The Vacationing Life

We went to Hermosillo yesterday. I needed to see the ophthalmologist and Demo wanted to see Spiderman. Neither of us like driving in the big city so we enlisted the services of our chauffeur.

I can't see out of my right eye - especially something glaring like a computer screen. According to the doctor one of my cataract lenses has formed a cloud, an opacity, which can be fixed with laser surgery for $6500 pesos (about $500 U.S.). I was thrilled to know that this problem was fixable and felt enthusiastic as we headed off to Galerias Mall to eat lunch before hitting the VIP lounge at Cinepolis.

ComicX is a restaurant chain in Mexico but the atmosphere and menu are total U.S. Action figures are everywhere. Lifesized Batman, Spiderman, Hulk and the rest. All kinds of action hero memorabilia adorn the walls. We were there when a family came in and the little boys went crazy. "Mira, mira" they ran from one display to another, "look, look."

We rushed through lunch - pizza, ribs, chicken - to get to the VIP lounge. We bought tickets to Spiderman, 100 pesos each which is a lot more than the regular theater but worth it. We walked in and I said "oh oh, there's no booze on the shelves." We tracked down a worker who said that their liquor permit had been revoked. Well why pay 100 pesos for the VIP lounge when you can't drink? I mean, sure, the leather recliners are nice but not that nice. We go there for the opportunity to drink alcohol with our movie. The Cinepolis management was very nice and gave us our money back.

Scratch the movie plans, we headed to the part of town where the rich people live, where there's a Starbuck's and a Chile's and an IHop and where the WalMart carries giant vodka for 100 pesos and Miracle Whip and Schweppe's tonic water. Afterwards we went to the Thai restaurant across the street and sat on the patio and had cocktails. Demo had chardonnay. Our chauffeur had some non-alcoholic beverage. I had a Tangueray and tonic but I had to provide my own tonic which I'd just bought at Walmart.

It was cloudy and we could see lightning off in the distance. There was a nice breeze. It was downright comfortable in Hermosillo which is often the hottest place in all of Mexico. I could've sat there for hours; it felt so city-like and civilized.

Demo's car has an outside-the-car temperature display. When we left Hermosillo it was 81 degrees. We hadn't experienced 81 degrees since May. Halfway to Kino, in Calle Doce or La Doce or just plain old Doce, the temperature rose to 98. Shit. When we reached Kino it was 94. As I got out of the air-conditioned car my sunglasses fogged up.

After Francisco came over and put some freon in the refrigerator, and I had my newly-defrosted (unplanned) chicken breasts slow cooking, I checked out the laser procedure the ophthalmologist wants to perform. I tried to find out the cost in the U.S. One site said $300 to $500. Well, damn, that's cheaper than here. Another said $1500. So I'm trying to get some actual quotes from offices in the U.S.

After my visit to the eye doc I'd said something about the cost of the laser surgery cutting into my vacation money. The chauffeur said "Vacation? Your life is a vacation. Look where you live." I responded that for me a vacation is going to a place with bookstores, restaurants, coffee houses, and bars where I don't know anyone. A vacation is the opposite of day-to-day life.

When did living in Kino switch from a vacation to real life? It happened when the newness wore off. When I began working. When I started feeling bored. When I started itching for a change...a change of scenery, a change of people. Which is why I live in an Airstream travel trailer. I want my life always to be a vacation and for me that means newness. Which is why, when all these people ask why I drive that big blue van, why don't I sell it, I know that Vanna is my key to full-time vacation living. Whether I tow that Airstream out of here or just take extended road trips in that hefty Econoline, Vanna is the key. And as soon as I can see again, we're hitting the road.

Wifebeater Update

This movie, called El Gringo, is now
showing in Hermosillo.

When I lived in that trailer park Arizona I created a blog called "On Silver Wings". I was new to living in an Airstream, new to living in the desert and just so damn excited about my new life that I blogged enthusiastically - and honestly - about pretty much everything. I never wrote negatively about anyone (except for "the sheriff") but still, when people started reading my blog and identified themselves, it got awkward and I killed the blog. When I first got to Kino, I created another blog but kept it anonymous - I never mentioned the town I was writing about nor my name or other identifying information. Now with this blog everything's out in the open and I face the same problem here - writing about a small community while more people in that community are reading the blog. I am constantly self-editing. How honest can I be about some of the things here? About the people? Especially the people in my trailer park? Most the time I think "fuck it" - I have to write honestly or the writing is stilted. Or I don't write at all.

