Disappointments

Three things disappointed me yesterday. The biggest was finding out that only the outside of Timberline lodge near Oregon’s Mt. Hood was used in The Shining. That means no hope of finding the same bold carpet, the same lounge, the same chandeliers as in the movie. Mark told me the bad news when I returned from a book signing at our local Kroger grocery. In May I sold eleven copies of My Lost_Summer at a signing there, but yesterday I sold only four. That was my second disappointment but it wasn’t huge because I understand that the book business has its highs and lows.

The first thing I did upon returning home was eat a grapefruit. I was really hungry. The grapefruit was pink and juicy and quite delicious—not a disappointment. Disappointment #3 came when Mark and I went to the Bass Pro Shop to get him new hiking boots for our trip in a month. He didn’t see any he liked better than what he’d seen in the LL Bean catalog so he decided to order online when we got home. That’s still not my third disappointment.

We weren’t quite out of the shoe section yet when Mark reminded me that I wanted some shoes. They’re a closed-toe sports sandal and are unique. Not lots of places have them yet. They would be perfect for warm whether light hiking and beachcombing, meaning the only shoes I’d have to take to Oregon would be those shoes and hiking boots, instead of hiking boots, sneakers, and flip flops for the beach.

Sure enough, Bass Pro Shop had the shoes I was looking for in my size, and I bought them. At home I wore them around, and after a time, they hurt my feet. My feet are somewhat flat, and it is sometimes difficult to find comfortable shoes.

Three disappointments. Ah. Well. Today’s another day.

Mt. Hood's Timberline Lodge

Mark and I will be touring Oregon in early September. Our plans were set months ago. When we watched The Shining last weekend, Mark told me he thought the “The Overlook” resort, ficticiously set in Colorado, was actually a lodge in Oregon.


Just this week I brought home some Oregon tour books and showed him the route I had mapped out for us. (I’m the navigator. I love maps.) He voiced concern over day 1 of our trip, and I was wondering how we were going to cram all I had planned for us into day 3, so we decided to scrap Day 1 and expand day 3’s activities into two days. That meant we’d need to find lodging around Mt. Hood, Oregon the Saturday of Labor Day weekend at this late date.

Mark suggested Timberline Lodge, The Overlook in The Shining. He read in the tour book that it is now a historical landmark, but 60 rooms are available for lodging, only 50 with private baths though. I loved the idea since—you can probably tell from a couple entries ago—I loved the movie.

I phoned our travel agent to have her cancel the current reservations we have for Saturday night and to see if she could get us something at Timberline. She put me on hold, made a call out to Oregon, got back on the line with me and told me there was one room left for really a lot more than I ever want to pay for a room for one night. Mark was OK with it saying, “How many times are you going to have the opportunity to stay in a place where a movie was filmed?”

So I told our travel agent to call Timberline back and say we’ll take the room—if it’s with a private bath. She said, “At that price, it should have a private bath.”

Reservations are made, plans are set: We are staying at Timberline Lodge in Mt. Hood, Oregon, the setting of The Shining, filmed in the late ‘70s.

Mark and I watched our usual Friday night Monk at 9 pm on USA network, and during the commercials as Mark was flipping the channels, he came across The Shining, showing on A&E. After Monk ended we watched The Shining, just six days after we last saw it. We started watching just a couple minutes before Wendy found the manuscript: “All work and no play make Jack a dull boy,” over and over. Basically, we got to see the best part of the movie again, this time knowing that we will be staying in the resort in little over a month.

At last Saturday’s showing I commented on the bold carpets in the place. I love bold carpets. Last night Mark said, “I wonder if those carpets will still be there.” And I said, “I hope so.”

A few minutes later he asked, “Do you think those chandeliers will be there?” Again, I said, “I hope so.”

Later on I said, “I hope that restaurant’s still there.” Mark said, “It’s a bar.”
“Well, if it’s still there, we’re getting drinks.”

At the scene where Wendy finds the manuscript, I said, “I hope that furniture is still the same.” Then Mark, to make a point of how star struck, er... movie-set struck I was being, said, “I hope that typewriter’s still there.” I laughed.

Then it was a joke for the rest of the movie, Mark saying, “Do you think picture will still be there?”

“I hope so.”

“Do you think the restrooms will be the same color?”

“I hope so.”

“Do you think it’ll snow?” He’s so silly. Yes, I would love there to be tons of snow on the ground, just like in The Shining, but we'll be there in early September.

So I’m pretty excited about seeing this place, wandering around. I told Mark we’d have to get there early to explore everywhere. He said the maze in the movie is not there; the maze scenes were filmed elsewhere. And that’s OK. I don’t like mazes anyway; I panic.

