AND GRACE WILL SET US FREE

Every Sunday, it's the same struggle. Two kids who don't want to go to church are scrubbed, dressed, and sent out to the car, always at the last minute. No matter what time I get started, we always seem to be leaving right when we are supposed to get there. Realistically, we are always about ten minutes late - the amount of time it would take me to get the youngest situated in some kind of other activity besides sitting next to me in service, struggling to sit still and be quiet. So there we are, and there we struggle.
Every Sunday, it's the same thing. It's the struggle with him to keep his mouth from running, a million little disturbances, the occasional dirty looks from people around us. Luckily, I think, we have choices between two services, and this one I always choose, because it's not nearly as quiet of a service as the other one, not nearly as serious, so not nearly as high of a penalty. If I had my choice between the two, I would choose the other - the other service going on next door is more mentally engaging, whereas this one, the contemporary service, is more emotionally based. There is always something about it, though, that makes me feel God at a heart level, instead of a head level, and this week, it was no exception.
There is live music, and colors swirling, and darkness inside the heart of the church, and pictures projected on to twin screens on either side of the stage, the words to the songs running over them. This week, it started with a picture of light streaming through the open canopy of a forest, a place where God exists to me. I was feeling it, not thinking it. A woman onstage was talking about her decision on a particular song we were to sing, talking about how her life was so full of all these distractions, and finally, when she came to ask God to reveal to her what music she should chose, and sought his counsel on the other issues, the answer was that He had been waiting for her this whole time, just waiting for her to start leaning on him already. And with this revelation, she chose Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone) , a modern twist on an old hymn. I always loved this song, but this day, I was being moved by the words.
Clips from a movie about the Last Supper rolled across the twin screens as this week's Scripture was played from a recording that reverberated throughout the sanctuary. The minister began his sermon, a time that is usually the most challenging with the children, mostly the youngest one. Today, it was the usual struggle again, the constant whispering between us, his requests for toys or potty breaks, my admonishments, attempts to engage him in coloring, the questioning myself on if other well-intended people are right, if he is too young for this and I should just make sure he is in the nursery during this, or in the little church choir upstairs, but always the guilt of pushing him into something away from me when all week I spent away from him at work, the desire to show him how I live my faith, how I want it to be for him, the expectations I have versus the reality of taking a three year old to church services that he can't understand. The difference this time, though, was how I felt about it. My heart was so much lighter than it has been in the past, dealing with this same problem, and I say a silent prayer to God, thanking him for bringing that light back into my life, for chasing the darkness away.
I am only catching snatches of the sermon, which is exasperating me, because I really want to absorb it today, and some of what Brian is saying is speaking to me. In fact, he is kind of talking about some of what I've been thinking about, about the struggle, and how we are to deal with it, questioning if we allowed ourselves to be defined by the struggle, or transcend it. "Some of us here are dealing with pain, dealing with past abusive relationships, dealing with dark times, and what God wants is for us to not be defined by that, but defined by this instead", and he gestures to the breaking of bread and the spilling of wine, of the sacrifice of the Lamb. He is talking about Passover, and the marking of the doors with sheep's blood, and the gift of people's presence in our lives, and my mind is rolling.
Then we break for communion, and all these thoughts spill out when I dip the bread into the wine, and take my place on my knees to pray after. I lift my heart up to God, and I am thanking him for the light he has placed in my life, for leading me out of the desert, for transforming my heart the past months, for all the gifts He has brought to me, for His presence most of all. I am weeping with gratitude for this God, who saved/ a wretch like me.
And wretch I was, so darn miserable and aching inside before. I think about that today, think about how on other Sundays just like this, I would go home from church crying, and spend the day trying to lift myself out of this depression. Some of that darkness was from the struggle of trying to manage these two heathen children on my own, but my attitude is different now. I used to wish someone was there to help me, to reach out for someone to lean on, but I've gotten past that, on to the realization that I have to do it myself. Sometimes I feel like no one's really there for me, but all that begats self reliance. I have to do it on my own, because it's not fair to ask anyone else to help carry this load, and that's part of my transformation. Sometimes getting what you need is to stop needing it, and learn how to do without. That's what we've been doing, with the eventual goal of being more complete without, to be more complete for.
Anyway, this day I walk outside of the service with these thoughts, and also the other thought that today was different, because the main thing that keeps me coming back to this place is the connections I have to it - my friends - but today I saw none of those connections. Right as I was thinking that, though, I saw one, and he is just who I wanted to see, after all.
Of all the people I have met through this church, Rich is the one I value the most. His name seems to suit him, in spiritual terms. In fact, he's the one who got me to start coming here in the first place, and after I got to know him, I saw why. Rich is a "fisher of men", a sheperd drawing in the lost sheep. He fired me up with the same enthusiasm, and we used to feed off each other, watching the flock from the back pew, seeing who was new, then almost pushing each other to go round them up, inroduce ourselves, invite them to our small group, which eventually got so big it splintered into many other small groups. Now, Rich and I aren't in the same small group anymore, and so we pass each other in the halls, and even in his house, since my kids are there every Thursday night, but we rarely have a chance to sit down and talk.
Today, as luck would have it, the person sitting by him had just left, and I claimed the spot. He was all worn out from giving blood, and as we sat, people kept stopping to talk to him, to thank him for giving his blood, as if he was part of Christ himself. I joked with him about the state of his heart, had it been drained dry, but knowing Rich, it never would be. As I joked, he caught my eye, noting the tears. Nothing much passes by Rich, and I knew I didn't have to tell him anything, but I wanted to. I told him some of what has been in my heart lately, about the transformation of spirit, of God's presence working in my life, about my struggles.
"It sounds like you've been beating yourself up pretty good, " he said, when I lamented about God "smoting my eye", about my failure to get myself out of a bad situation, about how it was finally time to see the signs in front of me. "I'm going to tell you something...for later. This might not help you right now, but I want you to think about it." He told me about the ghosts of exgirlfriends past, and how even though some of those experiences were bad and painful, in the end, he didn't regret any of it, because it got him to where he was today. He gestured to my kids, the older one who was practicing Tae Kwon Do poses in the hallway, the younger one who flashed us a brilliant smile. "And you got these two out of it, which is something you will never regret."
We talked some more. I told him I felt like everyone was judging me for these struggles I had with the youngest, how I felt eyes on me all the time. "If anyone IS watching you," he said, "It's with sympathy, not judgement. They probably remember what it is like to have small children, and have sympathy, or perhaps are thanking God they aren't there anymore." He gave me some real practical advice on my struggles with the heathens in church, a solution no one had ever suggested, but made perfect sense. "Man, I have missed you," he said. "You always had something deep to say, some intelligent remark, some profound statement to make. I'm sad that we aren't in the same group anymore."
Today, though, I thought it was him that was the profound one, the one who cut down to the heart of the pressing questions, and gave me the gift of clarity, and made me feel like the woe and strife of my past life did have a purpose, something I kind of knew but I guess needed to hear again. His idea for next Sunday, too, gave me hope.
Sometimes things do turn around. Maybe God was just waiting for me to be ready, for me to come and lean on him a little, and all those things I wanted, he just laid them at my feet, like a reward for the well-intended.

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the hope and the love are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought,
So the darkness shall be the light and the stillness the dancing.

