One of these days when we get some free time...

We have been in Tucson for ten days. It's not that I'm trying to hold out on you, but there is so much cooking, building, scrounging, playing, dilly-dallying, planning, and resting to do that writing about it seems frivolous. This time you get lists and pictures. 

Here's what we have been doing:

• moving in to our excellent new place where we will stay for a while until we don't anymore

• going to farmers market for meat and vegetables

• ordering weird stuff from amazon now that we have an address 

• slow cooking meat and vegetables in the slow cooker we got on amazon 

• drinking cans of fruit-flavored fizzy water

• making herbal iced tea in mason jars instead of drinking cans of fizzy water (hibiscus-blueberry is exceptional on hot days)

• playing with the neighbors' cat

• getting old bicycles to tool around the neighborhood (uh huh... '68 Swchinns, baby)

• tooling around our new neighborhood, The Lost Barrio, which we love

• playing with the neighborhood funny cat who has one argyle sock

• sending greeting cards to my auntie

• writing admonishing letters to Priceline and Sheraton customer service (we'll keep you posted if they change their minds about being a-holes, because good news is fun)

• eating chocolate

• chatting with our kooky-beautiful artist landpeople (landlords sounds so unfriendly), Ruth and Rafa and their adorable child, Ving

• fixing our funny, old bicycles

• going to the beer brewing supply store for airlocks and rubber gaskets

• drilling holes in mason jar lids

• pickling cauliflower and jalapeños and making ruby red sauerkraut (again)

• going a bit nutty in the head on occasion (mostly James)

• being lovely and incredible (mostly Ben)

• watching sunsets from our little "yard"

• washing clothes

• washing dishes

• washing Billy

• knitting slippers (these felted down to Ben-size... his feet are not 17 inches long)

• visiting Leslie's friends' homestead farm (unbelievably great)

• planning an indoor garden

• buying organic seeds, except for the okra, which I could not find in organic flavor. Scallions, beets, kale, chard, tiny tomatoes in red and yellow, cabbage, basil... I went overboard. There's a lot of light here!

• starting seeds in eggs cartons (need to eat more deviled eggs)

• dreaming of land to raise vegetables and chickens 

• tinkering with a gorgeous, ancient sewing machine we picked up from another friend of Leslie's (Ben is quite the handy bloke)

• lurking about the Home Depot collecting dirt and not finding suitable pots for an indoor garden

• knitting more slipper prototypes

• planning a trip back to Seattle to get our stuff out of storage so we can have all of our tools and Ben can drill and build and weld and tinker and I can sew and cook and pickle and tinker

• researching how to build raised-bed garden boxes

• watching zombie apocalypse stories on Netflix 

• coming home from walks and sighing at how peaceful it is to be home (Ben took this one)

• inviting people we know to visit us in Tucson (yes, you. You should come visit us in Tucson--it's a magical place)

• inviting hummingbirds over

• pondering the sustainability of our retirement from corporate life

• looking for a place to call home for real--where we can work and make beautiful things to use and share and we can eat and sleep and house all our machines and imaginary future animals and grown cabbages and okra and perhaps also very old someday. 

Somebody should write a letter

Remember those bed bugs from last post? Yeah, these:

The Sheraton doesn't, and Priceline doesn't have the cajones to call them on it, so we wrote them a letter. I (okay, someone) paid tens of thousands of dollars to UW so I could write a bunch of papers in college. At $64.81, this letter was a bargain, a better story, and more fun to write. It's out of my system now, and you should know that the whole experience is totally unrepresentative of Tucson people, who seem to be remarkably sweet all around, which is why we are staying here for the winter. Bike shop: nice people. Vitamin store: nice people. The bank: really nice ladies. Our landlady and her family: nicest people ever. Food co-op: you get it, right? This town is a special place full of beautiful people, and not in the fake L.A. way... the real way. These people are really beautiful. Except for the people at the Sheraton on East Grant Road. They are not nice. And Prceline is now guilty by association (their choice). Luckily, Priceline asks for feedback on every hotel stay. I LOVE feedback. I love to get it. I love to give it. When the feedback is good, I give it instantly, and then sometimes even more later if I'm still feeling tingly about the goodness. If you know how I feel about annual performance reviews and taking a freaking year to tell someone how they are doing, you will be surprised that it took me almost 72 hours to send feedback on the bedbug experience, which was not even about bedbugs, it was about weak and greedy corporate management, about which I also have strong opinions. 

