Inauspicious Beginning

Yesterday I had hoped to leave on my journey across country by noon. I finally made it out of the driveway of my mom's house at nearly 3:30 a.m. Whew!

After 5-1/2 months of intermittently working on my mom's house, contents, estate, etc., making Phoenix my base, I only had a few things to wrap up, pack for movers and then put whatever I could fit into my car to take on my 2,400-mile trip from Phoenix to Columbia, Maryland. Simple. Sure.

I got to her house early -- 6:30 a.m. -- and figured I'd be out of there by 10:00 a.m. if I was lucky, probably more likely noon. I kept running into papers, pictures, treasures of all kinds that I didn't know were there and had to go through one by one. Plus, I'd accumulated a lot of my own stuff, especially paper (bane of my existence, particularly in the electronic age), over 5-1/2 months! Aaargh!

About 11:00 p.m. I didn't think I could go on, but I kept going. Bleary-eyed and nearly staggering, I finally got everything wrapped up and shut the garage door at 3:21 a.m.

By then, my goal was simply to make it from south of Phoenix, where my mom lived, in Ahwatukee, north through Phoenix so I didn't have to deal with rush-hour traffic in the morning. I traveled -- carefully! -- 50 miles to a Hampton Inn at Anthem. Good choice. New, nice, clean, safe. And, best of all, it had a refrigerator!

After just a few hours of sleep and taking care of some business chores, I'm about to head out again. Hoping to make Albuquerque tonight. On not much sleep and a bit of a sore body from all of the exertion yesterday, my challenge will be to stay awake. Wish me luck! I'll check in here again tomorrow morning.

Sugarland Concert -- How Sweet It Is!

Last Sunday was WPOC's Sunday in the Country at Merriweather Post Pavilion. I have lived less than a mile from there for a little over a year but have not gone there until this all-afternoon concert. Between 1:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m., there were five acts, topping off with Sugarland. Wow.

Sugarland was awesome. The electricity generated by Sugarland was palpable, and few people sat from the moment they came onstage until they left the stage after returning for an encore demanded by the screaming, clapping, whistling fans.

Jennifer Nettles has a fabulous voice and incredible energy. She's generous to her partner Kristian and other fellow musicians. She's beautiful -- I love her tousled hair!! -- she has a light-up-the-room smile, and she's good to her fans. Their song "Stay" moves me every time I hear it, and I love rocking out to some of their up-tempo songs, though I'm not wild about "All I Want to Do-oo-oo-oo-oo" other than in concert, when it's great fun to dance along with.

Rodney Atkins, the second to last (and therefore he had second billing of the five acts), also was impressive. The other acts -- Billy Currington, Jason Michael Carroll and Laura Bryna -- were entertaining, though I absolutely hated Laura's overly big, overly curly hair. Uuuuuuugh-ly!!

Okay, so the music was great for a country music fan. But there was so much more to the day than the music.

I went by myself -- you get better seats that way, in my experience -- and I had a lot of time to people-watch. Most noticeable to me was how big everyone was. The guy next to me lopped over halfway into my chair and I didn't have that kind of room to give, not being a small person myself. His wife was large. The young couple next to them was large. All over the place I saw super hefty people; I was especially concerned to see how many large young people there were. I felt bad for them on all counts: aesthetics, health and peer pressure/judgement. Many baby boomers I saw, especially the older boomers, had trouble fitting into the seats. If we as a nation are going to keep increasing our girth, will we keep squishing ourselves into too-small seats (or stop going), or will the venues accommodate the wider butts with bigger seats?

Merriweather Post Pavilion has great acoustics. The music and voices sounded full-bodied, clear and crisp. That was the upside. It also had only porta-johns. That was definitely the downside. I stopped drinking liquid the minute I found out that there was no indoor plumbing (except for one facility marked for handicapped folks, but two women who tried it bolted out and opted to stand in line for one of the outhouses, having been nearly overcome by the stench). I only had to head to the lined-up porta-potties once in seven hours and was glad for that. Nooooo fun!! I marveled at the people drinking the very large beers because they probably had to go back more than once.

The whole Columbia Town Center, including the entire Merriweather Post Pavilion acreage, is due to be updated and revamped under the master plan being worked on by General Growth, which owns most of Columbia. It's all supposed to be walkable, with plenty of spaces for gathering and sitting -- and presumably will include indoor johns. That will be welcome in all respects -- a lot of us had to walk across uneven ground in really dark conditions back to our cars parked at Columbia Mall. But it was a fun walk with other friendly, chatty concert goers, and we were all still high from the music. In fact, six days later, I still glow when I think of that sweet Sugarland experience.