Of course I’ll post pictures upon our return. Stay tuned.

Prelude to the Arrival of Lindsey

After watching The Shining, I thought about other King classics from my youth. The weekend before Mark and I watched The Shining, we caught the last hour-plus of Carrie, which I had never seen before. I liked the ending when Carrie got her revenge against her classmates, who had mocked and ridiculed her throughout her high school years. The ultimate vindication was the crucifixion of her mother. In self defense, Carrie stabbed her mother’s hands to the wall.

Though I saw it in the theater, I don’t remember anything about Pet Sematary other than the semi running over and killing little Gage as he chased after a kite. His father was so bereft that he agreed to have his son given life again even though the re-lifing process had not yet been perfected, and previously precious Gage was evil upon his return.

I saw Pet Sematary on Friday, May 19, 1989. How can I remember that date from more than seventeen year ago? My niece was born the next morning.

The summer of ’89 was my second consecutive one spent in Windham, Maine with my brother Mike and his young bride, Ruth. I had just finished my freshman year of college and worked in the lab in the paper company where my brother worked.

The previous summer, after graduating from high school, I lived with them and only worked part time at Levinsky’s Clothing & Outerwear store and spent much of my free time down the street at the neighborhood beach. I met Brian, three years older, who was home from college for the summer and, coincidently, lived across the street from Mike and Ruth.

We dated the whole summer and were growing tired with each other by August’s end. Tired because we lived across the street from the other and so spent nearly every evening together watching videos, playing ping pong, or competing in Pictionary with either his mom and brother or with Mike and Ruth. Too much togetherness. Neither of us said anything about our increasing annoyance with the other. It wasn’t worth the effort as I’d be returning to Ohio soon.

Soon came, and Brian and I exchanged college addresses (before Internet), and I headed south with my brother Chris, who’d flown up to help me drive back.

Brian and I wrote once or twice a month, him asking for advice with the ladies and me giving it freely. Our friendship developed more in the eight months we were apart than it did during the nearly three months we were together.

The spring semester for my university—of Dayton—ended in April so I made it up to Maine before the University of Maine broke for the summer. Brian’s mom and I rode up to Orono in the family truck to haul the contents of Brian and his brother’s dorm room home. I was quite a surprise for them, and they were glad to have the help hauling furniture out to the truck.

Friday of that first week Brian was home, we went to see Pet Sematary with his friend from school, Arty, whom I’d met the previous summer.

As I admitted earlier, I don’t remember much of the movie, but I remember thinking it wasn’t that scary.

We dropped Arty off at his house and drove on to Brian’s. We got out of his powder blue Cougar and I said, “Seeya tomorrow.” We had made plans with Arty to meet at the beach. Then I walked across the street into Mike and Ruth’s big, five-bedroom house.

I washed my face and brushed my teeth and lie down in bed in my corner room to write the day’s events in my journal. Mike and Ruth’s room was upstairs. After a couple minutes, I heard a “boombloomboomboomboom” and a door slam. I walked out to the foyer, and the overhead light was on. Then in raced my brother carrying a small overnight bag. “Ruth’s water broke!” SLAM! And he ran up the stairs, the ones he’d just slid down.

I didn’t think I could offer any assistance so I sat on the love seat in the living area and continued journaling. Within a couple minutes Mike and Ruth were off to the hospital. I wished them luck and continued writing about the day.

After I’d finished, I shut my journal and looked out the sliding doors to the enclosed side porch, and there were the black cat’s yellow eyes staring back at me. I couldn’t see anything else as it was totally dark and some interior lights were on.

Now that I think about it, wasn’t there a black cat in Pet Sematary?

Anyway, I’d just written in my journal how the movie wasn’t as scary as I had hoped, but there I was alone in a big empty house with a black cat staring in at me. I was a little scared. I seriously contemplated calling Brian and asking him to come spend the night on the couch, but it was after midnight, and I didn’t want to call and wake his family just to quell my irrational fear. Instead, I checked to make sure all the doors were locked, especially the one to the porch, and I turned on every light downstairs and went to bed with the door to my room open. If the light didn’t keep the boogey man away, at least I’d hear him enter the house, and from my corner room have time to prepare myself for his attack.

Alas, the boogey man didn’t come. The rest of the night was uneventful. I got a call late Saturday morning that Lindsey no-middle-name-yet had been born about 8 a.m. I called across the street and told Brian’s mom the good news. I told Brian I’d be down to the beach later in the afternoon, after I got back from the hospital.

Lindsey no-name was the most beautiful newborn baby I had ever seen. Really, she was perfect.