So here's an update on my trailer park neighbor who tried to kill his wife. People in Kino who read this blog know who I'm talking about. And, hell, maybe someday the attempted murderer's wife will even read what I write here. Fuck it.

The asshole's still in prison - the old, tough and scary prison on Hermosillo's eastern edge. If I didn't despise him so much, if I wasn't so repelled by the thought of seeing his now-thinning face with its over-sized gleaming white false teeth making him look like a Day of the Dead skeleton, I'd go interview him about his life in that scary Mexican prison. Sometimes I think about him and try to imagine how he spends his days there. I know that he greased some palms and got moved to a better part of the prison. I know that he complains to his lawyer about the food. (No shit, dude. You shoulda thought about that before you tried to kill your wife. Pendejo!) People joke that he's finally learning Spanish. I know that his family get his medicine and toiletries and stuff like that to him via friends of mine. And, boy, does that piss me off.

It pisses me off that they use my Mexican friend - well, they don't "use" him, they pay him - to take these items to the prison because, unfortunately, he knows how to maneuver through the system. And it pisses me off that my gringo friend acts as intermediary. Last night when I told el gringo how I felt, he said "well, he [the asshole] is really sorry." Well fuck a duck, all wifebeaters are sorry afterwards. And, frankly, from what I've heard he doesn't seem sorry. When one of the people who was present that horrific night gave his deposition to the judge, the asshole had his lawyer bring him a slip of paper with all these biblical sayings on it, things like "thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor." Does that sound like a man who has faced what he's done honestly?

I was very happy to learn that the person who had agreed to be the mail drop wrote the family and said he was no longer interested in playing that role, they'd have to find someone else. I have another friend who comes down here regularly and I'm afraid they'll approach her and she'll say yes. I hope beyond hope that she won't do it. Not very Christian of me, is it? Well when my Mexican friend was in prison and we were trying to get him out, the asshole refused to help, saying that he needed to learn his lesson. Karma, cabron. You need to learn your lesson.

El gringo who acts as intermediary with the family wasn't there the night of the beating. I think if he had been - if he'd heard the wife screaming, if he'd seen the husband come out and bear-spray spray and machete the neighbors - if he'd seen all that, maybe he wouldn't be so quick to help. I was there. Which is another reason I won't face him in prison because I'd be tempted to take a machete to his head then I'd be in that hell hole.

What's the latest? Well he wasn't extradited as some people believed would happen. They said Mexico won't want to deal with him, the possibility of this Americano dying under their watch, so they'll ship him out. Didn't happen. The process through verdict and sentencing takes about eight months and it looks like he'll be in at least that long. Should he be found guilty on two counts of attempted murder, he could face 15 to 20 years. Can he buy his way out? That's a possibility but it won't be cheap. People estimate 60 to 80 thousand dollars.

I can't imagine what it's like for this man to be in that Mexico prison. But I get enjoyment picturing him there. Yeah, yeah, maybe bad karma on my part. Fuck it.

Spying on Kino

The people on the beach cannot see into this house. They cannot see me watching them. The owners of the house put in mirrored windows - a necessity when you live right on the beach right in town. So I stand at the sliding glass door and watch people on the beach.

I see the old man who collects cans walk by. He always looks at the house in the hopes I'll come out with a bag full.

I watch the man launch fishing boats. His technique is designed for efficiency. He drives onto the beach, makes a huge arc, backs up into the water where he slams on his brakes at the same time the guy in the bow of the panga releases the rope which ties the boat to the trailer. Whoosh! The boat is free, the truck takes off for another.

Couples make love in the water, holding each other close.

Mothers take their naked babies into the sea to wash their butts.

Unhappy dogs are carried into the surf - a flea dip.

Young women in swimsuits pose for photos. Their favorite pose is a leap in the air. Yesterday a middle-aged woman lay on the beach, the waves washing over her, while her husband snapped her picture.

Little boys (and some men) pee against the wall.

Every day the older white-haired lady who is schizophrenic or something, who walks around town barefoot, every day she gets in the water to cool her body down. I've seen her eat food at picnic blankets while the picnickers were in the water.

Yesterday the beach in front of the house was packed with people. There were two families consisting of at least 20 people in each. At the rental house next door a group gathered for a birthday party. They put a trampoline on the beach, strung a pinata in the yard. When I went to bed I turned on all the fans in the bedroom to block the music which was still going strong - and loud - at 4 a.m.

