Endings lead to new beginnings

After 35 years of existence, my regional professional organization will be coming to an end in 2011.  There are many reasons it is ending, most importantly those of us who have “driven it” for many of those 35 years are getting old, and we are tired of doing it all.  So what went wrong?  Could we have kept it going?  Was it inevitable?  And lastly, is this actually good in the big picture? 

We started in 1975, a group of young and old, dedicated professionals in the largest city within a huge, largely rural, geographic region.  Ah, the energy, the dreams, the growth.  Our organization “grew up” in the mid-1980’s, became a licensed non-profit educational organization, tripled and then quadrupled our small initial membership.  In the decade or so since we had started, some of the founders retired, some went on to bigger and better things, but many of us stayed and dedicated ourselves to the education of like-professionals in our region.  For some of us, it was the bright spot in our working lives - even though it took so much of our personal time, we learned as much as we taught to others.  Most of our places of employment supported the work we did through our organization because they saw it as good PR to the rural areas, and they liked having the “regional experts” in their employ. 

In the meantime, a large, national organization was also growing, but exponentially.  They were formed in 1972, but in the beginning mostly targeted large urban centers.  Then, in the 1990’s, regional chapters of the national organization started to form within our geographic area, but didn’t seem to affect us that much.  Our membership dropped by about a third from the mid-1990’s on, but our educational offerings were still well attended, and we still had the human resources to continue to plan and present them.  Our financial picture was secure because we had been extremely frugal since almost going broke in the early-1980’s. 

In the mid-1990’s we started to have trouble recruiting new board members to take over for some of the older, tired members.  Then, for years, no one at all was willing to join us.  We kept on going, and “appointed” a few people (i.e., twisted their arms) - some of them stayed and did a wonderful job with us.  But then one member had to leave, then another, and another, and there was no one who would consent to the time and work commitment to join us.  By 2005 we went from 12 to 10 board members, then shortly thereafter from 10 to 9.  Nine was ok, but we had to put much more work and pressure on the remaining board to make it work.  Two years ago I retired and moved over 300 miles away from the heart of the organization.  I’ve stayed involved, but it is a long drive to make every few months.  I feel distanced, not just from my profession (since I’m not on the front lines anymore) but also from the organization.  Several others are also saying they need to leave soon, due to personal or work pressures.  Their workplace is no longer supportive of their time off working with the organization – things are too tight financially, and a small regional organization doesn’t have the same clout or prestige as the large national organization.   So, we can’t continue on as an organization, we need to end it, and that is OK. 

Those newer to the profession in the large urban region, who have not been willing to give the time or effort into the regional organization (for perhaps the same reasons of clout and prestige), have begun to form a chapter of the national organization in the very city where the regional organization resides.  Ten years ago I would have been incensed.  Five years ago I would have been sad, but accepted it.  Now I am cheering them on, and hope that they can fill some of the niche we will vacate as we wind down.  There is some overlap, and they can definitely provide much better services to those in the urban area.  They have a national office (paid!), and national leadership, which help to take the pressure off the locals to “do it all.”  How nice!

A few of our board members are devastated, and feeling guilty.  Could we have recruited better?  Could we have mentored better?  Maybe, but only in hindsight.  We had limited time and resources, and we functioned on an all volunteer basis.  We could not do everything.  And, the changing values of the different generations have definitely made an impact.  Most of us are baby boomers.  Most of the newer professionals are Gen-Xers.  We have different values in the workplace.  Our organization was founded not just on the values of we baby boomers, but on the values of the generation that preceded  us.  A major paradigm shift has occurred since then.  The national organization struggled for a while to adapt to the changing demands of a new audience, and have been mostly successful.  We were too small (and, again, all volunteer) to be able to do so. 

I say to our board, give up on your sense of responsibility and give up the guilt.  Let’s go out with a bang (NOT a whimper) and leave a legacy in our region that some might remember.  We need to support the national chapter, but let them make their own decisions and their own mistakes.  After all, they have the national office to guide them.  This is a GOOD thing, and it is the right time for this transition.

And, endings do indeed lead to new beginnings.

It's a Boy!!

