Steven’s trip to Boise, Part 3

After our brief hike, it was time for us to pack up and head home.

32 Driving back.jpg

After a little break, we played a game that I had brought – a cooperative fantasy game (those are apparently Chirstina’s favorite) called Legend of Andor.  It’s a challenging game (though sometimes more than others, depending on the randomness of the setup), but we managed to win, just in the nick of time.

Chirstina made us dinner, and then we played a couple of lighter games afterwards and made it an early night.

The next day was Sunday, and we needed to leave at 1 PM to get me to the airport in time. That made just enough time for one more game! We broke out one of Serenity’s favorites, Terraforming Mars, which is a card-driven economic game.  I had played it once before, but it had been a few years, and even though I read up on the rules and the cards that morning before we started, they were still gracious enough to let me start with one of the “beginner” corporations. With that boost, I actually managed to win! 

The games were great, and I had intended to take some photos of us playing them, but every time I got too engrossed in the gameplay and forgot.  So instead, here’s a photo of Serenity and I next to the pile of all the games we played.

33 Games we played.jpg

And here’s a selfie of the three of us:

34 Selfie - Serenity, Chirstina and Steven.jpg

And for good measure, here’s photos of their two cats. I forgot to mention those before, but they were quite friendly and cuddly and kept me company through the night.

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02 cat 2.jpg

The flight from Boise to Vegas was uneventful; here’s a shot out the window just outside Vegas that I found interesting

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I had a long layover in Vegas, and then a redeye flight – midnight to six AM – to Detroit.  Thanks, Spirit!  😕  At least I was able to get some work done in the airport, and everything was more or less on time.
Still, even if the flights weren’t the best, the visit was totally worth it – the games, the camping, and most of all the company!  I hope to come again in another few years.
Best,Steven

To send Kristina a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com.

Kristina’s Website: Life Coaching for Adults with Autism

Steven’s trip to Boise, Part 2

My brother Steven visited Callan (Serenity) and Chirstina, and sent me a 3-part email about it, complete with pictures. Yes, you too can be famous – just send me a blog entry and I’ll be happy to post it.

The photos from Part 1 didn’t come through in the automated emails in my first attempt last night. I fixed it about an hour later and sent a second email. The photos should be working in the second email. If not, you can always go directly to my site, https://turning51.com/

And now, from Steven:

Picking up where we left off… camping at Badger Creek!
Serenity and Chirstina had a large tent, while I borrowed an old one-person tent of Serenity’s:

12 Their tent and mine.jpg
Their tent and mine

Here we are setting them up:

Setting up the small tent
Serenity and Chirstina setting up camp

Then, after a delicious camp dinner cooked over the Coleman by Chirstina, we made a fire… for smores, of course!  Here we are whittling sticks.

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Making sticks for smores
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Almost ready for smores

The next morning, after another fire, Serenity and I took a little hike up the hill across the road.

18 Rock and tree on yonder hill.jpg
Rock and Tree on Yonder Hill
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Serenity
19 Steven.jpg
Steven

We paused for photos by the rock (remember that one from the other photo?) then continued to the top.  Here’s a shot of Serenity coming up after me. You can see the rock, the road, and the camp below.

20 Serenity making their way up the mountain.jpg
Serenity making their way up the mountain

Once on top, I took some nice shots of the river and the campground. 

Top of the hill
Campground from the top of the hill

Then I took a bunch of pictures of the local wildflowers, because I liked those:

That will have to do for part 2 since I’m out of embedded pictures. I’ll complete the trilogy later.  
Best,Steven

To send Kristina a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com.

Kristina’s Website: Life Coaching for Adults with Autism

Steven’s trip to Boise, Part 1

My brother Steven visited Callan and Chirstina, and sent me a 3-part email about it, complete with pictures. (Yes, you too can be famous – just send me a blog entry and I’ll be happy to post it.)

A clarification for new readers – Serenity is Callan’s nickname among family. So here it is, Installment 1 from Steven:

Hi Kristina,
I’ve been meaning to write to you about the very nice trip I had to visit Serenity and Chirstina’s in Boise the first weekend in June. I wanted to share some pictures, since I know you like that, which is what has delayed things a bit. That and my wanting to tell the complete story 🙂

I was really happy to finally get to see Serenity again, having been wanting to do that since before the pandemic, and was excited to meet Chirstina, too. The limiting factor, of course, was getting to Boise. So the story starts with plane tickets.

I’m not a big fan of Spirit, but found I couldn’t resist the option of $400 dollar tickets when every other carrier was $600+. So I bought a pair, with decent flight times, for June 8th-11th. That’s right, end week in June. Then, a few weeks after I bought them, I got an e-mail from Spirit saying that my return flight on the 11th had been cancelled, and I should rebook on their website. When I checked it out, I discovered that rebooking on another flight was not really an option, because there weren’t any – they had discontinued the entire route (or at least the return flights), effective about June 6th. So, I contacted them through their online chat, and after getting past the AI and only 2-3 hours of waiting for a representative, they were able to move the entire trip one week earlier, to June 1st-4th at no extra cost (although the return flight was now a redeye). So, not great, but not too bad.    

