Rubio's Night

Last Saturday, my husband tried to bring a little bit of California to our dinner table and made fish tacos. Man can he cook, here is a look at our plates.

                                             

                             

The Movers Arrive: June 5th

The movers arrived around eight-thirty in the morning and were finished by three, leaving the overwhelming task if unpacking mislabeled boxes packed by moving company employees.

Kitchen

 Living Room

Office 

Can you tell that we suffer from TMC (too much crap) syndrome? This was only three rooms. There were three more rooms and a garage that weren't photographed. How the heck did we cram all this stuff into a 900 sq ft home when it doesn't even look like it will even fit in this 1980 sq ft home.

Meeting the Neighbors

On our first night in our house one of our neighbors came to say hello--more appropriately, "Rib-bit." 

The thing is, he visits every night and sits on the cool concrete driveway and eats his dinner. 

Finally A Clean House: Before Movers

Front door entrance and fireplace. 

This is one large room which we will separate from a dinning table on the opposite side of the room.

                      

Back Door and area where we will put or dinning table.

My husband's office.

To show how big our canopy chair is see photo below from an Eagles youth football game.





2011 photo: Referees are Jan Bissel and Art Cortez

                                                       

Kitchen with open bar area which looks into open front room. To left of stove is doorway to hall and bedrooms. Okay, kitchen isn't so clean, but it shows the pantry to the right, laundry room to the left, and doorway to hall and bedrooms to the left of the stove. 

 Master Bedroom 

Tex-Mex is not the Mex I'm Used To: June 3rd

Enchallidas a'la Tex-Mex

After stretching our legs while admiring our new home, our stomachs’ growling became audible to the neighbors, so we decided to go out for Mexican food. We headed to Red Oak, a nearby town, and ate at a restaurant called Cancun’s.

I ordered cheese enchiladas, and the waitress asked, “Con carne or Queso?”

I replied, “Queso,” proudly thinking to myself how cool I was for knowing queso is Spanish for cheese. 

  

When the food arrived, I was shocked to see what looked like nacho cheese sauce on top of my enchiladas.

When the waitress returned, I tried hard not to squench my nose at the gloppy, yellow puddle covering the rolled tortillas on my plate, and asked, “Don’t you have the red pepper-based enchilada sauce?”

She looked at me like I was crazy, and I realized Tex-Mex isn't the Mexican I'm used to... so, I will now plagiarize L. Frank Baum and admit, " Toto, I've a feeling we're not in California [poetic license allows for substitution] anymore." 

Texas Migration - Destination Arrival: June 4rd

We finally arrived at our destination around 5 p.m.

Our Front Porch




 View from our porch.

Front view of our new home.

Texas Migration - Rocky Mountain Oysters: June 3rd

We arrived in Amarillo about five o'clock and decided to go to dinner at a restaurant featured on the Food Channel's show Man Vs. Food. The helpings were huge, food was fantastic, waitress was wonderful, and the ambiance was awesome. We couldn't have had a better time.

Big Texan Stake Ranch: Home of the famous free 72 ounce steak (if you can eat it within a hour)

http://www.bigtexan.com/

Rocky Mountain Oysters, aka bull testicles. May sound gross, but when served fried with a little ranch dressing they taste just like chicken tenders.

Inside the Big Texan 

The stage for the 60 minute challenge is below the long horn skull.

Check out the website above so you can see the size of the steak. 

Texas Migration - Albuquerque, NM: June 2nd

We reached Albuquerque with no major setbacks. Truck's air conditioning decided it was our friend again and cooperated by working properly.

We stayed in a nice trailer park that offered a free continental breakfast, which we were grateful to save a few bucks, and I was able to do some laundry. All our clothes were in the moving van, except for a few pairs of undies, three towels, and two change of clothes.

We hit the open road around eleven for our next night's stop in Amarillo, TX and our adventure at Big Tex for an interesting appetizer.

Texas Migration – June 1st: Three-thirtyish

Relying on my pioneer ancestry, we persevered. Just as before, the two hour tide rolled in another crashing wave: our second blow-out.