CRACKED REAR VIEW

This morning on the way to work, I was thinking about something funny. I was remembering this elaborate prank Jennifer and I had in college that revolved around the punchline of a joke. The joke wasn't even that funny, but was made all the more hilarious to us for that very reason.
The joke was told to me for the first time by Russel John, the improbably redneck I worked with at a summer camp in '96, and I brought it to College Station, after which we worked it into a prank call situation...way past the point of being funny.
So the joke is something like this: This boy goes to the circus, and there is this clown that keeps taunting him. This darn clown just will not leave him alone, calls him names, embarrasses him, teases him mercilessly. It really affected this boy, but he had no idea what to do about it. Every year when the circus comes, this same clown goes after this boy, and he tries all these various things to get the clown to stop, but he can't. He ends up spending years in therapy working on this, and finally perfects his comeback. He goes back to the circus as a man now, and sees that clown, and this time he is ready to show him how all those years of therapy helped him learned the perfect way to deal with him. So when the clown starts messing with him again, he pulls out all the stops, and says....
"Fuck you, clown!"
I was laughing about this in the morning, laughing about an incident involving the punchline and Holly the Ho', laughing about all those college years. I was laughing all day, over other things. Hilarious moments involving me in the parking lot, observed trying not to pee myself with laughter, laughing over lunch, good times in the workplace, smile on my face. At the end of the day, though, there was this conversation, so to speak, that kind of changed my tune. It was a good conversation, but it got my mind rolling as I left work, heading into the traffic and the rain coming down. At first I was fine, playing my favorite tunes and getting deep into Keely Karoake hour like most days drive, but then something broke. And maybe it was just the rain, or maybe it was the deeper damage, but the dam broke and the tears came down.
During this time, there was a missed phone call from Jen, and even though I was on a stretch of road that I don't usually talk, I called her back, because I really needed a girlfriend. I told her what was on my mind, barely able to talk with the emotion of it all. She totally understood where I was coming from, the distorted sense of self that is the remnant of my broken marriage.
"Most people during this time are feeling sad because of what they lost. You're not sad for the loss of your marriage, you're sad for the loss of self you experienced in your marriage. You're sad because you are finally getting away. Thank God you are finally getting you and your children away from that."
We talked about this concept of beauty, the damage to my psyche that was caused by the mental cruelty of this man I lived with for ten years. "All this time, your girlfriends have been trying to tell you how beautiful you are, strange guys in bars were telling you that...I'm sorry it wasn't enough for you. It wasn't enough to overcome the way he treated you."
She told me to go ahead and cry about it, it was part of the healing. As I drove, all I could think about was how I wanted so badly to smash all the mirrors in my house. Hands clenched in fists of rage, wanting to strike out at the memory of him pushing me into those mirrors. "Look at yourself in there. Just look at yourself in the mirror. You're so ugly, how could anyone want you? Just look in there, see it?" And I am mad, not just at him, but at myself for falling into that, for looking in there and seeing what he saw and believing that, for letting that be the image I held in my head as the truth.
And it's all of it that I was crying about, the healing from all of it. During the fall, I was processing this stuff, seeing the sand castles he built in my mind starting to crumble and go back to the sea, the constructs he made to keep me under his control slowly disintegrating under the high tide. I was thinking about San Diego, and an experience that showed me what a liar he was. I was thinking about my parents, and their relationship with me that set me up for later damage. "It's the reason he chose you, honey," the counselor said. "He recognized something in you that was weak and he could prey on."
And prey he did. In some part of my mind, I see that his intention was to make me feel so bad about myself that I would never leave, but that doesn't make sense, in some ways, either, because he placed no value on me. Why would he care if I left, when he didn't care about me when I was there?
That makes me feel like all that time, he wasn't really seeing my true worth, and it makes me angry. It reminds me of the Vanilla Ice Cream guys, and how they saw me the same way - all about what they could get, and nothing about what I could give. In some ways, those Vanilla guys from college had boosted my ego, but they failed to see that there was more to me than this perceived superficial beauty and bedroom skills. None of them ever saw anything I wrote, or engaged me in intelligent conversation, or went riding with me. We never talked about books and ideas and the things that interested me. They never even knew I loved animals. How little they knew me, after all that time of working next to me.
Well, none of them but Ryan. Today I also remembered how I felt when I moved back to Texas, how for some reason coming home made me think about Ryan. In my mind, that was a sad feeling, that coming home emotion, because I thought that no one would ever see me again the way Ryan saw me. Those days were over and done, and I mourned the loss of my beauty, along with all the other pieces of me I left in my past. Over the past months, though, I've started to see that my beauty was simply part of my light that I had been hiding under a bushel all this time. And like Alicia said, it's time to start letting the light back in, and open up the parts of myself that had been closed off from this pain.
When my mom and I were in counseling, we talked about some of these things. She brought up that my sisters had been envious of the way she touted my beauty to them, that they felt insecure because she had been telling them all this time about my "classical features", about my intelligence, and they felt that their worth was unrecognized because of what she was seeing in me. "But don't you think I should have been the one you were telling that, too?" I wanted to ask her, because I never heard a single positive thing from her regarding myself. And it's those broken pieces that upset me today, the fact that those closest around me and who are supposed to love me the best are the ones who destroyed me the most.
This weekend, I was at Jen's house, and there was this man there who knew me during the time I was with him. We talked about beauty, that day, too. I told him how my insecurities, how these sand castles did keep me from leaving, how all I could see about myself was this cracked rear view. I told him how I was scared that man was right about me. Julian looked me up and down, and said, "That's not something you need to be worried about." He told me how hot he thought my pictures on Facebook were, and that made me laugh, the last laugh in fact, because this man I was married to said roughly the same thing. "Funny," he had written, "how that now that we are not together anymore, you look a whole lot better to me."
That makes me want to take some rocks for target practice against the mirrors. It's like we were at the circus, and he took me to the fun house and convinced me those distortion mirrors were my true reflection. It makes me want to come up with a great comeback against it.
Fuck you, clown.

HORSE POWER

I can't even remember when I started this love affair with horses. It was sometime before permanent memories started; somewhere mixed in with memories of sitting on my mother's lap listening to her read stories and being tucked in with my sister and brother. It was a part of my childhood legacy.

So, when I was five, I was given the choice between dance classes or horseback riding. Hard choice. ;) There were many, many years of lessons. Never a horse of my own, liked I dreamed, because my family wasn't THAT rich. There were years of horse camp and grooming other people's horses and dreaming of my own.

I knew I would find the right horse one day, and I thought many years of what this first horse would be like. I didn't make this dream come true until I was twenty one, and bought Bullseye my own damn self. Bullseye will always be "the horse of my heart", but, he is gone from my life.

So, my youngest child started asking for a "neigh" when he was about two, and I missed horses. I told Michelle about this lament often - I had ridden with her in high school, and she still had the same horses. Occasionally I would go riding with her, and I yearned. She told me this year that if I really wanted a horse again, "this is a good time to buy". The bottom fell out of the horse market due to the slaughter ban, and then the recession hit. Low-end horses were bottom dollar, people were practically giving them away.

So, that's kind of how I ended up with December. She was a bottom dollar price on a warm day. I chose her with the kids in mind, but it is me I think who is getting the most lessons.

I was thinking about that today when I was riding her. I was musing about the fact that I ride her bareback more than I rode Bullseye in that manner. I love bareback riding best of all, but I mostly always had a saddle on his back. Why does it seem like I do this more with her, I pondered. Well, it's a trust issue....

I tried to trust Bullseye , it's inherent in our story. However, over time our trust got broken. It's complicated. But December, bless her heart, I trust her. She is smooth as silk to ride, and completely unflappable.