Another aspect of their cheap flight was no checked or carry-on baggage other than a personal item. One could add a carry-on, of course, but it would run around $150, so I realized it would be cheaper to stick with a personal item and just mail the larger items one way, or buy used ones online and ship them directly. Over the next few weeks two games, a camping mat and a sleeping bag arrived at Serenity’s house in Boise, and I carefully packed a rather large personal item which, to my gratification, did indeed fit in their 18″x14″x8″ box, as long as you stuffed it just right.

01 See, its a personal item.jpg

The day of the trip things started out well, as the photo proves, but then quickly went askew.  Shortly before my flight was scheduled to depart, Spirit suffered a systemwide computer failure and so was unable to send off any planes for a few hours, which obviously did a number on their schedule.  Communication was very poor – the gate monitors still said everything was on time, and the gate announcements were not terribly informative. They had no idea what was going to happen next, and to talk to anyone about options you had to go to the ticket counter, which of course was on the other side of security. Thankfully, this all provided a rich opportunity for bonding with the other passengers; a common refrain was “I had told myself I wasn’t going to fly Spirit again, but…”

When the system finally came back online, they sent out a later flight then came back to ours, which finally went out to Las Vegas only 3-4 hours late. Unfortunately for me, my connecting flight from Las Vegas to Boise had not been delayed as long, and when I arrived in Vegas it had already departed. After finally finding someone to talk to (ticket counter again, and as you can imagine the lines were long as they tried to work through the backlog of stranded travelers) I found that my options were 1) Rebook on the next Spirit flight to Boise, which was a full 24 hours later, or 2) Find my own earlier flight to Boise, pay for it myself, and get a refund from Spirit for the Vegas-Boise leg.  (Apparently, unlike every other airline I’ve ever flown on, Spirit refuses to rebook you on a different carrier’s flight if theirs is cancelled or badly delayed). After some quick internet searching and phone calls to Serenity, I decided to go with option 2 – I found an Alaska Airlines flight via Las Angeles that wasn’t prohibitively expensive and slated to get me there by about midnight, which was better than midafternoon the next day.

That flight went smoothly (actually rather pleasant), and during the layover I was able to get ahold of a Spirit customer service agent on the phone (after only 40 minutes on the line!) who quickly and efficiently cancelled my rebooked Vegas-Boise leg and promised that I’d be getting an e-mail about a refund within a few days. Of course, that was over a week ago and I haven’t heard anything yet… But anyways, Serenity and Chirstina picked me up at the Boise airport around midnight, and I had arrived! Overall I considered it a victory – I triumphed over circumstances, kept my cool (even kind of enjoyed the challenge) and made it the same day. Still, I may be immune to the lure of cheap Spirit tickets for a little while.

— HOUSE AND CATS–
Anyways, the next day (Friday) Chirstina had to work – it was her first week on a new job with the State of Idaho, answering tax questions. So Serenity and I broke out the 2-player games – specifically, we played two rounds of Star Wars: Rebellion, which was new to me (though I had heard of it) but a favorite of Serenity’s. It is a 2-player thematic asymmetric card-driven wargame, and was quite enjoyable (very thematic). The first game I played as the Rebellion, and was rather crushed because I failed to hide my all-important secret rebel base very well, and furthermore failed to defend it sufficiently. Quick win for the Empire. The second game we switched sides so I got to be the Empire, and this time I won, though only barely. I found the secret base three times, but it was well defended, and I only managed to destroy it just barely before my time ran out. Along the way Emperor Palpatine converted Princess Leia to the dark side, because Luke was too hard to turn… just like Vader promised (but failed to deliver) in the movies!

Once Chirstina came home from work we quickly packed the car for camping – she and Serenity already had everything prepared and organized for the trip – and headed out up the Boise river to find a campsite. The route soon became a winding dirt road along the side of the mountains – the sort that has two way traffic but is only one lane wide in many places, requiring some negotiation and maneuvering when there is another vehicle.  Fortunately the speed limit was only 25 mph, and Chirstina had quick reflexes so we made it there safely.  

We had a short list of no-reservation primitive national forest campgrounds along the route, and were hoping we could find one with a spot available on a beautiful Friday evening in June. The first campground,  Willow Creek, had the most spots (9), and they were all full. There were even additional people camping in unofficial spots nearby. That wasn’t very promising, but we continued on. 20 minutes later we reached the next campground, Badger Creek, and to our surprise found that it was completely empty. I wondered if it was closed or there was something wrong with it or something, but no, everythings seemed to be in order (and the next morning a second camper did arrive). It was just an unexpected blessing.

The campground was beautiful. I’m going to transition to pictures now.

03 Badger Creek Campground 1.jpg
06 Badger Creek Campground.jpg
09 Badger Creek Campground.jpg
08 Badger creek campground - down by the river.jpg
07 Badger creek campground - down by the river.jpg

As you can see, it was right by the river, which was fairly high with spring snowmelt, and we loved the sound of the rushing water.

