I am writing this totally whacked tonight so I don’t have anything much to say. The truck is mostly packed, the dogs are going crazy knowing that their crates are in the truck. We had our new washer and dryer delivered today (finally) but in the midst of packing up, so lots of commotion and turmoil all at the same time. I am ready to get out of here! Well, mentally ready but still things need to be done to finish up in the morning.

I might be blogging from the road or not. It just depends. For sure I will be blogging once we arrive at the cabin. Stay tuned!

I know you all might not be interested in these particular goings-on (is that a southern phrase {goings-on?}) but you did sign up for this so I hope you are ready for my “sort of” personal and almost-but-not-quite daily diary. You might just decide you want to unsubscribe.

After all, this is why I started this blog in the first place, to record my daily life for myself and those closest to me. Somehow it expanded to a slightly larger audience than that, but still small enough to feel comfortable (knowing the whole web is not open to reading my personal life just in case they cared) to just be me. Not that I haven’t ever been me, but I think you know what I mean. Most of you who are now members have been reading me long enough to know me even if you’ve never met me. I like that. Knowing that, I feel free. Able to say what I want. Well, within reason that is.

Tonight we sat down with a glass of wine (maybe two) on the deck before dinner and went through our recipes that we had selected as candidates for meals at the cabin.

For those of you that remember, our cabin is situated about a 45 minute drive away from the nearest town, which happens to be Laramie, Wyoming. The roads leading to our cabin our not paved, but dirt. Red dirt. Red dirt roads that can become washboarded and rough to travel over. Roads that have free-range cattle and antelope roaming freely over them. Once we are at the cabin it’s hard to pry us away for any reason. We can go a week (if we plan meals accordingly) not leaving the cabin environs except to go on nightly drives to see elk, etc.

For most people, this isolation would drive them crazy. Not us. We relish the opportunity to “tune out” from the stress of daily life. We take long walks with the dogs. We do jigsaw puzzles. We nap when we want to. We read when we want to. Heck, we do most things when we want to. The fewer the trips in to Laramie, the better.

All the more reason to plan out our eating strategy wisely. It’s not easy, but we seem to manage on the “less is more” strategy just fine. If you forget an ingredient there is no ringing up the neighbors to borrow something. No convenience store conveniently close.

I think we came up with some pretty tasty meals. We’ll get groceries on our way in to the cabin to last us up to four days and after that we’ll go in to town to do a bigger shop. Somewhere in Nebraska on the last day of travel I will unravel Rick’s list and organize it.

Bella, our ever present companion, helped us make the list. The devilish glint in her eye and big grin on her face says mom, when we leaving? can we go now? my beaver pond awaits!

Our cabin pulls us back like a malfunctioning compass, insisting that for us, west is the true north. Our souls resonate with those 70+ acres of rolling sage-covered high prairie hills. The deep gullies filled with aspen and pine. Bart’s Creek (named after our Bernese Mountain Dog Bart who loved the water) that runs in the spring. The beaver pond where Bella loves to “swim.”  The meadows where columbine and lupine grow. The moose, deer, and elk that sometimes grace our land with their presence. (Although the free-range cattle that also “grace our land” are unwanted visitors.) The coyote serenades at night. The Milky Way shining brightly in the night sky. The cabin made of hand trimmed logs. It’s part of us. Part of who we are.

And next week this time we’ll be arriving about now after three days on the road cooped up with three dogs and two cats and a packed Suburban full of all the necessities.  We’re on countdown now ...

My wet driveway early last evening.

If you are reading this then you are a newly minted member to my blog site! Welcome, and thanks for joining! To have my blog become membership only has long been a wish of mine. I know you’ve heard me say it time and time again. Now thanks to computer guru (and husband) Rick, my wish has been granted. No more waking up to ten comments left by people whose sentences are mere gibberish with links to who-knows-what kind of web sites embedded within them. Hurray! And I doubt that anyone noticed, but our entire web site was transferred off an old and aging server over the weekend to a new one by our provider. All went smoothly thank goodness.

