Feast or famine

Or so it seems.

Why oh why have I been so quiet?  Well, we seem to have come to a temporary halt in our trip.  Temporary, not to worry.  Due to that fact though, I think, the inspiration to sit and report on what we've been doing has up and floated away.  For now.  As we haven't been doing much.  It's a good thing I'm so backed up on our travel log, at least I can catch up meanwhile, perhaps.

I think this is a lesson in 'be careful what you wish for'.  I wished for rest from our go, go, go lifestyle that characterized our east coast adventures.  I got some rest in FL in the form of not going and doing and seeing.  Much anyway.  The plan was to head to TX for some friend and family (F&F) time.  Some.  And then, head off into the sunset, literally.

Well, it's been five weeks here in TX.

FIVE!!

And now, it seems it's going to be even longer, taking us into March....Like I said, it's famine time!  Famine from our travels and sightseeing lives that is.  We love being here with the F&Fs of course, but, we're not home.  We're staying with people and are not rooted, as strange as that may sound coming from an RVer.

Why are we still here?  It is for a very very good reason, and we wouldn't have had it any other way.  First, we were delayed in Houston due to S's eyes and doctor appointments.  All's fine on that front, for now anyway. Then we headed to Austin, where the plan was to stay for a nice chunk of time, 2 or 3 weeks.  We have lots of friends and family here to catch up with.  After spending some time here in Austin we went out to the country to visit with more friends, popping back into Austin for an overnighter with my Dad's cousin N.  Well, a one nighter turned into a many many many nighter thanks to our dog.  Yes, poor Labra.  He got underfoot (not uncommon for a 12 year old Labrador) and sent N tumbling over him with her knee smacking into the tile floor.  Ouch.  Ouch.  And Ouch!  Understatement of the year.

Next morning we made the call to EMS and dear dear cousin N was diagnosed with a fractured patella……Oh my goodness….Needless to say leaving her was *not* an option (her fall being our dog's fault or not).  Our beloved cousin was laid up with no one in house to help her out.  Obviously, again, we were going to stick around to take good care of her.

Two weeks later and N is doing much better and can even hobble along on her own now!  Yay!!  So, no, we don't *have* to stay, she can certainly fend for herself now.  But, we're still helpful in the sense that she doesn't have to get up for every little thing, do every single thing herself AND, more importantly, we keep her entertained.  Sometimes we provide a bit (?) more entertainment than she perhaps bargained for ;-).  Nevertheless, she loves us and we love her and all's well.  We do promise we'll be leaving.  Really really. No.  Really!


N, being pretty much dependent on us for food these past two weeks, has enjoyed many a raw meal and daily smoothies!  Nothing like being pretty much 'incarcerated' to be indoctrinated into the lifestyle :-).  Honestly though, we've been doing a bit more heating of food, I'll explain that another time.


Despite N's successful recovery process we will be hanging around Austin for about a month more.  Why?  So S can travel to help out a friend.  If I am going to be left all by my lonesome with three kids and a dog it might as well be some place I know like the back of my hand (we lived here for 7 years) AND somewhere we have many friends and family to keep us company.  Austin's it!  Better than in the middle of nowhere RV land.....


Anyway, looks like we're hunkering down in Austin for a while, if we really leave when we hope to, it'll be a total of 9 weeks in east and central TX!  Wowie wow wow wow.  Certainly was not in the grand plan, but, the best laid plans and all that.....


Go with the flow y'all, even if the flow gets clogged up sometimes!

Little Blue

Yes, I know.  It's been a while.  I blame technology and I blame my frustration with it.

I've been trying for what seems like forever to upload Inventor's birthday post but keep running into frustrating 'photo upload errors'.  These errors had me going through every single photo and checking and rechecking it for hours upon end.  I kid you not.  Iv'e spent so many hours on it that I have since thrown up my hands in disgust and given up, for the moment anyway. I WILL get that post up one way or another, it just won't be right now.  Poor Inventor.....He turned 8 btw!

In the meantime, and yes I know I'm still back in DC in our little travel log, I bring you a sweet little story of a cat.  Yes, a cat.

This -



is Little Blue.

The photo was taken a year and 2 months ago out in the middle of nowhere TX.  He was one of a myriad of free roaming cats my loving Aunt B generously feeds on the ranch she shares with my Uncle D.

