Sep03
Posted on Sep 3 by Ruth Davis
We’re past the halfway point of our volunteering gig here in Mendocino on the Northern California coast. Three and a half months done, one and a half months left to go. Both of us agree that this is the most beautiful place we’ve volunteered, with all of the moist green, the redwoods, the headlands, the ocean, the rivers, and so many gorgeous wildflowers, plants, and blooms everywhere. I asked Marika, “Could you live here?” “Too cold,” she said. “Too isolated and hard to get to,” I said. But boy, are we enjoying it all while we’re here. This past month, we had a very different work schedule. Instead of working at the Ford House, we were scheduled to only work at the two campground visitors centers. And it was every weekend. At first we were both upset. How come no one else was scheduled at the campgrounds? How come we didn’t have a single shift at the Ford House? And why were we the only ones working every weekend? And then I remembered that the new couple...
Apr06
Posted on Apr 6 by Ruth Davis
It’s been four weeks since Marika’s hip replacement surgery, All went very well, and, according to her surgeon, she is healing ahead of schedule. She gave up her walker and is now sporting a cane. She’s driving and running errands, and even went to a friend’s house for some backyard birding. I did a great job as her care helper. She got her meds on time, had clean laundry, dishes, groceries, had her potty moved and emptied every day, and I even found ways to make getting her TED hose stockings on more fun. I felt like I was channeling my father, the efficient caretaker, while trying to infuse some of my mother’s compassion in the mix. Still, Marika will tell you I was too controlling, and she couldn’t wait to be independent. So while she was recovering, I continued to get things ready for the house sale and getting back on the road. I’d gone through all of the “things” in the house, and was starting to look at storage spaces for our boxes of stuff...
Mar07
Posted on Mar 7 by Ruth Davis
It’s been a month of idling and waiting to see if Marika would be approved for a much needed hip replacement, when it might happen, and how long the recovery would be. Without any of this information, I’ve had to find ways to be OK with not doing, planning, or even knowing when we’re leaving, or where we were going. That’s a pretty big ask for a person who loves to plan and know the future. So, while Marika went to her medical appointments for her face and eyes, did physical therapy, changed her diet, and lost 30 pounds, I spent most of last month watching Hulu and Netflix, riding my bike, playing games online with friends, and keeping up with the laundry, dishes, vacuuming and washing the floors. We did have fun shopping for the fabric to have the sofa and bunk cushions reupholstered in the RV. And we’ve been spending lots of play time with our new dog, Tillie. Back in December, Marika and I started looking at online rescue sites for a dog. After...
Jan03
Posted on Jan 3 by Ruth Davis
We are here in the Big City, staying at my Dad’s house in central Phoenix for the winter. It took a few weeks for me to shift from the fear that we’d never get back in the RV, to enjoying and appreciating living in a real house, with great water pressure, three bathrooms, a big kitchen with a real stove, two ovens, a microwave and, my favorite, a toaster oven, a washer and dryer, recycling, and lots of space to spread out. And even though my Dad hadn’t lived in the house for the last year, there is an ample supply of plastic wrap, toilet paper, and scent free laundry detergent to last for the duration of our time here. When we moved into the house at the beginning of December, it was familiar, odd, uncomfortable, and homey, all at the same time. This is the house I lived in from ages fourteen to eighteen, until I left for college. Except for a few overnights, and the time last year when we moved in for a week while...
Nov27
Posted on Nov 27 by Ruth Davis
We left the Oregon coast mid-October, just as the evenings were getting colder, with days of rain in the forecast. We took our time, mostly sticking to our 2-2-2 rule: drive no more than 2 hours each, arrive by 2 in the afternoon, and stay 2 nights. This way, we don’t get tired and cranky on the road, and it gives us time to move our bodies, and explore the area if we want to. We stayed the first two nights in Medford, where we ran Big City errands, visited an art coop, and ate Thai food in a park. On the third day, we had reservations two hundred miles south for three nights at a casino RV Park so that Marika could bird at the nearby Sacramento Wildlife Refuge. After a summer of few bird sightings, she was delighted to see shorebirds and pelicans, a variety of ducks and hundreds of white geese. But on the second day, the weather reports warned of big winds, which could heighten the fires that were burning on both sides of I-5 that we would be...
Oct03
Posted on Oct 3 by Ruth Davis
A story about my father, from 2001 Parallel lines are lines that never intersect. For infinity. Or maybe they intersect in infinity, I can’t remember. So I ask my father. “The definition of parallel lines must consider whether you are in a plane or in three dimensional space,” he says. My father’s answers are never simple. My father is a mathematician. He graduated Summa Cum Laude from Carnegie Mellon, earned the prize in Solid Geometry when he was in high school for proving an answer incorrect on the New York State Regents exam. He can perform long division in his head, calculate the square root of any number and convert decimals to fractions and back again without hesitation. My father is the only person I know who actually knows how to use a slide rule. I, on the other hand, have always struggled with math. Not the memorization of simple arithmetic, but the intangible concepts of numbers and exponents in space. In high school my father helped me with my algebra and geometry and every time, I was reduced...
