Back Home again in Indiana

I drove alone to my home town recently and snapped some photos along the way. I often lament the lack of great job opportunity in that part of the state, but I've been remiss in not commenting enough on some of its beauty.

Here's a look at part of my drive, which seems like kind of a country music song in pictures. I might have had the tunes blaring and I might have taken some curves a little too fast, but it was a beautiful day -- one of the last top-down days of the year -- and I was mostly alone on the two-lanes.

Gold stars if you can match the closest town with the shot. The first one doesn't count as there's a huge clue in it.

I should do this again now that the fall colors are coming in and there are pumpkins on display along the route.

Sorry I'm late... I was hanging with my kid

One day, several years ago, Jeff returned from doing something super important to find Ali and I lazing about. We were probably binge watching Total Drama Island or something educational like that.

Anyway, he accused us of laying around like dogs. So of course we cabbaged onto that phrase and looked forward to the next time we could lay around like dogs. Or maybe it was a phrase that I came up with. I don't really remember. 

But Ali and I laid around like dogs this past weekend. And it was wonderful. We'd gotten up early so she could hang out with her friends a bit. I worked while she did that and then took her to a dental appointment and worked more while she went under the scraper.

But then, we went home and binged on South Park. 

It was the first time she'd been home since she went to Purdue. We'll see her again this weekend because the Misadventures of Bindu, a movie filmed in Broad Ripple, will debut on Saturday. She was an extra in it, and we're going to see if she made the cut. Otherwise, we wouldn't see her again until Parent's Weekend and then Thanksgiving.

From Lafayette we went straight to Petite Chou for French onion soup. We didn't even care that to get a table we had to sit outside and bundle up with blankets from the car. 

Afterward, she and Jeff saw the second iteration of It. I'm a chicken and I avoid traditional horror shows and shows that involve tortured children. I did go with them to Joker the next night. We had poutine.

We also had a girls' dinner with Aunt La, Jenna and Amy, which was fabulous. The girls agreed that going to college was an adjustment with ups and downs. But it's evening out for both of them, and for their poor parents as we all find our new normal.

All in all, it was a fabulous four days. I miss her all over again.

I might be a bit twisted, but I'm fixing that.

Let me just say that I have a longstanding rule about going to the doctor: I do not web surf to determine what this or that pain might be or to learn what may lie ahead of whatever fix I have coming. I'm a world-class worrier already. I don't need more anxiety from the myriad possibilities the interwebs offer.

I didn't do it when I had a child.
I didn't do it when I had my first root canal.
I didn't do it when my knee hurt so bad I couldn't walk.
I didn't do it when I was sure I was dying of uterine cancer.

Spoiler alert: the baby arrived just fine while I was in a morphine coma; my only root canal pain came from having my mouth open for so long, which surprised me as I can yammer on; I didn't need knee replacement; and it was a UTI easily fixed with meds

So when I was first encouraged to see a chiropractor,  I laughed politely and said I'd consider it. I can pop my own back, thank you very much, I was thinking. Years later, still in pain, I capitulated. How bad could it be? Tons of people see chiropractors every day. And my friend Bree Emsweller owns the place I went to. You may remember her from steering me toward lip waxing. I was temporarily less hairy, but man, I'm pretty sure that's on the list of things Homeland Security does in dark rooms in third world countries.

At Book Club the other day, I was complaining about my leg. Bree pushed and prodded on me awhile and suggested I visit  the Joint in Broad Ripple.

I was expecting a strenuous massage.

I kind of got beat up.

Don't get me wrong: it's been helpful. But I was really expecting something different than what I got. Remember, I did zero research other than Googling to figure out what to wear.

So I was a little tense, not knowing exactly what to expect. There was a moment when I was sure the good doctor had mistaken me for a chicken on a Sunday when the preacher was coming over for dinner.

After a couple of twists and jerks, he said, "I think we'll try something different; you don't seem to be relaxing enough to make that effective,"

I thought: "You got that right, buddy." I mean, it was like he was Tom Cruise and I was a bad guy who had to die silently. Who can relax in a situation like that?