When I say a myriad, I mean A Myriad.  This is what kitty dinnertime looks like out there:



No, not all the cats have names, I think.  This one caught D&B's eye cause he was so small, so blue/gray and so affectionate!  He, like all the cats out here (well, except for the royal indoor cat) find their way to the ranch where they are well fed.  Other than that, they are on their own and have to fend for themselves when it comes to every other aspect of survival.  And out here, it's really survival of the fittest for these guys and gals.  It's wild country!

Well, this particular little kitty cat was so friendly, so small and so trusting that B didn't hold out much hope for his survival.  BTW, no, they could not bring him indoors and officially adopt him since the royal cat would surely have had a very violent hissy fit.  In other words, his survival in this particular house was not guaranteed either.

Our kids fell for Little Blue the minute they set eyes on him,



And he didn't seem to mind them at all either.

Just to make it clear, S and I are NOT what you'd call cat people, by any stretch.  We are dog people.  Cats were never on our must have list.  Nor were they on our 'even slightly interested' list.  BUT - we ALL fell in love with Little Blue.  EVEN S.  If it weren't for his severe allergic reactions to cats Little Blue would certainly have come back home to CO with us!  That's quite a statement coming from us I tell you.

B, being quite concerned for this little guy, asked us if by chance we knew of anybody who'd be interested in adopting him.  Nobody came to mind.

About a week after our visit up at the ranch my good friend H here in Austin mentioned that they have started thinking about getting a cat.  They already had a dog and have had a cat in the past, but they really were only interested in a particular kind of cat.  A very very VERY gray cat.  These kinds of cats have a name but it completely escapes me at the moment.  Well, you can probably guess what my reaction was.

Long story short is we ended up going back up to nowhere TX during that visit and brought Little Blue to his new, safe and sound and loving home in Austin.

Why am I sharing all this?

Well, we of course visited Little Blue (and our friends) again during this TX visit.  Little Blue is A. Not so little anymore and B. Goes by a different name, Sterling.

This is 'Little' Sterling today, a whopping 10lbs later....

He really is stunning.

I know, I know, you don't see his size quite yet, hang on.

This is his behind...

Getting the picture?

This is his whole entire humungo self!

He is still loving and gentle, i.e. tolerates quite a lot.....but as you can see from here, it's hard now for Inventor to even pick him up!

His coat is soooo think, lush and soft it could rival any fancy lady's fur coat!

He's gorgious and we still absolutely love him.

And he, apparently, still remembers and loves us too

:-)

Just a hangin' and just a chillin' - October 30th & 31st

So here we are on our two day 'vacation' from sightseeing in DC.  Much needed I might add.

Turning to the weather for a moment, the first two days we spent here were some of the most humid I've experienced in my life.  And I've been through summers in Houston!  It wasn't all that hot, in fact, it was even down right chilly those first couple days.  But my oh my was there moisture in the air.  Even our plants grew mold!!  Not to worry, they have dried out and recovered since.  And yes, we travel with two little plants.  The first was a going away gift from our friends in Boulder.  It's a practical gift aptly named by my friend, the magic plant.  We refer to it as such as well.  Its real name, though not the scientific one I guess, is Hen and chick.  Yes, Hen and chick is the name.  It's sort of like an Aloe plant but better in the sense that it will cure practically every ill your skin may experience.  From bug bites to burns to rashes, this plant's juice does the trick, in an instant!  Like I said, it's the magic plant.  Aloe, btw, we ingest more than we use on our skin, though it's good topically too of course.  The second plant was a gift from one of our new 'Teton friends' from Minnesota.  It's a garlic chive plant.  At the moment it's not faring so well....but we're still holding out hope.  It's delicious!

Back to DC though.

As you can see from the double pajama layers the weather turned really cold that night.  But, the next morning the kids were up and writing in their USDA notebooks again!



While S and O (who spent the night in his tent at the campground) had their morning drinks.  And there are the plants! Attempting to dry out in the sun a bit....



This one was busy working on his White House.  After five days of getting up early and hitting the road, or the pavement, everyone was really glad to have the morning, and the day, to just chill.



O spent quite a bit of time teaching Analyzer how to use Wikipedia for her airplane and rocket research.  She was expanding her aerospace studies to beyond what she found at the museum.

And there's a plant again!  I think it's a recurring theme.....That's the Hen and Chick btw.  Hard to tell, but it has the 'mother', or hen, in the middle with all the little 'babies', or chicks, shooting out around it.  They will start their own new 'colonies'.



Lots of time for giggles and fun and there's the other plant!  The chives obviously, during better days....



Sunday came and we had a family related mission.  We were going to meet the mother and stepdad of my soon to be sister in-law, M!  They happen to live about 45 minutes away from where we were so we set out in the afternoon to meet them for the first time and have a nice evening together.