But no matter, we live elsewhere, and we are rich, and we just got matching '68 Schwinn bicycles and love every moment of every day, because life is too short. Next post will have photos of the bikes and the new digs. I don't want to contaminate all that yumminess with this rant. But sometimes a girl just needs a good, juicy, stark raving rant. Ben calls them imaginary knife fights. I just think it's hilarious that when I used to complain, my dad would say, "Somebody should write a letter."

Dear Priceline, 

   We had an unacceptable experience with one of your hotel partners, the Sheraton in Tucson, where we were set upon by an infestation of bedbugs during the night of Monday, January 19th. After calling Priceline and taking photographs of the bugs, we brought three bedbugs in a glass to the front desk at 2 am, then left and went to a different hotel. On phone calls with your agents that night and the next evening (twice) the hotel stated that they had no record of any complaint on our part, and refused to sort things out with Priceline on either occasion. 

   Your customer service agents were polite and tried to help, but seemed sadly powerless to resolve the issue, informing us that any recompense is at the hotel's discretion. The lack of authority and follow-through despite their clear desire to help is an indication of a shortsighted business model. 

   It is regrettable that Priceline has partnered with a business that is untrustworthy on multiple levels, although this misfortune could happen to anyone. However, it is unacceptable that your company’s policies have made it impossible for your representatives to make things right for your customers when we are wronged by one of your partners. 

   While we have had mostly positive experiences with Priceline hotels, your company’s unwillingness to make this right has left us with a feeling of distrust and a desire to save others from a similar poor experience by sharing our story via social media. 

   We understand that the cost of standing up to a business like the Sheraton is probably too great for your company, and to lose our business is of little consequence to you in revenue or reputation. Despite this understanding, we feel it is only fair to remind you that the long-term cost of holding profits in higher regard than customers is an obviously terrible business model that works in opposition to the way in which you hope it will. This model also demands a high price of your employees, undermining their dignity and their sense of pride in working for Priceline. 

   So, Priceline, because you have decided to let the Sheraton in Tucson bully you into keeping our $64.81 for your and their substandard services, please know that we no longer wish to do business with you. This is not about money; it is about trust. We do not trust you. It feels right to do business with people who choose to do right and it feels wrong to do business with people who choose to do wrong. We choose not to engage with companies and people who are too disreputable or too impotent to do the right thing when given a simple choice. Also, we are sorry for you. 

   Sincerely,
   James-Olivia Avigail & Ben Hillman

Westward. Huh.

It's been a while, hasn't it? I believe we were in Austin getting ready to retreat to Tucson for the winter, to eat farmers market food and find a camper trailer to strip down to its bones. We're still looking for the right one, and have had several minor adventures since our big decision to turn around.

First, Austin. Here's what we did and saw: we ate fish tacos twice; we went to the Whole Foods Mother Ship where we got the best papaya ever and their exceedingly friendly meat guy loaded us up with osso buco (our AirStream had a slow cooker in it! All our stuff smells like meat now), merguez sausages, and then gave us some other forced meat products as a welcome-to-Texas gift; we peed outside between the trailer and the backyard fence (totally sanctioned and encouraged in signage posted inside the trailer by the landlady... seriously and truly); we threw our food compost down the hill into the woods behind that very same sweet trailer in which we slept; I knitted a very terrible cowl-cape thingy that Ben thinks makes for an adorable mini-skirt (for a 10-year-old); in the middle of the night, wearing nothing but a jacket, knee socks, and rain boots, I threw a poop down that very same hill into those very same woods behind that very same trailer where the compost gets thrown--it was really unladylike, but it was the rightest thing to do at the time; we stayed up late and watched the movie 'Tiny'--it's about people building very tiny houses, mostly in the 200 square foot range--and, as we were staying for a few nights in this big, lush 27 foot trailer, we were naturally inspired to downsize; we talked to our landlady du jour about the excellence that is Austin; we fed and petted the affectionate black cat that came with the trailer; we talked to each other about how much we didn't care about staying in Austin (it's us, not Austin); and we left Austin without seeing very much of it. We loved that trailer so much. 