The alternative was he took something like a hammer -- I was face down by this time on the table and didn't see the device he used -- and commenced to thumping on the sides of my neck like I was a watermelon he wasn't sure was quite ripe.

It was waaaaaaay better than the wrenching thing. but all things being equal, it's not something I'd generally pay for.

If you haven't been to a chiropractor to get what they call an "adjustment", let me clue you in: an adjustment requires the chiropractor to prod and pull and push on your body until your joints cry "Uncle." You're on a table that pops with every vigorous pummeling. It sounds like a jail door slamming shut on your innocence.

Sometimes he'll just pull your leg, but not in a fun kind of jokey way. He literally yanks on your leg.

And when you stand up at the end, you feel.... better.

Or I did. I'm still analyzing it, but apparently I have a twisted/tilted/uneven pelvis that needs to be pushed, pulled and prodded back into place. It's been the issue affecting my walk and potentially is why I have had leg pain for the last several years.

I'm kind of excited about it. Until, you know, I have to lay down again and have my joints pummeled back into the position they should have been in all along.

I think I recommend it. But I'm twisted/tilted/uneven.

Take my word for what it's worth.

I'll be on the porch

It all started when Ali and I fixed the door from our garage to the back porch. It failed to shut properly since we moved in back in 1998 but it was the back porch and we had other other priorities.

The ugliness of the concrete block wall into which the door fit was an annoyance that I lived with, tried temporary fixes and groused about. For years, I had an item on my Christmas list for wall board to cover it up.

Then, earlier this year, on a trip to a local liquor store with Jeff, I saw an entry way paneled with a small mosaic of wooden wine crate panels. "That's it," I said. "That's what we should do with the porch."

In July, I started prepping. Was I putting off my angst over Alison's imminent residency at Purdue by scraping off the hideous brown, square linoleum flooring until I wore a hold in the center of my hand? Yes, of course.

We'd considered the flooring so terrible we didn't care if we spilled paint and glitter and glue from our various art projects when she was so little she didn't know I have no talent with paint or glitter or glue. I had happy flashbacks with every splatter I found as I tore off those squares.

It was another couple of weeks stripping the peeling paint from existing wood and the door, then priming and painting them.

Finally, we were ready to address the wall. I won't bore you with the hours of varnishing, measuring, cutting, re-measuring, re-cutting, sanding, gluing, mixing and matching it took to get us to the finished product. Notoriously impatient, I had Thanksgiving as a deadline for it all to be done.

We went through four tubes of "all weather" Gorilla Glue, two cans of paint stripper and have, of course, leftover primer and paint. I used most of our Goo Gone and probably will need more if we're to keep the floor. Jeff hates my idea of using wine corks as a baseboard, so we have that battle still to come. But miraculously it was a project with little marital discord.

Mostly because I gave Jeff moral support and fetched this and that while he worked out what when where. Our neighbors may tell you there was a fair amount of cursing and muttering. They're probably exaggerating.

More than 130 panels made it onto that wall; some in their original size and some pared down to fit.

The circle is a French oak red wine barrel top we scored on a trip to Casey Brewing and Blending in Glenwood Springs, CO. Seemed fitting that we included it because it blends Jeff's love of craft beer with my wine appreciation. (They age some their beer in wine barrels.) John, our tasting guru was kind enough to sign and date it for us.

Other than the wine barrel lid and my insistence in the spring (long before I saw the wall in that liquor store) that yes, we would find a use for those cool wine crates,  it was Jeff who secured the 170-plus wine panels we had to work with.

Some of the panels came as actual wine crates from local liquor stores. The last-minute donation from John and Chris at Kahn's Fine Wines saved us from the terrible fate of having to use duplicate panels.

Jim at The Wine Shop and the crew at SoBro Spirits contributed crates and panels, as well. Others were sourced by the bargain-hunting, eBay surfer, Captain Reed.

In addition to his procurement skill, Jeff is the master when it came to execution. Mostly because math and I kind of hate each other's guts and it turns out that math skills are key when trying to fit mismatched shapes onto a flat surface.