This time, I was close enough behind the trailer to see the tread separate and roll off the tire. Amazingly, the treadless tire held as I drove like a mad woman, flashing my lights and honking my horn as I passed my husband, waiving my arms to get him to pull over.

Being godfather to a nephew who’s an Eagle Scout, my husband’s preparedness paid off because we had a second spare.

We prayed, crossed fingers, and rubbed chinchilla feet (since no rabbits were available) the final two hours to Flagstaff, AZ, and arrived around five-thirty in the afternoon. Never before had I been so happy to pull into a Walmart parking lot. There we replenished our stores with two new tires, a heavy duty tire jack, and two trailer batteries.

When we arrived at our campground, I was too exhausted to go to the steak house/dinner theater which resided inside the campground. However, Lucy and Lorne had a blast. (http://www.blackbartssteakhouse.com/)

Texas The Migration – June 1st: Oneish

Trouble flowed in two hour intervals because right before we stopped for gas in Lake Havasu City, the driver’s side vent of our Chev 2500 Silverado’s air conditioning decided to blow hot air, forcing the passenger side vent to work double duty to keep our chinchilla’s cool—in case you aren't aware, chinchillas can die in temperatures above 80 degrees.

We thought that maybe we could have the chinchilla’s ride in the trailer with the a/c cranked up, but discovered the trailer batteries were not strong enough to run the a/c without a generator or electrical source. 

My husband made a deal with our little rodents. If they’d stay alive, he’d give them lots of treats when we reached Flagstaff. 

SPOILER ALLERT: Not only did they kept their end of the bargain, they increased their number by one the next morning.

Baby and Mama  Chins are born with eyes open, all their fur and the ability to hop around. This photo is was taken the day after he was born. We named him Flagstaff. Can you guess why?

Photo taken one hour after birth.

Lorne and Flagstaff: June 19th, 2013

Because we handle the babies shortly after birth, they are used to people and being held.

Texas Migration – June 1st: Ten-thirtyish

After barely two hours on the road, we had our first blowout (note…I said first) just outside of Palm Springs on Route 66. Believe me when I say that fixing a blow out in 105 degree weather with one teenager, two anxious boxers, and three overheating chinchillas is not the way you’d like to get your “kicks” on this interstate highway.

While jacking up the trailer to change the tire, our jack broke making the task more difficult. To my husband’s credit, he laughed in the face of adversity. Okay, so he was cussing, not laughing, but after forty minutes we were just like Willie Nelson and On the Road Again.

PHOTO TO FOLLOW 

At the time, we didn’t realize the tire tread from the blowout caused major damage to the right-side wheel well and undercarriage, leaving a three foot square groundlight (opposite of skylight) hole in the floor of our travel trailer. This pleasant discovery came later that evening.

The Texas Migration – Saturday, June 1: Departure

We optimistically set a goal to leave the house by six a.m., so it was no surprise when we finally hit the highway for our new homestead at eight-thirty on a bright and shiny California morning.

My husband, almost fourteen-year-old daughter Lucy, and our three chinchillas (one pregnant) drove/rode in our 2006 Chevy Silverado, while pulling our twenty-nine foot travel trailer.

Momma, Sugar, is beige and pregnant. Can you guess what Lucy named the white chinchilla? If you guessed Snowball, you win.

Daddy, Quinn 

I drove held up the rear in our 2008 Toyota Yaris with our two boxers in tow—one of which gets horribly nervous whenever traveling in the car. Pee Wee is the five-year-old brindle, whose nervous behavior drove me crazy during each and every minute of our 1,382 mile journey.

On the third day I yelled at her and  threatened to leave her on the side of the road. For the last five hours of the drive Pee Wee sat like a statue, refusing to look at me or let me pet her, and stared out the window.

Dezzy is the nine-year-old fawn, she is the sweetest and most neediest dog in the world who never likes to be less than five feet from your side.

 Old photo from July, 2009, but one of the few where the dogs are awake and sitting still. 