This morning I got out of bed around 5. Even at that hour people were playing in the water. Boys sat on my wall. Older women sat in the sand using the wall as a backrest.

Kino certainly has become a weekend get-away for people in Hermosillo. Yesterday I saw a weather map for Mexico. Hermosillo had the highest temperatures in the whole country, hovering somewhere around 115.

This house is only a block from the trailer park where I live. Although on summer weekends the park is filled with Mexican families who stay in the bungalows or who bring their own trailers (a new phenomenon), it is still a gringo enclave. I never realized how much until I took up residence in this house on the beach with its mirrored windows.

Moonset Over Alcatraz

Two nights ago I woke, oh it must have been somewhere around 3:00 in the morning, to a spotlight shining in my face. I've been sleeping with the roller shades up and even though it's too hot and muggy to open the windows, I can still hear the sea, I can see various lights reflecting on the water. It took me a few seconds to realize that the spotlight was the moon. Have I ever been able to see the moon from my bed? Even when I lived on the beach in Oregon I had to walk downstairs to the kitchen to see the moon over the Pacific Ocean. I remember being able to see the full moon from my bed in one of my Portland apartments but I lived in too many to remember which one - maybe the third floor apartment on NW 22nd or the second story apartment at NW 29th and Thurman.

The moon moved across the sky. I closed my eyes for a few minutes and when I opened them I saw the strangest sight. The moon was sitting atop Alcatraz Island, balanced like a big yellow ball. Then it began slipping down the other side. Never in my life have I seen a moonset. In the winter, that is the exact same spot where the sun leaves us.

All the while this is happening I'm telling myself to get out of bed and get the camera. But I also know that my camera won't do it justice. So I decided to enjoy the experience, try to get a shot the following night.

Last night I practiced nighttime shooting which, as you can see from the photo, was a near failure. This is a shot of the moon over the muelle (pier).

Right on schedule, I woke when the moon was directly overhead. Which was the problem - it was overhead; not low enough to shine in the bedroom windows, not low enough to see from the bed. Its path was much higher and therefore the moon was going to pass Alcatraz without stopping. I consoled myself with the thought that there's always next month...and the next and the one after that...

Madre, can you spare a peso?*

Omar (on the left) and Manny (the other one) work at the trailer park.

Manny's worked at the park since before I got here. How Omar came on the scene, I'm not really sure. In the five years since I've been here, we've gone through a string of workers. Manny's dad worked here for years until he got pissed off and walked off the job. We had some kind of hot gangsta dude for a a very brief time. He took to lazing around rather quickly and was pretty useless. One guy's work schedule kept getting interrupted with stints in drug/alcohol rehab. Just before the gangsta dude we had Daniel and Martin but Martin got scared off when he accidentally tripped the neighbor's alarm. Daniel is delivering bottled water which is a pretty good job.

Suddenly last summer Omar showed up.

Poor Omar! He has got to be one of the shyest people I've ever met. Muy timido! He would ride around in the truck with Manny looking like a scared rabbit. Manny would yell "shut up Omar!" in english (callete! in espanol) and Omar would giggle. We discovered that Omar was married to a woman who had something like four kids from a previous relationship and she and Omar added three more to the bunch. Not too long after Omar started working at the park he and his wife split up and he moved in with Manny.

One day Omar came to my porch alone and sat in one of my camp chairs. I was at the computer and could see him through the window. I went outside and Omar rattled off a memorized script which I could barely understand except for two words "pagar" and "sabado." I've been hit up for loans many times so I figured that's what he wanted. "Cuanto?" I asked. "Dos cientos." I went inside and scrounged up 200 pesos and gave it to him. Again he repeated the script - he'll pay me on sabado (which is payday). Saturday rolled around and there was Omar with my 200 pesos.

We developed a routine. Mid week he would come over and sit in a camp chair. I'd go outside. That's when I would see his wife waiting for him on the side of the road. She'd come to Omar asking for money for the kids; he'd come to me asking for a loan. One time he only wanted 100 pesos. So after that I'd go outside and hold up one finger on one hand and two fingers on the other. One or two? Mostly it was two. I'd give him his money and every Saturday he'd pay me back. Manny had taught Omar that if you want to be helped by the americanos, you have got to pay them back or they will cut you off.

Now that I'm living outside the park, I haven't seen much of Omar and Manny. However the other morning they came by to hit up Banco Madre. Manny put the 5-gallon water bottle (garrafon) on the dispenser for me then Omar rattled off his script. Manny said he needed money too. I feigned shock. Tu tambien Manuel? Si, madre, si. So I went and got two 200 peso notes and handed them to the boys. Omar giggled the whole time.