Or so I thought. Ironically, five minutes after I thought that very thing about her, she DID spook at something, and at the worst moment - coming around a corner at a canter. Mind you, the arena is mostly mud right now. She sees something out of the corner of her eye, and makes a mad bolt to the right in fear.

But my body responds automatically without even having to think about it. Sit back, center myself, work the reins in her mouth to guide and calm her, heels down for balance, my seat on her bare back telling her to slow down, calm down, and go this way, and this speed....

I think the fact that I don't even have to think about it is amazing. It makes me think there is more strengths inside me that I haven't had the chance to use in a while, but it doesn't mean they have gone away. They've just been dormant, but when given the opportunity, they will come back just as automatically.

I think, that's it, that is one of the powers the horse has - to teach us to trust ourselves.

A Tale (End) of Two Monkeys
Once, my sister had told me, "maybe you just don't understand death." It was her way to trying to oversimplify why I didn't make it to a relative's funeral. I never really got into it with her, but she was wrong, as she usually is. That had nothing to do with it.
In reality, I am more comfortable with it than most people, but it is not even that. I know all about death, from a biological perspective. I know how much time it takes for each stage of cell death to occur, what is happening inside the body, how long until rigor mortis sets in. I have held hundreds for their certain death, and some died in my arms before we could expect it, or plan for it. I know how quickly I need to tag 'em and bag 'em before the smell starts to penetrate the air. I have sat with a stethescope while a literal wall of dead dogs were piling up before me, verifying death before each body was taken to the cooler. I have walked an old horse over snowy fields with her side cut open, trying to make it to the kill area before she keeled over. I have killed many, many times myself, dogs and cats and a few other species.
I know animals are not exactly like people. I know there is something different. The biology is the same, but our emotional attachment is different. We see humans as intrinsically more valuable than animals, even with our own pets. I know a lot of my vet tech friends consider their pets to be like their children...however, I also know that most of them are like me, in that for their human children, there would be no bounds to saving a life or finding a cure for a terminal disease, but our pets come with a financial limit, and in the end, we would all consider euthanasia as a viable alternative to prolonging their suffering, or reducing the impact on our finances.
These days, I am not going over the bereavement process and asking clients to decide on body care, or pick the urn that best represents the way they want to remember their pet. My patients don't have names, they have numbers. Part of the reason we don't name them is to reduce the emotional attachment to them. I always have to tell myself I love them collectively, not individually. I tell myself that not to make myself feel better about their inevitable deaths, but to feel better about the fact that most of the time, their deaths don't affect me emotionally. It is a reminder that I still care, that I am not so blase about death that it no longer bothers me.
Most days, I shake off their deaths like a pair of dirty scrubs at the end of a workday. Death is a part of the job. For a moment, I did the same thing when I was told the news about a couple of animals I had been working closely with. I received the news with the same shrug of my shoulders and little frown of sadness. I saw with my own eyes that their injuries were catastrophic, and accepted rationally that euthanasia was the only alternative.
Later, I began to engage emotionally with their death, and in this, I realized that some part of death is still a mystery to me. Human death we can convince ourselves to accept through our faith. What I mean is the question of where the soul goes. It is unfathomable to believe that the spirit of a person is simply just gone when the body stills, so we attach cultural or spiritual beliefs to its final destination. We tell ourselves that spirit is now in Heaven, or watching over us, or waiting to be reborn in another body, another lifetime.
Many people who work with animals believe that animals have no souls. I don't believe this myself, but we don't do much thinking on what happens to their souls after death. In my mind, there is a beautiful grassy meadow somewhere on the other side, with dogs chasing elusive squirrels in bodies free of pain. This maybe only a personal myth I created to help me deal with constant death around me, some sort of prevention against what they term "compassion fatigue", a real syndrome among my industry.
What do we define as the soul of a person? Their personality, the "inner core', their psychological attributes? If that is so, how can we look at animals and think they have no souls? To me, animals always have personality. There are different ways of approaching animals with different personalities. Based on their responses towards, say, a human approaching them, you could classify them on their personalities and treat them in accordance. A dog who is predominately fearful is handled in a different physical manner than one who is aggressive.
And I knew the personalities of the ones involved. Twelve animals that I had known for two years were placed in the same room, with the same set of controls. Two were put together, and two were put down. I knew the personalities of everyone in that room.
And yet I didn't ask for an ID number. It's like I didn't want to know, wanted to stumble upon it for next documentation and try to put the pieces on it. I was familiar with each one, how they responded to things. I had classified their personalities. I didn't need to know their number to know how things might have gone down.
And now I wondered where it went, where did it go when that needle hit home. Did the patient just die, and that's all she wrote? Is there a heaven for monkeys up there?
Do monkeys have soul? Do they ascend in any meaningful way? Is there a great reward for them up there, for spending their life in a cage, waiting for their turn to die for mankind?
I hope so. And I do love them. Sometimes I think God is working through me, or allowing me to work for them, as directed by him. Is it all part of some grand design?
The problem is, what happened was something everyone thought I would try, at some point down the road. Maybe, but I was years away from it, I felt. It was a wild risk. Yet, it was performed by...not me. I would not have attempted that, but now that someone has, I feel the eyes upon me.
Lord. Lead, guide, and direct me.

Left In Manitou

Sometimes I can still see her

Peering out the bedroom windows

Then disappearing

Walking down the blue ramp

Into the park,

Past the penny arcades

Turning left, then heading up Lovers Lane

Where that blue light is always on

Stops at the Dead Man's Tree

Where the noose hangs limply

Then in the dark into the park

With the giant sundial

Only seen in the light of the moon

Take a sip from the fountain of healing waters

Walking over to the big clock

Keeping the time

The time before

The slamming door

And the baby who is always crying

And the mother who was always dying

And the husband who was never around

In this tiny one horse town

Written circa 2001

This is me now, in front of my old apartment in Manitou Springs, Co. I left this apartment in 1998 to move to a ranch with my husband, who was then my boyfriend of only four months. This is me over this past weekend as we celebrated our tenth wedding anniversary by going back to the town where we met and fell in love. I got to go in my old apartment, that was wild! I used to take a walk almost every night, the walk I describe in this poem, in the four months I lived here, and now it exists in my memory. I meant to make that night walk again, but instead we decided this time to create new memories.

MISS ME MUCH
I haven't been around here much lately.
There's a lot of places I've been wandering instead....