05 Hill across from the campground.jpg

This photo is of the hill across the road. Remember that rock.

Uh oh, looks like gmail has a limit on how many photos I can embed in the e-mail, and I’m at that limit. Looks like this is going to have to just be part 1.  To be continued!

To send Kristina a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com.

Kristina’s Website: Life Coaching for Adults with Autism

Caught in the Act

We have a recirculating fountain out front that sometimes overfills when the irrigation comes on. It’s on the drip system, and it’s hard to get it just right without letting it go completely dry. Since we’re accidentally intermittently watering a little patch of dirt in front of the fountain, we thought we’d plant something there, to take advantage of the water.

John found these cool purple plants at the local nursery. He had seen the same variety in a neighbor’s yard, and they looked great.

Within 24 hours of being planted, they looked like this:

Where did they go? They aren’t just dead, they are gone. Only a few bare stalks left.

You guessed it. Here’s the culprit, caught in the act:

Hey bunny, how come you ate our purple plants immediately, but are totally ignoring the same plant at our neighbor’s house?

To send Kristina a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com.

Kristina’s Website: Life Coaching for Adults with Autism

A quick camping trip in early June

John’s adjusting to a new job, we’re selling property in Albuquerque, interviewing new remodel contractors (yes, it’s come to that, more on that later), getting everything from Albuquerque unpacked, dealing with address changes, health insurance changes, new doctors, etc. & etc. We needed a camping trip for our sanity!

We decided to go the weekend after Memorial Day weekend, after all the crowds thinned out. Not that there are ever crowds where we go camping. We always do our best to avoid popular areas.

John had a 3-day weekend, which gave us plenty of time to get away, as long as we didn’t go too far. We chose an area that’s new to us, in eastern Arizona near Mt Graham.

We pulled off at one of the first campgrounds to take a look around, and John liked it so well, we decided to stay. We don’t usually stay in campgrounds because we have to keep Biska leashed. But it was pretty, and nearly empty. And I wasn’t enjoying the climb up the mountain. Many times in the past we’ve made the mistake of going too far up the mountain roads, only to discover that it’s cold, bleak, and windy at the top. Then we have to wind our way down again, and I don’t like those twisty, exposed roads. This time we decided we liked what we saw where we were.

Later, while walking around, we discovered another spot just up the road outside the campground. We moved there for the second night.

We had that area to ourselves until the following day, when a large, loud family arrived. We were packing up to leave by the time they arrived, so we didn’t mind.

The elevation was high – I think around 8,000 ft. I did not have a lot of energy at that high of elevation, so we didn’t do any huge, all-day hikes. But we did go on a couple shorter hikes.

The hike that started at the campground was difficult to find. It required walking through the middle of the group campsite to access it, and there were no signs indicating where it was. It was worth the hunt though, because it was a beautiful hike.

We particularly liked the blooming trees – which we believe are locust trees.

I think they are Southwestern locusts, Robinia neomexicana. https://www.treesofnorthamerica.net/show/tree/Southwestern-Locust/173

We all got our pictures taken with the flowers.

Actually each of us more than once!

Most of the flowers were pink, but there were beautiful white ones too.

The manzanita was also blooming:

John took quite some time trying to take a picture of this caterpillar. It was hanging in mid-air on a thread, swinging in the breeze, and the camera had a very hard time focusing on it.

The hike also had some great vistas and rocky outcroppings.

The next day we drove up the road a short distance and went for another walk.

We came across this abandoned campsite with halloween signs nailed to the trees.

Suddenly I realized I could smell smoke. Sure enough, the fire was still hot and smoking slightly! Someone had just been there. Even though it was broad daylight, it felt spooky. It was as if the goblins had just slipped into the trees when they heard us approach, leaving their fire still smoking.

It is ridiculously dangerous to leave a smoking campfire in any conditions, but particularly in the hottest, driest month of the year in the desert southwest. We were out hiking and didn’t have much with us, so John started trying to put it out with his bare hands and a stick.

Luckily, just then some other people came by looking for a campsite, so we left it for them. They were happy to find the campsite available and we were happy to have someone else take responsibility for the abandoned fire so we could continue on our walk.

Further down the hike we came across various pieces of metal equipment – remnants of some sort of industry – perhaps mining. We thought this was maybe a boiler to generate steam.

All in all, it was an interesting hike!

It was great to have a break.

To send Kristina a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com.

Kristina’s Website: Life Coaching for Adults with Autism

On the bench

John is still onboarding. Raytheon has a very strange onboarding system for their new hires. After John started work last month, we discovered that he didn’t actually have a specific role on a specific team yet. That explained why we couldn’t figure out who is new boss was going to be! The company needs engineers and scientists, so they’re hiring them, and figuring out later where exactly to put them!

John and numerous other new-hires are in an office off-site, under a temporary manager. There, the new hires take endless training courses and wait assignment.

