The Cross Country Trip

When my daughter, Becky, got a job offer while home on vacation, I quickly volunteered to help her pack and move from Los Angeles to Minnesota. I flew out and we packed for 3 days, the truck came for her stuff on Friday, and we had Saturday and Sunday for good-byes and her last church jobs. Sunday she woke up with apparent food poisoning. There was no way she would be singing and/or playing organ at church. We still had hope she would recover enough to attend a farewell dinner at the Hamburger Hamlet. As the day wore on, even that had to be scrapped, and I was depressed to think we'd have to delay our Monday morning departure.
Monday morning she was feeling better, but we ended up leaving closer to noon, than the 6 AM start we had originally planned. At least we were on the road. Nothing appealed to me at lunch in Barstow at the Big Boy, but I ate a sandwich, and left most of the fries. We spent Monday night in Cedar City, Utah, and I only ate about half of my orange chicken bowl from Applebees. I figured it wasn't good to eat heavy that late, but it still sat in my gut like a lead ball.
Tuesday morning I woke up vomiting. This was definitely not the mother-daughter experience I was hoping for. We stopped at the Wal-Mart, stocked up on barf bags, Alka-Seltzer, etc., and hit the road. Neither of us could eat much, so we lived on Sprite and ice chips for the next day or so. We made it to Denver by Tuesday night. It was late, so no dinner, and Becky wasn't sure if her tummy was upset or just hungry.
Wednesday morning we managed toast and scrambled eggs. We got our earliest start so far, about 9 AM. Was great finally being out of the mountains where the driving was less stressful. We made it to Des Moines by early evening. I discovered it's not easy eating a bland diet on the road. We picked a Country Kitchen, thinking surely they would have chicken noodle soup. The soup choices were calico bean, cheesy broccli, or baked potato, which I ended up choosing.
We were within about 4 hours of home, and it was 8 PM, so we decided to go for it. Our saving grace was an audio book I had on my iPod. It couldn't have been timed better. We had been listening off and on the entire trip to Chill Factor by Sandra Brown. It's a "whodunit" that keeps you guessing until close to the end. The end of the book came as we made the last turn half a mile from the house.

Rhubarb Leaf Birdbaths

Several of us got together a few weeks ago to attempt to make those very cool birdbaths from concrete. We each found some large leaves. You need to pick your leaves right before beginning your birdbath. We had a bagged concrete product that we added water to make the consistancy of brownie batter. We each had a rounded pile of sand, which we covered in plastic wrap. I'm not sure this was necessary, because the leaf goes on next, face down with the veins up. Next, we placed concrete on top of the leaf, about an inch thick. The edges are smoothed, and you just follow the shape of your leaf, so that it forms an upsidedown "bowl" over the mound of sand. The concrete needs to cure for at least a couple of days.

We got together the following week to paint our creations. One bag of concrete goes a long ways. I'm looking forward to trying it again next summer. I wish the darn gophers, moles, etc., in my yard hadn't killed my biggest rhubarb plant.