We did see one amazing and beautiful thing on our way out of town last Thursday. Susan Jones texted a list of Austin swimming holes, which seem to be a thing in the way that a Starbucks on every corner or ladies wearing fleece are a thing in Seattle. I'm sure Ben got better photos of this natural wonder. It's caves! That little hole in the shallowest stream ever goes down and down and down forever and divers sometimes get lost or stuck and die in there. It's only big enough in some places to swim your body and a tank of oxygen through, and then it opens into gorgeous, underwater caverns and mazes. Google it: Jacob's Well. We just hung out at the surface with this guy. 

True to our aggressive driving schedule, we then drove for almost three hours and arrived in Hondo, TX, where Billy got sick. We stayed for an extra night in Hondo, where the local mechanic fiddled with Billy's guts, got us running in under ten minutes, let us hover over his shoulder, and charged exactly nothing for his trouble. The tow truck driver was also that nice. So was the guy at the auto parts store. And the taco lady. It is possible that everyone in Texas is just that nice, except when they drive. Upon entering Texas from the west, we were greeted with an enormous sign that read, "Welcome to Texas! Drive Friendly, the Texas Way." Like signs in corporate offices posting statements of corporate culture, it felt more aspirational than true. Unlike corporate offices, 4:00 pm in Texas looks like this:

In New Mexico, we passed again through Las Cruces, where we did not go to the Toucan grocery store that I like, but we did stay at the Hotel Encanto de Las Cruces--our last fancy hurrah before Tucson. Sometimes, after a trailer and a string of funny, cinder block roadside motels, fancy feels so fine. So very fine, indeed. We looked like a pair of Beverly Hillbillies moving all of our earthly belongings into such a fine room and also laughing hysterically about it as it was happening. 

And then there was last night. I got greedy with Priceline after our fancy hotel night, not taking into account that things change from town to town, state to state. Can you see that truck in front of Billy? It is carrying missiles. That's right. Missiles. I should have heeded the omen. 

We left our room at the Sheraton in Tucson this morning at 2:00 am after brief but serious talks with the front desk and Priceline customer service (like the elusive New Mexico dust storm, this may exist--to date I have encountered neither such thing). Until this very day at just past midnight I had never seen a bed bug. Imagine my surprise to learn that they are visible to my naked eye and all the entomological paranoia of the past two months could have been avoided with one simple trip to the internet. They are hideous. Ben's photos are more forgiving than the internet's. 

And so we loaded our many crates and bins into Billy and moved back to our old standby, the Best Western, for one last night where the night clerk told us we could stay until 1:00 pm and get some rest. We scoured the room for any signs of the offending creatures, and of course placed everything we own that is not housed in a plastic crate safely in the bathtub. 

Until the middle of last night, I had not actually felt homeless. Fleeing a hotel in the night is a decidedly not rich and beautiful experience. We are right now curled up in the huge, bug-free bed of our last hotel. We move into our winter digs this afternoon, where we can wash everything in scalding water, unpack our cooking gear, always find the cumin, do laundry on a whim, and not waste another single moment packing our things and loading and unloading Billy. 

When I was a little girl, I was sure that the turtle was my spirit animal. I was not sure why. I may have somewhat romanticized the idea that home is with Ben, wherever we laugh, wherever we discover, wherever we keep falling in love. We learned last night that home is also where we can sleep through the night, feel safe from blood-suckers, and refrigerate our food. It doesn't have to be the same place every night, but it helps if it's the same place all night. 

***

Short play of the day

Ben: I love you. 

James: (jumps on Ben like a spider monkey) You are my spirit animal!

Ben and James together: hysterical laughter

Thanks, Otis. I think a change IS going to come.

Dinner tonight was sautéed red cabbage, scallions, bacon, diced potatoes, cumin, garlic, and a braised egg on top. When you have to do everything on a single burner hot plate, your methods get Asian pretty fast. I come by it honestly, and also it is imposed.



Where were we? Roswell? (Yawn... no aliens except us.) Between Roswell and Austin, which is where we are right now, there was a little bit of New Mexico and a whole lotta Texas, and that was only half of Texas.