If you’ve read My_Lost_Summer, you can thank Lindsey Anne (almost Brooke) Evans for the passage at the end of Chapter 14: the closure to the “hope” metaphor that had run throughout the book. She didn’t write the passage, but she did comment on the lack of a satisfying closure, which prompted me to write it. How smart for a sixteen year old?

The Shining

My husband and I belong to Blockbuster Online, where for $18 a month, we get three movies at a time mailed to us. When we return one, another from our queue is mailed. About half the DVDs in our queue are Mark’s choices and half are mine. Mark’s choices tend toward newer releases packed with action, like Hostage with Bruce Willis, or stupid action comedies, like The Man with Eugene Levy and Samuel L. Jackson. “Boy movies” as I call them.

I do enjoy the smart, stupid, or even bordering-on-juvenile comedies, and “40 Year Old Virgin” is one of the best I’ve seen recently, up there with “The Full Monty,” which I saw twice in the theater I liked it so much. But most of my DVD selections are classics I didn’t see when I was young; I never was much for going out to the movies. This weekend Mark and I watched The Shining with the exceptionally creepy Jack Nicholson and the wonderfully meek and screamy Shelly Duvall.

We waited until it was nearly dark outside before we started the movie, in order to set the mood. Before we started the DVD, I had a little bowl of cereal so that my growling stomach wouldn’t interrupt the show. The first bite was unusually acidy. I removed the spoon from my mouth and saw that I’d bitten an ant in half. I screamed so that Mark startled. The scream wasn’t loud, but it was long. Mark stared, frightened for me, asking “What?! What?!...WHAT?!”

“I ate an ant!”

“Oh, I thought you broke a tooth or something.”

I threw the bowl and the box of cereal away and grabbed something else to satisfy before settling into my comfy corner. The mood was really set now: I’d had a pre-scream.

Jack (Nicholson’s character’s name) was growing insane in that huge resort that he shared with his wife and son. When Wendy (Duvall’s character) discovered her husband’s manuscript, about 300 typed pages with the same sentence repeated over and over and over, she (and we) knew Jack was beyond his senses, not to be returning.

“All work and no play make Jack a dull boy.” He was anything but dull for the rest of the movie.

The most memorable scene for me was the one where Jack enters room #237, looking for a woman who supposedly roughed up his young son. The boy claimed she was in the bathtub, and Jack said that was impossible since they were in the resort alone, were the off-season caretakers. Yet Wendy implored him to investigate. Upon stepping into the bathroom, Jack could see a figure behind the shower curtain. A voluptuous young woman pulled back the curtain to reveal her nakedness, and Jack was quite pleased. (One can understand his pleasure since the only other woman he had seen for months was the skinny Ms. Duvall [Olive Oyl in the Popeye movie]).

This beauty stepped out of the tub, approached Jack, and wordlessly, they fell into a kissy embrace. After ten seconds or so of fondling, Jack opened his eyes to see the woman’s back reflected to him in the mirror; she’s all saggy and scabbed over with sores running with pus. The camera gives us a view of the bathwater she had just emerged from, and it was full of mold patches and scabs like those on the woman’s back.

“EEEEEEEuw! EEEEEEEEEuw! EEEEEuw! Ohhhh. EEuw!” I was glad I was watching from home so that I could express my total disgust freely; Mark didn’t care, people in a theater might.

Steven King is one sick writer. I’d like to know, What purpose did that scene serve? Another time when Wendy is fleeing her gone-berserk husband, she runs upstairs and unexpectedly encounters a guy in a bunny suit on his knees engaged with a man in a business suit. The Bunny stops his business and both men look at Wendy; they don’t seem angry or embarrassed but are rather expressionless. Again, What significance did that brief episode hold?

Any thoughts, anybody?

Fully Recovered v. Not

Earlier in the week I sent an e-mail to state brain injury associations across the United States informing members of the Boards of each about My Lost Summer and the hope and understanding it will offer to coma survivors, family, doctors, nurses, therapists, and other caregivers. Yesterday I received an e-reply from the Support Group Coordinator for one state’s BIA thanking me for letting her know about the book.

She continued that she also is a coma survivor and tells me that “upon reading excerpts from those 5 chapters [of My Lost Summer] I personally was not enlightened.” Then she writes, “By you saying that you are ‘fully recovered’ is mis-leading. Gains ARE made; compensatory tactics & strategies are both gleaned as well as developed naturally. The body was/is designed to heal…it just needs to be fostered daily.”

