to Spain and back.....

ok, so....I have been to Spain and back since I last blogged.....the first time I went to Spain I blogged daily in internet cafes near our hotels in Barcelona, Bilboa and Madrid, as this was 2002 and personal Wi-Fi devices were either not yet invented or not in my personal possession.....therefore that trip was better recalled in prose than this trip...despite the techy available of instant posting of photos to FB.....the logistics of this trip were as precise as the last....from airline reservations to train connections to hotels/hostels.....and nearly to site entrance pre-bookings....who knew that Park Guell would be so crowded as to require a pre-booked tour time? Thankfully, I had thought to book timed entrance/tower tickets to Sagrada Familia, which was literally crawling with tourists eager to see what progress had been made since a previous tour.... leaps and bounds progress....so much so that the pope has already visited to consecrate the church as a basilica...we are not likely to go back to Barcelona any time soon, as this visit was tacked on to the end of the first pilgrimage installment.... St Jean Pied-de-Port to Pamplona.....when we return to Spain to hike Pamplona to.....somewhere down the Camino we will either arrive in Spain through some other entrance point, or fly in/out of Barcelona without taking extra site-seeing days. Our four-day Camino hike was a good start, but we will lever finish this journey if we only hike four days at a stretch....hoping for at least eight days next trip.....as close to Burgos as possible....we have started a list of lessons learned, such as clothing items that worked and those that did not.....and that changing out socks mid-day prevents sweaty feet from blistering.....much as we envy those we know locally who started at the 100 miles to go mark and walked eight days to get their certificates in Santiago de Compostella....I cannot imagine skipping the beginning...the taxi ride from Pamplona to St Jean Pied-de-Port, the 5 mile up-hill hike to Orisson, the 17 mile hike up and over the Pyrenees to Roncesvalles, the up and down pine-scented trek to Zubiri, and the overheated finale to Pamplona....I freely admit that I went a full week without walking at all when we got back....but given that I have a certain level of fitness to maintain I am back to walking 30 minutes on the treadmill in the mornings and an hour in the evenings....hopefully I can shed a few extra pounds between now and out next section...and maybe I can memorize a few more words in the local language before next time as well.....hope springs eternal....

last-minute details.....

ok, so....my installment-plan pilgrimage starts tomorrow, and there are still so many loose-ends to be worked out, details to be divulged to family and final decision made on what essential wardrobe pieces must be packed and which left behind.....Since our last big trip mother and I have worked out her funeral arrangements and paid for these plans in full...must remember to make sure the eldest knows where the folder is kept.....I have stockpiled several frozen meals as well as purchased gift cards to places that my mother enjoys either sit-down or carryout....both for the convenience of my son and daughter who will share in her care while I am gone, but also for mother's entertainment.....she does so love to eat out. I need to make sure the eldest knows where our will is kept.....which bills are paid directly from my checking account and how one can access them....just in case.....paper bills no longer arrive at the house so the first sign of non-payment could be the termination of phone service or electric or both....of course, I do not intend to die suddenly while I am away, nor do I really believe that mother will do likewise....but if I do not prepare for the worst-case scenario, that is precisely how things will work out....as for other details, my spouse and I had a good laugh last evening when it was determined that I speak Spanish about as well as I speak Italian, which is not very well....in such situations where no English can be spoken I always revert to be rudimentary understanding of French punctuated with sign language and gestures.....at this point language barriers are the least of my worries.....I am concerned about the potential for storms and/or rain (in Spain) and whether or not it will fall mainly on the plain, or on us as we hike across the Pyrenees, about getting too hot or too cold, about where I shall find relief when nature calls.....and that is assuming that with adequate pacing of our hike I can complete each day without throwing in the towel and calling a taxi.....as numerous folks have done before me...the ladies in my Sunday school class have assured me that it still counts if I pay a taxi to drive my pack to the next Refugio..... heavy sigh.....I have not been to Spain since 2002, and I am certain that much has changed....we shall be in BCN just ahead of the independence vote...which should be interesting.....and we are fighting a terrorist war, which frightens me to no end.....but I will soldier on with my travel plans, because to d otherwise would be letting the terrorists win. Pray for us....