If only all things were going that smoothly. Last week I noticed that our 15 year old Maytag Neptune washer was not spinning the clothes anymore. This weekend we went shopping for a replacement and were surprised to hear that our particular Maytag model basically put the Maytag people out of business because it was such an unreliable machine! For us it was just the opposite. We chose a sleek new wave action LG steam washer and steam dryer. Delivery date was set for today. Last night we got a call that our delivery date had been pushed out to next Wednesday due to blah, blah, blah (you’d be bored if I explained). So, next Wednesday just happens to be the day before we leave for our cabin in Colorado. And, as you can imagine, I have loads and loads of laundry to do before then. Thank goodness I washed all the cabin bedding and towels before the washer quit on me. At least that’s done.  We don’t have a laundromat in our town either, can you believe it? Neighbor Kim offered her washer to me but she said hers doesn’t spin all the time either and she has to reset it to spin. I told her she needs a new machine as well!

In the past 24 hours we’ve had another three inches of rain. Good grief, not what we need at all! I’m glad we managed to get the lawn mowed this past weekend. What a soggy mess! Hopefully the flooding will be minimal down the mountain from us. They already have enough to deal with.

The trees are stressed from all the rain and are dropping leaves like crazy. Some even look like they are starting to turn which is way too early. I don’t think the color is going to be very good this fall.

Along with the rain comes interesting mushrooms. These were growing by our neighbors’ stone wall. I don’t know what they are but they were gorgeous. Maybe a type of chanterelle. We weren’t sure so we didn’t try them out!

A visiting fawn from last week.

On Monday we took the dogs for a walk down to Green Turtle Pond. The road leading down there had been closed off due to water damage from Irene, so we knew we’d have a nice quiet walk. It was pretty soggy through the wooded trail section and we had to detour off the path several times to avoid downed trees. Somehow both Rick and I managed to get stung by wasps: for Rick it was on his arm, and for me, on my knee. The road was full of deeply carved gullies but no major wash-outs like we had envisioned.  When we reached the pond we were the only ones there. I don’t think that’s ever happened before. It was so quiet and peaceful. The dogs got a much deserved drink and of course Bella had to go wading.

Alex shows off his silly side while Hailey looks on. Thank goodness the dogs are booked at the groomer’s this week!

Bella’s “spin-dry” cycle works better than the one on my washing machine at the moment!

I know it’s kind of a lame post but that’s all I have for you today. Again, my heartfelt thanks for sticking with me and continuing to read! Somebody please leave a comment so we can see if that’s working too!

I’ve been meaning to post for days now, yet I haven’t. Maybe that’s because not much is going on.

I can’t really talk about the weather since it is behaving itself and as I type it’s a balmy 44 degrees (F) out there this morning at not quite 8 o’clock! Not the single digits; not even below freezing! We’ve had a few flurries of snow but no real snow now for well over a week. I think the spell over our winter-enchanted piece of Earth has broken. The snow is slowly melting but it’s still treacherous to walk on. Maybe today it will be warm enough to slush up that icy crust.

Should I talk about my bra fitting a week ago at Intimacy on Madison Avenue in the city? No, you probably don’t want to hear about that.

Or should I tell you about my bird rescues? Bird Rescue #1: a blue jay rescued from the mouth of Bella that didn’t turn out very well, or Bird Rescue #2: a junco that flew into our sliding glass door that did turn out well.

Maybe my topic of conversation should be about our Colorado cabin and #1: the beleaguered Board of Directors of the Homeowners Association and all the problems associated with that mess. Or #2: the neighbor who lives back behind us and can’t access his property until mid-June because of a very deep snow drift that occurs on the road that goes through our property asking if we’d let them cut another road on our property to go around said drift or build huge ugly snow fences on our property that won’t help anyway. No, you probably don’t want to hear about that either. (We said no to both proposals, by the way.)

I suppose I could talk about why I am dusting off the old Rosetta Stone Spanish software and brushing up on my español. PANAMA (and quite possibly Nicaragua {Granada} too) in May. How’s that for an exotic travel destination? Rick has business and I am tagging along. There are other wives going too, so it should be really fun. I am hoping to see a rain forest environment and people say that a visit to the Panama Canal is a must.

Plus, we’ve been thinking about places to retire (six months in the States/six months “somewhere” else) and this is one place that was on our “maybe” list. This will give us a chance to see what it’s like. There is quite a large ex-pat retiree community in both countries.

So, see? Not much!

Sunrise this morning.