Um, excuse me. You don’t know me, right? Then how can you say I’m not fully recovered? Lady, after three or four years post injury, weeks would pass that I would never even think, “I’m a coma survivor.” I had bigger fish to fry, as they say: college, a job, travel, a marriage eventually. Focus on what you can do rather than on your limitations, for cryin’ out loud.

Fostered daily (said with a slight shake of the head). Please (said with an eye roll). I’ve been in brain injury chat rooms, on forums and bulletin boards, and it seems like the participants, whether two years post injury or twenty, are wallowing in—or fostering— their own—perceived or real—pathetic-ness.

I’ve also, in-person, met survivors of coma who are no longer identified by their status as brain injury survivors, who have no time for nurturing self-pity because they’re busy with life. Not until I began research for My Lost Summer did I know that brain injury chat rooms and such exist. Rather than seeking out validation for my limitations. I strove to overcome them. And now, yes, I consider myself fully recovered. As I wrote in the epilogue of My Lost Summer and several posts back and e-mailed to this lady who thinks my label of fully recovered misleading,

"I am quick to anger and quick to tears, and I lose words all the time, especially when speaking but often when writing too. These are supposed after-effects of Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). Yet who’s to say that these traits aren’t simply parts of my personality? Those of us who suffered our injuries early in life will never know the difference between what we could have been without the TBI and what we've become. I used to struggle with that, thinking that my life would be fuller and have more meaning and that I would be smarter and moreover a better person had Flash not fallen on that fateful day. But several years ago I accepted that I'll never know what could have been, and, overall, I'm satisfied with what I've become."

While I know that these online groups would not exist were there no need and not everyone was lucky enough to recover as well as I, I also think these groups are somehow enabling many survivors, who sit home in front of their computers looking for company in their misery about their troubles and lost abilities when their time would be better spent working on improving themselves physically, mentally, and socially.

I replied to the woman, thanking her for writing, and then I told her “The first five chapters of the book are not meant to enlighten, they are meant to ‘tease’ or grab the reader. Chapters 10-15 is the enlightening part of the book as it's told from my point of view, from that of a freshly conscious coma patient.”

I admitted to her my hesitancy to call myself fully recovered, but I certainly am not handicapped, or challenged, in any way. I have a breathing difficulty due to damage to my brainstem respiratory centers, but it presents only upon exertion, and I get what look and feel like cold chills at random times throughout the day, at least three a day, every single day, whether hot or cold. But those are the only symptoms, physical or mental, that I can attribute to the coma, and I’m not even sure about the cold chills.

So, to this lady I thumb my nose and say, “Don’t tell me I’m not fully recovered. A lot of it has to do with attitude.”

Auto Erotica

I drive a 1999 Oldsmobile Alero with only 62,000 miles on it. My infatuation with it, the feeling one gets from owning a brand new car, ended years ago. However, I still tolerate it.

• The vinyl on the dash and on the doors has peeled up from sun exposure.
• The plastic thing that keeps the seatbelt clip from sliding all the way down is broken—so that the clip annoyingly slides all the way down.
• The air conditioning, fixed while the car was still under warranty, barely cools even now, after it's been fixed, supposedly.
• A couple years ago, four months after the warranty expired, the heater was broken for a cold Christmas Eve drive to and from my in-laws'.
• Last month I got new tires and last week the rack-and-pinion gears were replaced.

It seems in this relationship that I am giving more than I am getting from the Alero. I know the car has caused me other distress, the specifics of which now allude me, that the mechanic has assuaged through the years. Just this Wednesday after work, I met my Alero in the lot and was disappointed yet again. The intense July sun somehow weakened the bonds in the glue holding the rearview mirror on, and it hung by wires, mocking me, seeing how far it can push before I call it quits and end our partnership. The car is seven years old, and I'm getting the "seven year itch."

I met my Alero soon after I ended another auto-relationship, which also lasted seven years.

The first car I loved was a 1992 Chrysler LeBaron convertible bought used in 1993. It was a showy turquoise with a white top and had not been ridden hard, with fewer than 10,000 miles. I washed LeBaron weekly for the first couple years we were together, even gently scrubbing his soft-top with Soft-Scrub with Bleach to keep his white bright so that when we were out together, people would exclaim, "How handsome." He'd grown accostomed to pampering as, before I bought him, he'd escorted the dealer's wife on her daily errands. And his good looks garnered compliments through and past his middle age, until he started to go gray on top.

Unlike with my Alero, LeBaron and I had a mutual give-and-take relationship; I regularly dropped him at the shop for his required maintenance and upkeep and he met all my auto demands without complaint. Until 1998.