K, M's Mom, is a lovely lovely woman with a wonderful sense of humor to boot.  In an email she offered up this description as to how to find them.  She said, in the driveway are two cars, one black one white, the house is white with black shutters and the couple inside, is black and white! Love her :-).



Unfortunately I don't have a decent picture of O, M's stepdad to share.  He was so gracious, shared K's sense of humor and had some very interesting stories to share with us about himself and his family history.

We took a short walk down the street to play with the dog



and kick the soccer ball around.



Inventor helped out with the dinner and we all enjoyed a serene, lovely and delicious time.



Tomorrow, it's back to town to explore more museums....no more of this rest stuff!

Landmarks

A visit to Buffalo required not only a visit to the falls, but a pilgrimage to several other important locations as well.

Please forgive the pictures, they were taken with the iphone....

The first was a pilgrimage to Crosby Blvd. and the home my mother along with her two brothers grew up in.



I have no memories of this house as they moved just before I was born (I think) into their new and smaller condo. Despite having no memories of my own, I have a pretty clear vision of the house in my head from stories upon stories I've heard over the years.  It's like a gone but not forgotten family member, everyone always talks about it and keeps its memory alive.

Next on the list was the condo in Oakbrook I had spent so many summers hanging out in.



Now this place I have endless memories of!  I can clearly see it in my mind's eye, I can feel the fabric of the furniture, the carpets and even the building's hallway walls (they were textured), I can smell the scent of that same hallway (loved it!), I can taste the corn on the cob my Gramma used to make, I can hear the beloved upstairs neighbors playing piano, I can feel the dampness of the basement and sense the fear I had going down there to do the laundry (it creeped me out!)

It's such a complete sensory experience going back there again.....I loved that place!

The outside still looks the same, even their back porch (the lower one).



The hallway is no longer textured and the scent is gone, a real disappointment for me.  I was looking forward to inhaling that place again, as strange as that may seem.  I find a lot of my memories in general are tied to smells.

We said goodbye to Oakbrook and drove by our host's old house just down the road.  Another house with fond fond memories, mainly of my later life in Buffalo with S, but also earlier ones.  I tried to get a picture by the sun was exactly in the wrong place during our drive by.

We drove by the first apartment we shared during our second year at school.  Upper right.  That's where S sat and ate the caviar my Dad brought for him from Russia when he came to visit.



What a dump.... :-) We tried to find the other location we had lived in but couldn't!  We either weren't remembering it correctly or it had changed.  No matter.  By that time we were good and tired of nostalgia and were ready to move on.

Oh, before doing that though, I have to mention one more place we used to frequent and did so again,


If you don't know, Wegmans is the best grocery store there is.  It was back then and it's even better now. No wonder Whole Foods doesn't open up shop in Buffalo, there's some real competition here.  They even had a drop in playroom for the kids so you can shop in peace! What an idea!  Not that we utilized it.  Unfortunately we only discovered it as we were heading out for the last time....

We did however have fun with the Buffalo Bills paraphernalia


And loved this shirt :-)



See, even Wegmans is mentioned on it!

Our stay in Buffalo was extended by a day since we had some maintenance to do on the RV and plenty of organizing and shopping to do before we could head out again.  Oh, and when I say 'we' had some maintenance to do that'd be the royal we of course.  You don't see me climbing up on that ladder do you?  S was up there patching up the roof a bit.  Nothing big, just typical stuff.  But it did have to be done before the rain came.....




More play was to be had with our hosts



More attempts at play were to be made by Patsy -

Come on, you're leaving tomorrow.....GET up and play with me!!



Giving it up.  Again.



This is where I want to be and what I want to do.  Nothing more, nothing less.

Leave. Me. Be.



Lucky for Patsy she had kids who wanted to run around, if not a dog.

Ready? ready?

I'm ready!!



GO!!!!


Boy that dog can turn on a dime.

And finally, some rest.  And peace and quiet for the rest of us....

A house vs. a home

Yes, the dog was introduced to you yesterday, before the people.  If you know our cousins P&A, you won't even question that order of events. Dogs are royalty in this house!

 

Having our behemoth parked in their driveway was quite a curiosity to all who live and drive by there I'm sure.  It's not your 'typical' RVing neighborhood (if there is such a thing)....

 

 

Here we are enjoying a wonderful dinner at a fancy location.  No jeans allowed.  We had to dig out our, relatively, dressy clothes for this one.  I said relatively.  Everything's relative....