You might have seen me sitting at a soccer game
Or making phone calls for snack and team photos
Or in my minister's office
Trying to understand my life and faith
Or outside reading a book watching kids play
Stuck in high water, driving in the rain
In Willis TX with a GPS
Or in Goodrich, Texas, looking at a mare

Or wiping sweat off my brow,
walking through a blacktop parking lot
Loaded up with kids, and groceries, and worries

Exploring the wonder of flowers in the gully
Or at a park, watching children laugh
Or in a forest, going for a walk

Or leading a white horse down a dusty trail
Or at a fast hand-gallop along the arena rail

Walking in boots,
in tennis shoes,
In sandals down the street with a kid or two
Maybe scrubbing a dog in the Sunday sun
In prayer, or in church with a friend
Watching a little one turn three
Or teaching some kids how to steer a horse
Or some just to hang on
You might find me with a birthday cake

A bridle, a brush, a birdhouse, or a burrito
Or a pocket western in hand
One Louis L'Amour treaded for another

Talking on the phone to an old friend
Or shaking hands with a new one
Driving and crying, or leaving it all behind
Having a smoke and a Sprite on a country road
Or a burger and coke with an old friend and our kids

I might be walking in the forest
following a compass and leading a child
I might be saddling up as you read this
To teach a child, or go for a ride
I might be reading a book to a boy in bed
Or walking next to a kid and a dog on a summer evening stroll
I might be around here, somewhere

FATHOMLESS Easter Sunday, and I am hurrying into church, late as usual. I hold my little son's hand and scan the side of the plain brown building, trying to determine the fastest route into the Sanctuary. I decide on the side office door, and also to save time by going "as the crow flies", across a stretch of grassy lawn. My wedge heels cut into the grass as I lead my little boy at a fast clip into the hallway and around the corner to rows of chairs set up behind the main glass door entrance to the Sanctuary. I had never seen so people at this church, so much need for overfill seating before.
A mild wind had been blowing outside, and the sky was heavy with grey clouds and the hint of rain, a typical spring day. As we sat and listened to the choir sing, I crossed my feet and noticed blades of grass, sticky with dew, clinging to my black heels, a conspicious sign of spring afoot.
Spring is a time of rebirth, and I think there is no time like Easter Sunday to experience spiritual growth. Contemplation of the sacrifice made for us by God and his Son evokes a strong sense of humility and awakens longings to be greater, to know deeper, to strive harder to be a good servant in me. Easter Sunday is a reminder of the powerful lesson it took me most of my lifetime to comprehend, that Jesus loves ME enough to have made that sacrifice to bring me closer to his Father.
On this day, the clouds began to darken during the service rapidly. Midway through, thunder was booming outside. I looked out the window to watch how hard the rain was falling, and was shocked that it appeared dark as night outside. Rain pelted the ground, and I thought how odd it seemed that just minutes ago I had been racing across the grass in heels, and how no one would be doing that after the service.
The sermon this day was focused on Mary Magdalene, which I think was a good choice. She was the only one who had front row access to the whole ordeal, from the beginning of her disciplehood (as I do consider Mary a true disciple), through the arrest and torture of Jesus, during his time on the cross and during transformation and ascension.
I tried to imagine what the disciples felt during the week of Passover and through the stages of Jesus's sacrifice. I think coming into Jerusalem that week must have been like my entrance into church that day. At that time, the political climate was starting to darken ever slightly, but the force of what was to come was still mild, the tugging of a wind and a movement of a cloud. The disciples must have been expectant with new beginning, like the earth beneath my shoes and the ripe grass on my shoes. They were waiting for something amazing to happen.
The arrest and sentencing of Jesus, his public torture, must have seemed like a powerful storm. The disciples probably felt tremors of excitement and fear, like that which fills us when the lightning lights up that sky outside the church. When those clouds darkened so intensely, I half expected to hear a curtain rip in the background, and I had a visual of the moment Jesus left his mortal body. They say the sky grew unusually dark in those final moments. I can see him there on the cross, in mortal agony, as a dark sky swept in around him and the wind picked up.
It seems like I have felt like that myself, metaphorically. When I think about the time of my spiritual awakening, I remember it as a time of unusual darkness in my soul. Winds of despair were turbulent inside me, but the only thing that kept me strong was the realization that God was there, holding me in the palm of his hand, and that He had never left me. I had left the church, and I had turned my back on God, and when I realized that at my darkest hour, He was right there with me, giving me the strength to rally on, I was overwhelmed.
Now, granted, God knows what He is doing. He knew that in order to reach me, I would have to have the message received in what I term "the Trifecta" - on a physical, mental, and emotional plane. That same week that I was afflicted physically, I also viewed The Passion of the Christ AND became absorbed in James Michener's "The Source", and in seven days, the message had been received and absorbed, and I re-committed my life to Christ.
The sermon this day was focused on what Mary found when she reached the tomb of Jesus. I can't imagine the many emotions she must have felt when confronted with angels instead of death.
Rebirth. Hope. It takes many forms. For Mary, this day, it took the form of angels and a gardener who called her by name. For her, and for us all, the sun did come out, and its radiance was astounding.

JUST YOU AND ME AND THE RIVER FRIO

As I walked along the halls of work, a man came out of a room. He was my "Spanish tutor" these days, and he asked me how I was doing in spanish. The day before, he had asked me the same question, then repeated it in a second tone of voice, and added, mi amore, to which I laughed, "Mi amore? Nooo..."
Today, when he asked me, I exchanged with him what my plans were, and he tells me of his. I showed him my tires I was hanging and he said it reminded him of tubing down the river.
"You like the Frio River?" he asks, and I affirm.
"Let's go. Just you and me and the River Frio."
He sings a song of drifting along, bottle in the hand, tells me his favorite liquor, asks me mine. I am not sure I remember what mine is, plus I really have to do my task now. Along the way, I think about this little dream of his.
This man, he is much older than me. In fact, he has a son that works with us as well who is the same age as me (and quite the hunk). I had asked him of his wife, and he tells me of being married 35 years. He tells me the problem with marriage is this: that sometimes one of the peoples likes another person, but they cannot go with the other person because there are two of you, married. Both peoples need to agree. Sometimes the person says they love the other one so much that they will not allow the other people to go to someone else.
I love it that he tells me this. It kind of cracks me up because it is such a guy thing. Sometimes I think if guys had their way, they'd still be out there scamming if women didn't rein them in. To me, I find that monogamy is much easier for women.
I also understand what it is like to love more than one person. I think I lived like that a lot. I could straddle that fence better than anyone back in my day. It's not my day anymore, and his days are passing him by, too. I think of his plan to take me dancing sometime, and that's fine, I would like to cut a rug and he might do as a dancing partner. Of course, he knows that him and I on a river fine is nothing but the fantasy of an old man drifting along as life is passing by.
Every now and then we would like to catch our past as it swims by us and see its gills sparkle in the sun before we toss it back. The unfortunate truth of youth is that it fades, and so does opportunity. I thought for a moment that maybe if I was still young and free, I might take him up on that idea. I might dance with him until night time stars twinkled a warning, and drank until I was thirsty again. I might wink back at him and share that bottle.
Then again, maybe I wouldn't. In my prime, I might have walked right past him with my eyes wide open and never have noticed him. In fact, when we talk about the Frio River, I think it is possible I have. His idea of a good time is being surrounded by family, grilling fajitas and drinking a cool one and enjoying the cool, shallow waters of the river. He favors a wading spot in the Frio River outside the perimeter of Garner State Park. I might even have seen his family there before, as I walked by with my two sons on a camping adventure once. I stopped with the younger one to take this picture as a family much like ole Francisco's surrounded me. The idea that we cross paths with strangers before we ever met is such a wild one to me. This world is so small, and yet so mind-boggling huge.
At any rate, when he smiles at me and tells me, "this color looks good on you, very pretty...for a pretty girl", it makes me smile, and feel a bit like the girl I used to be. I remember that attraction and a good time used to be enough. I am much more practical now. These days, it is not. I am so much more complicated, or maybe just have a better sense of what I need. The list gets longer the older I get.
It's nice, though, to look back and think about how fun that used to be, when caring wasn't worth caring about. Dangling your hands in the waters and wondering what you might catch, just you and me down on the River Frio.

BRAGGADOCIO

I'm not usually one to brag, but....

I won a really cool award at work!

It came with a glass trophy and fabulous cash prizes.

Every time people ask me what I got the award for, I am tempted to be a smartass and say "because I am just that cool!"