My husband and I had started dating by then, and I admit that I was growing lax in my care for LeBaron. Mark drove a younger, equally as showy, Ford Mustang convertible whose black top had not faded or grayed. It was a sharp car, and LeBaron grew jealous I think, since I spent many evenings out with the Mustang.

One day that summer LeBaron tried a drastic move to test the Mustang's loyalty to me. The brakes went out. Luckily, I was in a busy area and pulled into a Jiffy Lube lot and called Mark. Through rush-hour traffic, the trusty steed (the Mustang) rescued me.

I had LeBaron's brakes replaced, but from then on through the next year he made regular monthly or bimonthly trips to the mechanic, and when he conked out on me during a drive up the hill less than a couple miles from home, I was forced to seriously consider another car. I don't blame LeBaron; I blame myself for getting involved with a man with a flashy Mustang. There was no way LeBaron could compete, especially with a younger model.

Parting was hard, but I knew it was the best--for both of us. LeBaron could fix himself up again and a cute young thing could pluck him from a used car lot, and he'd be happy. I was almost 30 and was looking for a more stable, reliable relationship. Mark and I were married by then, and he helped me choose a new car. I didn't want anything that would compete with the Mustang. I wanted something that would know its place as the conservative, family car, and so together Mark and I chose the Oldsmobile Alero in silver mist, which is just a fancy way of saying gray.

Ever since my Alero's vitality has been wilting, I've been fantasizing about a fling with a foreigner. A sturdy, well built German model, perhaps, or one from the Orient with a sleek, sporty body. Maybe a Swede!

Even though the Mustang turned eleven this year, has been in two major wrecks, and is an American car, it’s still a great ride. And like so many men, it gets more attractive with age. It has more than 126,000 miles on its still powerful engine, and the only time it’s been in the shop (other than for body work from the two wrecks) was to get new brakes about 50,000 miles ago and last year to have the radiator and hoses replaced.

Just as one in so many cars ends up being a lemon, Mark’s Mustang turned out to be a peach. A juicy, fuzzy, sexy peach.

La Isla del Encanto es Puerto Rico

My first nationally published article was a travel piece (The Christian Science Monitor, February 26, 2003). I love travel writing and nearly always write up something to share with friends and family upon our return from some far off or exotic local. I apologize for waiting to post this until July when Mark and I took the trip in February. My Puerto Rican friends loved reading this account of my impression with their home island.

Puerto Rico, February 16-22 – Every car’s license plate in Puerto Rico reads “Isla del Encanto.” This I noticed as Mark and I sat in barely-moving traffic our first afternoon after getting our rental car. The island was failing to enchant either one of us.

We deboarded our plane at 2:35 p.m., retrieved our luggage fairly quickly and caught the van to Thrifty Car Rental. Seemingly, the employees there work on what Mark termed “island time,” and not until about 4:30 did we finally leave the place with a car, by which time the worst rush-hour traffic either of us had ever experienced had begun. At 7:45 p.m. we arrived at Oceanfront Hotel in Isabela on the north-northwest shore, and luckily the first floor was a restaurant because we were famished. My husband got shrimp fancied up some way, and I got the island standard mofongo con mariscos (with seafood). I’d read in my guide book that different locales in Puerto Rico vary the recipe for mofongo but the base is plantains—a heartier banana-type fruit.

Mark loved his shrimp, and I enjoyed the mofongo, which arrived in a dough-bowl overflowing with shrimp, scallops, and fish pieces in a stew of onions and tomatoes. As I ate, I looked for the plantains but never discovered any. To end our meal, we shared a vanilla flan, a firm, pudding-like dessert. (To give you an idea if you’re not familiar, mousse is light, pudding is a little heavier, and flan is more dense, so much so that it sets and holds its shape.) Mark had never tasted flan and was a bit hesitant about trying it, but he liked it.

Our waitress didn’t speak English so I was glad I had brushed up on my Spanish before we came. I asked her how long it would take to get to Las Cavernas del Rio Camuy, where we had planned to go the next morning. She told me an hour to an hour and a half, depending on traffic. Mark and I slept well that night with plans to head inland in the morning.

Perhaps if one is familiar with the route to get from Isabela to Las Cavernas, the drive takes from one to one and a half hours, but since we were not familiar and because the street/route/highway signs are lacking on the island, we didn’t arrive until 10 a.m. though we left the hotel at 7:30 a.m.

But the cave, carved from an underground river that was still running, was worth the trip. Once enough English speaking folks had arrived for a complete tour, we watched a short film and took a trolley to the big cave, which was open to the outside in three places, and we saw three big crickets and a spider.