The big news from last week was that one of the other new hires got an assignment that he turned down! All the other new hires were like, wait, can you do that? The guy, Jeff, is an experienced, senior engineer and he wasn’t willing to do the kind of work they offered. Everyone watched to see what would happen. Would they tell him he had no option? If he refused, would they ask him to quit? Apparently Jeff was willing to take that chance. The job they offered wasn’t what he had expected, and wasn’t worth it to him, so Jeff decided to wait for a better offer. But would they give him something else?

The thing is, there isn’t a “they”. There’s no one omniscient person or team responsible for placing the new hires. The new hire resumes are being shopped around and job placements come in when a manager decides he wants one of them. The placements come in almost the same way a job offers comes in when you’re job hunting. You don’t know when you’ll get an offer, how good it will be, or how many other offers you may (or may not) get. And the new hires don’t know how long is “ok” for the placement process to take.

The new hires are being paid meanwhile, but they’re being paid out of overhead rather than having a project to charge. How long can they hang out in limbo-land, training, and charging overhead before they go to work on a real project? Turning down a placement offer took some balls!

John says it’s like being picked for a sports team – no one wants a bad assignment but not one wants to be the last one picked either!

Well, John’s coworker, Jeff, got lucky and a second offer came in a week later. Jeff was much happier about the second offer and gladly accepted. Good for him for holding out for what he wanted!

As you can probably guess, John’s not just waiting around for a placement. He is used to writing proposals and bringing in money – a very valuable skill for any company, right? So he’s been busily setting up meetings and suggesting ideas and trying to get programs started. But he doesn’t have an insider’s understanding of the company, so it’s like he’s driving blind. It’s unclear how to get his own ideas off the ground – or whether that’s even possible at Raytheon.

It seems like Raytheon tends to mostly just respond to their customer’s requests, rather than proactively suggest ideas. I think the difference is that John comes from an innovative research environment rather than a strictly contractor environment. Raytheon may not necessarily have internal processes set up to enable John to bring in funding.

John has also discovered that he was hired into a section of Raytheon that isn’t optimal for him. It turns out that he was hired into the section whose main customer is the Navy. But because of John’s specialties, he should have been hired into the section that serves the Air Force instead. There had been no way for him to tell he was being hired into the wrong section when he accepted the position – he was given very little information at the time. Back then, he couldn’t even tell Raytheon was organized around customer lines.

The managers who hired him should have been able to tell based on his resume. It seems like a mistake on their part, but I assume they wanted John anyway, even though they probably realized he would have been a better fit in another part of the company. They were glad to snag him for themselves!

So now John’s considering whether (and if so, how) to get himself into the section of the company that works with the Air Force. Or maybe he will decide he’s just fine in the Navy division. (Don’t worry, he would still be here in Tucson either way.) If he is determined to get into the Air Force division, it is unclear whether he should just continue to reach out to the managers whose projects appear to be more appropriate for his background as he has been doing, or whether he should actually re-apply to a different job within Raytheon.

At Sandia we called that process post and bid. It means an employee can bid (apply) for a publicly posted job opening if their current management isn’t motivated to let them simply make an internal move. If they are the chosen applicant and are offered a posted job, their current manager can’t block the move. Sometimes managers will post a job opening specifically to poach a valued employee from someone else’s team.

But at the moment it appears that John could go wherever he wants within Raytheon. So he’s scrambling to figure out what departments and programs are doing work that is a good fit for his background. He’s setting up lots of meetings trying to find and connect with a manager who can utilize his speciality knowledge and skills.

I know that John is going to get it all figured out and do great because he has so much to offer. But meanwhile he’s in an unenviable position of basically having to job hunt within his new company. And what if someone offers him something that’s a poor use of his skills before he’s able to find something that suits him better? Will he turn it down?

By the way, just so you can understand the difficulty – Raytheon is huge. There have something like over 13,000 employees here in Tucson alone. That’s why the program managers can’t just sit down and have a little internal meeting and figure out where to optimally place all their hundreds of new engineers!

John has already found some work for a team where he feels useful, so he has about a quarter of his time filled up. He also has been lining up a lot of other proposals and possibilities. Knowing him, he’s probably working harder at getting situated than any of the other new hires. And he’s probably going to overshoot and end up with far more work than he can manage. I guess if that happens, he knows where to find the pool of new hires for help!

To send Kristina a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com.

Kristina’s Website: Life Coaching for Adults with Autism

Forgetting

I got up a few minutes late this morning and had to rush around, trying to get to my doctor’s appointment on time. I made it on time, whew, only to discover that my appointment is tomorrow morning. That in itself is no big deal. I’ve done that sort of thing my whole life. But it’s getting worse and it’s making life more difficult. Luckily my life is easier in a lot of other ways (primarily, less work), so dumb stuff like this has less repercussions. Any given instance is less annoying than it used to be, because I have more slack in my life to be able to go to the doctors two mornings in a row. But my forgetfulness in general has been getting worse, which is a bummer and worrisome.