My beautiful daughter-in-law is now 20 weeks pregnant.  The ultrasound two days ago showed a boy.  I had had a feeling, very early on in the pregnancy, that it was a girl.  You have a 50-50 chance when guessing gender, and I was wrong.  IT’S A BOY!

Having been a tomboy, I was relieved 27 years ago when I found out I was having a boy.  I would have had to learn a lot if I had had a “girly girl.”  Not that girls/women aren’t great, after all I am one (and I think a great one).  But I don’t relate to many little girl activities as well as I do playing with snakes, having reptile and rodent pets, building things in my dad’s wood shop, rough-housing, etc.  My sister played with dolls, I arranged them in my room, left them there, and then built doll houses for them.  I loved to design and make things, and when they didn’t turn out very well the first time, I just tried again. 

Having a boy child keeps mothers on their toes.  I remember going to a meeting when my son was just barely starting to “scoot” himself around.  Another child was there, about the same age as my son, but it was a girl.  The little girl’s mother spread out a blanket on the floor, and placed her girl in the middle with toys surrounding her.  She stayed within a few inches of where she was placed for the next hour and a half.  I spread out a blanket and placed my son on it with his toys surrounding him.  Within a few minutes, and every minute or so for the next hour and a half, I would be chasing him around the room and putting him back on his blanket.  He would not stay in one place.  The world was too exciting and needed to be explored.  I looked at the little girl, happily playing with her toys on her blanket, and thought “how would it be??”  Then I thought, “I wouldn’t trade for the world.”

Even in utero my son was an active child.  Practicing for the circus, I used to say.  The kicks to my liver, diaphragm, and spleen were enough to take my breath away.  Driving a car was very interesting when he let loose with one of those.  The kicks to my bladder made me know the location of every bathroom in the near vicinity, and I sometimes wouldn’t make it.  The night before he was born, it felt like he was banging his head against my pubic bone for hours.  I walked around the house, not knowing what he was doing inside me, only knowing that it was darned uncomfortable.  I went into labor the next morning and 6½ hours later he popped into the world, almost literally.  I had a “precipitous” 3^rd stage of labor, so the doctor, who had gone out for a short break, almost didn’t make it back into the room in time to catch him as he came out. 

My son learned to walk at a little over 9 months of age.  I like to say he only walked for a day, because after that he moved at a full tilt run.  What a challenge.  He figured out the baby safety locks for our kitchen cabinets almost immediately – the only person deterred by those locks was my mother-in-law, who repeatedly had problems with them. 

My son made it through to adulthood without any significant problems or addictions.  How lucky for all of us.  How fortunate for his wife.  And now they are having a boy….how wonderful.

Building Fiascos, part 2 - the laundry room

When the house was being built, we weren’t able to travel the 300+ miles to check on how things were coming along as often as we would have liked.  Because of that, it was always somewhat distressing when we made it down here and found mistake after mistake.  Most of the mistakes weren’t huge (although a few were), but they were all irritating.  And unfortunately, not all of them were able to be corrected - which is still irritating, but I’m getting used to them.

We have a nice little laundry room, aka our mud room, and also where the dogs are fed.  It’s the passage between the garage and the house.  There is a small half bath (toilet and sink, which is a large laundry sink – very handy!) attached to it. 