After our cave tour we drove a short distance to the world’s largest radio telescope and climbed the many stairs, from where we parked, to the museum, through which we walked to see the telescope. Big, yes, but neither my husband nor I am interested in astronomy so we didn’t spend much time there.

We drove on to the southwest coast where I bought a necklace made of bamboo for $5, and we walked out on the beach briefly. Then we turned east to Guanica and arrived at our Parador at 6:15 p.m. For dinner at the restaurant there, Mark ordered shrimp and rice with sausage, and I got snapper in garlic sauce with plantains. Both our meals were satisfying, nothing more.


On February 18 we slept in until after 7 a.m. then went to the dry forest and hiked. By our estimate, we hiked ~seven miles total—three hours and fourty-five minutes, anyway. We saw a few pretty birds but didn’t get any pictures; we saw a lot of epiphytes, the cactus-like things that grow on trees. We heard a loud parrot squawk but didn’t see it.

When we’d hiked for almost three hours and were walking back to the car to rest, we decided to take a trail we passed that lead to the ocean; it was only a mile or so. The trail ended at a road. We crossed to a fence with a sign that read “No entrada sin autorizado.” No entrance without authorization. Bummed, we sat on some boulders and ate tangerines trying to enjoy the ocean from a quarter mile away, before we headed back up the dry, hot steep trail to our car.

That afternoon, hot and dirty from our morning hike, we arrived in Ponce at Hotel Melia, just off the main square of the city. We showered before walking out in search of dinner. Unbelievably, there were no restaurants on the square or close at all. After investigating all nearby nooks for possibilities of food, we encountered a police officer. I asked him for a recommendation, and he asked what type of food we were looking to have. “Comida criolle,” or typical Puerto Rican fair, I answered. He directed us to a place a couple blocks away--right next to the police station--called Don Juan.

For the third night in a row, Mark got shrimp in garlic sauce, and, like the first night, he loved it. The best he’d ever had, in fact. I got an array of appetizers: green salad, onion soup, shrimp cocktail, and sweet plantains. It was all good and the TV played a college basketball game on ESPN for Mark to watch. We were the only patrons.

When we walked back to the square, the firehouse museum was lit up with pink neon lights, and the fountain was also lit. A young couple in wedding attire stood on the corner and waved as cars drove around the square flashing lights and sounding sirens.

Because we had reservations for the next night on Vieques, an island off the southeast coast, we needed to drive from Ponce to Fajardo, almost half an island away, to catch the ferry. Hotel Melia is in the center of the city, and getting out, which proved to be an exercise in patience, took us an hour. The map showed that following Rt. 1 east would take us to 52, the main hwy. We found Rt. 1 and the sign said “este.” “Alright,” I said, “just keep following this east and it’ll take us right where we need to be.” A block or two later the sign read “1 este,” and we were on our way. Three blocks later, as we followed the same route in the same direction, the sign read “1 oest.”

“One WEST?!” I thought back to our first morning here, when, due to insufficient highway signs, our drive to Las Cavernas del Rio Camuy took us twice as long as it would have taken a local. “This %*^@ island! Can’t get their #!@* signs right!” I was frustrated, and as usual, Mark was the picture of calm.

We turned around several times and took different roads and came upon another sign that read “1 sur.” Now, who has ever heard of a route that runs east/west and south? But I checked the map, and sure enough, in Ponce, Puerto Rico, Rt. 1 runs east, west, and south. Ugh.

Eventually, we stopped at a gas station to ask how to get to 52, and of one guy filling up, who was driving a vehicle painted with the Ponce airport’s logo, two employees, and one patron, none could tell me how to get to 52, which runs right by the airport. As I stepped out of the station back to Mark in the car, I noticed a street sign pointing drivers to 52. We were less than a mile away.

The drive to the docks in Fajardo was uneventful. The tale lies in the parking.

The neighborhood by the docks was run-down, a little ghettoish, and street parking was hard to find. The guide book said that a fenced lot was available, but we saw that it was gated and pad locked. We drove down this block and that block and found a spot relatively close to the docks on a corner outside a packed Pentecostal church with its doors open to the air. The preacher was feeling the spirit, we could tell, but he spoke so fast (in his native tongue? in tongues?), I couldn’t understand a word. I was a bit reluctant to leave the car overnight in an ungated lot, let alone on the street, yet we had no choice.

Mark was at the trunk selecting only the essentials to take while I sat in the front gathering my backpack and such. I heard him say, “What?” a couple times and then he said, “Hon, what’s he saying?”

I got out and saw a boy about 15 on a bike. He told me that we could park at his house for $5. He said it was safe when I asked. I thought it was a better idea than parking there on the corner, but Mark said, “Nooo. It’ll be OK.” So I told the boy, “No gracias,” and opened my bag and put my swim suit, shorts and a T-shirt into my husband’s bag, and we set off towards the dock.