Let's backtrack to Arizona for a moment, though. Fairbank Historical Township. It's roughly four or five still-standing buildings, one of which is a two-seater outhouse (my phone wants to auto-correct this to a two-sweater outhouse, which may not be inaccurate this time of year), and a cemetery on a hill. The cemetery is a two mile walk down an overgrown dirt road from the township proper, and we walked it and agreed that this is the sort of place horror films are spawned in the imaginations of city slickers like us who have no clue what all those noises in the woods are.



The most recent headstone was from the 1800s, but most graves were marked by simple crosses, some only with piles of stone. I was starting to get a sty, so I took a stone (no, not off a grave... sheesh. I'm irreverent, not a godless a-hole). My old-school eye doctor prescribes boiling a rock and wrapping that hot stone in a washcloth and using it as a warm compress. My new-school eye doctor prescribes antibiotic eye goo. I say when my eye feels like a headache and looks kind of like a hum bao (which is delicious, by the way), I throw everything I've got at it and hope it stays sunny for a few days so I can wear sunglasses while I have goo and hot rocks in my eye. Luckily, our cemetery hiking day was like this:

Back to New Mexico, then. I only personally know one person from New Mexico, and it is not a wonder at all she got out. Friendly folk, the New Mexicans we encountered, if a bit over-imaginative and not at all imaginative at the same time. As we drove through the desert, consciously but not purposefully avoiding any towns that may have been culturally noteworthy, we encountered a sign that read WARNING: DUST STORMS MAY EXIST. Cheers, Andra, for envisioning a smart and sassy world of hot pink stilettos and computer programming and then making that a reality (and marrying a fireman. I know... he has a name; it's The Fireman, right? And yours is The Goddess Divine, and now everyone knows it). Dust storms may, in fact, exist, but not where you live, lady. 

West Texas smells icky like they are pulling the ancient liquified bones and blood of dinosaurs out from below the earth's crust using giant steel grasshoppers as work slaves, probably because that is exactly what is happening. It stinks and stinks and stinks and then all of a sudden you are in the pretty part of Texas where the cows and sheep and goats and deer are wandering  around acting very cute and delicious and the sunsets are like whoa. 



Texas does not mess around when it comes to beef jerky. I'll say no more. I can't because my eyes are rolling back into my head right now.



Last night we stayed at the Peach Tree Inn in Fredericksburg, TX. I have renamed it the Sweetest Little Place You'll Ever Wish You Had Not Tried To Cook Dinner Inn.





That's me preparing dinner on the bed because there was nowhere else to do it. I'm either smiling or crying. That was approximately 428 seconds before I had an emotional breakdown because we have no idea what on God's green earth we are doing roaming around like gypsies (but not so organized) and convinced that Ben couldn't possibly love me with a bad attitude and a sty and--you guessed it--hormone-induced psychosis. Chocolate seems to have no impact on a sty, but worked wonders on my other ailments.

Things are better today, much chocolate, mollifying conversation, and several bouts of hysterical laughter later. We now have a loose plan to move more like nomads and less like fugitives. If you've been following our "plans" for the last few months, you may recognize that our method is more agile than waterfall, which is to say we are gathering requirements and re-prioritizing as we go.





For the next three nights we are in this lovely, kooky little airstream trailer (thanks, airbnb!) with an outdoor claw foot bathtub. This is only one of several adorable trailers for rent in Austin, a town that seems to be just as cool as everyone says it is, but all we want to be is home. We don't know exactly where that is just yet, and the nomads in us know that it won't be permanent--just a place to settle in and make things with our hands until spring comes and we can move north.

We are looking at cities in Louisiana and Georgia, but right now everything about Tucson feels more and more right the farther we drive away from it. In our lives as in software development, requirements-gathering for a better outcome happens incrementally as we implement each new phase. Before we left Seattle I couldn't have known that I wanted to be in a town that feels smaller than it really is, that loves fresh food without being pretentious about it, that makes art to share and use up without ambitions of making it precious or inaccessible. I couldn't have known that warm days and icy cold nights would feel so blissful or that I would fall in love with other people's dogs or that my body (this wretched dog) would feel so healthy in the dry desert air. It will get hot. Too hot to be happy. It's perfect. It is built-in that we will want to leave, to head north eventually, to explore another place where our farmhouse waits to be built or rebuilt.