Now that you have the layout of our laundry room, I can explain the problem we identified on one of our trips.  Because it is a fairly small room, and because you pass through it from the garage to the house, I wanted a counter placed on top of the washer and dryer (we have a front load washer).  That counter top would be very handy and multipurpose, for placing shopping bags as they are brought in from the car, items we want to take out to the cars, a staging area for feeding the dogs, etc.  And indeed it has been great.  However, on that trip to check on the progress of the house, I saw that the contractor had instructed his men to build a frame for a riser (~13” high) underneath the washer and dryer.  Because it was only one of a number of problems we identified on that trip, I had a melt down.  It was clearly written on the plans that we wanted a counter there, and now, because of that riser, that counter top would be basically unusable - it would be almost 50” high!  The dryer vent passed inside the riser, as did the floor drain for the washer.  Nice thoughts on how to vent the dryer, but now I wouldn’t have a counter top where I needed it.  We weren’t ever asked about these deviations from the plans, they just made them.   I wasn’t very nice when I told them to tear the damned frame out.  The contractor wasn’t happy – where would he put the dryer vent?  His problem, not mine, but we had to help solve the problem.  There was no reason the vent couldn’t be routed through the abutting garage wall, enclosed, and exit the house a few feet from the original location.  So, the frame was torn out, and the dryer vent re-routed.  But, the electrical outlets for the washer and dryer weren’t lowered to compensate for the change, nor were the recessed drain/water unit for the washer, or the recessed gas outlet/wall vent for the dryer lowered.  Seems like they should have fixed those too, but they didn’t.  The counter we now have cuts right in front of one of the outlets – our solution was to use a switched surge protector and place it above the counter.  Since we are a solar house, having that outlet switched works well.  The drain/water connections are above the counter – that’s ok too.  What wasn’t ok, was the way the dryer vent had to be connected since the vent outlet hadn’t been lowered.   When we moved down several months later, we found that the dryer worked fine when it was pulled out from the wall a foot, but when pushed flush to the wall (as it needed to be) it would shut off - too many tight turns in the vent tubing.  After numerous unsuccessful tries to fix it, I finally told one of the men to forget about trying to “fix” it by connecting it to the recessed unit, and to just cut through the wallboard and straight into the vent, completely bypassing the tight turns.  The dryer itself, and the counter top, would hide how jury-rigged (ugly) the solution was.  Now the dryer could be pushed flush to the wall and it worked great.  Such a small thing, but it would have changed the usefulness of the room to not have that counter top.

More on these building adventures (fiascos) at a future date. 

What Mothers can do to us

I'm a mother, and I think a pretty good one.  I had a pretty darned good mother (until her death when I was barely 16), and she had an ok mother (some generational quirks, but my mother learned from them). 

But what I also had, as of the age of 17, was a strange and periodically psychotic stepmother.  I know, a stereotype, but true nonetheless.  I'm sure my sarcastic teenaged (and grieving and shocked) tongue didn't help one bit, but she would just "lose it" and rant and rave at me, and throw things, and break things, and once she chased me with a carving knife in her hand. Afterward, her memory of those events was vague.  I was too young to put a diagnosis on her behavior, I was just so shocked and unprepared for anything like it.  It was only later when I lived with a bipolar roommate that I realized that my stepmother was probably bipolar, undiagnosed and untreated.  Her generation just put up with those kind of quirks ("that's just the way she is....."), or locked them up and then lied about it, if they got too dangerous.  I remember my sister taking me to the police station after the knife incident.  We were living in a relative small city (huge compared to where I am now), but the police knew my stepmother, one had gone to high school with her, and they said "that's just the way she is....she'll get over it and she won't hurt you."  Great support huh?  My father said he was "too old" to start over - he was in his early 50's, but his generation didn't admit mistakes, they just lived with them.  His solution?  I had just started college at a nearby school, but made up my mind about attending too late to get into the dorms.  He had his influential boss pull strings and within a day I was living in the dorms.  You can imagine how my 17 year old mind processed that move - "get out of here"  "you are causing trouble" "it's your fault."  I vowed to never spend a night in their house again, and I almost succeeded.  Unfortunately, 20 years later, I was foolish enough to spend several nights in their home when my son was about 18 months old.  On the last day, she had one of her raving rants, that lasted for hours.  My father did nothing (no change there).  Inside I reacted the very same way I had 20 years before - adrenalin rush, heart pounding, totally freaked out wanting to flight or fight (yes, I reversed those intentionally). My outer demeanor was able to react very differently than when I was 17 - exuding calm and trying to talk her down with some limited success.  I vowed again to never spend another night there, and never did.  I have been able to have a superficially "ok" relationship with her since then, but always from a distance.  I have amazed myself that I have maintained that superficial relationship with her over nine years since my father's death.  Maybe it is even better now, because she is no longer the crazy woman keeping me from my father, but a sad old woman who misses him too.  2000 miles and over 40 years have also helped.  The lies I lived because of her.  When my first husband and I moved in together, I told my father; he was ok with it, kind of, but said never to tell my stepmother.  Two years later we married, so it wasn't too long a delay.  When my second husband and I moved in together, again I told my father, again he said not to tell her.  So we lived a lie - my husband could never answer the "house" phone for fear that it would be her calling and then it would cause "problems" for my father (yes, indeed she ranted and raved at him too).  We didn't marry until 11 years later, 5 years after my father died.  I kept up the charade.  I remember the phone calls after I moved so far away in the late 60's, in the middle of the night, just "you little bitch, stay out of our lives forever" followed by the phone slamming down.  Those when on for several years.  Precipitated by what?  I'll never know.  I don't want to know. 