I've seen a lot of changes in Manny over the past few years. He's grown into a responsible man who's looking for a good Christian woman. From what I understand, Omar tries as much as he can to help out his wife and kids and once a week goes to her place and spends the night there. (Hopefully just visiting and not making more babies!)

Manny and Omar - I couldn't have asked for nicer adopted sons.

*this is for Bill S.

How To Write

A month gap in blogging mostly due to settling into my 8-month house-sitting gig. But also transcription work picked up. And I've been writing a novel. I don't know how people can write more than one piece at a time. For instance, Cheryl Strayed wrote her book Wild while also penning various essays and doing the Dear Sugar advice column over at The Rumpus. Luis Alberto Urrea dusts off old pieces while working on new. I guess a lot of writers do that but that's hard for me. I started another book about life in a trailer park only this trailer park is in Mexico and not southern Arizona but there's this novel that's been nagging me to get on it so I dropped the trailer park book for that. And I kind of dropped blogging too.

There are a lot of books out there on how to write. I own a few: Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird, Robert Olen Butler's From Where You Dream, Stephen King's On Writing, Ray Bradbury's Zen in the Art of Writing, some books on screenwriting like Your Screenplay Sucks by William Akers, and books specifically on memoir writing (Judith Barrington's Writing the Memoir). Each book offers at least one piece of advice I've latched onto. For instance Anne's shitty first draft and Ray's writing should be fun. Most writers advise writing every day. Stephen King goes even further and recommends 1,000 words a day. Maria Doria Russell (Doc) wrote on facebook that she'd only written something like 459 words that day but 6 of them were great (I'm paraphrasing because I can't find the exact post). If I remember correctly when I saw Luis in Tucson he said he went long periods without putting pen to paper but the words were percolating in his head so that when he did sit down to write, he wrote muy rapido, almost like transcribing the story as he saw it in his mind's eye.

One of the biggest impediments to writing is our internal critic. In the NY Times series Writers on Writing, Kent Haruf (Plainsong) says he writes in the coal room in the basement of their house.

It's the old notion of blinding yourself so you can see. So you can see differently, I mean. I remove my glasses, pull a stocking cap down over my eyes, and type the first draft single-spaced on the yellow paper in the actual and metaphorical darkness behind my closed eyes, trying to avoid being distracted by syntax or diction or punctuation or grammar or spelling or word choice or anything else that would block the immediate delivery of the story.

This is akin to Anne Lamott's shitty first draft - just write the damn thing and edit later. And Stephen King recommends that a) don't let anyone read your book while you're writing that first draft and b) after the first draft is finished, put it aside for a few months. When you begin the editing process you'll be seeing it with fresh eyes.

There's been a strange shift in the way I write from memoir to novel. With the memoir I wrote fast and furious, wanting to remember as much as possible - just get it down! - then hack away later (and I've probably hacked too much but that's another story). Every morning I got up and wrote. I was excited to be doing it. After all, I was writing about me! (two exclamation points in one paragraph is one too many, btw)

Now the novel...in a way it feels more like a chore. Kind of the way I feel about doing those saggy upper arm exercises when, really, they're not a lot of work and once I'm doing them, the time flies and I feel very virtuous afterward. However, there are ways in which the novel and the memoir are similar: I know the main character, I know how the story begins and how it ends. Unlike the memoir, it's all the stuff in the middle I'm not too sure about. But here's the weird part. When I sit down to write I may not know where the book is going next - does she have an affair with the nice man who's given her shelter? - but the book seems to know where it's going. I sit down and type out the next scene with no forethought. It just happens. A scene in this case is only a few pages long and I'm not really sure how many words that is. I don't care. I write a scene and usually stop there. But that book is always open on my laptop. Sometimes I'll go back and begin the next scene. Maybe just a sentence. Maybe a whole paragraph. It doesn't seem to matter because the flow is always there.

Another difference is the ease with which I'm writing dialogue. With the memoir, I sucked at dialogue so I pretty much left it out. Maybe because I was trying to write as close to the truth as possible and that's pretty darn near impossible when you're trying to remember conversations, most of which happened while you were drinking.

And one last thing: Even when I'm not physically writing the novel, I'm thinking about it. I'm thinking about my main character. She is the last thing I think about before I fall asleep. She is always with me. I guess she's telling me how we get to the end.