Who knows where we will end up--Spokane, upstate New York, Savannah, back in Seattle? Who knows where we will spend the rest of winter? What we know is that we will spend it working with our hands and moving when it makes sense, waking up together and being glad about it, gathering more requirements, and laughing hysterically every day. It's a lot like right now, but somehow even better. 

This is amazing! (This is uncomfortable)

We left Tucson on Wednesday and are once again headed east. We have not found our trailer and we did not meet the homesteaders, but we are enthusiastic about being on the road again. Last night we slept in Lordsburg, NM at a truly terrible La Quinta Hotel--thanks, Priceline. Tonight we are in Roswell, where there are several RV dealerships. Tomorrow is shopping day! I got a wild hair and decided that I wanted to make some bastardized version of Manhattan clam chowder tonight, so there is a pot of celery and onions withering in our "kitchen" (if I may be so generous).

You'd think that Roswell, of all places in this enormous desert, would have some funky, alien-themed hotel, but the only vintage, silly-looking place in yelp had a single, horrifying review so we are right now in a Best Western, which has a remarkably large office/entertainment center which I have commandeered for my own nefarious culinary purposes. 

Despite the absence of amenities at last night's hotel, our dinner was--I'll just come right out and say it--incredible. Diced Japanese sweet potatoes sautéed with onions, Tucson fire-roasted red peppers, spinach, garlic, cumin, and sea salt.

The enthusiasm of being back in Billy and rambling again is only slightly tempered by the emotional and physical discomfort of being back in Billy and rambling again. Allow me to paraphrase one of Ben's explanations of how life works: Ben describes us, humans--okay, some humans--as internally wondrous beings with a nearly unimaginable capacity for transcendence and emotional evolution, and we are housed inside these dogs (his word). Our dogs are these physical shells with their physical needs--warmth, food, familiarity--and they don't necessarily respond well to the demands of the angels/demons/higher creatures/what-have-yous living inside. 

Here's where it gets uncomfortable: when the angel and the dog are misaligned, things go awry, e.g. stress can trigger physical ailments (for me, cubicle = psoriasis. TMI? eesh... sorry) and physical events can trigger emotional or psychological discomfort (my food sensitivities = depression or fuzzy brain). 

Before, I was married to the man I described as my anchor. My dog lived in the bliss of routine, and my angel/demon/what-have-you was climbing the walls of the asylum and screaming out every crack in the castle walls. The pendulum now swings the other way. The beautiful crazies have escaped together and it feels like flying. We laugh like maniacs every day. We talk about everything, every possibility, every lesson we've learned, every doubt, and our only limitations are these familiarity-loving dogs who want to wake up every day on the same bed and eat the same food and do the same thing. 

A thing we talk about is not giving in to our (uh... my) discomfort and settling for an existence that is anything less than amazing. I learned the most beautiful lesson about pain when I doula'd for Jenava and Mike when she gave birth to Baby Torben. Pain does not always equate to suffering. So long as you can cope and see an end to the moment without fear or panic, you can endure the pain--in Jenava's case with a bad-ass grace that perhaps only mothers know. Purpose seems to have a great deal to do with it, as well. For Jenava, Torben was the reason for each contraction, for each push. 

Our reason for pushing these dogs is a new model of engaging with the world in such a way as to be always the masters of our own destinies, in which we and everyone are safe to be ourselves, in which we and others like us (crazy folks, if you will) are celebrated, and in which we are expected to examine ourselves and each other, to engage fully and honestly, to show each other our best selves and set a standard for being kinder, smarter, sweeter, and better than we have to be just to get by, because that's when things get amazing. 

So while we ramble, here's what you get, doggies: We feed you daily vitamins and fresh vegetables. We exercise you and water you and wash you. We sleep you for hours and hours. We pet you and love you up and let you play and lay around a lot. And since you still beg, we will shop for a camper and a place to settle down for a while, because part of this journey is about honoring what feels right to our bodies and our hearts, to our intellects and to our spirits. 

Oh, yeah. And we want a dog. A real one with a wagging tail and four legs and a big, giant heart. Wild as we may be, we are, after all, a pack. 

We are the edibles

This is Ben and Billy having a moment of together time and vulnerability. 

We leave Tucson tomorrow morning, by which I mean sometime around noon. On our way out of town, we will visit the homestead of a couple who is living in our future, friends of Leslie's. We have been here for over two weeks, and I am a little bit taken with this town, mostly the food we have eaten. 