After discovering that my appointment isn’t until tomorrow, I tried not to get too frustrated and took the scenic route home. The scenic route went right by my favorite nursery, “Green Things.”

I hadn’t planned to go to a nursery so I hadn’t brought the pick-up truck. By the time I got done, the inside of my Mini Cooper looked like this:

That’s the front seat. There were more in the back!

A couple of weeks ago I had a forgetful incident that was actually somewhat scary. I had taken Biska to doggie daycare that morning. She goes once every week or two, for about 4 hours. It operates on a drop-in basis, and I usually take her in sometime mid-morning and pick her back up in the early afternoon. She loves going and playing with all the other dogs. It’s one of her favorite things!

After taking her to doggie daycare, I came home and did housework and exercising and whatever. At some point, I wondered where Biska was. I looked around for her for a little bit and didn’t see her. I grew increasingly worried, but still didn’t remember that she was at daycare.

Suddenly I remembered that I had taken her to doggie daycare, but instead of realizing where she was and being relieved, I felt complete panic, thinking that I had picked her up from daycare and left her out in the car in the driveway. I don’t know why I would even have thought that, but I did, and I panicked. It’s June, it’s 100º out, and a dog will not live very long in a closed car sitting in the direct sun in the driveway. I grabbed my keys and ran barefoot to the car, dreading the worst.

The car was empty, thank god. I still didn’t know where my dog was, but at least she wasn’t dead in the car. I would much rather have her wandering the streets of Tucson making friends with everyone and dodging cars than trapped in a car in the heat. I went back inside and called her again. Where was she?

Finally I remembered she was still at doggie daycare. In fact, it wasn’t even time to go get her yet.

I can understand momentarily forgetting that I had taken her to doggie daycare and looking around the house for her for a minute or two. But once I remembered that I had taken her to daycare, why didn’t I realize she was still there? Why did I imagine I had picked her back up from daycare and left her in the car in my driveway?

It was so upsetting – I still practically start crying thinking about it. In fact, I’m going to go check on where she is right now.

I love my dog!

To send Kristina a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com.

Kristina’s Website: Life Coaching for Adults with Autism

Katherine Singing

This amazing performance is by my niece, Katherine, Mark’s youngest. Their mom, Yang, is Chinese and their kids are bilingual.

Truly an accomplishment! Katherine will be 12 years old next month.

By the way, this is the first time I’ve managed to figure out (with a friend’s help) how to post a video without first posting it up on youtube. So let me know if you have trouble with either the link in the first sentence or the video embedded below it.

To send Kristina a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com.

Kristina’s Website: Life Coaching for Adults with Autism

Mini Vacation in Phoenix

I recently told you about a new anti-anxiety medicine that I was hoping would help me enjoy traveling more. The first time I took it, it seemed to help. On my way to California in April, my flight was delayed and then cancelled, and I couldn’t get out that night. I took it all in stride, and I credited the medicine for that.

But on my subsequent flights – my flight out to California the next day, and on the way home from California, and on my way out to Ann Arbor, the medicine didn’t seem to work as well. Instead of making me calm, it seemed to just make me stupid. I don’t want to be stupid. I am already stupid enough!

I particularly didn’t want to be stupid after my flight from Ann Arbor to Phoenix because it was a late evening flight. It would be dark by the time I arrived. I’d have to figure out how to get on the correct shuttle to get to my car and I’m not familiar with the Phoenix airport yet, or the parking situation. My car was somewhere near the airport…I had a claim ticket…actually I had completely forgotten that I had a claim ticket tucked away somewhere, but I figured my app would tell me what to do.

And then I had to navigate on freeways in the dark to an Airbnb where I’ve never been, and figure out which place was mine and which door was mine and hope the keypad code works. And my hosts would not have been still awake to help me.

So I decided I needed my brain to be working more than I needed anti-anxiety meds coursing through my system. I didn’t take any meds on the flight back and I was ok. I don’t think I was any more anxious than I when I took the meds.

It got me thinking – I don’t think my problem is anxiety. I think it’s some sort of sensory overwhelm that’s different than anxiety. That’s probably why every anxiety medication I’ve ever taken has not worked.

Actually, my anxiety medicine did work when I had reason to be anxious – when my flight was so delayed that I was not going to my connecting flight to California. But the med didn’t help when everything was going smoothly. I was still miserable during the trips – but it wasn’t anxiety making me miserable. It was something else.

The closest I can describe it is sensory overwhelm. Everything is too loud and visually complicated and everyone is moving and the plane is moving. It’s just too much going on. But it’s not causing anxiety exactly, it’s causing confusion, which is different than anxiety. Although confusion can cause anxiety and frustration.

Anyway, I just took my time and tried to keep my head on straight. We landed, I found my luggage, I found where I needed to catch the shuttle, talked to a shuttle driver to figure out which shuttle I needed, talked to another shuttle driver to figure out which location I needed (the parking company has two or three near-airport locations, with different shuttles serving each one). I found my car, found the directions to my airbnb, managed to navigate in the dark on the freeway through construction (my poor eyesight doesn’t help me any).