Spanish Word of the Day - Peligroso

As most people know, the other day 49 bodies were found in the state of Monterrey, Mexico. They'd been decapitated, mutilated. The drug cartel Zetas claimed responsibility.

Every time something like this happens, it reinforces people's fears of traveling to Mexico. It is too dangerous (peligroso)!

In our local expat email newsletter someone posted a link to a Lonely Planet blog post about the safety of traveling in Mexico: Are Americans Safer at Home than in Mexico. I recommend the article and the comments from gringos who live and travel in Mexico. But I had to laugh at one comment by someone from Oregon who said that in Mexico they've not experienced any crime whatsoever - no burglaries, murders, etc. I so badly wanted to post a response but had a problem creating an account so I'll respond here.

No robberies or burglaries? Are you kidding me? Things are stolen all the time. But does it happen more here than in any neighborhood in the U.S. where you have the homes of wealthy people abutting homes of poor people? I'd say it's about the same. That's why people in the U.S. live in gated communities or have home security systems. Most of the thieving is of small items - shoes, shiny objects, beach chairs - but some can be major like having all the copper stripped from your home. (I know from news accounts that that is a problem in Tucson. Not sure about other parts of the U.S.)

Just the other day a friend's camouflage crocs were stolen. He always leaves his shoes outside his trailer door and, no, he didn't think the dogs had taken them. During happy hour our security guard pulled up on his bicycle and asked if we'd seen P. around, the amputee in the wheelchair, because he thinks P. stole them. Okay, so he thinks the shoes were stolen by a guy with no feet. That's possible. I guess he could've stolen them to sell. But for him to maneuver the wheelchair around all the tables and grills and planters on the patio would be quite a feat even for someone with feet.

Last night P. approached us in his wheelchair wanting to sell some pearls. "Let's see if he's wearing your crocs," I joked. He wasn't. But where's his fancy motorized wheelchair some gringo gave him? I don't know. That's probably another interesting story.

Now this brings me to our security guard. If you want someone to stay up all night patrolling the grounds, best to hire a drug addict and best if he's addicted to a speed-like drug. Our security guard's drug seems to be meth - he's got all the signs from toothlessness to skin eruptions to paranoia. I've heard a couple scary stories about our security guard from a man who's known him for years. The first story is that he tried to murder his girlfriend by burning her up in their trailer. The other story is that he was friends with a gringo who disappeared and he somehow gained possession of the gringo's possessions, his home and property.

Recently our security guard had a puppy. He tortured the puppy and the puppy was taken away. This is not the first time he's abused an animal.

Some little boys came into the park and he shot them with rocks from his slingshot. Turned out one of the boy's parents were paid guests at the park. They left in a huff. I said, "You can't go around shooting little kids just because they're playing in the park."

So that's our security guard.

As far as I know the most serious crimes committed in our little town this past snowbird season were committed by a gringo - the two counts of attempted murder by my neighbor. Oh yeah, and pedophiles. We've had our share of those and thankfully we got rid of our resident pedophile.

I'll conclude by saying Mexico is safe. Just stay away from gringos and don't piss off your security guard.

It's Over

Another snowbird season comes to an end.

Late yesterday afternoon as I sat reading in the lounge chair on my porch I was overcome with a feeling I'm not sure I ever felt before: Ecstasy. Contentment and happiness are elusive enough but ecstasy? That's a rare one.

The motor home to my right is gone. I can see the sea. I can feel a breeze. I can hear the surf. The big ugly bus in the space in front of me is gone. I can see the sea out my front porch door. I can see the sea through the front window of the trailer.

I can blast my music if I want because I have no neighbors. If friends come by and want to party, the guy next door (who tried to kill his wife) isn't here to turn on his spotlight in an effort to run them off. (In retrospect, thank goodness that's all he did.)

It was a quiet snowbird season in the park up until the last couple months. There was one emergency hospitalization in a psychiatric hospital in Hermosillo followed a week later by the neighbor trying to kill his wife along with bear spray spraying and machete-ing people. Then a friend suffered a stroke which meant another Hermosillo hospitalization.

It's no wonder then that as the last of the big rigs pulled out and the vista opened up I was overcome with joy, peace and thrilled with the return of solitude. Of course there are people I'll miss but they'll be back in October and others will arrive and we'll see what kind of dramas next year's snowbird season will bring.

Except I won't be here, in this trailer park.