Speaking of food, the wok seems jealous of Billy, and has inserted herself into several photos: frying plantains, sweet potato and leek hash, goat chorizo and fried eggs. This bitch is on fire. 

And if you got hung up on "goat chorizo," let me assure you that enough garlic and cumin will make anything delicious if you're into that kind of thing, and by "that kind of thing" I mean flavor. There is a local ranch, Sky Island, that supplies the co-op with pastured meats. The couple who owns it prints their name and phone number on the packaging. I want to call them and tell them that I know they must be good people, because bad people couldn't possibly raise such delicious food. 

On the topic of good people and delicious food, our friends Kevin and Andrew were in town from Seattle by way of two weeks at their other pad in Mexico, where they meditated each morning, swam with dolphins, ate whatever was in season and fresh out of the sea at the market in town two miles away, and got enviable suntans. They spent the night at this hilarious, swanky hotel in the Catalina foothills. The place had a kitchen, so they fed us the way they feed everyone: organic, fresh, local, plentiful, tasty, vegetation-heavy food prepared with love and humor and followed by copious amounts of chocolate. There are no photos. We were too busy talking and eating everything. Andrew got me into pickling a few years ago and he gave me my first kombucha scoby. Not very many people could be as excited as he was that I have a jar of red cabbage fermenting into ruby sauerkraut under the kitchen sink at our rented dollhouse. Everything about the evening was refreshment. They fed us enormous contraband raisins smuggled across the border. You'd think after a month of exile from polite society, the small illegality of smuggled raisins would have lost some of its edge, but the excitement of it only sharpened our senses. Sometimes it's the little things. 

We spent yesterday at the desert museum. It has a hummingbird sanctuary full of greedy, tiny hummingbirds. It also has coyotes that pose on rocks and javelinas that love on each other and take belly naps together under trees. 

Ben went to work with the camera while I mostly just poked him and pointed at things and silently mouthed, "Ooh! Ooh!"

During open hours the giant, mostly outdoor museum is also infested with obnoxious tourists who have no idea that inside voice and outside voice are really more like ideas than hard and fast rules. Sometimes when you are outside, like maybe when you are standing in front of a mountain lion who could maybe kill you, inside voice is perfectly acceptable. Even inside-a-church voice could be just right. I might be turning into an old lady, but I'm fairly certain the mountain lion and bighorn sheep agree with me. 

The big, scary, captive animals track quiet people with their eyes as if to say, "You actually see me." Then again, I have sometimes been accused of anthropomorphism, which is perhaps odd for a ravenous carnivore such as I. I don't think the two ideas are incompatible, empathizing with animals and also eating them. Andrew has been vegetarian for twenty years, and we haven't really talked about it (Kevin eats everything). I'll have to ask him why, and he might ask me the same thing. I mean, we've all seen Buttermilk the baby goat jumping all over his friends, and besides owls, which everyone knows are sort of assholes, who could eat this sweet little buddy?

Without getting too deep into it this time, it matters to both me and Andrew where our food comes from, whether it is plant or animal, and I am grateful both for and to my food. I make no case for or against any particular diet other than what works for one's own holistic well-being, and I do not take my choices lightly. I actually spent some years in my twenties as a semi-neurotic vegan, and am now a semi-neurotic forty-year-old omnivore, although I am convinced that cholesterol soothes a troubled spirit, especially when administered in the form of custard or gelato. None of this comes without a good deal of thought... and overthought. 

Thoughts, I think, should generally lead somewhere, otherwise why waste all that time and energy? And so, while I have not, nor should I, come to any formal conclusions about what anyone but I should be eating, I have decided what should eat me. Not to be terribly morbid, but Ben and I agreed that when we are dead, we want our newly useless bodies to be dumped in the desert to be food for the scavengers and insects and other living things that also like to eat meat. We desire to be in death what we are learning to be now--beings who fully participate, appreciate the cycle of life and feast of this earth, and return what we took. We are not ash. We are not dust. We are meat, and meat is delicious. 

Dear Pantene, WTF?

