Catching Up 3-24

We enjoyed the play we saw on Friday night, Don’t Dress for Dinner; it had 5 main characters and a sixth minor character in the second act. It was opening night and there were some awkward pauses here and there but it was still fun. We all went out for after play snacks at Denny’s and as our waitress was not very organized or quick we were there for quite awhile, but no one minded. We were home way after our bedtime!

On Saturday we pried our bods out of bed and got busy getting ready to hit the road for our friends place in Palm Desert, California.

I received a phone call from the dentist office in Los Algodones in answer to an email I had sent them on Friday and I confirmed an appointment for Monday afternoon. We were planning on being back on Sunday.

By the time we were all packed up we left here at ten a.m., the computer said the drive would take less than 3 hours. Well, I don’t think going through an agriculture inspection station and TWO border patrol checkpoints were taken into the time consideration! It took us another 45 minutes or so to get through all of those, they were in California. We made a stop at Costco to pick up a couple of goodies and made a stop for some lunch and we didn’t arrive until after 2:30.

Deb and Cathy’s place is up against the mountains so they are a short walk from natural areas and up out of the wind tunnel area down by I-10. Their house is a lovely “mid-century modern” bungalow and is bright with Saltillo tile floors and a nice pool and has the split floor plan that makes it wonderful for guests.

We spent the afternoon visiting and catching up and then we took a ride to their favorite park to check on the black swan that is sitting on her next. That crazy swan kept busy picking at the plant that she could reach with her beak; she is sitting on two large eggs and two smaller eggs that are suspected duck eggs. The pond was full of turtles of all sizes and you could see big fins of carp breaking the surface of the water, a very active eco system and a lot of the ducks looked like crosses of different species.

Palm Desert is big on the arts and beautifying so there are flowers everywhere and art pieces throughout the landscape, oh and golf courses everywhere too. The other thing that we like about it is it is surrounded by mountains that are beautiful and there are lots of palm trees. We’ll go back and spend more time so I can take a lot more pictures, there was inspiration everywhere!

We were going to come back on Sunday, but Deb thought we would be staying a few days, but we couldn’t do that with my dentist appointment on Monday which I wanted to keep…darn it, because there is a lot to see and do there…but now we know for future visits.

About two a.m. Sunday morning the wind started blowing and was blowing hard, it kept waking us up and by morning we had decided we would stay until Monday morning. The wind blew hard all day and I got some pictures of a box blowing down the street and there was a lot of other stuff rolling by! The palm trees were amazing the way their leaves were whipped around.




We went to town to go through a few of Deb and Cathy’s favorite art galleries (Deb is a professional artist and instructor) and the wind was very pushy, in a few places it sounded like the roofs were being lifted off. We saw some phenomenal art in a couple of galleries and in one gallery where the term art was a relative term we saw some phenomenal prices!


The large pieces of palm “bark” that the wind had ripped off the trees were strewn all over the place and one caught my eye because it had such a beautiful wood grain look. I thought they might work for a future art project and picked up a couple. As we were driving back to the house we saw a lawn covered with the pieces so we jumped out and gathered some more, we didn’t figure the home owner would mind a little help with the clean-up…smile!

We had first thought that we would go to Mexico on our way home on Monday until I remembered that we didn’t have our passports with us, so we just planned on leaving an hour earlier to get home first, get the passports, have some lunch and then head back over to Mexico.

We had a great, great time with our friends, we had great exchanges of ideas and I think we were all inspired after our visit! We look forward to getting together again!

On Monday before we left we discovered that the wind the day before was the worst in fourteen years and that the gusts were 70 mph. We were sure it would have been bad all the way back to Yuma and we didn’t really want our truck sandblasted.

We left as planned at 9 a.m. and got back to our trailer at noon…just three hours with no inspection stations! We had our lunch, got our passports, got back into the truck and headed for Mexico.

We trotted through town to the office. They were really busy, but I didn’t have to wait long and after an hour and a half of drilling out two old fillings and refilling and shaping of the new fillings I was done. I am a baby at the dentist…I was never hurt, but the fear, the Novocain, the lack of oxygen because I hold my breath too much, the being flat on my back with my eyes closed and my mouth hanging open that entire time, my hair standing off my head weirdly because it was squished by the dentist, and holding every muscle in my body tensed up I guess I looked kind of shaky and scary coming out of the back into the waiting area. I was elated that I had survived, but everyone kept asking me if I was all right as I emerged…I guess the numbness didn’t let my relieved happy face shine.

Then it was off to wait in the customs line, we got in line at four fifteen and didn’t get out until six oh three. We were entertained by an older man in front of us dickering and buying stuff from the sellers in line. The Customs agent I hit was being relieved and as she was leaving she opened my passport, asked if I had anything, I said no, dentist appointment and she waved me on through without even running my passport through the scanner. The last time I had to open my purse and my passport was scanned, you just never tell what they will do.

It was a really long day, mostly because of the torture I had to endure…..

Today was windy here and cool, we took our laps….I did three and Larry did five. During our walk we were able to say farewell to Marilyn and Ed as they were headed home. We had coffee with Neil and Mavis. After coffee we decided to all go to lunch at The Olive Garden where we had their soup and salad, which was really great. On our way home we spent some time watching a farmer knock down and weed the rows of what looked like young cantaloupe plants…farming technology is fascinating close up.

The rest of the day I was trying to get caught up here and I had taken some photos earlier today that I had to ooh and ah over. There is a pair of hummingbirds that are attempting to build a nest on the end of the arm on our satellite dish…would be fascinating to watch but we leave in a little over a week and that would be mean.

We caught the Prez’s speech and then the Dancing w/Stars result show and then we were reminded that it was Dairy Queen night, so as this will be the last one…tonight we were twelve and by next week we might be four…maybe even two; so we decided to go.

Now I am back, have showered and still need to get the pictures chosen and edited….I may run out of time and have to add the pictures tomorrow! It is already 10:30 p.m.