So what brought up this unpleasant trip down memory lane?  My dear, beautiful daughter-in-law (DIL) is having problems with her mother.  Her mother lives 5000 miles and several countries away, but has been visiting them for several weeks.  She is somewhat unstable, and sometimes not completely connected to reality, but can function most of the time, especially when she is in her own culture.  She's been pushing my son and DIL to purchase a house, seeing it as a status symbol.  My son is still in graduate school until Spring, and my DIL is almost 20 weeks pregnant.  They are happy in their apartment, and don't need the additional stressors of purchasing a home and moving.  Plus, the second wave a foreclosures has barely begun, the market hasn't hit bottom, so it's not the best time to buy.  Several days ago, her mother called and was essentially threatening to take the baby away after it is born, and raise it in that other country because their apartment isn't big enough - and my DIL could see her baby through internet connections.  My sweet DIL reacted similarly to how I reacted to my stepmother, VERY upset inside.  Not really surprising.  Not good for her or the baby inside her.  I remember those reactions.  So last night I talked with them, and tried to help them come to terms with the lack of reality to her mother's comments.  She has no legal rights to that infant (they aren't ever going to leave her alone with their infant).  They will be wonderful parents, or as wonderful as any parents are able to be.  Babies don't come with user's manuals, never have, never will.  They are adults, and will make the decision about upgrading their living space when it is more convenient for their situation. 

Helping them made me realize once again how different we all are, how different our parenting was for us, how different our parenting is to our kids.  Some of it was great, some of it was awful.  Luckily seeking help through counseling is now common and accepted.  They will be fine - no one ever said living would be easy.

Until next time.

In the City

I had to drive to the city (300+ miles away from home) for meetings.  I get to see family and friends while I am here, which is nice, but what a culture shock it is each time I’m here.  From a very rural, laid back area, to a metro area of 1 million plus people, traffic lights, freeways, heavy traffic, crazy drivers (ok, we have crazy drivers too, but it isn’t so bad when there are only two cars on the road, total).  Whew!

I can’t believe I used to live here, and I can’t believe that I used to have a job here that ruled my life.  I was my job, and my job was my life.  Why??  What did I miss during that 35 years?  I can tell you my old job doesn’t miss me – it’s tough on the ego to find out you were just a body drawing a paycheck instead of a valued member of an organization.  So easily replaced, so easily forgotten.  The newer generations have it right about working.  We worked during the week, and rested up on the weekends so we would have enough energy to face another grueling week.  They work during the week so they have enough money and resources to play on the weekends.  They don’t expect companies to be loyal to them, so they have limited (realistic) loyalty to the company.  There was a time I thought that viewpoint was incredibly self-centered and selfish – now I wish I had learned that lesson decades ago. 

There are a few things I miss about the city, but I don’t miss them enough to wish I lived here again.  One of the things I miss most is sushi.  I went to a little hole-in-the-wall sushi place last night, by myself, and had three delicious rolls.  It wasn’t a place I knew well (only been there once before), so I experimented with the rolls.  Yummy – I wish I’d had room for more, but I was so stuffed it was hard to get the last three pieces into my mouth. 

I wrote what is above four days ago.  I’m home again, after four very hectic but very pleasant days.  It was so wonderful to drive out of the metropolitan area yesterday morning.  Within 100 miles I was completely “in the country” again.  Hallelujah Hallelujah (and I’m not religious, in the traditional sense anyway).  In another 100 miles I started seeing some red rocks, and another 100 miles to home.  Now, sitting in my recliner in my living room, laptop at my side, I can lift my head and look out the windows and see my sheets drying on the line, and the most beautiful panoramic vista all around.  It’s hard to be so far away from my son and his wife, but it is so right to be here.