The Captain and I are at odds over whether to keep the floor as is. I kind of like it. It's old and has character. I can see it on the floor of a wine cellar. We'll get the curtains back up soon and I'll figure out what furniture will go in there. There's no heat or cooling out there, so we won't likely keep wine out there except to serve. There will be a lot of serving...

I'm settling into the idea that Ali doesn't live here anymore. Typing that sentence did make me cry, so maybe I'm not really there yet. It is so weird that she's not here. Sigh. But she's doing so well at Purdue. And she'll be home to visit soon. It's all good. All good.

Man, I might need some wine. Or I'll get started on the floor. Or the furniture. Or a care package for my little Boilermaker. Or actual PR work. Maybe I'll get back to what's going on in Claymont, and you know there's a ton of stuff happening there.

Until winter sets in, I'll be on the porch. Come on by. We'll have some wine.

We said it would be a month

Thirty days. 3.0. A month before we'd see our little Boilermaker.

It's advice gifted me by my friend Chris Austin in the form of "The Naked Roommate: For Parents Only." It's designed to ensure your child goes off to college and forms relationships and routine such that he/she will be more inclined to survive, if not thrive, their freshman college year.

But I forgot about Labor Day and its 3-day weekend.

"Let's go get her," I said to the Captain.

"We can't," he said. "She needs a month. You said so."

I huffed a bit but decided he was right. She made plans to visit a friend in Chicago and arranged for a bus ride to get herself there.

Back in Indy, we had an awesome time with Eric and Tracy at the Indians' game (Tracy's first baseball game, somehow), dinner with them, Jeff & Susan and Jack & Karen on Saturday; then a jaunt on the Red Line's debut day and dinner with Tracy & Eric and Karin & Dale on Sunday.

I checked on Ali -- she had a great time other than having to step around a pile of steaming vomit on a Chicago bus. Her friend Allie, shrugged and said, "You get used to it."

Sometime during the weekend, I lamented the 30-day thing to Jeff, who coughed and hesitated. "Yeah, about that," he said.

I narrowed my eyes.

"Remember that I go to the Purdue/Vanderbilt football game every year with Andy and Bryan?" he said.

I nodded.

"It's next weekend," he said. "We have an extra ticket. For Ali."

I wanted to complain. OK. I complained.

But I did want one of us to get eyes on the girl. Did I want it to be him without me? Nope. But such is life. Plus, I'd asked for a lot of additional work to keep me from being helicopter-y and the universe delivered. So I needed a day to catch up.

They had a great time. She showed up with proper spirit and appetite, hung out with them a while and ditched them to watch the game with some new buddies. 

As for the Indy weekend, here are a few shots. Should have taken more but we were more in the moment than I thought. It was a great weekend.

We are building an awesome wall

It's probably not The Wall that first sprang to your mind. This one is a happy wall. An inviting wall. A wall that says, "Hey, come on in here and stay a while."

That's of course as long as we don't get divorced getting it up.

The Before, though in my defense this was a rare
time we used the porch as a storage shed.

The Captain and I don't have a stellar record of working closely together. Years ago, before we were married, he dropped in on me at work to spend some quality time just hanging out. I was at work. I may have given him the hand.

Later, he came home to find me rebuilding the walkway from the driveway to the house. "Have you done ANY research into how to do that right?" he asked.

Talk about a project delay. The Central Avenue bridge project has nothing on Jeff Reed interrupting my divine inspirations.

No excuse for letting this go so long.

Our project right now is covering up the ugly, painted concrete block wall that serves as the garage wall on one side and the back porch on the other. It's going to -- one day -- be covered in wine crate panels. I did all the grunt work of stripping old paint, repainting and removing some fairly hideous linoleum tiles from the floor, cleaning, prepping, etc... The Captain kept measuring the wall in his head and comparing it to the size of the panels.

I was all set to start gluing the panels we had on hand straight to the wall. He kept muttering about the effect moisture and extreme temperatures have one wood. (The porch isn't heated or air-conditioned.)