Truthfully, it was for an idea I implemented last year that inspired the staff at my facility to take extra special care of their animals. Around Christmastime last year, I visited another facility to learn from what they were doing, but they were so excited about my idea that we spent a good deal of time talking about that instead. They took my idea and ran with it, creating the same kind of program at their site, and then another facility took an interest as well. Later in the year, there were presentations on my idea, giving the credit to me.

Not long after, there was a call for nominations for yearly awards, and I received six nominations. In the presentation that the corporate suits gave in front of our staff, they said it was the first time in fifteen years that someone had been nominated for awards from people outside their own facility.

It is the first time I have earned a trophy as a grownup. My parents "brag" cabinet is littered with trophies the four of us earned as children - mine include swim team, softball, writing awards, horse show trophies- but I haven't gotten any since...high school, I suppose.

It felt really good. The thing about trophies, and being recognized, is it makes you feel like you might be really good at something.

If I could choose to be really good at something, then this would be exactly it - to win an award for "the person who embodies the spirit of compassionate care" for animals.

After all, I have devoted my life to serving them. I certainly hope I would be good at it by now!

QUESTION OF SELF
The past few years have brought social networking sites to the forefront of online life. I heard it said you could find old friends through sites like Myspace and Facebook, and so first I joined one, then another. The advantage to a networking site is that you have immediate access to people in your social network that have drifted out of your geological zone, and whom you don't casually run into anymore and have the chance to catch up with each other's lives.
It is in renewed contact with people from different times in our lives that we can see ourselves in comparison with where we used to be. It is where the past catches up to the present.
I find it very interesting from a psychological perspective the unique connection that brings, and how those comparisons play out. For instance, I have noticed that with our world growing larger, we find more in common with those in our immediate world. We have access to millions of people, and so the fact that this person was not in your clique in school doesn't seem to matter anymore when you consider they grew up in your neighborhood and went to all the same schools as you, and therefore has a common ground of experiences with you that most people don't.
It can also illuminate how different you might have become. Lately, I have been considering this idea that an old friend threw at my Facebook page. She questioned if I was having a midlife crisis, based on the things she saw on my profile.
My profile reads basically the same as my info on this site. To me, this is just the same old stuff I have always been into, which is why I think about her comment so much.
Am I supposed to have changed? Have we just changed so much that I seem different to her, or did she just never really know me? Have I changed? Or has she?
I have always been committed to preserving my identity. This commitment to being true to my self started when I was in high school and had some experiences that I had to make it through. I did some soul searching and inner self reconstruction in order to come out better on the other side, and when I finished, I saw who I was and vowed to keep that person intact.
When I became a mother, I saw myself and the women friends I knew with kids the same age lose parts of ourselves to become mothers and wives. I noticed that my experience was a common one with the women I knew, in that the first three years of their children's lives, the mother's life completely revolves around mommyhood. We don't have time for hobbies between holding our babies and keeping our house.
When I was in that stage, most of my reading was Parenting magazines and baby care books. I would list as my hobbies "cooking and cleaning". Changing diapers and making bottles came before reading and exercising, and when you did have time for yourself, you were too tired to do anything with it.
...But in those days, I still had my horse, my dog, my journals, and my Kerouac, my "pop philosophy and psychology", an interest in the esoteric, the reading, the walking, riding, and writing, and my dog Rascal, for the love of I went to work every day...
When I finally woke up one day, washed the baby drool off my shirt and re-entered the land of the living, I realized I had lost some of my essence, and that essence remained vital to my sense of fulfillment in my life.
Some of my friends never made a clean break. Some lost themselves and their identity to motherhood, and that is all that they are now. These are people like the mommybloggers and soccer moms of the world. I didn't want to be like them. I thought I was a pretty hip chick and I wanted to stay that way. I missed the way they used to be, and I didn't want to wake up one day and feel that way about myself.
When I had my second baby, I fought to keep my sense of self. I did something every day with my children, or maybe alone when my husband was home, to keep myself feeling like me.
I spend lots of time in introspection and self assessment, so I have always felt like I had a really good sense of who I was. The problem we run into with introspection, though, is that who you think you are is really only half of the picture. It doesn't matter what we think of ourselves when viewed through someone else's eyes.
Perception is reality. If someone percieves me one way, then I do exist in that way, to them, and no amount of disagreement on my part changes their reality of who I am.
Who are we, then? How do we really know what people think of us? They never come right out and tell us exactly everything they think of us. The only way we can tell is by reading into the clues that they leave in the things they say.
For instance, I have some clues on what others think of me lately.
Out at the piano bar, "Indy" introduces me to his girlfriend with "she's a really good writer, and she shows dogs..." she was so sweet - "And very pretty...!" she said, and I to her....at church, my old friend introduces me to the minister with, "and she's probably the deepest person you'll ever meet.." and the small group study circles all nods in affirmation, murmuring "she's really deep..." and my geocaching girl friend telling me she was surprised with how much I read, and says it probably explains why I am a good writer....my husband doesn't want to tell me something because I "have no compassion" and my best friend scoffs and says he must not know me, then, because you know that's true...
Compassion, the force that drives me to my life direction. I am still the girl who made a vow to her childhood dog to take a stand for animals, after finding the dog being kicked by boys and unable to get away because I had tied her up....a loyalty to a dog that became the collective "Dog" and the collective "Animals". I am still the same girl who later calmed an outlaw horse and made him hers, the same who could touch the male bongo that no one else could touch, and got to name his fall baby. The same one who held dying dogs in her arms in animal shelters, and dedicating herself to animal health care, and shelter dogs, and stress in captivity in general.
"She was overexposed to animal euthanasia," one doctor wrote about me in a letter of recommendation, and so I was injected with passion to preserve the human-animal bond through education and training, a teacher of Puppy Kindergarten with twenty people and ten dogs bouncing around the clinic waiting room.
An old friend sees me the same way as ever, she says, "warm, kind, intelligent, beautiful" and I to her, another sees me as "creative"...and a contemporary friend who remembers me as being really into geocaching...."a true friend, which is a rare thing these days," says an ex...
The thing is, I built this thing, this person in here, with the help of God. God had a plan for me, and I feel fortunate that it was revealed to me early on. I have certain talents, or gifts, like compassion, empathy, and the ability to focus on something intently for a long period of time. I felt strongly that he wanted me to make the world a better place for animals and equipped me with the ability to do so. This has been "me" since around eight years old, this core belief that provides me direction.
Curiosity, the force that drives me to seek adventures and knowledge. I have always been a seeker. I want to know the answers and go to the places and experience everything, which made me open to many different impulses and places. I want to learn, to study, to ask questions. I want to taste all the food and meet different kinds of people. In my younger and wilder days, this spirit would manifest in a general "sex drugs and rock n roll" manner but now manifests in interest in traveling, or the picking up of different hobbies, like dog showing or geocaching.
I am of the opinion that I haven't changed much over time. I am still into the same things. my mother used to always explain me to people with the same line - "she's into the 4 'R's - reading, writing, running, and riding" (horses). The first two are the same, though my tastes on those has changed over time, and although I only run ocassionally these days, I still like to get all self-competitive with solo sports. Dogs have been substituted for horses, and although I can't ride them, I still get the benefit of developing a mutually beneficial relationship with an animal who speaks "another language", but with whom you find a way to communicate with.
Recently an college coworker told me I had changed from the way he remembered me, with my kids and "enjoying what you do yet and want more" not who I was to him. When I questioned why my circumstance would imply I had changed, he suggested because my wild lifestyle when he knew me was incongruent with being a mother. He had me locked in the image of the "party girl" I was in my college years.
In some ways we change, yes. We evolve. We mature, grow up, move past the party life and into the family life. Yes, suddenly we're baking cookies and passing out Kool-Aid instead of cantering along on the back of a horse. We have a trunkful of tack that hasn't seen the light of day in seven years sitting in the garage, and bills instead of tests, and careers instead of jobs.
I, however, have been very proud that in spite of the changes, I remained true to who I was. I speaks of loyalty to me, like holding on to the friends of our youth and former flames. I want to be that loyal, still holding the halter of the horse she sold years ago, still looking through the old love notes from days gone by, silly and sentimental but always honest.
If I let it go, then it wasn't real. I was always real.
And I don't want to be the woman whose past didn't exist after she became a mother, or a lover, or born again. I want to be a woman shaped by her past but not defined by it, nor by the present, but rather somewhere in between. I am who I am, who I'd always been,who I'll always be.
To me.