Until next time I feel like writing….

Living Better, Maybe, through Chemistry

A cold front is coming through, so it’s very windy right now, but it’s often windy where we live. In fact, the early settlers in this region recognized that winds would blow almost unimpeded through this valley between the cliffs by calling it “Hell’s Bellows.” We didn’t know about that very apt name until early this summer, over 12 years after we bought our property, but it certainly applies. Had we known would we have changed our minds about purchasing our land? I doubt it.

Anyway, we had a robust monsoon season this year. Thanks to the abundant rain, we have now abundant growth of every noxious and not-so-noxious flowering plant that can survive in clay and/or sand. And now the winds. The result? My allergies are in full miserable bloom. My brain is functioning on half blood and half snot, sometimes more snot than blood. Not a pretty picture is it? Well, it doesn’t feel so great from this side either. And the blood supplied to my brain is chock full of antihistamines – double-dose (or more) loratidine and round the clock chlorphenirimine, with alaway thrown in for my eyes and patanase for my nose. I can’t take any decongestants anymore – my heart acts up – so I have to depend on antihistamines. And I’m so darned sensitive to medications that I can’t take the “powerful” antihistamines like cetirizine. I can’t use steroids because of the side effects. So I take what I can take, and function as well as I can function. Luckily it is fairly cool right now so we can keep the windows closed in the house at night. I wear a filter mask and wrap around sunglasses if I walk the dogs or I’m hanging laundry on the back porch. I get some interesting looks if neighbors drive by. If I can even get to sleep, being as “zooed” as I am on drugs, I have to be propped up so my nose drains rather than clogs.

I’m really hoping for an early frost - my husband isn’t, but I am. He will have to cover the cold-sensitive plants in his garden if there’s a threat of frost. I will celebrate the death of those pollen-generating plants, and breathe free and easy, until next year.

Letter to my Birth Daughter

I never met you, I don’t know you, I only saw you once - through a nursery window thanks to a sympathetic nurse. But today, September 8th, 2010, is your 43rd birthday. So Happy Birthday. In that 43 years not too many days have gone by that I don’t think of you in one way or another. Each year your birthday is the hardest.

I know I did the right thing. In 1967 it was close to impossible to keep an out of wedlock baby. My parents (father and stepmother) were humiliated that their daughter was not only sexually active, but had been caught. They had to send me away. I was distraught that my boyfriend wouldn’t marry me - he was off to fight in VietNam. I was too young, at not yet 19, to have been a good mother – especially with no parental or societal support. I was smart, but had to drop out of college in my second semester because I was pregnant. High school education and no skills. I was still reeling from my mother’s death two years before, I could barely keep myself together, much less raise someone else. I gave you a chance, and by doing so it gave me a chance too. But it wasn’t easy – don’t ever think it was.

My older sister was adopted, and then two years later I happened along (surprise!). The two of us were really sisters – we never knew anything else but each other. And she became my sole support in my time of need in early 1967 even though she too was still grieving for our mother. I talked with her about topics we hadn’t broached before – how did she feel about being adopted, was she mad at me for not being adopted, weren’t we still sisters even though not blood kin, was it ok to think about giving you up to someone else? Was love about being able to let go at the right time?

So I grew up, thought I had dealt with my grief and loss, married, had a son. But it was only while going through my divorce that it became pretty clear that I hadn’t dealt with my grief and my abandonment issues – over my mother, and over you. Counseling helped. I finally healed, am still healing. Healing doesn’t mean you forget and it doesn’t mean I don’t miss you, miss knowing you.

But I won’t search for you - you need to search for me. From what I’ve seen online, it is best that way. I never changed my name when I married – not just for professional reasons, or because I am the last of my line with this surname, but to make me easier to find. My sister eventually searched for her birth family, too late to find her birth mother alive, but she has several half siblings and has established a relationship with them. I’m so thrilled that it worked out well for her – it certainly doesn’t make me any less her sister. Her oldest son, also adopted (followed by two surprises), searched out his birth family, but unfortunately it didn’t work out as well for him.