I maintained that the wooden ceiling is in pristine shape and, I thought to myself: "Wine crates survive in caves and coolers and out in the vineyard. They must love weather shifts. Plus, imperfections in the wood is what will make the wall extra cool.

He decided we needed furring strips so we could test the glue on painted concrete and we could adhere wood to wood. Sigh.

"Did you wait for that paint to fully dry before you put on a second coat?" he asked me after inspecting the door.

I wisely did not answer. A few weeks later, he said, "You're going to have to do more painting around that door."

As he's was paying way more attention, I waited a loooooong time between those coats.

Then, he said we needed to coat the wine panels with urethane. The guy at Lowe's agreed with him, so he came home with more brushes and rollers and other home improvement paraphernalia.

Him: "Two coats!" "Get the edges and the grooves." "Don't drip on the edges!" "Go slow! It bubbles if you don't and I have to sand that down." "Slow down!"  "Let it dry!"

Me: Sigh.

While he measured and muttered and chastised the wood for not being exactly what he wanted and wondered if the panels had grown or shrank since his last measure, I spent a good hour or so arranging the first section of the wall with the panels that were -- finally! urethaned and properly dried.

I used an old sheet on the garage floor that I'd marked with the dimensions of the wall. (Not my idea; but it was a good one.) Except the sheet was old and stretchy, and my lines didn't match up exactly right. In my defense, you try using a Sharpie to mark a straight, 88-inch-long line on a sheet that you don't discover until later is already not straight. I could have used Donald Trump's expertise at this point.

"Hmmm," said the Captain, later examining my work and mentally judging it against the actual wall. I went to bed. He stayed up and reconfigured.

Over the years, we've learned a few things about working together.

1. I will never have his patience and when it comes to needing to measure stuff, I should just let Captain OCD do it. 
2. He will never like grunt work or cleanup and I should play to my strengths.
3. When he talks to himself, don't engage. He's arguing with the wood or the faucet or the glue. Entering those conversations just delays the project.
4. What I lack in precision and detail, I make up for in energy and flexibility. You've got a better idea? Go for it. I'll be watching TV. And I'll bring you a drink and a snack later.

This explains why today on our full day of wall work, I'm at my laptop and he is buzzing about outside measuring our latest panels, and doing his own version of the jigsaw puzzle of how the panels will fit. He's become more committed to the project of late and when asked, "How's your wife's wall project coming along," His response was, "It's my project now."

Truth be told, I need him on this. I may or may not have glued one panel upside down while I was working solo the other day but caught and corrected it before the glue dried, and, more importantly, before the Captain got home. It was perfectly positioned in its place but for the upside down thing...

Do I need his concern that we not have two French wine panels right next to each other? Nope. But I direct you to Rule No. 1 of The Rules of Working Well with Captain Reed. If we ever finish, it'll be better fitted together than had I done it alone. Will anyone really notice but us? I say no. The Captain disagrees and reminds me that HE will notice.

There's not a lot of uniformity when it comes to wine panels when it comes to width, length or thickness -- a fact I'm counting on to make the wall interesting.

I scored the top of a wine barrel a brewery in Colorado uses to age beer. Seems like a perfect way to merge my wine appreciation and Jeff's craft beer fixation. Plus, it's wicked big, round and will take up a lot of room. Configuring around it will be a chore for Captain OCD and his new/old saw he brought home from Maine.

Some of the panels we got at local stores, but Jeff has been eBaying like a demon. We have had and even still have some of the bottles from the brands, but not most of them.

All in all, it's been a fun project. He's occasionally mentioned the cost of all the panels that he's been ordering. I remind him that my wall will stand for years while his craft beer is literally pissed away, remembered only on his beer app.

Here's where we were yesterday. We're hoping to finish the short wall today. Judging by the conversation going on in the porch right now, I'd say that's ambitious. If you're within earshot, I apologize for the language.

Sea urchin? Of course. I'm cool like that.

I like to think I'm an adventurer. I'm a curious person and I will try just about anything. Climb to the top of the world just to see what I can see? Sure. Jump off a roof? All the time when I was a kid.