 

 

Needless to say those clothes haven't gotten much use on our trip.  We brought them along specifically for these kinds of occasions.  I did not however bring along fancy dress shoes for the boys. So, that meant their everyday beat up sneakers went along with their button down shirts and clean, hole-less, pants :-). Analyzer was the one most decked out with her dressy shoes and velvety dress.

 

While in Buffalo, we stayed inside my cousin's actual house, not in the RV as we had originally planned.  This was the first time since leaving our own house that we stayed within 'real' walls.  We had two bedrooms at our disposal, one large bathroom all to ourselves plus an extra one in the house.  We had excellent water pressure and endless hot water.  We had consistent heating and cooling.  We had a large fridge to accommodate all our fresh produce and such, as well as a large kitchen to use.  We had in-house laundry facilities and of course, plenty of room to maneuver.



 

 

Given all those luxuries, you would think we would have had a hard time going back to our small, 'limited' house on wheels.

 

Well, I'm here to tell you that that wasn't the case AT ALL.  Nope, not one bit!  We loved being with my relatives of course are are so grateful for their wonderful hospitality, but missed our home.  We missed being among our things and our surroundings.  As comfortable as our beds were in the house, and they were, we missed our own beds.  Like most people know I would assume, it's not easy packing up your stuff to take with you when you're traveling.  Especially when kids are involved.  And boy is it a great feeling coming home again, even if your time away was terrific.  It's home.  And that's exactly what we'd experienced.  We had left home for several days and then came back.  Yes, we had a fantastic time with my wonderful cousins and enjoyed them and their house, but it was good to be home again when it was all over.

 

I'm getting ahead of myself though.  We did plenty in Buffalo before we left, but I'll save that for next time.

 

The bumpy road east...our last leg

Our last day of travel, for now, had thankfully arrived.  Today we would reach our first destination, Buffalo NY!  Why Buffalo you ask?  The answer is here in case you missed it.

Cutting across the northwestern corner of



Whirlwind expressed this sentiment:  I love trees, they're my heros!  I thought that was a nice way to greet a new state :-).

Pennsylvania was short lived and we soon, FINALLY, crossed over into NY!! Hallelujah!!



Despite the tremendous amounts of bumps and lumps on the road heading east, driving into Buffalo, as corny as it sounds, warmed the cockles of our hearts.  Again, here's why.




And no, Buffalo has nothing to do with these, so not sure why you see them around....



I was told the name might possibly have something to do with the French words for 'beautiful river', as in the Niagara.

In any case, we'd arrived!  The longest and most drawn out part of our trek east had come to an end.  We were now ready to settle in for several days and do some short distance exploring and wandering as well as some long awaited visiting.



That's cousin Patsy on the right, our chief greeter and playmate during our stay in Buffalo.  Patsy is an adorable young lab who provided hours of play and entertainment for all.  She, unfortunately, did not get nearly as much in return from Labra, who was quite content to just sit still and rest, being the old man he is.

Patsy never gave up though, she was always nudging him along saying "come on!  Get up and play already! Whachya sittin' around for all day long?!"



Labra would have non of it.

Biscuits were a huge hit though of course,



And here's where Labra did get in on all the action





His best trick yet!

Those two dogs sure got a lotta love



Attention



and activity



During our visit.

Some more than others regarding that last one.

Running into my roots.....

And back to the blogging world.........


Continuing eastward on I-80 we kept seeing RV after RV.  Only thing is, they were all heading in the opposite direction.....west.  S saw it as a commentary on our mistaken notion of heading east.  In other words:  What are we thinking?!?  Seriously though, along the entire drive east, almost every RV was NOT going where we were.....kind of makes you think, but not too much.  We didn't change our plans of course, we had a mission in mind.  Things to do and more importantly, people to see.  Important people.

Since I am chief navigator, I was examining the map and, lo and behold, I spotted the city my grandmother was born and raised in!  Not only that, we'd be passing right through it, not even a detour was going to be necessary!

Crossing the border into Illinois on a beautiful fall day -



we quickly found the signs to Rock Island.  A town I've heard about my entire life and never ever would have thought I'd actually visit.  I mean, what are the odds I'd end up on the border of Illinois and Iowa some day?! Not very high I can tell you.



I was super excited at this find!  My hope was to locate the house my Grandma G grew up in and snap a few pictures in front of it.  Our experience ended up being oh so much richer though.