I got to the address, dragged my suitcases through a patio gate (now remember, it was pitch dark at the time, not this bright happy sunshine of the next day)

…and discovered not one, but TWO doors, both of which looked exactly like the one in the internet picture I had memorized. Which door was mine? And for that matter, why am I standing alone at midnight in this total stranger’s yard?

It’s all quite cheerful in these pictures I took the next morning, but at the time it was dark, I was exhausted, and there’s always that lingering concern that if you’re trying to get in at midnight and you pick the wrong door, someone might decide to shoot you!

I went ahead and tried my code on the right-hand door, and it worked. Whew! I made it!

Turns out in the daylight it’s quite easy to tell which is the main house and which is the guesthouse. The guesthouse is the cute little square unit on the right, attached to the main house by a breezeway. But it was not obvious at night.

The next morning I was completely delighted to be there.

There was a park and a walking trail at the end of the cul-de-sac two houses down. I got up, walked outside, and it smelled like the desert, and it felt like the desert and I felt instantly at home.

I walked down to the fountain and was greeted by a man walking his dogs, who identified himself as my host, Phil. He must have seen me exiting the gate and standing in his driveway, holding my sunglasses aloft while I tried to decide whether they were dirty enough to warrant heading back inside to clean them, or if they were good enough. I judged them good enough.

“Why are you here?”, Phil asked. That wasn’t actually the first question he asked when he and his three overfed fluffy dogs spotted me walking toward the park. Phil’s first question was why my car had a New Mexico license plate when my Airbnb profile says I’m from Tucson? Well…yeah. About that. My husband hasn’t got around to registering our cars in Arizona yet. Lol.

I didn’t say that. I just told him we’re still getting moved. What I didn’t mention was that we’ve been moving to Tucson for over two years now, but we’ve been New Mexico residents until this month. The nuanced truth just gets too complicated for a brief sidewalk greeting. I’ll be so glad when we’re finally done with all this complicated not knowing where I live, and I have easy answers for friendly neighbors.

So why was I there? Partly because my plane arrived late at night and I didn’t want to drive 2 hours home in the middle of the night. I don’t see well in the dark, and I get tired easily. Plus, I thought it would be nice to decompress after my trip to Ann Arbor. Also I wanted to do errands in Phoenix.

I have been thinking of buying an exercise machine but neither of the brands that I was primarily interested in are available in Tucson. I could order them, but I wanted to try them first before deciding which to get. So one of my main goals was to visit a couple of fitness showrooms and try out some options.

After my walk, I started on my big-city errands. In addition to wanting to try out exercise machines, I also wanted to look for tile samples with a Southwest or Mexican feel. Visiting tile stores took me all over the city – and Phoenix is huge and sprawling.

You haven’t heard much about our remodel recently, but yes, we’re still slowly plugging away. Very slowly. Right now some smaller projects are slowly being done. Did I mention how slowly the projects are going? Neil drops by occasionally, but most of the time he is on vacation or working elsewhere. Slowly.

Later this summer I want to remodel the master bathroom. That will be a very disruptive job, so I hope to hire a bigger firm in order to get it done in a shorter length of time. There’s usually a several-month wait before a big firm can get to your job, but once they start, they’re better at getting it done in one big crush of activity. I do not want my master bathroom being remodeled in little bits at a time every few weeks.

Anyway, tile samples:

Haha, no, this was a bit much. It reminds me of a clown.

I ended up buying a few copper colored tiles for the master bathroom. The white tile behind it will be the primary tile, with copper accents to add interest. We did the hall bathroom in white with dark blue accents, and the master bathroom will be white with copper accents. (Note to self – we need to pick out new edging, the off-white that looked good in the hall bathroom will look too gray here.) There is always something.

I also ordered the tile in this next photo for our fireplace hearth and for accenting on our patio. The reddish-brown tile underneath is our floor tile, and our hearth will be the plain orangish-brown one on the left, accented with an occasional flower tile.

After I got done with my errands I sat out on the courtyard with my computer. I love courtyards, even in the intense Phoenix heat.

Some of the neighbor’s names for their internet accounts were amusing.

Speaking of remodels, I couldn’t help but think about how my hosts had remodeled their guesthouse. Phil told me that it was originally a studio with no kitchen. It had the main room plus the bathroom and a closet. Phil and his wife, Peggy, converted the closet into a kitchenette by adding a window and a sink, mini-fridge and microwave. I had guessed as much because there was a door to the kitchen with a mirror on the back of it, lol. It pretty clearly used to be a closet.

Their solution worked ok, but I would have taken that couple of feet of wall out; the doorway and that little bit of wall to the right of the doorway. That would open up the kitchen space which would then have enabled the kitchen to continue around the corner to where they have a clothes rack. Then they could have had the kitchen on two walls in an “L” shape and have twice as much (or more) kitchen space. There still would have been enough room for a small closet under the TV where this desk is:

And the desk could have gone between these two chairs instead of the little useless end tables:

If they had run the kitchen around the corner, they would have had room to include a full sized sink, modest refrigerator, stovetop and a dishwasher. The kitchen doesn’t need to be behind a door and a wall.