Jump in a two-seater airplane with no instrument panel and a rope system for guidance flown by a pilot 20 years past the time he should be driving a car ? Why not? It was for a news story.

So when the owner of a restaurant in Colorado offered us a delicacy that he'd acquired just two hours ago and was super hard to get, of course I said I'd love to try sea urchin.

This is what sea urchins look like in their natural habitat →→→



This is what's inside a sea urchin.
←←←


This is what sea urchin sushi looks like.  →→→→

Ours had only one dollop of the delicacy, and the vessel that held it was much taller and filled with rice. Our restaurant friend described it as "the butter of the sea."

Now, I'm not sure who first decided to:

A. Dive to the ocean seabed to discover and acquire a sea urchin;
B. Think, "Hey, that looks tasty!"
C. Battle the spikes to open a sea urchin; and
D. Taste the innards of a sea urchin and decide, "I gotta get me more of this!"

But it wasn't and would never be me.

I  grew up in the country and know full well where my protein comes from, but I still don't like debris on my dinner plate. My mother-in-law would have disowned me if she knew I think digging out lobster or crab meat is more work than it's worth (not to mention the carcass pile.) Alison disagrees and is up to her elbows in crab legs as often as she can be.

I know it's not sophisticated of me, but in addition to not liking bones on my plate, I never want a fish to be looking up at me. That said, I did have a lovely oyster on the half shell this week. (I put the shell back in the center dish and was grateful when the plate was retrieved.)

My general thought is that when nature gives you barbs or shells to protect your insides, your insides are either pretty damn awesome or they're deadly. And you'll probably live your life just fine not knowing whether that creature would be the best thing you've ever wrapped your tongue around or would leave you with poison bubbling from your burned out mouth.

But back to the sea urchin I didn't have to catch or debarb. The chef was not wrong about the texture. It was like butter. But I doubt your butter tastes like, fish. But with extra fish. Like, lots and lots of fish.

And, it was a two-bite portion.

So yeah. I'm sitting there with the owner of this restaurant who's GIVEN us this treat, which you know has to be super expensive and we know is as fresh as seafood in Colorado can be. I take the first bite.

The chef is standing there, beaming, knowing we're going to love it. I don't know what the Captain's facial reaction was, but Meryl Streep had nothing on me even as my brain was delivering an all-caps banner ad in bold, red capital letters: YOU HAVE TO TAKE ANOTHER BITE OF THIS THING.

I sent a quick message to my stomach to hold on tight to the butter of the sea and quickly shoveled in the remaining morsel, all the while nodding and marveling as I described its scrumptious-ness to our host. I don't think I visibly shuddered.

It was an experience, that's for sure. The rest of the meal was out-of-this world fabulous, by the way. I'd totally go back there. But I'll be dodging the generous chef.

In other Colorado news, we had an amazing trip. I got to see my awesome friend, Kathy Van Buskirk and meet her super fun family. We went to an area of Denver famous for food and murals. (Indy may need to go there and learn how to roll out murals.) Food was great. The company was way better.

We were in Colorado because Jeff had an opportunity to learn some wonky, arcane utility stuff and it came the day after we delivered Ali to college. I went along for the ride, and we tacked on a couple of days that allowed Jeff to visit Casey Brewing & Blending, which creates some of his favorite fruited, sour beer.

We drove from Denver to the brewery and overnighted in nearby Glenwood Springs, home of the Thai restaurant where we encountered the sea urchin. We also had a fabulous breakfast at Sweet Coloradough, which boasts the best donut in Colorado. I feasted on samples and had a breakfast sandwich and a wicked good bloody Mary.  Jeff had donuts and declared them amazing.

The night before, we walked to a hot springs that offers a variety of temperature tubs that overlook the Colorado River. We were there at sunset and walked a super spooky mile back into town in the pitch black dark along the river.

Had we encountered rapists or murderers along our river walk, I had planned to tell them that we were full of sea urchin...

Our view from the hot springs.