It would be a couple hours before the ferry departure, and as we sat in the waiting area, my apprehension about our parking situation grew. After 20 minutes or so, I told my husband I was going to go check on the car. It was two blocks over and two up.

Everything looked OK. Doors were secure, locks seemed un-tampered with.

On my way back to the docks I saw a man open the gate to the parking lot and let a car in. I asked him in English if I could park there. He said I could but that I’d need to hurry.

I did a 180 and ran the two blocks back to the car, but I couldn’t get the key to work in either door. I was panicking. Even the 15-year-old on the bike, still riding around looking for people desperate enough to pay $5 to park at his house, tried to get the key to fit, but it wouldn’t work.

I ran back to the lot and searched for the worker but couldn’t find him. I thought I’d blown my chance to park there, but I figured I’d keep trying. I ran the two blocks back to the waiting area and yelled for Mark. I told him that I could park in the lot but I couldn’t get the %#*& keys to work, and I held up the key to him. He said, “That’s the key to your car.”

“Oh.”

Sure enough, there was another, skinnier key on the ring. The key I was trying was the one to our Alero sitting back in the airport lot in Cincinnati.

So Mark accompanied me back to the lot, I searched until I found the worker, I told him that I’d leave my husband until I brought the car, and then I ran to get the car. Whew! I’m exhausted just recalling it all. But it all worked out in the end.

Just after 5 p.m. we got into our room in Esperanza on Vieques, an island that until 2003 had been occupied by the US Navy so it’s relatively undeveloped. We ate at a place called Bananas, and Mark got a cubano: a sandwich of pork, ham, and cheese. I got jerk chicken and fries. After dinner we went on a bioluminescent bay tour. Everyone had his or her own kayak to go out about a quarter mile in the bay where we secured our boats to the guide’s and we got out. Well, Mark didn’t. He doesn’t swim. He was pretty scared even though the water was only about 5 feet deep and he’s 6’ 4”.

Points of light slid down my fingers and arms as I lifted them out of the water. I swam to Mark, and he said it was neat when I kicked my legs real big. It seemed like I had a neon green aura. He said I looked like a ghost.

Even though Mark didn’t get in, he said that in the water in his kayak were dinoflagellates lighting up. As we rowed in, we saw fish zip along lit up by the dinoflagellates. Pretty awesome.

Early the next morning, Monday February 20, the proprietor of our lodging drove us several miles along dirt roads to a beach where I snorkeled and Mark sat on the sand watching crabs. Then we walked back along the coast, taking our time. We lunched at Bananas and walked back to Casa Alta Vista for our luggage and a taxi transfer to the dock.

Monday afternoon we arrived at the mainland, made a quick exit from the ferry, and got to our car before the traffic got too bad. With relative ease, we made it to our lodging place for the next two nights by 6:30 p.m.

La Paloma Guest House is set on a hill on the edge of the rainforest. Nilda, the proprietor, greeted us and pointed through a clearing to the sea and an island. She told us it was Vieques, from where we’d just come. The place was just beautiful, and the coquis (tree frogs) were already chirping.

I thought La Paloma had a restaurant, but it looked like just a house. I asked Nilda. She said no, there was no restaurant, but she would serve us leftovers from what she had just served her family. We went to our room and within minutes she brought down three plates of food, gratis: lettuce & tomato salad, catfish, eggplant & puffed pastry, and rice and beans with chicken plus a full carton of O.J. The eggplant/puffed pastry concoction was something we didn’t care for too much, but everything else was excellent.

Tuesday morning we left La Paloma ~8 a.m. for El Yunque rainforest. We stopped at the visitor center, saw the overview film, and then hiked for several hours, stopping for lunch at La Mina Falls. After lunch we hiked to the lookout tower, which provided views of the northeast coast and Luquillo. El Yunque is the fourth rainforest I’ve been to, and it’s the greenest. Lush, healthy, thick, verdant.

We stopped at a grocery on the way back to La Paloma and bought frozen meals for dinner. Our room had a microwave. At La Paloma we sat out on lawn furniture listening to the coqui, appreciating and luxuriating in the Puerto Rican rainforest environment.

The next morning we drove in to San Juan. Our flight was at 1:45, but we dropped our car off at Thrifty to beat the rush. The van took us to the airport, we got our tickets and checked our luggage. Then we took a taxi into Old San Juan. We toured El Morro, a US National Monument. It’s a fort on the coast. We bought cigars for friends and a T-shirt for Mark. For lunch we found a restaurant called Mofongo where I ordered mofongo relleno y camarones (with shrimp and peppers). Mark got a cubano. My mofongo came in a doughy bowl again, again with no plantains. About halfway done with my dish, I realized: the doughy bowl is of mashed plantains.