Christmas Reminders All Year

When John was little, we started a family tradition of picking out our Christmas Tree from the Live Oak Canyon Christmas Tree Farm in Yucaipa. Every year, the weekend after Thanksgiving, we would spend the afternoon wandering the property looking for the perfect potted pine tree, browsing the gift shop, and letting the kids play in the blow up rides and petting zoo.  (http://trees.liveoakcanyon.com/)

After the holiday we would plant the pine tree in our yard. Often the tree wouldn't make the heat of a Hemet summer, but some took root and thrived—two even growing to 20 plus feet.

Around March, I noticed that one of my beautiful, old trees was dying from the inside out. Upon further examination, I noticed that there were little holes burrowed into the tree trunk and sap was seeping out like tears. This was the handy work of the Bark Beetle. The last infestation hit San Bernardino County forests around 1998, due to drought conditions and other factors. Unfortunately once infested, there is nothing that can be done to save the tree. (http://www.sbcounty.gov/museum/barkbeetle/distribution.htm )

Every day, from the underside needles outward, I watched the branches that once proudly supported our ornaments turn brown and brittle. Finally, I could stand looking at my poor tree anymore, so I had my gardener cut the branches off, leaving the trunk to stand alone against the wind. No more would it be shading my boxers in the summertime.

To me, it seemed like a metaphor for my life in California. It was getting harder and harder to keep up with the rising cost of gas, electricity, water, taxes, etc.

Maybe watching my tree die made it easier for me to leave California, despite the distance that would be set between my family, wonderful neighbors, and dear friends in my writing critique group. 

Leaving Friends Behind

During the weeks leading up to our departure, I tried to rationalize with myself and my daughter that moving in this day and age is different from moving when I was little. I mean, with texting and email only a click away, responses can be received almost instantaneously.

Not to mention, the face to face phone internet calls that Skype provides--which, when I was a child, was once just an idea in a "what will the future be like" paragraph that every grammar school teacher made their students write.

Surely, the distance won't make that much of a difference. How wrong I was.

For those left behind, their lives and routines stay the same. Of course they miss us, but their environment stays familiar.

To the mover, everything is new, unstable. Distance brings loneliness and isolation. Fears the next text or email may be one too many and we've become a needy annoyance to those whose everyday lives we still want to be part of.

So, here is the tribute to those we've left behind. We love and miss you and think about you often. Please don't forget us.

Lucy's Best Friend and Angles Game Good Luck Charm, Jill Farmer: 2011 Season

My Writing Partners in Crime (not really...in Children's Lit)
SCBWI Agents' Day May 2010 in Newport Beach, CA

Stephanie Jefferson (http://stephaniejefferson.com/), Rilla Jaggia (http://www.rillart.com/, and Nancy O'Connor, middle grade author and winner of several picture book contests

Memories on Crest Drive

Memories that made our home a special and safe place to raise our children, like putting in new French doors, playing in the sprinklers, Easter egg hunts, or bonding with family and pets.  

 Installed French doors 1997 

                Lucy: April 2001 

                                   

Easter 2009

I'm guessing this photo was taken in some unknown month in 2000, since I think Lucy looks about ten months or so, and John doesn't look older than 13.  

Second child is so neglected, don't you think?

Once again, neglected. 

 I have no clue what age Lucy is, but from her front molars, I'm assuming she's eightish,

Joanna and Pee Wee: Easter 2009 

 Lucy and her first chinchilla, Quinn: July 2011

I've got the date correct because the photo's date was stamped... yeah me. 

Okay, I mean, yeah technology. 

Our puppies grew up in the house, too. Photo of Dezzy after she and Pee Wee destroyed a twin mattress that we put on the porch for them to sleep on. 

 

They actually pulled it under the green chicken fence and adjusted it on the lawn. We actually had footage of this on our motion cameras. 

Last Two Rooms: Family Room and Garage

It is appropriate that these last two rooms are shown together. 

Whatever didn't fit in the above room, got stashed in here. 

The Old Office... aka John's Room

My husband painted our son's room McDonald's yellow, which I'm sure is one of the reasons why he left for college in Minneapolis the day after high school graduation and never looked back.

Wouldn't you?

The attic access wasn't a big plus either.