So, here I am. Long ago I registered with a match agency - nothing so far, maybe never. Who knows, maybe someone will forward this post to you. My husband, my son, and my close friends know about you, so there’s nothing on my side that needs to stay hidden or secret. I’m too old, at almost 62, to care what others think.

Happy Birthday. I hope your life has been filled with love and happiness.

Building Fiascos, part 1

This will be the first in a series of funny and not so funny stories about the frustrations of building a home in a rural area outside a very small town, while you are still 300+ miles away.

Flash back to early 2008. Retirement was looming in the not-too-distant future, the building site soil testing had been done, the house plans had been reviewed and mostly finalized, and we were ready to have the builder break ground. My husband and I had 10 years to discuss where we wanted the house placed on our 20 acres. We came to an agreement, and carefully measured from an easily identified tree, set up a rock cairn, put a flag in the cairn, and took pictures. I then took a close up google map of our land, put in the property lines, circled the tree, and drew a line to the “X” marks-the-spot where the cairn was located. I then emailed a pdf copy of the map and the picture of the cairn to the contractor and the draftman. The draftsman replied that he received the email and understood our instructions.

Flash forward almost two months. They still hadn’t started the house. We were camping on our land in the motorhome, and went to our future neighbors’ house for dinner. We walked to their house, but he drove us back after dinner because it was dark and chilly. Right before we got out of his car, he asked “so where is your house going to be?” We gave him a 30 second, but fairly detailed, description and said goodbye. The next morning we headed back to the city.

Two days later I remembered to turn on my cell phone, which had been off for our trip. When living in the city we had landlines, and our cell phones were just for emergencies. As soon as it turned on, there was a message from our neighbor, saying that they had staked out the house and that it was in the WRONG spot. In fact, it was staked out in what I think is one of the prettiest parts of our land, a small rise with some junipers, lots of interesting rocks and cactus. I refer to it as our rock garden. What a loss that would have been if they had started excavating!! Numerous emergency phone calls to the contractor, the person who staked out the property, and our draftman (who couldn’t figure out how they had gotten it so wrong!) finally resolved the problem – but not the third time it was staked. And it was actually still wrong - in the correct east/west location, but 8’ further to the south then we had marked (corner of porch, vs corner of house, which has worked out fine). After 3 tries we figured we had better go with “close” rather than “exact.”

In hind sight this incident is pretty funny, as a near miss, but at the time it was very tense. We should have known that this event was a harbinger of other problems yet to come.

The next installment will be posted sometime in the future.

The Rattler in the Shop

I like snakes and my husband likes snakes.  That doesn't mean that we don't have a great deal of respect for venomous snakes.  I was probably the only little girl in my neighborhood who was bitten by a non-venomous water snake - while playing by the creek waiting for my mother to pick me up after ballet practice.  I picked it up incorrectly, so I deserved the bite.  I also had fun catching garter and corn snakes while my first husband was shore fishing at high country lakes - at least I wasn't "skunked" because I'd always find at least one snake to catch (he thought I was nuts - guess that's one of the reasons why we aren't married anymore).

We have a subspecies of the western diamondback rattler in our area called the Great Basin rattlesnake.  They are non-aggressive, and would rather slither away from you than attack.  Of course, any snake will attack when stepped on, or threatened, or handled roughly.  Back to the story....

My husband isn't very good about closing up his shop at night.  After Say's Phoebe birds nested in his shop last year he at least tries to close the "garage" type door now, but it is usually open at least an inch at the bottom.  Plenty of room for rodents to enter, and therefore, plenty of room for snakes to follow.  Several months ago my husband walked into his shop and heard the loud rattling of a decent sized snake.  Once he found where it was, he got his snake stick and brought it outside.  He sent me for the camera.  I shot some decent footage as he played Steve Irwin (RIP Steve!) with the snake, and while our neighbor (who happened to stop by at the right moment) got the snake bucket.  Those of us around here who don't mind snakes, and realize their value in rodent control, usually put the snakes in a 5 gallon bucket with a lid, and drive them several miles down our road (unoccupied land) to release them.  We've only seen two other rattlers this year, although we have seen  many more gopher snakes (they are such fakers! - they have patterns similar to the rattlers, curl up, puff up their heads, and hiss at you - but they don't bite when picked up).    I hope you enjoy the video.