Best Western Adventures

Series 11

VICTORIOUS AT VITREOUS

The day started badly. I was woken early by whining children. Between my children and the children of my sister-in-law, there were five kids under the age of nine at my in-laws house, and this day, they all wanted breakfast and no one else was up. A couple hours into tending kids, I was cranky and fed up wth my husband who had been drinking late and sleeping in every night. When I went to ask him why he was still sleeping, he looked at me like I was crazy and said,
"I'm on vacation".

That was a fuse that lit my fire. Apparently, my vacation was meaningless, because it didn't relieve me of any responsibilities or allow me any perks like sleeping in on a summer day. I wanted him to get up and help me out, and he just wanted me to be quiet. Finally, he urged me to get gone, go for a drive and calm down, while he tended kids for a while.

I wasn't even sure I wanted to go. I really just wanted some help, or to be able to relax and watch TV for a while. I needed to unwind. Finally, though, it reached critical mass and I took myself and my GPS unit and went out the door.

My plan was to go after a geocache called Above the Needles. The information page said it was a bumpy road but most vehicles could make it. I found this Fremont Highway 48 that was taking me closer, so I guessed I was on the right road.

I was playing around with the radio and began listening to NPR. They were debuting a new album by a band called Gypsy Soul, from the Pacific Northwest. It was the perfect music for my drive. Primarily driven by a female lead vocalist, the songs were all about universal experiences of love, of troubadors and the seeking inside our souls. I have trouble expanding my music choices in the right direction and stumbling on this band during this drive was a sparkling gem to brighten my day.

It was a beautiful drive, but as I drew closer to where the compass on my GPS was leading, there were choices, side roads that may or may not lead me closer to my destination. Some of them I went down, only to have to turn around when the road became impassable for my little vehicle, and turned a direction that lead me further away. There was a spot to park in front of that stream in the picture at the top that seemed to be the absolute closest I could drive, but the road ended there. The GPS showed that I was still 0.90 miles from the cache site, and would have to cross the stream and hike. I hadn't brought enough water for that hike, nor was I prepared to defend myself against any large predators.

I had been on the road now for at least an hour, aimlessly driving around, and I didn't want to just give up and call it a day. I decided to look through the waypoints loaded in my GPS unit and see what other geocaches might be nearby.

To my excitement, the closest one was a cache called Vitreous. I had been trying to find the road to Vitreous over and over during the visits to my in-laws, since it was a very special geocache. It was hidden in December of 2000, in the early days of this game, geocaching, that we who play love so much. It is on the list of the oldest active caches in the world (although if someone has a recent updated list, I would love to see it).

I had never been able to find the road to Vitreous, but apparently now I was on it. I kept driving, following the arrow on my compass, as the distance shown on the unit got smaller and smaller. For many geocachers, this is the most exciting part - watching the countdown as you get closer and closer. As the distance grows closer, your heart begins to beat faster, and the excitement builds higher. I was still driving when the compass read 200 feet from the road, which was awesome because that meant I didn't have to hike far before reaching the prize.

In this case, it was a medium white PVC pipe container with what appeared to be bear claw marks all around it. I guess a curious bear wanted to know what was in there, too! There really wasn't much inside the container, but there usually isn't. It is really more about the thrill of the hunt and the reason, a motivation to get out into the wilderness to explore that leads us to download waypoints from the website and go out and try to find the location and see what is there that inspires us geocachers. It is about adventure and exploration more than it is about trading treasures. I simply signed my name in the book inside and then had the privilege of being able to tell my story to my friends about finding this really old geocache in a remote area that has only been found 46 times in the eight years it has been sitting there.

As I drove back to my mother-in-laws house, I thought about roads, and how sometimes, just when we think the road we are on is not going to take us where we thought it would, it takes us somewhere else, somewhere unexpected, but somewhere we really wanted to get to in the first place. I thought about this belief that some people in my bible study have shared with me, the belief that God doesn't have just one plan for us, or that he adjusts our plan according to our choices. God will lead you where he wants to go, they say, and the choices you make will all lead to the same place, the place he calls you to go.

Today, He called me to go to the mountains, where I found peace, soothing new music, beautiful woodland streams, and the road I was supposed to be on. I came back feeling refreshed and happy, and like I had been given a gift, the gift of two hours of sheer wonder that made me feel like I really was, finally, on vacation.