We caught a cab back to the airport. On our flight home, we agreed that, despite the traffic, Puerto Rico is the Isla del Encanto after all.

Techno-phobic? Techno-illiterate? One and the Same?

“Krykee!” to borrow an exclamation from Steve Irwin, Animal Planet’s fearless Crocodile Hunter. Loading images into this blog wasn’t the easiest thing to do!

I am, I must admit, a bit computer- and all-things-technical illiterate, and it took me more than 30 minutes to find the little “picture” icon to post these shots. My husband and I just in November bought our first DVD player and cordless telephones. We do not own cell phones--though we do have a microwave.

Yes, we should both be less techno-phobic since my baccalaureate is in Engineering and he’s a man, and men, by nature, are more techno-curious. But earning my BS degree was a hard-fought journey that culminated fourteen (YIKES!) years ago. Eleven years after that I earned a Master’s in a humanity: Writing. Why the about-face in disciplines?

I’m ambidextrous now; I use both hands nearly as often to do everyday things: I brush my teeth, apply mascara, and shoot basketball left-handed; I write, eat, and bowl right-handed. I started life completely right dominated so why the change? Here’s my theory:

You know that the left side of the brain controls the right side of the body, and vice versa? And the left side of the brain is the logical side while the right is the creative? Before the accident I was really dominant left-brained, and the horsefall that caused my brain injury damaged that side. My right side was paralyzed, and so after I gained consciousness I had to use my left side for everything.

About a year passed before my right side regained enough strength and control to do many things, but by that time, I had gotten used to doing certain things left-handed, and I didn’t switch back. My theory is that since I’ve used my left hand for so much through the years, my right brain, the creative side, developed, and thus, I have an MA in a creative field.

The images I uploaded are not where I want them to be, which is in the sidebar. But figuring out how to do that is for another night. I'm sleepy.

My No. 1 Fancy Tickler

I’m back! Not that I’ve been away, I just didn’t have any book news about which to write: sales for June and July have been slow. But a couple weeks ago I met a fellow author, Alan Baxter, on an online book marketing forum, I read his blog and realized that every blog entry I write doesn’t have to be about My Lost Summer. Maybe 30% of his entries concern his novel, RealmShift, but the rest is about heavy stuff like religion and politics or lighter fare like commentary on the ridiculousness of posting recreational prohibitions in a public park or the “completely empty rhetoric” of messages on church marquees in his town.
So since the lack of book sales is not motivating me to write and I miss writing, I’ll write about whatever tickles my fancy.

What’s got me giggling this weekend? Well, my husband is usually tops, and this morning is no exception. Around 10 a.m. this morning we combined errands and stopped at the library to return some books on our way to the bank to deposit some checks. Sure, two people are not required for those simple tasks, but we do enjoy each other’s company.

By 10 a.m. on Saturday, our neighborhood is bustling, and as we approached our pass of one woman holding the hand of a toddler as they were walking into a store, I exclaimed, “What a butt!” The woman wore Capri pants of linen, the fabric not thick enough to disguise each dimple and bump of her gargantuan hump.

It was something monumental, unlike anything I’d seen before, which is why I commented: I didn’t want my husband to miss the opportunity to see; something that colossal is a rarity.

What made me laugh was his analogous observance. After we passed and he had a couple seconds to think about it, he said, “Reminds you of a couple bags of dirty laundry, doesn’t it?”

As a writer, I had to take advantage of that perfect observation. English professors have always instructed budding writers to let their words paint a picture, and a butt like two bags of dirty laundry is as clear as it gets.

My husband, alas, has no desire to write, however, he frequently impresses me with his analogies. I have always admired people who think in analogies, as it's a trait--or skill--that alludes me. And I'll always wonder if my head injury (ah, coming back to the book) prevents me from being able to think that way. As I write in the epilogue of My Lost Summer, "Those of us who suffered our injuries early in life will never know the difference between what we could have been without the Traumatic Brain Injury and what we've become." Are those pathways in my brain gone, destroyed on impact? Or were they never there to begin with? I'll never know. I finish the paragraph in the epilogue with "...years ago I accepted that I'll never know what could have been, and, overall, I'm satisfied with what I've become."

Sure, I'd like to think in analogies, but until I can train my brain, I'll have to use what my husband shares. He doesn't mind. He's a sweet, selfless guy.