Prickly Pear Jelly

Last year my husband really wanted to make prickly pear cactus jelly.  I wasn't very excited about it, but after putting it off for several weeks, I said ok.  He collected the pears from the cactus all around here.  They aren't the big, juicy red pears like you see on YouTube videos or other web sites - those must be from localities with much milder winters.  Our pears are tiny, and mostly seed, averaging the size of the first joint of a man's thumb.  I searched online to find out how to remove those tiny, extremely sharp spines (called spicules) from the pears.  The concensus was to burn them off.  So, for the first batch of pears, my husband used our gas stove and carefully turned each pear using tongs.  Then I washed them, finding several residual spines (ouch!), and started to make my first batch of jelly.  We used a steam juicer, and it worked great.  The juice was thick and slimy, like mucus, which I didn't expect (I have found out that is what it's supposed to be).  After boiling it, adding lemon juice, sugar, and liquid pectin (which was at least 3 years old and looked like jelly itself), it was a bust.  Beautiful, flavorful, but  no thicker than the thick juice - probably the old pectin.  I then tried jelly rescue instuctions from the SureJell site, and it thickened to the consistency of hard plastic.  Delicious, but it had to be warmed in the microwave to spread.  Meanwhile, we were finding cactus spines everywhere - on the counter, in the stove, on the floor - very painful.  For the second batch last year, my husband went onto our back porch and used a camping stove to burn off the spines - kept them from getting inside, but he got spines all over his lap, legs, and feet.  He had to strip naked before he came into the house (good thing our neighbors are 1/2 mile away) and segregate his contaminated clothes to wash separately.  I even found a spine, the hard way (imbedded in my finger), 10 months later while cleaning the stove!  The second batch was like softer hard plastic - it still had to be heated in the microwave to be spread.  However, it was delicious (my husband says it tastes "pink").  Over the last year, we used a few jars and gave a few away for presents, with instructions for microwave softening. 

Despite those difficulties, we decided to try again this year (again stimulated by my husband).  I decided to try a different method to deal with the spines.  My husband picked the pears, and thoroughly rinsed them several times.  He then cut each pear in half, but didn't remove the spines.  I lined the fruit section of the steamer with two layers of cheese cloth, and we placed the fruits into it, spines and all.  It worked!  We didn't get any spines into the juice.  The second change for this year was to use Pomona's Universal Pectin, something I had seen online.  I had made a trial batch of apply jelly last Fall after I bought the pomona pectin and it was awful - it had lumps, with the consistency of large ball tapioca.  But I read the FAQs online, and re-read the instructions.  I used a hand blender (Emeril calls it the boat motor) to blend the juice after I added the pectin-sugar mix.  I blended it for a LONG time.  I also used the boil-and-test method, e.g., boil a minute or so after everything has been added, then put a small dab on a cool dish and see how it jells.  I ended up boiling it for ~10 minutes, at which point it seemed to be jelling well, so I put it in jars and processed them.  The good news it that it is the perfect jell consistency - spreads well and not syrupy.  Unfortunately it has a very slight granular texture, like tiny (tiny!) tapioca.  Maybe I needed to use that boat motor a few more minutes.  But it is so delicious and just the right jell, so you don't notice.

I'm glad that we didn't have to deal with the spines at all, and that we have jelly that spreads without being nuked!  But will I remember what we did next year?  Sure, I'll read this post....

Lost on Lake Powell

We've had three small boats in the past 18 years.  My husband loves to fish, I love to drive.  A match made in heaven, or somewhere....  Our latest boat is a 16.5' open bow.  Kind of small, but I think it is a great size for the two of us, him fishing, me driving.  

However, boating is EXPENSIVE.  Several years ago, a friend said that if you can afford to put $100 bills into a garbage disposer, then you can afford to have a boat.  Since the end of 2007, we couldn't afford a boat, so we towed it down to our property while our house was being built, and there it sat, covered, untouched, and unused. 

