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My Parents’ New Home in the Desert
I stole myself away from my busy life and trekked out to the desert to visit my parents and help them unpack their new home in the desert this last week. I really wish I could spend more time out there because it is sooooo awesome! I’m seriously considering retiring out there myself if I don’t pull off the cottage on the beach dream. It’s just desert and rocky hills and cacti and big skies as far as you can see. And it’s so peaceful! I kept asking my mom if she wanted to turn on a radio or something because the quiet was almost unreal.
But we didn’t. We kept it quiet except for our chatter as we unpacked. We worked and worked and worked at finding places for a lifetime of treasure-hunting. My mom has so many treasures! It is very, very, very hard to get rid of them for so many reasons. Each thing has a story or a special person they were picked out for. It breaks my heart when she tells me she’s saving this or that for this granddaughter or that, knowing that this or that granddaughter also has a busy life and no room for more “stuff.” It’s just sad because the stuff is so special!
Hoarding (and I say that affectionately. My mom is not as bad as some.) is such a difficult terrain for everyone to maneuver. Both my mom and I have felt deprived of things in our lives so we hold onto “stuff” so closely because we think someday in the future we might need them. It’s a psychological mine field. I inherited the gene too. I love a good treasure hunt through a thrift store but my house is getting more and more cluttered and I don’t want to end up with so many things I have no where to put them. I’ve often pondered getting a storage unit to let my hobby continue but I know it would be a bad idea. If only my mom and I could just open a store!
This is just a fraction of the many many treasures. A fraction! And that’s not even counting the hundreds of trips they took to the dump and the goodwill. So many treasures. I am proud of my mom though. She has done the work. She has let go of soooo much and it has been hard. I’m really proud of her that she can navigate such a big change so late in her life. It is not easy. I cannot ever accuse my parents of being lazy. They are not.
Somewhere underneath the layers of unpacked clutter you can see the bones of a really cute house. I love their new house! It has a lot of light and quirky colors on the wall. You don’t feel like it’s a mobile home at all, which I love. It looks a lot better than this but my mom and I worked deep into the night and I stopped taking pictures because the light was bad.
I will say this: Home is where the cats are. My mom’s cats have seemed to take in the new home with no problems. All five of them! (I have her sixth at my house: Kady.) They are not allowed outside which is a big change because they are used to roaming a half acre at their old place. But their new place is so close to the hills in prime coyote territory so they are staying inside. My dad plans to built an elaborate cattery outside for them and rest assured, I will definitely try to be part of that project. How fun, right?
I wished I could have stayed longer and helped him get started on it but there was just too much to do AND too much for me to do back home (which is why I’m so late on this post). I’ll try to get out there again soon and maybe take the girls because I know they’ll want to explore the desert.
My dad and I took a walk the next morning and checked out the scenery. It’s so pretty. I’ve always been a desert girl so this open space and desert fauna makes my heart sing.
Look at that mist coming over the mountain. Isn’t it pretty? It is really hot out there but they get a really strong wind that whips up around 3pm every day that cools the valley. Then the mornings are cool also. I am curious to see how cold it gets in the winter.
I just love these plants. I know lots of people like lush gardens with neat and tidy rows of flowers. I am not one of those people. Give me some prickly cacti and some sage and I am happy as a lizard on a warm rock.I look forward to many more happy visits!
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The Bubble Walk
We did a thing this weekend. A bubble thing. Lots and lots of foamy, colored bubbles. It was a “run” sort of. I think it would be more accurate to call it a walk or an “experience.” We basically lined up with a few thousand other people and walked five kilometers around the Angel Stadium parking lot and let bubbles rain down on us for instagrammable moments. It was a blast.
The kids do not think running is cool. I do however and since I work out all the time I busted out of the first station in a gallant run and took off leaving them in their suds. About half a kilometer later my heart hurt from running so hard (I may have tried to show off a little) so I decided I missed them and lapped back to walk the rest of the “run” with them. What can I say, walking though bubbles taking pictures is more fun with your slow walking family than by it is by yourself, feeling virtuous about your healthy heart.
It was so silly and fun! Who dreamed up this idea? I think they are brilliant and they are laughing all the way to the bank. It was totally packed. You couldn’t even run because there were so many people. There was music and dancing and lots of people walking into each other because they were paying more attention to their phones documenting all the fun than they were where they were going.
You’d think it would be a crazy, slippery health hazard with all those bubbles and running and dancing and people not paying attention but surprisingly, the bubbles weren’t slippery at all! I didn’t even see a single person slip or fall. Idiots playing in the puddles and getting gross and dirty were everywhere but no accidents to speak of. The bubble solution must have been some special formula that foamed but did not create any sort of slippery film. Suds and puddles everywhere but nobody losing their footing. It was brilliant.
The kids loved it and filmed every minute of it until their phones died.
And who am I kidding. I took about a thousand photos too. I was just smart enough to not waste my battery before we got there.
The swag wasn’t so bad either. We got these really cool t-shirts that we thought would be tie-dyed with all the fun colors from the bubbles but sadly, they washed out.
We definitely got the pictures and the memories. These are going into 2019’s photo calendar for sure. I love doing these sorts of things together. And! Best of all: We woke up at 7am and walked three miles together!! How often do we get to say we did that? Like never.
Joon sent me a link for the color run and I’m thinking: sign us up! Do it for the photos, do it for your health, who care’s it’s all good!
Then we went to IHOP and ate all the calories we burned off in a big breakfast and lived happily ever after.