I began with a couple of phone calls to my aunt, uncle and cousin to hopefully get an address.  No luck.  My clever aunt did however suggest that we try the local library to check their city directories, if they had them.  One phone call later I verified that indeed the records did exist and we were free to come and look anything up on microfiche.  I of course know what microfiche is, but haven't really used it since college. And even then, I think I needed it once and that was it.  This was not only going to be a cool personal history lesson for us all, but it would also end up being a lesson in historic methods of storage and research.

So here we are parked behind the library.  Quite a feat given the size of the parking lot.  And given the age of the building, quite a juxtaposition.



The front of this historic library.  I wish I can remember how old it actually is.



Once inside we were directed to these drawers to choose a year and its corresponding film.  Since my great grandparents lived there for many many years, I randomly chose 1925.



And the search began -





The 'rolling' of the film was the most exciting part of it for the boys of course.  But to give credit where it's due, they all got a kick out of seeing their great great grandfather's name on the screen once we finally found it and loved the drawers full of film.  Guess everyone takes from it what speaks to them :-).

Jackpot!

Hard to see, I know.  In my excitement I kept snapping away not really checking to see that the pictures were coming out clearly.....Hopefully you can see the number 1606 kind of in the middle of the page, that's the line we were looking for!  There, on that line, is my great grandfather's name, Adolph Kalina.  Following his name is his profession - a furrier (this listing was under 'professional pages'), both his business and home address, and his wife's name, in parentheses.




Mission accomplished, we hit the roads of Rock Island, RV and all, in search of the addresses.

Our first stop was the shop in old downtown, now a pretty sad location with lots of empty storefronts. Happily, Grandpa Kalina's store was occupied and seemed well taken care of.




Moving on, we headed for the house.  After driving along some pretty narrow roads in the old part of town, obviously, we found 21st street.  Following the numbers down the road though they just didn't make sense!It almost seemed like the street numbers were changed at some point.  Confused, we stopped at what we thought might have been the location of the house, now a daycare center, and rang the doorbell hoping for some clarification.

Two young men answered the door.  The first did not know of any number change.  The second confirmed that indeed they were changed a while back due to re-zoning and that the house next door has been there for over 100 years.  He went on to describe it and it matched the descriptions I heard all of my life to a T!  It used to have two chicken coops, a tennis court, a very large plot of land (obviously) and a large vegetable garden.

Still a bit confused but getting excited now, we headed over to examine the house more closely, but not too close of course, since it did belong to someone after all.  At the recommendation of my Mom, I called my Grandma.  Duh!!  Why I didn't think of that I don't know.  Gramma couldn't believe her ears when I told her where we were.  Imagine the shock and surprise!  I asked her to describe her house to us to be sure we were indeed in front of THE one.  I asked her questions about it too.  We all came to the conclusion that it was IT.

As it happens, my brother was there visiting with her at that very minute and he was able to show her pictures of us in front of her house that I had just uploaded to Facebook.  Ahh!  All the wonderful ways to be able to use technology!

As we posed in front of the house for photos



The first young man from the daycare next door came running over.  He told us he had grown up in the house and that his parents still live there!  After we came by he picked up the phone and called his Mom asking her about the former residents.  She told him he should show us THE NAMES GRAFFITIED ON THE BACK WALL.  She thought they were theirs!!!

What??  Names on a wall?????  Never heard about this one!  Nor had any of my relatives apparently.  Racing around to the back, the young man in the lead, he let us into what is now an enclosed porch and showed us THE wall.

Names indeed!!  WOW!!



There were the names of my great uncles and aunt scrawled on what was then the outside wall and dated 1925 and 1931! No where could we find my grandmother's name, she was too young in 1925, not sure why she didn't partake in 1931 though.  The name of Charles K is the most prominent and appears several times.  The other names are harder to make out in this photo.  Other families who inhabited the house added their names to the wall too, a nice tradition was started by my ancestors I think :-).

I can't tell you how amazingly cool it was to see those familiar names on that house.  Being there and seeing the house my grandma grew up in, a sight I never thought I'd see with my own two eyes, was remarkable enough.  But discovering those names?  Well, that just took all the cakes in the world right there!

The young man accompanying us was tickled to make the connection as well.  He had of course always seen those names but never knew who they belonged to.  We had now closed a circle for him and his family.

My grandmother always told me stories about her life growing up in that house.  Her father's garden, the chickens, how she learned to play tennis there and took that love of tennis with her when she moved away, married and had her own children.  My father being the first of three.

Like I said at the beginning of the post, a simple stop, turned into a rich and rewarding experience.  You never do know what's gonna happen do you?