/or their second floor stairs. We usually come home on Sunday, but decided to stay an extra night, so Sunday should be a great lazing around, reading the paper and watching football kind of a day (something we NEVER get have the time to do here-always too much to do around the house). AND it's supposed to snow, which is so cool for Thanksgiving.

The only bad thing is that I will miss spending it with my family - but they know we'll be thinking about them.

Halloween-The Busy Bee

The Genie likes Brazilian today

I have a theory that when you put your Ipod on Shuffle, the little Ipod Genie inside takes over and picks out the songs for that day. The reason behind this theory is that some days I hear almost all country or big band, or 4 or 5 songs by the same artist within a one hour period. It just doesn't seem too random to me. The Genie definitely has moods.

I can't keep up

Gabriel has matured in so many ways since he started walking I can't even keep up with them anymore. I never realized that opening that one developmental door would advance him in so many other ways. He can turn things on and off now, especially his noisier toys. He can open up certain doors in the house, which proves that he is getting taller by the day too. He can rip off his bib, which is his new clue to us that he is finished eating. It's been really amazing to watch how he fine tunes his communication skills, especially when it comes to what he likes and doesn't like. Anything he doesn't like is met with his very loud and whiny one syllable cry. This is his BAD noise. He has a much wider range for GOOD noises. Anything outside wins instant approval-it's all GOOD. Coming back inside is BAD. Putting on shoes and socks is BAD. Taking off shoes and socks is so GOOD it inspires giggles. Pasta, bread, cheese, peas, carrots, brocolli, sweet potatoes and all fruit is GOOD. Mushrooms, lunch meat, fish and cauliflower are BAD. In this case, the whiny noise is accompanied by a healthy toss of the offending food onto the floor.

The most interesting communication Gabriel has, though, is with the pets. Several weeks ago we realized that he has developed a language for Molly that he doesn't use with anybody else. It involves keeping his mouth closed while flicking his tongue off the roof of his mouth alot. This sounds a bit like Hindu chanting. We can't figure out if he is trying to emulate a barking sound, trying to say "Molly" over and over again, or if there is a deeper and more complex set of words being said. He has used this language around some of our neighbors' dogs, too, leading us to determine that it must be canine in nature.

On the opposite spectrum, his feline language is all very high-pitched, short noises. Mom hears this over the phone and says it sounds like a jungle bird, but I've decided to start calling it his Cat-Chasing Comanche War Cry. The most passionate of the cries come while he is actually chasing one of the cats, arms held out and slightly up. He especially likes to chase Zoe, probably because she will run away at first but then always comes back for more. She LOVES to play, even with a terrifying stumbling one-year-old.

So all in all, my child is now learning four languages: English, Spanish, Dog and Cat. Even though English still gets a little complicated sometimes. Every time we read Goodnight Moon before bed, we get to the pages that say "Goodnight stars, goodnight air", and Gabriel starts patting his head to tell his hair goodnight. The song from My Fair Lady, "Just you wait 'enry 'iggins, just you wait" always comes into my head when this happens. I knew all of that Harry Potter audio would turn him into an Anglophile!

The magic is over

I finally wrapped up Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows yesterday. I feel a bit like I have lost my best friends. But I loved the book. I have been thinking about why I like the series so much, and why I continue to try to get other adults to read it. I think it's because no other book or books have possessed me so since I was a kid. I have read many books over the years that I couldn't wait to open up at night, or that made me laugh and/or cry. But these books get into your soul. I could almost think about nothing else for the last few weeks. It's not just the complex world that Rowlings has created, but the complex characters and story. The black and white areas of "good" and "evil" have distinctive gray areas, and she wasn't afraid to tackle things like governments lying to their contituents, or media-bias. Sometimes people who seemed to be villains were actually heroes, and the heroes had many flaws when we got to know them better. I loved the concept of trusting and believing in your friends, especially in life and death matters. I love Hermione, with her love of books and learning and bushy hair - how could I not identify with her? Jav and I have been talking about the book over dinner every night (I was driving him crazy with all of my yes or no questions since he finishied the book weeks ago).

The only complaint I have is that I wish Rowlings could have published all the books before any of the movies were made. I like having the characters' faces in my head, but that's impossible once you've seen them in the movies. And the last couple of books had a tendency to seem like one fantastic movie scene after another. But this didn't take away from the narrative at all, to me.

I've been reading over my old posts in order to get everything labeled, and I came across this today. Well, I'm pretty impressed with Harry and his destiny, and with J.K. Rowling's vision. I can't wait to start reading them with Gabriel one day.

Padre trip

Even though the trip was not like I had pictured in my head, we had a good time on our beach trip. First off, I never realized how much work Jav and his parents did to spiffy up the condo each year. I tried to help out when I could, but still didn't feel like I helped very much. Secondly, the weather got pretty nasty the 2nd full day we were there. The front that hit Fort Worth made it all the way down south. The temperature dropped into the 60's with high winds, both of which made it pretty uncomfortable to stay outside for any length of time. Everybody thought to bring a jacket except me, so I bought a fleece pullover on one of our many trips into Port Isabel. One weird thing was that the ocean was really warm. We probably looked silly in our windbreakers and hats and shorts and flip flops, walking along in the water.

One of the cool things about the trip was the International Sandcastle Building competition, held at the Sheraton Hotel every year which is just down the beach from our condo. We took video of the winners since we didn't have the regular camera with us that first pretty day. Another cool thing was that I realized how much I like and get along with my inlaws. They have become family to me; they are such a big help with Gabriel, and I'm so lucky to have them. We all watched the finale of a Mexico-version of American Idol that they had been keeping up with, and we had such a good time together.

Gabriel has decided he likes the ocean. He was afraid the first day and preferred digging (ok-mostly eating) the sand on the beach. But that afternoon he watched a little girl who was a few months older than him playing in the water. She was a native and learned how to walk on the beach. I guess this made Gabriel think, "Well, if she can do that, so can I", and he liked the waves after that.

Jav and I got to have one dinner out, which was funny because we couldn't find a place to go. ALOT of restaurants close up on the island, so we went back over the bridge to Port Isabel, just driving around in the relentless wind looking for a good seafood place. We ended up eating at a big tourist trap right at the base of the bridge, but they had good food and good magaritas. One sad thing that happened was that there was an injured pelican hopping along on the bridge when we crossed back over. He apparantly couldn't fly, and I wanted to stop and help him somehow, but it was too dangerous to stop on the bridge. I thought about him for a long time, and hoped that someone else figured out how to help him that night.

When we left early in the morning to come back home, the full moon was shining on the bay. It was just beautiful and I was sad to be leaving the ocean. And on the way home we drove right through the Monarch butterfly migration route. For about 7 or 8 minutes we saw one every 15 to 30 seconds. They must have some pretty good radar because they seemed to float higher than the car whenever we approached. I think we only ended up hitting one of them, which made me feel so bad. I wondered how many people driving down that highway even noticed them. When I think about the thousands of miles they have to travel, the trip to Padre doesn't seem that bad after all.

Heading down to the beach.

Still not quite sure about this ocean thing.

OK-I've decided it's pretty darn fun.

Especially since I'm with Tita and Tito.

Chillin' in the condo.