In late July, my husband decided our little boat had sat there long enough.  He uncovered it, cleaned it up, started the motors (main, plus trolling), and said let's go.  I got it registered, he got it insured.  We were ready, so on the second Tuesday in August we headed to Wahweap for a shake down cruise.  We'd boated on Lake Powell in the past, but always the northern part of the lake (it is a HUGE lake - check it out on Google), never Wahweap.  Now we live near Wahweap, so we'll learn a whole new part of the lake.  Not having been out for almost 3 years was concerning - would it be like riding a bike, or would it all be new??  Well, it was mostly like riding a bike, but it was a bike that didn't work very well.  We got it off the trailer without problems, and then got out into the bay a little ways.  When we tried to do a radio check (marine radio - a necessary life-line, believe me!), we could hear them, but they couldn't hear us.  Ka-ching, our first future expense, get a new radio.  Then we tried to get "up" onto the water into a plane position.  The engine had always had a "dead spot" when accelerating, but this time, we couldn't get past it.  It would stall out.  So, my husband (the floating mechanic) worked on the boat for a while, which didn't help, then we drove around at slow speed, checked out the trolling motor (which was ok), and headed back to the dock.  We decided that our best approach was to drop it off to a mechanic in Big Water (~10 miles away from Wahweap) rather than have my husband work on the engine.  Their diagnosis?  It needed a carb rebuild and float.  Second Ka-ching!

Two weeks later, after being told that it was fixed and ready to go, we did our second shake down cruise.  Well, it still had the dead spot, but we could plane if we eased the throttle up to high speed.  We drove to Lone Rock, which is fairly close to the marina, and trolled in the shade while my husband fished.  We weren't skunked - he reeled in a 3" blue gill (the pirhana of the north), and then sent it off to hunt again.  Other than asking the mechanic about the dead spot, and still needing to order a marine radio, the other issue was did we have the correct propeller?  My husband was worried that we were running at too high RPM's while at top speed.  The mechanic said that the dead spot could be fixed with a minor adjustment (free).

So, another week, another drive to Wahweap, and another shake down cruise.  We borrowed a higher pitch but smaller diameter prop from the boat shop, had a new marine radio ready to plug in, and headed off to the lake.  The new radio worked (yes!!).  The prop was a bust, we were better off with our old one, but we could still get up to plane ok.  We still had the dead spot, so the mechanic must not have made the adjustment (or if he did, it didn't work).  But despite those issues, we felt like exploring a bit with our little less than a half tank of gas.  Off we went to find Warm Springs Bay (aka Warm Creek Bay).  We had a great map, but the lake isn't marked that well.  We followed a house boat, and found the cut between two large cliffs that got us out of Wahweap Bay.  Talk about narrow and shallow, but well marked by buoys and no wake, so it wasn't bad.  At that point we dug out our little Explorist 200 GPS and turned it on, and then drove all over exploring Warm Spring Bay.  After having lots of fun for a while we saw that we were getting close to the point of no return on gas, so we turned around to head back - and promptly got LOST on Lake Powell, and didn't even know it for almost half an hour.  After realizing we had no idea where the cut back to Wahweap was, we drove over to some people camped on the shoreline.  They were really nice - the bad news was that we were completely opposite of where we thought we were, but that it was pretty easy once you knew to look for a cliff called "Castle Rock."  The gas was below 1/8 tank by then, but we kept our fingers crossed and headed in the correct direction, found the cut, and make it to the fuel dock (on fumes).  Of course, we always had the trolling motor with its 1 gallon of gas, but that would have been very slow going.  After we got 10 gallons, we decided we weren't ready to pull out yet, so we headed back to Lone Rock, turned off the engine in its shade - while my husband fished I lounged in the open bow with the paddle, adjusting our position every few minutes. 

All in all, we had a good learning experience on our third shake down cruise.  However, when we got back to the boat storage in Big Water and got our prop back, my husband learned that they had received the wrong carb kit for our engine, and used it anyway; they had ordered the correct one and would install it when they got it (no charge of course).  So much for telling us it was fixed, and that it just needed a simple adjustment....mechanics are pretty much the same everywhere, no matter what they work on.

Lessons learned:  (1) don't explore if you don't have enough gas; (2) turn the GPS on at the marina and mark it; (3) pay attention to landmarks and rock formations; (4) ask for full disclosure from mechanics and (5) we are darned lucky.