disappointment...

ok, so....i worked for weeks archiving the photos and prose that documented my eldest's TransAmerica bicycle ride in 2009 as a tribute for his 30th birthday....and he was underwhelmed by the gesture to say the least....which is code for he would rather have had the cash.....gentle readers, as i age I am less likely to leave cash to anyone, let alone my children.....at this point, the blind native american fire fighters of South Dakota may be my charity of choice.....

an ominous sign.....

ok, so I came to my senses when I got to the roundabout this morning at 7:39 am.....wtf was I doing on the road to Danville rather than on Faulkner Station on my way to work.....I recall that I was trying to pin down the essence of the dream I was dreaming as I was waking up....and/or I was following the station wagon that barreled down Gwinn Isl. Rd. just as I was pulling out from the circle. So...I pulled onto the connector and then onto to 127 and arrived at work about the same time I would have if I had gone the correct way..... Is this how the semi-senile suddenly find themselves lost, several counties from home...they get caught up in their daydreams and simply follow the cars ahead of them?...I am unnerved....

a graduation rant....

ok, so....i had too few employees in the building today because of graduation....from preschool, from kindergarten, from 5th grade, from 8th grade....gracious sakes...what ever happened to rewarding with a cap, gown and a few gifts the major milestones....like high school and college.....and maybe graduate school...after the mob scene that was graduation in the horseshoe of The Ohio State University Stadium, I opted for a simple celebratory lunch with family and a few friends at the Golden Lamb in Lebanon, Ohio when I finished grad school at the University of Cincinnati. I recall that we also skipped the ceremony when my spouse finished his M.Ed at U of C.....we were in honeymoon mode and paying for another cap and gown seemed silly.....but I digress from the notion that finishing the grades offered in any one district building is or could be the pinnacle of one's academic career.....the photos posted on FB are precious, of course...but I fear with far too many the bar has been set far too low with regards to potential.....as well as for actual achievement....the last time I attended an 'awards' event it was at the insistence of a child who was certian that an award was in the offing...there was...for attendence...which I contend is merely a parent's award for assuring that the child in question was out of bed and in the car in time for school drop-off despite the weather/attitude/health conditions.....having said my peace. let the numerous FB photos continue throughout the weekend with my congratulations and prayers for a brighter future

regrets

ok, so...over the past 2 weeks I have worked tirelessly on an epic birthday gift....I compiled the photos Andrew took on his TransAm bike journey in 2009 with his blog entries and when the blog entries petered out I added in Ernst's personal; journal entries from the time he joined the ride in D-ville until the finish in Yorktown. The written record helped me to organize the photos and produce a book with 115 pages and 363 photographs. The whole 'publish a book' started with the youngest child. I had produced a scrapbook when Andrew turned 21 and when Stephan graduated high school ( for him as well as his friends). For Cayle, I had missed the high school milestone, and scrambled to get an on-line book published using the MixBook templates. Fast forward to my trip with grandma to Cleveland for a family baby shower. I took lots of pictures of my mother and her sister and her niece and her grandson Jason who she never gets to see. I again scrambled to put together The Book Of Grandma as a tribute for Mother's Day/Birthday. This book included such milestones as our wedding, the birth/lives of her grandchildren and extended family on her side as well as her move to Danville. While I was in the book-making mood, I put together a travel memory book of the trip to London I took with Cayle in 2010, and then went on to make a travel book of my trip to Italy with Ernst in October. All of these scrapbooks were made easier by the availability of written records/emails/notes/calendars. Fast forward to this very day, whereupon I am trying to piece together the trip I took to visit Andrew in Austria in 2010. Like the London trip, the Italy trip and the TransAm trip, the Austria/Switzerland trip photos were never printed out. They exist only in cyberspace, unlabeled as to people, places or things. And so I got this bright idea- I would check back to my blog for April 2010 for the exact itinerary. Ha! Only three days were recorded and one of those was the day I left home rather than the day I arrived. I blogged on Easter Sunday, yet failed to name all of those present in the photos.....and I blogged the day we walked 9 miles to see the grave of James Joyce in Zurich. My last best hope is that I typed out a tentative itinerary and sent it to Andrew and somehow still have the email in a sent file. Bottom, line... the purpose of having a blog was to be able to reference things I can no longer remember.....at least I am blogging on this very day to chastise myself for failing to blog.... heavy sigh.

