Torrey, Utah

Tuesday we were up at 7am and made it out of Pole Creek Campground at 9:48am all connected, then down the mt and ended up in Torrey, Utah (just west of Capitol Reef National Park) a little after 4pm. Eliot was really hurting but got a good night sleep and felt better today. We're staying at Sand Creek RV park and campground, a small rustic park built entirely by the owners, Donna and Dwayne. She does lapidary work and makes beautiful jewelry and he builds rustic furniture. We have electricity and water and nice showers. We've stayed here every spring and fall for the past four years on out way up and back from Pole Creek Lake. It's a beautiful part of Utah, red rock country. I'll try to get some pictures and post them later. We have wifi here which is not always reliable.
Eliot found on the internet the Laser Spine Institute based in Tampa Florida that says they can do endoscopic minimally invasive procedures to free pinched nerves and that they have an officer in Scottsdale, AZ. I wonder if anyone who reads this has heard about such procedures.

Going off line

This will be my last post for a while because Rhett, the seasonal ranger (who hasn't landed a full-time job yet despite his many talents and skills, his love of the outdoors, his genuine concern for people and stewardship of the land) will help us take down the satellite dish in the morning and load the generators into the truck. We will miss him. Tuesday we hope to take the last trip down the mountain - truck pulling fifth-wheel pulling trailer with the quads.
I have to explain he thrill of receiving the award which might have seemed a little over the edge. When I was in first-grade in elementary school I had my gold stars taken away from me for a minor infraction which I didn't even know was wrong. Nobody had explained the rules to me. School from kindergarten up was a disaster for me. Celeste you don't know how lucky you were to be taught by your parents. I could write a whole long post about the tortures of childhood and the failure of public education in the US. When I was an usher one year at the UU Church in Rochester (I joked about it being called a church - I said it was a cover for subversive activities. It had little to do with religion, no dogma, inclusive of all believes and lifestyles - it was about community, love and service) I mentioned the gold star incident to the head usher. At the end of the year he handed me a card for good work done with gold stars all over it.
When we get back online I'll try to figure out how to send awards. I'm constantly finding new wonderful blogs to read.

I got an award!

Look what LadyLuz send me, an award. I don't know why. Don't think I deserve it and now I'm supposed to send it to 7 other blogs. I hope I can find seven other blogs who don't already have it. Maybe I can send duplicates. And I'm supposed to send 7 things about myself nobody knows:

1. I practiced social nudism for a while. It's great for body image. You don't find any beauty queens at family nudist camps, lots of happy kids running around as they were born, every thing hanging out naturally and skinny dipping beats bathing suits anytime. One does have to be picky about where to go. The Naturist Society is he best way to connect to family oriented camps. And many of them don't allow singles. It's best to be a member of a local club.

2. I volunteered two winters at the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge in New Mexico before I met Eliot. I learned a lot about birds and met some wonderful people. Didn't know until after I'd known Eliot for a while that he's been a birder his whole life.

3. I studied Transactional Analysis originated by Eric Berne and figured out my life script according to his method which helped explain a lot of my behavior and and found his Games People Play to be very helpful.

4. In 1957 I bicycled with my late husband from Munich to Bremerhaven on single speed bikes. It took a month and we lived on $1 a day.

5. I worked five years in a Nursing Home as an LPN on the night shift. They loved my hugs but hated the suppositories I had to give some before my shift ended. And I hope I helped some find peace in their final days. If I believed in guardian angels, I know who'd they be.

6. When I worked in the Nursing Home, I bicycled to my job at 10:30 at night and rode home at 7:30 in the morning except when it rained or snowed when I walked instead. It rained and snowed a lot in Rochester, NY. 20 minute ride, 40 minute walk.

7. I've been in 47 of the 50 states.

Now I have to figure out how to send the awards. Bobbie will probably tell me how or maybe LadyLuz or maybe I'll even figure it out myself (unlikely).

2.

Saturday

Last I wrote I had to stop because Eliot wanted to turn off the generator. It's Saturday morning and now I am trying to remember what it is was I wanted to write. It was clearer last night and very fuzzy this morning. and the computer keeps wanting to do things other than what I want. I remember when I was studying Wicca and I wanted to concentrate I would meditate and call down one of the Goddesses, usually Athena who was known to have a swift mind. (Ritalin also works, if you're into western medicine). Last night I discovered that Lady Luz sent me an award which I thought was wonderful and wanted to capture it but didn't know how. Maybe Athena can tell me. Also I want to tell Bobbie that I can now get her Videos since updating something (I think Adobe) and just listened to Simon and Garfunkel which got me quite emotional (nostalgic, sentimental, whatever it is that happens to old ladies). I am so close to tears now. I think I should call down Kwan Yin because I know when I feel like this I need forgiveness which is her specialty. And then I am also so sad because I started reading Sleepwalking Land. Can Kwan Yin forgive the whole human race? War is so devastating. Our Civil (why do they call it civil - should be called barbaric) War lasted only 4 years, Mozambique, 15 years. This rambling is getting pretty silly. I should stop and do something useful like checking the vault toilets. With so many people up here this weekend they might need more TP. A bit of humor is needed now. Did you know that when you want a parking space you call down the Goddess Asphalta?

So Little Time

I am trying to catch up before Eliot wants me to turn the computer off because the generator is pretty close to the big fire he just started and I'm sure he wants some peace and quiet by the fire. We gave up on the traction because he had a very bad night after using it twice and I thought looking at him in this contraption cannot be good because of the angle of his spine. It's different lying flat on the table at PT and having traction. He stopped and last night he slept well and he won't use it again until we get another opinion once we get back to the Phoenix area which we hope won't be until the end of Oct unless he starts hurting too much in which case we'll go quickly back. There's more I want to say but I guess I'll have to wait until tomorrow.

Books

I travel between two worlds on the internet: Facebook and the blog-0-sphere. I thought it might be fun to mix the two because I had fun with this from Facebook.
Rules (as I received them): “Don’t take too long to think about it. List 15 books you’ve read that WILL ALWAYS STICK WITH YOU. They should be the first 15 you can recall in no more than 15 minutes. Then there were more rules that just apply to Facebook
The Little Engine That Could by Watty Piper
Grimms Fairy Tales
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
1984 by George Orwell
2001, A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clark
Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit by Judith Kerr
Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann
Gone to Soldiers by Marge Piercy
One of Ours by Willa Cather
Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Lord of the Flies by William Golding

Traction

Funny, the doctor and the Physical Therapist totally disagree on how to use the traction. Part of the dr's instructions seem impossible to follow. The other part whether to have constant pressure (PT's advice) or intermittant (dr's) is debatable. Eliot's thinks he'll go along with the PT's advice. Afterall he's a fisherman.