Lee texted and asked about the felted bag, so Ben and I went to the Mercado to take some product shots. The Mercado, specifically Seis, has those life-changing corn tortillas, but a snack is not always my sole motivator (quiet, you). We had a photo shoot to undertake and the Mercado seemed like a fun backdrop. 

Ben thinks he can get better shots of the bag, but we will never get a better shot of my hair. I've been using the Pantene samples from our last hotel. Don't hate me because I'm beautiful. 

Uh... 'merica?

Happy New Year. We are rich. Rich. Rich. Rich. We eat leeks and bacon in the morning, and pozole for New Year's Eve lunch. Ben couldn't photograph the rich, spiced pork, hominy, and bean soup fast enough because I was too busy eating it. 

For health reasons I'm not generally one to eat corn products, but we are practically in Mexico, and Seis, this little place with outdoor heaters in the Mercado down the street, hand makes fresh corn tortillas that could possibly heal many of the world's spiritual--if not physical--ills. Yummy little cakes of soft, warm deliciousness. The judge has agreed; they were a sort of corn tortilla paradigm shift. 

As far as home cooking goes, besides the leeks and bacon, we bought those ridiculous tiny powerhouse scallions and some ginger and a pound of local, grass-fed beef at the co-op. I LOVE playing with food! Our wok could not have imagined what it was in for when it was hanging there in the shelf at the Brookings, Oregon Bi-Rite. One day it's granola, the next day it's Asian meatballs. 

Back to it, then. This country is unbelievable. Not last night, because last night we did not party like it was 1999 (unless knitting and watching zombie apocalypse movies counts), but the night before last we stopped by the house of one of Ben's old friends. Keith was throwing a party at his spectacular home/artist space in one of the oldest barrios in Tucson and we needed to show up with a bottle of something or other, so we drove through the liquor store a few blocks from our casita to get a bottle of wine. They had one. Just one. We took it.

And you read that right. Drive-thru liquor store. It was my first time. If you're from Texas, this probably doesn't strike you as anything out of the ordinary, but we just came from Seattle, where until about a year ago you couldn't get a bottle of Bailey's at the grocery store for your Saturday morning coffee. Liquor accessibility was not so fast and loose as it is in the more southerly states. (The trade-off was that you can openly buy THC laced hard candies at Cannabis City, but those take forever to kick in, and when they finally do, I just get super sleepy. Not highly recommended.)

Other than a few minutes with Keith and a loose plan to connect again this weekend, the only other meaningful social interaction we've had was with Ben's old and dear friend, Leslie Newman, who makes powerfully beautiful jewelry, the likes of which I imagine might be found in the tombs of royalty in ancient civilizations, had they access to such a wide array of materials and stylistic influences. (I pulled this photo off the interwebs.) 

Leslie is halfie like me, like Ben. In some other post on some other day, I'll get into my developing thoughts on how split ethnic and cultural identities alter your entire outlook on the world and make you abnormal. If you know how I feel about normality, you will know there is no negative implication when I discuss abnormality. 

I do not think that all halfies are shapeshifters, but if one has had the luxury of growing up in multiple worlds and belonging to none of them, one begins to learn to disguise oneself, to sense subtle shifts in environment and adapt quickly. Socially, while the 'normals' develop like a stable and heterogeneous pack of dogs, a halfie develops as a chameleon, no alpha, no pack. Again, no judgment. I love people and I love dogs. Really this has not so much to do with being a halfie as it does with being a misfit, whatever form that takes. 

If you are an abnormal, sometimes it takes meeting other halfies, other misfits, other artists, other dropouts, other chameleons, other abnormals, other your-own-kind-of-mutt to make you feel as though you really were just a dog all along and your pack exists somewhere. Your tail wags, your ears perk up, you eat a bowl of phô in the desert and talk about things that matter, whatever those things are to you. 

Maybe even normals wear a mask and talk about things that they kind of don't really care about so they can feel like they fit in. It's a good skill to have if one is not to be a complete social moron, but I wish for no one to feel like an outcast if they choose not to disguise themselves all the time. 

This is a year of absurdly deep gratitude, to have found a wild creature of my species--evolving as we are--and move through the world with a wagging tail and a joyful heart. I do not wish for a world full of my own like kind, but for people to find their own like kinds and to be less lonely and more loved, because no riches compare. This is all simply to say that I wish you prosperity in the coming year and always.