BEST WESTERN ADVENTURES
Series 9

IF YOU FIND YOURSELF IN KLAMATH
When I first met my husband, he told me he was from Northern California. I thought of San Francisco, Sacramento, maybe Redding. I didn't realize he meant "northern" Northern California. He might as well have just said Oregon, since his family homestead is only a half mile from the border.
He told me a story about his ranch. "It's in a valley surrounded by mountains, with a river running through it." He thought it was paradise on earth, and he had me convinced, convinced enough to pack my bags and go with him. Fifty acres of heaven on earth, with a barn and corral for my horse. "You can ride for miles," he said, "and all the grass he can eat!"
I always thought I would make a good pioneer, and longed for wide open spaces. I had dreams of having my own space, of looking out the window and seeing my horse grazing, of being able to ride bareback in the moonlight whenever I wanted. It was a great romantic dream that I bought hook line and sinker.
Trouble was, it was nothing like the picture he painted, and the dream sank away from the reality that living so far away from a town left me lonely and sad. "What are you doing there?" My sister asked me. It was no secret I was unhappy, but I was trying to make the best of it. It was desolate out there in Tulelake, CA.
The nearest city to the ranch in California was Klamath Falls, OR, which lay thirty miles to the northwest. That's where all the jobs, stores, and people were, and so that is where we drove several days a week, sometimes twice a day, when I moved to his hometown with him.
After a year of living on the ranch, I was ready to move closer to work, to his family, to my new friends, and insisted we move into "Klamath".
We moved into the house on Lakeview Avenue in July of 2000, and left Klamath Falls in July of 2002. We moved in around the time our first son started walking, and I left to come back to Texas when he was two and a half year old. My memories of this house are all of my toddler son, who was the same age as my youngest is now. It was with a weird sense of dejavu when we drove past our old house several times while making the rounds in town with little Baby K instead of Baby A. I remember how we used to put the baby gate up on the front of this porch, and how little A would stand, Rascal at his side, against the baby gate, or how they would watch the street from the bottom screen on that door.
This visit, the two days we spent in Klamath, was different from the other visits we have had since leaving. I knew it was going to be different the moment we first came into town, when we met our friends for lunch on the way through the first time.
The difference was something I didn't expect - a complete sense of disconnectiveness. What was I doing here? I thought to myself. I guess enough time had gone by now for my connection to the town to completely dissolve, and for me not to recognize who I was in relation to this place.
I couldn't reconcile the person I was then with the person I am now, only six years later, and I have never had this feeling the other times we have come back. My place in this town had lessened by degrees until now, I wondered how I had known it so.
We spent both nights in town with my husband's aunt, who had been my best friend there in town. She lived around the corner from us and almost every night we would walk around the neighborhood together, pushing babies in strollers, Rascal at my side. Now, she works nights and slept during the day, and with all the catching up with his friends late at night, so was my husband. My oldest was completely satisfied hanging out with his cousins at the house playing video games, so Baby K and I toured the town, using geocaching as a reason to connect with my old town.
When I was leaving Klamath, it was during the time of the Great Sucker Fish Debate. The environmentalists wanted to preserve the habitat of the sucker fish, which lived in the ditchbanks that the farmers used to irrigate their fields. The family farms were going belly up during the drought because the water could not be used for fields and farmland, lest a sucker fish lose its home. This symbolic bucket sits in front of the courthouse as a reminder of that drama, and was dedicated to Klamath Falls from their sister city, Elko, Utah, that dealt with a similiar issue. Elko raised funds for the farmers as part of what was known as "The Bucket Brigade". Oh, and did I mention there is a geocache hidden on it?
When I lived in Klamath, I was really yearning for female companionship. There is not much to do in a small town like this (population 20K) except have home-based business parties, and that is where I met all my friends. There was Dora, whom I met at a Tupperware party; Brandee, whom I met at a CandleLite party; and Kerri, whom I met at a Creative Memories scrapbooking workshop. Kerri's children were the same age as Baby A, and we used to take them to Veterans Park to feed the ducks, near where the top pictures were taken. Those pictures I took while finding a virtual at a birdwatching area; this one to the right is Baby K doing a Baby A and chasing the pigeons at the park. He is the spitting image of his brother at this age.
Kerri moved away not long after I, and we lost touch about a year later. I didn't go looking for Dora or Brandee. So much time had passed by this point that I didn't even try to visit the last two people I might still have a connection with in this town outside family - Claudia the Crazy Cat Lady and ole Doc Goodell, the horse vet I worked with for a spell.
Instead, Baby K and I saw the sights, and I stopped at my perennial favorite west coast fast food joint, Taco Time, only about three times in the two days we were in town. We stopped off at parks and the Klamath County Fairgrounds. The Fairgrounds were the site of the annual Klamath Country Fair, which I took the oldest "baby" to every year. We went to the fairgrounds all the time, for everything, back then: bull riding, dog shows, the horse packing clinic (which draws a crowd every year), rodeos and horsemanship contests, cooking demonstrations. We even saw the world famous Lipizzaner stallions perform there. I never noticed these old tractors, though. Fancy that, there was a geocache in one of them....
So, what was I doing in Klamath? Back then, I was just trying to survive, not trying to build a career like I am now. I was being a first time mom, completely wrapped up in my son. I was leaving pieces of myself at all these places.
In touring the town chasing cache finds (total of eleven finds in our morning ventures), I managed to remember and reclaim some of the pieces of me I left in this town, to find the connection to the places that I thought was lost. Through visiting with family, I revisited the person I used to be, and realized, in many ways, I am still the same, just more myself than I ever was back then.

West Palm Beach Adventures
I just returned from a five and a half day trip to Florida. I was there to attend a conference for work, but I had some time to go geocaching and to the beach as well.
What can I say about West Palm? Rain, rain, and more rain. As soon as I arrived, the storm clouds began rolling in. I realized early on that I was going to have to adapt and lower my expectations about how much I was going to be able to fit in.
The first half day, I had time to find two microcaches and hunted for two other caches that appear to be missing. I had noticed while researched nearby caches that many in the area I was staying in were poorly maintained, so I had concerns. About half the caches I had bookmarked had at least one, and some several, DNF (Did-Not-Find) logs on them. That would include the one in the location above, which was disabled while I was there (owner of the hide officially marking it inactive until it can be checked on). It was a great place to check out the beach, though, and take pictures of travel bugs.
After this, I was famished and looking for a place to eat, and I found Testas, which I found to be vaguely overpriced. I was quite full after, but I think $25 for a salad, soup, and soda was a but unreasonable. The bread served tableside is awesome, and the service was okay.
At this point in the evening, it was a lull between storms and I managed to make it out about five miles west to a regular sized geocache down a nature trail, where I was able to drop off two of the fifteen travel bugs I brought with me. Then it started raining again and I relaxed the rest of the evening in the hotel and attached bar.
The next day, first whole day in the location, I got out in the morning to head down south to some of the beach areas on Highway A1A. I was so focused on the afternoon hiking I was going to do that I was dressed completely inappropriately to be walking down the beach, and had forgotten the rule about "when in Rome". I should have brought my bathing suit. I was really kicking myself for that but I was on a roll with geocaches and didn't want to drive all the way back to the hotel. I kept looking for a surf shop but the only one I saw wasn't open yet.
The highlight of the adventure was the second of the three caches I found, and a DNF. At the second cache, an older gentleman gave me a nice seashell as he came up the boardwalk. He told me he walks down every morning and gets the seashells, so he has no need ot this one. "It's my therapy," he grinned at me, and I thought hey, pretty cheap therapy! After he left, I was looking on one side of a boardwalk for the ammo can and spied a large black snake making its way into the foliage on the other side. Then I realized the cache was right there, near where the snake had originated. I left two more of my travel bugs at this spot.

Very soon after this, I went after a cache in a very nice park in the Boynton Beach area with a lovely marina and cool shady benches. I really enjoyed the park itself, but I didn't find the cache. I was having my Indiana Jones moments looking for it, back in the wet tropical forest in the rear of the park. The plants were huge and
wet, and everywhere I went I was hypervigilant of snakes. Like Indiana himself, I hate snakes.

After this little adventure, I really wanted to go change my clothes and I was a bit overheated, and I had a strong desire to sit in a cool restaurant and try some local cuisine. On the way through Lake Worth, I found South Shores Tavern and soup and a burger there. It was decent food but I only ate half.

I started back to the hotel, and struggled with a couple more caches. I bet over the time I was there I only found half the caches I actually looked for, like this one near the fountain in the heart of Lake Worth's city center. I looked for another one in the Lake Worth area and didn't find it, but did stumble upon this benchmark.

The storm clouds were rolling in by now and the air had cooled, so I decided I should make the most of the time I had left and headed to Okeeheelee County Park, where there was a cluster of caches. I grabbed one cache as the storm rolled in, with booming thunder and high wind. It started raining as I got into the park, and I decided to wait it out in the park's Nature Center. I bought some items for the children and checked out the displays, and finally the rain calmed down, enough for me to make it down one of the trails, despite the concerns of the employees about lightning (I have had advanced lightning training in my years on scouts, and what I saw wasn't worrying me). I dropped off another coin and made it back to my rental car just as another downpour came.

I managed to find a quick park and grab micro in the park, but the heavy rain didn't appear to be letting up. I went to a nearby Applebees to wait it out, but when it was still coming down hard after I ate, I just went back to my hotel to prepare for the evening's festivities.