It wouldn’t have been very much more work and they could have doubled the size of their kitchen. The floor tile would need to be patched where the wall was. If they couldn’t find an exact match, they could do a decorative span across the threshold. That is a very common technique for visual delineation even if you have matching tile.

It’s possible they might have needed to do a little bit of drywall patching – but probably not, if they put cabinets and backsplash across the 4 inches where the unnecessary wall had joined the main wall. It would not have been very much harder, and it would have looked so much better and had been so much more useful than having shoved a tiny bit of kitchen into a closet.

See, I am incorrigible. Always thinking about remodels.

Anyway it was a cute little place. They allow dogs too. Maybe John and I will go back together someday. Phoenix is our nearest big city and there’s lots to do there!

To send Kristina a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com.

Kristina’s Website: Life Coaching for Adults with Autism

Traveling to Ann Arbor

I’d had my trip to Ann Arbor scheduled for a long time in anticipation of my mom’s 80th birthday on Mother’s Day. It seemed like an auspicious time to visit. My oldest niece also turned sweet 16 the day before Mother’s Day. Time to visit family!

I had reserved a nice Airbnb because, many months ago when I planned the trip, I thought John was going to be able to go with me. Unfortunately, it turned out to be his first week on his new job. The trip was scheduled two days after his start date! So I had to go without him.

Ugh, airports are overwhelming!

I’m glad my brother, Steven, was able to pick me up. Flying is stressful for me and my brain gets fried. I was happy not to have to worry about navigating on strange freeways in an unfamiliar rental car after several hours of traveling.

On the way to my airbnb Steven took me to a grocery store. I rarely eat before flying and I was getting hungry! I had planned to buy food at the airport, but I followed everyone onto a tram, and it turns out the tram goes overhead, past all the food courts. I hadn’t even realized what happened; all I knew is that I never saw any food until I was past security and too far to turn back.

When Steven dropped me off, with my luggage and groceries, he helped me carry everything up the stairs from the street for me (the airbnb is on a hillside). While there, he met my airbnb host as she was giving me the key. He recognized her accent as being from a certain part of northern Germany. Steven was an exchange student in Germany when he was in high school – apparently he lived very near to where my airbnb host is from. It wasn’t just her accent – Steven also recognized a particular figure of speech. Instead of “uh” she would say something that sounded a little bit like “no” as a punctuation or pause noise, and apparently it’s a speech pattern common in only that specific part of Germany. It’s funny that both my brother and my husband speak German.

It was a big relief to get to my airbnb with my luggage and my groceries. Whew. The next morning I walked through a park to a local rental car location where I had reserved a car. They were short staffed and also running out of cars. I waited patiently. I could tell they were struggling to find cars for everyone, so I wondered if I would have to Uber to Mom’s house and back, and try again the next day! 

I had only paid for an economy car because I wanted a small one, but they didn’t have any economy cars left. They had given the previous woman a pickup truck, so I was wondering, what would be left after that? What could be even worse than a pick-up truck? I didn’t want some big monster car. 

At first the clerk was about to give me some sort of Volkswagen, I don’t know what because I didn’t recognize (and therefore didn’t remember) the model. He went outside to get it ready, because they were scraping the bottom of the barrel and the cars weren’t even washed and cleaned up yet. He came back in after a bit – there was some issue with that car and he wasn’t going to be able to give it to me after all. So now what was I going to get? More waiting.

Finally the manager grabbed a set of keys from a back board and gave it to the clerk helping me and said, “Just give her this, she’s been waiting too long.” That is how I managed to snag some sort of mid-sized Lexus hatchback or small SUV. Brand new and very fancy. One of those cars where you don’t actually have to stick the anything in the ignition. 

I pulled out of the parking lot onto a busy road and the new car immediately started beeping at me frenetically. It was a divided highway so I had to make a u-turn, pass the place and u-turn again, all the while the car was acting like it was going to self-destruct momentarily. I got it back to the rental place and realized, as I was turning it off, that the red hood icon maybe meant the hood wasn’t fully latched. Initially I had assumed the problem was under the hood i.e., the engine.

By the time a guy came out to check on me, I had figured out that it was just the hood latch. So I could have just pulled over and fixed it myself, but that car is intimidating. For example, later that day I unfolded the side mirrors manually, not realizing they fold in and out automatically when it’s turned on and off. The second time I saw them folded in, I figured ah-ha! It did it by itself!

The car also vibrated the steering wheel at me once, which was very startling and distracting. I was trying to give an oncoming car some extra space because he was heading toward the middle of the road to give a bicyclist next to him some space, and apparently my car didn’t like me going to the right of the white line, or maybe it didn’t like the oncoming car angled my way or something, but the last thing I needed while concentrating on the situation was the car vibrating the steering wheel and startling me. 

Also the dang car just seemed so big compared to my Mini Cooper at home. However, it was a very nice car and I was glad to have it.