I'll be in a real house just a little bit down the beach from the trailer park. At this point it's a long-term housesitting gig - the owner will be back for a couple weeks around Christmas - then I'll go back to her house until she returns for a couple months in the spring. It looks like it will be a perfect arrangement. I'll be close enough to my trailer that I can walk over here every day and water plants, feed cats, hang out, have a presence at my home so no one's tempted to break in and steal my copper wiring (which is why the house owner wants someone at her house, having returned to a home stripped of copper). And to make sure the trailer doesn't get overrun with mice and palmetto bugs (the cats should help with that).

My hope is that this summer will be more tolerable when it comes to the heat because I'll have room to spread out and won't be confined to this air conditioned box. And because the house is right on the beach, there should at least be a breeze.

This is going to be quite a change - going from this tin can to a real house, and not just for a month but for months. I didn't like home ownership because I felt isolated, preferring apartment buildings and trailer parks. So it'll be interesting to see how I feel about it now. Will I miss the park and the dramas? Or will there be a balance as I roam between the two places?

I'm excited to see how this plays out...nearly ecstatic.

New Old People

They are in their 80s or 90s now, these people who began coming to Kino Bay 30+ years ago. They came to camp, to vacation, to fish. At first they brought tents and trailers. Then they built homes.

Drinking margaritas with girlfriends whose ages range from 40 to 60 we joked that we are the new old people. We are the same ages these old farts were when they first got here. Thirty or so years from now we’ll be replaced by the new old people. On and on it goes.

Among the expat/snowbird community I swear the mean age must be 70. (Or is that median age? My data analysis days are only seven years gone but right now I can’t remember which is which. At any rate, the white people here are old.) So imagine the excitement generated when two hot guys under 80 showed up at the bar. Way under 80. Like 40. And not just hot but fun, friendly, generous and flirty. No sexual innuendos for these guys; the sexual flirtation was explicit, in your face. We drank it up. We were giggling girls. We couldn’t get enough of these guys.

Kino is not a town young Americans come to party. It is a town young Mexicans come to party – especially this week (Semana Santa) and next (Semana Diabla) and summer weekends. And most of us prefer it this way. We don’t want Kino to turn into a Rocky Point. But once in a while it is nice when boys come to town and spice up the lives of us new old women.

Florence and the [Washing] Machine

Has someone ever done you a favor but they did it wrong or not to your liking but you couldn't really say anything because they were being nice so you had to hold your tongue?

One weekend I was camping with my girlfriends (the Kamp Kittens who, when it was winter, morphed into the Kraft Kittens) and I was feeling cranky (or was that kranky?). I probably should've stayed home but I decided to be social and go. Our first morning I wanted to sleep in and be left alone but one of the women came over to my tent and presented me with a cup of coffee. How nice of her, right? But she'd put cream in my coffee and I like it black. I was polite and thanked her but all day I mumbled why the hell did she put milk in my coffee? doesn't she know how i like my coffee? why would someone do that? 


A friend of ours was dying only we didn't know it at the time. I mean, she was in her 30s so how could that be? She was single and so us women friends did what we could to take care of her. One time when she was in the hospital one of the women did her laundry and brought her bras, panties, t-shirts, things like that. The woman in the hospital bed wasn't as nice as I'd been about the coffee. "The next time you do my laundry could you please use unscented detergent?" Or she'd reprimand us because we brought the wrong underwear. When we cleaned her apartment, we had remembered to recycle, right?

The night of the wife beating I'd grabbed the only blanket I had (outside of the comforter on my bed) to throw around my friend as she hunkered down in the dirt under my trailer. Later I put it around the shoulders of one of the bear spray sprayed men. I'd given away all my other blankets during a cold spell last year including my one and only sleeping bag. This blanket had been given to me by my realtor when I moved into my house - a pretty off-white Pendleton throw. It was one of the few household items I brought with me when I left Portland.

I didn't expect to see that throw again or if I did, I figured it would be a mess - a mixture of dirt, blood and bear spray. When I got home from Tucson the blanket was on my picnic table. It was clean. It was felted. It was shrunken down to half its size. Flo, God bless her, had washed it. A 100% wool throw thrown in the washing machine. Didn't she know not to do that? Had it reappeared I probably would've bagged it up and waited for my next trip to Tucson to have it dry-cleaned. But how could I say anything? So when Flo came over I thanked her profusely.

I may give the throw another wash and then dry it in Demo's dryer to thoroughly felt it. Maybe I'll make it into...uh, what? A purse? A door mat? A bed for the cat? A pillow cover? Could I needlepoint it? Hang shells from it? Hey, Kraft Kittens, got any ideas?