I thought I would have some opportunities to still get a couple close caches once my conference started, but once again I adapted, this time to spending all my time at or near the conference center, talking and learning. Right across from the conference center was the City Place, a shopping area with restaurants. I ate lunch there at a place called Brewzii's with a group of people I met from a local foundation, who happened to have an open position at their company and who encouraged me to speak to their boss. I did eventually, but never mentioned the job vacancy, as my agenda with her regarding something else.

Although my conference was geared to a specific audience, there was a wide spectrum in interests within this audience that ranged basically from field to lab work. The presentations involved current research within this wide range. During one lecture on field conditions and species in Madagascar, I found myself missing a very close friend. I suddenly saw her through the impressions I had when we first met, of us together at an ethology talk and being enthused on the same level, of her interest in conservation biology and traveling to exotic places. It made me sad in a way because of how we drift, as people, further from who we were in the past. I want to cling to my idea that people don't change, but it has been so long since I have seen my friend at my side in these types of talks. I had forgotten that part of her, but finding the ghost of that memory here made me nostalgic.

Although I haven't achieved the academic aspirations I had during that time, I have never left this field. In some ways I have continued to be a student of animal welfare my whole career, in varying capacities. At this conference, I was surrounded by the big names in this little field, and the people who I met right off the bat where the folks writing the papers that I in turn plan to reference in my paper, those PhDs and DVMs who work in the little field of behavioral research that is highly applicable to my job. These are the movers and the shakers in my world.

I found them to be highly accessible and enthusiastically helpful. They all pushed me on different levels to get my data out into the world and hoped I would do a talk on my subject next year. I got promises to sent me references, methodology, and offers to edit my paper or assist in some way. In that respect, I was serving my personal agenda.

At the same time, weighing on the back of my mind was the ticking clock of the promise of a great new job that came my way. I have been in what I would characterize "enthusiastic talks" with another company that is offering a higher position and higher pay, in the area of the world we want to live in.
Most of you know my husband's great desire to move to the Pacific Northwest, and a company is up there with an open position for a great job within my skill set. The nagging problem is the fact that the job would not be focusing on the area of behavioral research that I find so fascinating. On one hand, it would be a way in so that when the ideal position opened up, I would be at a close angle, or could use the job as a stepping stone to the national centers nearby.

On the other hand, once I leave, I give up the rights to my data. Right now I have stumbled upon some success in solving a problem that hasn't been successfully solved. Putting my data out in the world could help me achieve some of my academic goals. Suddenly, it becomes very pressing to get my work out, and at the same time use it to serve my career in the best way. I asked a lot of questions about publication turn around times at this conference. I confirmed my decision while here that I still wanted my place in behavior research, and that I really need to slow my stroll with the new job.
On the second night of the conference, I went to dinner at Brewzii's with a small group that included my colleague from the Reno site, the woman from Bastrop who had told me she wanted me to work for her, and her friend who did a very interesting talk that afternoon.

Over drinks and dinner, we were talking about a book. Eat Pray Love.

The context of the story a woman rediscovering who she is, reclaming her individuality after divorce. I mentioned how my friend's mother who works at our church has always counseled us about maintaining our individuality, and warned about friends of hers who got divorces once the kids were raised, because the women had forgotten who they were without children. Without that individuality, she warned, you will be left in the lurch at some point down the road. I commented that I thought that happened to these women because most were stay at home wives with working husbands who just grew apart over the years.

The woman from Bastrop says "it's interesting that you see it that way," which I think was quite a tactful way of saying "I disagree with you." She believes it is the common experience of women to sacrifice their individuality in relationships to men. She and her friend agree that as women, they always plan their lives around the men in it and have difficulty in making individual plans. In my life I have the opposite problem in that I strongly retain my individualism at the cost of intimacy in the relationship.

We all decided this was probably adaptation to spending three of the nine years of marriage with him away with the military. It was a survival technique to absorb myself in hobbies and social groups while he was gone, and naturally there would be a struggle when he got back with how much he was willing and able to be a part of this life I created for myself.

The third day of the conference ended early, and my Reno cohort and I went to explore the beaches. I put sunscreen on all day but still ended up with a nasty sunburn. I ended up taking us to two of the beaches I had discovered while geocaching.

I have always said that my idea of bliss was riding on a horse bareback, cantering, and letting go of the reins to reach up to the sky in connection with the universal and divine creator. Today I remembered another kind of bliss - to float spread eagled in the ocean water, eyes closed, warm sun radiating along your body, to rock in unison with the waves and in connection to the universal and divine creator. I was "at one with the universe" during our hours at the beach.

We had lunch at an Asian fusion place, Thiakyo (I think, funny that I am unclear on that now), that blended Japanese, Thai, and Chinese in the same location. The food was good, though. I had the shrimp pad thai. After this we went to another beach, and talked all afternoon. I was so relaxed when we got back to the hotel, but I had sand in all kinds of places and painful pink skin. We prepped for the banquet and met downstairs to head out to the venue, the Palm Spring Zoo.

They put on quite a party. Zookeepers were on hand to bring out animals to show off. We were served cocktails and hors-doeuvres within the zoo near some exhibits, then taken over to the Tropics Cafe for food, dancing, and more wine. It was a great chance for people to put their hair down. Dawn and I started out singing along to Violent Femmes, and ended up on the dance floor busting moves, along with all the other mad scientists. I had a great time making more friends and talking to friends I had made earlier, but then we left about midway through, tired from a long day. Dawn needed to get up early to catch her flight and I didn't want to drink anymore.

The next day was my last day there. I returned in the morning to the Okeeheelee Park to go after the caches I wasn't able to get in the rain. They were all decent hikes of at least 0.2 miles, and I grabbed five in two hours of hiking. I dropped off all my remaining travel bugs. I left fifteen on the trip and came back with two.

Before checkout time, I got back to the hotel to grab a shower and pack. I am so glad I took a shower then because it left a nice cool, clean residue for the rest of the day. I grabbed a quick cache in downtown and headed out for Apoxee Park, where I was going to do some more big hiking. Turns out Apoxee Park was closed, which was fine because it started storming right then anyway. I was looking for a place for lunch and some more caches, and ended up at the Riviera Beach Marina, looking for Captain Joe.

Captain Joe runs a boat taxi that will take you over to Peanut Island, a man-made island paradise recreation area. He almost didn't take me due to the weather. He asked me what I would do there, and when I told him "hiking" he seemed okay with it, and by the time two other people got on board, it turned sunny after all and it was quite a nice walk. It was 1.3 miles around the island, and I found one cache and took pictures. This brought my trip total to 16 geocache finds, and I dropped all fifteen travel bugs.

By the time I got back to the mainland, I was about a half hour behind schedule to get to the airport, but it turned out to be all right. It was starting to storm as I pulled up to the airport, and as I sat at the bar, the locals and tourists aliked joked about the relentless rain.

In the end, it was one moment during this trip that seemed most memorable. At the closing banquet, as we walked into the rustic porch area of the lodge, another storm was rising. Lightning lit up the dark blue background as hundreds of white birds, egrets, flew swiftly in circular patterns over the lake, or landed in nearby trees. The DJ booth was playing a song from Lion King, the song in the beginning scene, and it seemed to blend perfectly, and I could feel the energy of the birds in the air. All around me were gathering researchers and scholars, world class primatologists. It reminded me of a part in a letter I wrote a former boss recently, about how at this job I have now, I had learned to fly. At this moment, I was. I haven't lost me. I know exactly who I am.

Who I am Is

A bird soaring

A body floating

A person dancing

A woman smiling

A student learning

And I am

Still Here.