Unfortunately the Airbnb was on the other side of town as my family. I originally had picked it out for John and I, and I knew he’d love the beautiful neighborhood and the wooded nature area with walking trails a block away.

I also knew John wouldn’t mind driving us across town every day to visit everyone. John likes to drive. But as it turned out, with just me, it would have been easier to have stayed somewhere closer. But it really was a beautiful place and I did enjoy it.

My unit is the lower one in this double decker house. It was a 2-bedroom unit and I didn’t use the second bedroom for anything. Mostly I used the kitchen and the front patio.

My only complaint was that the blinds on the bedroom window were very lightweight and let the morning sun shine straight through. I wouldn’t have minded too much if it was in the middle of winter and the sun was getting up late, or if I was on Eastern time instead of Pacific time. But in May that far north the sun gets up very early. Subtract another 3 hours for the time difference, and my brain felt like the sun was shining in the middle of the night. OMG COFFEE PLEASE!

I loved my patio underneath the owner’s balcony. That’s where I ate my meals and spent my free time.

The weather was downright hot. When I had checked a few days before I left, the highs were in in the 50’s, but there was an abrupt change right when I arrived. It was 79 degrees! I only brought sweaters! That’s what I get for trying to pack light. I end up not prepared.

I had brought too much luggage when I went to California in April, because I anticipated changeable weather and I had a variety of activities planned. I tried to pack lighter this time, but had expected colder weather and did not bring anything for hot weather.

I quickly went to TJ Maxx (a nearby discount store) after I got the rental car, and picked up a pair of shorts, flip flops, couple of blouses and a sundress, all for very cheap. I figure I can never have too many pairs of cheap shorts and flip flops, now that I live in Arizona!

The clerk at TJ Maxx was so deliriously happy that the weather was finally warm after a long winter, that she was singing! She serenaded me the entire time I was at the counter with a song that she was making up on the spot. It was all about how wonderful Ann Arbor was and how wonderful spring was. I was thinking, wow, how often are people willing to sing in public like that? Maybe she was on something, but I like to imagine she was just friendly and happy. Everyone I met in Ann Arbor did seem to be friendly and happy.

Here is my mom and dad in their backyard.

This is their house. I didn’t grow up there – they’ve moved several times in the nearly 40 years since I left home.

I also had fun visiting with Steven and his family. Here they are at the botanical gardens.

I have a tendency to forget to take pictures of people because it has to be arranged – people don’t usually just sit around, passively posing for a photo like a flower or a landscape scene, waiting for me to come across them and recognize the perfect shot. And most people don’t appreciate being snuck up on for a candid shot. If people would just stay still and not change their expression the instant they saw a camera pointing in their direction, I would take a lot of pictures of people! I like the thoughtful looks on people’s faces when they’re caught unawares.

Anyway, I was glad I remembered to get photos of my parents and Steven’s family, even though they were posed. The only unposed photos I ever seem to manage are the backs of people.

Here is Steven with his two daughters.

After visiting each day, I would come back to my airbnb to rest and work with my clients over the phone.

On Sunday morning we met at their church. I don’t usually like attending church services, but I figured that it was part of the day’s agenda, and I had gone out there to be part of whatever was happening, so off to church I went. Well, did I ever get lucky. It happened to be the Sunday that they held their service outside. It’s a little something special they do once a year in the spring, when the weather is at its very best. They held the service outside for Mother’s Day, which I really enjoyed.

Their church is very small. Here is the choir singing with an electronic keyboard as accompaniment. Mom is on the left in the white dress and hat, and Steven is on the right.

Steven was leading the service that day as well as being a quarter of the choir. Their pastor recently retired and they have not found a new one yet. Because of the lack of preaching, they did extra congregational singing instead, which suited me. I was hoarse by the end of the service because I’m very out of practice. I don’t usually go anywhere or do anything where I would regularly sing.

That afternoon we had a very nice meal to celebrate mom’s 80th. The savory sweet potatoes were a big hit, thanks to Laura for the recipe 🙂

The next day, we spotted these baby birds in Mom and Dad’s backyard. Both parents were flying around, screeching. We couldn’t figure out how the little birds had gotten there. We looked up and there was no nest in the huge tree above.

We were worried about them. Dad said he had seen them closer to the patio and they had somehow made it out a little further. You can see them here in the foreground, about 6 or 8 feet from the patio.

We retreated into the house to see what would happen. Over the period of an hour or so, they hopped all the way across the lawn to the bushes in the back corner, their parents tweeting at them the whole way. Sometimes the parents would bring them food. They would hop a foot or two and then rest for awhile. We believe they must have been nesting in a nook somewhere near the house where it was warmer and sheltered, and it was time for them to relocate. What a vulnerable time for the little baby birds!

I also went on a very nice bike ride with Steven on my last day there. Ann Arbor was a pretty town and the weather was perfect and my visit went very well.

Now all I had to do was make it back home again!

To send Kristina a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com.

Kristina’s Website: Life Coaching for Adults with Autism