came this close.....

ok, so worked a half-day, then took my 4-hours of voting leave.....go figure....4 hours for a regular election and 8 hours for a presidential election....The actual voting was swift as there was no line....the only real lag time involved was showing my picture ID and then debating how to answer the question....Republican or Democrat? I had already signed in, so it was doubtful they would check my registration closely for afifliation.....could I get by with saying GPO just so I could vote for Matt Blevin in hopes it might push the election one step closer to my Ditch Mitch dreams?!...I came this close.....

illuminated pages

ok, so....in between the storm's lightening and thunder, our dog's fearful whines, and thirsty moments temporarily quenched by the water glass on the bedside table....i had a most curious dream that i was frantically trying to identify the name, meeting date/time of a college course i was surely missing due to a recent move from someplace to somewhere else.... in the dream i am grabbing pages out of boxes....old notes from a math class...economics graphs and charts....and then pages from an iluminated book, with my notes written directly on the pages.....something ghastly let alone heretical to do.... i have a vague recollection of a course that i ended up dropping my junior year...something to do with nutrition and culture....i still get chills when i think of the instructor....the kind of person who seemed to feel that i was not good enough for the profession and therefore below her contempt to take this class.....one often saw here chatting up the 4.0-types...as if gpa was a predictor of professional fulfillment.....the smartest girl in my year could not talk to strangers let alone friends without having huge swaths of red swell up on her neck and then creep up into her face..... hopefully she found a quiet isolated job in research and away from the public eye.....but i digress from those desecrated illuminated pages.... and the class exam i (supposedly)missed.....

peas.....

ok so i rallied to plant peas today...having seen the headlines in the D section of the Saturday Herald Leader.....about March being the best month to plant peas.....among other cold weather crops...I propped the trellises purchased last year, dug up the terraced vegetable bed....and then headed out to swim laps, grocery shop and then head on to the Lowes for the seeds.....twp kinds fo peas, sweet peas, onions, kale, beets, radishes, and two kinds of lettuces....thehose is not yet hooked up so these seeds will have to wait for the next round of precip to begin the sprouting process....

58 years + 1 day

ok, so....58th was the first anniversary of my birth that i regretted that i was not older, not younger....at 62 I could conceivably retire...at 63 i would retire with 15 years of service and would have covered the youngest child on my family insurance policy til she was 26. nothing happens at 58...nothing hopeful, at least....five more years seems like a really, really long time to get up five days a week to get to work, and five years to keep my place of work viable on my watch....in wretched financial conditions...heavy sigh....

making plans.....

ok, so.....i am comtemplating a trip to Spain...to walk the 1st leg of the Camino.....have figured out that flying to Barcelona, and then by train to Pamplona and then by taxi across the border to St Jean Pied de Port in France where the journey traditionally starts...is the best bet...now all I need to do is to prove to myself that I can hike 14 miles a day with a 25 pound pack in all sorts of weather come this October.....I am listening to Shirley McClaine's audiobook The camino, about her pilgrimage in the late 90's. Seems she had been there in some past life, and while others who commented on Audible's site about that part of her book being a bit wacky, I found it to be entertaining as well as a confirmation that 'we have all been here before'. She did the walk at age 60, BTW. I had been trying desparately to recall the name of the restaurant I so enjoyed in Barcelona in 2003....and finally found it by searching this very blog...Le Gremola has since closed, sadly. I was still with TRC in 2003, and it has also(sadly)closed. Looking at a few days in barcelona before we fly back home, as my spouse has never been there and there are so many fascinating things to see there. Maybe I will make it to a beach this time around....