Dancing with the Un-Stars

On my Boomer Blog, I have a new post that I hope you will read. It's here.

Crime Columbia Style

In my new home town of Columbia, MD, in an effort to get to know the area, I read the free weekly paper the Columbia Flier. (Well, it says it's $1.00 newsstand price, but I've only seen it for free.) I read the ads and pretty much every page.

My favorite part of the paper is the Crime Log. There are usually several car thefts and a few break-ins, but there are some great small-town crimes that are priceless. My favorites of late:

"West Running Brook, 5100 block, between 6:30 a.m. and 3:15 p.m. May 16. Cigarettes, soup and cash stolen from residence after window pane pulled from front door." (Judy's note: SOUP?!)

"Basket Ring Road, 9600 block, 2:47 a.m. May 19. Resident heard knock at bedroom door and later heard front door close. He looked out the window and saw two males run toward Thunder Hill Road."

"Broken Land Parkway, 9800 block, 8:30 p.m. May 9. Female was walking along bike path when male exposed himself. Male then fled."

"Flowerstock Row and Tamar Drive, 1:15 a.m. May 10. Female and two friends were walking when a dark vehicle pulled over and an armed male got out and demanded cash. Walkers told the gunman they had nothing of value. Gunman got back into car and drove off."

Don'tcha love it? May all crimes be only as serious as these.

Convoluted Columbia

Columbia, Maryland, is a planned community patterned, I was told, after the Disney area layout in Florida. I think that's a bad idea.

I have always thought the area around Disney World is unnecessarily spread out, with confusingly winding roads and everything hidden, all in the interest of, what, aesthetics? Whose? I am a practical woman and I like to actually find the businesses I want. How silly of me.

In Columbia, to where I just moved, has all of these little hidden villages, nine of them. They have great names -- Wilde Lake, King's Contrivance, Long Reach, Dorsey's Search -- but just try to find a dry cleaner, a hair salon, a full-service car wash or even a gas station. Strike that last one, actually. Gas at the nearest stations to me in Columbia is at $3.159 and $3.189 per gallon. I buy my gas on my way home in the evening from my office in downtown Baltimore; I paid $3.059 yesterday to fill up. Still a gouge but better than near my house.

One night I made a wrong left turn very near to where I live and ended up in some housing area from which I thought I would never emerge. Seriously, every street wound around to some other street that wound around, but nothing led back out. I got so tangled up that I couldn't figure out how to get back to where I came in. My GPS told me to turn left where there was no road and took me round and round and round. Fortunately, I wasn't alone -- I do have a witness to this -- and at first we were laughing but after a good half hour of this, we got angry and not a little scared. Finally, who knows how, we emerged. Ridiculous!

Meanwhile, I still look for a dry cleaner. Verizon promised to send me phone books but after a month, they have yet to arrive. I tried punching in "Cleaners" to my GPS but good old Garmin has maps that are so out of date that literally half of the time I call up any business it has in its database, it's not there anymore. I've found everything from a whole housing development to a leveled, chained-off lot with the outline of buildings still there. The height of the weeds popping up through the cracked concrete indicates that the businesses have been gone awhile. Yet when I go to the garmin.com Web site and enter all of my access information, I get the message that my software is up to date. Helloooooo! Not exactly.

Despite the challenges, I found two dry cleaners today but don't like either one. I have yet to see a full-service car wash, only those inadequate drive-through jobs where your car dries on its own, usually with spots. No thanks. And my hair is desperately in need of a trim but I haven't spotted a hair salon either. Even a damn convenience store is hidden. Can you imagine hiding a convenience store, which depends on drop-ins for its very existence? The closest (and only that I've seen) 7-Eleven is so hidden that I only found it when my GPS told me where it was. It's so hidden that a woman clerk was murdered there about three weeks ago and nobody saw anything. Of course they didn't -- it's hidden! Very sad.

I live near the (apparently) famous Columbia Town Center, which is another name for a mall. I have yet to go there. It's monstrous, 230 stores. I'll probably tackle it today to at least find a hair salon.

Don't get me wrong. I love where I live. I have fabulous forest views from all of my windows -- though it can be disruptively loud, as the busy road 200 yards from me is the main route for the emergency vehicles as they respond from the fire station up the hill. It's very beautiful here, with vivid, lush green trees everywhere and nice landscaping around homes and businesses and room to comfortably spread out. There are lots of highways and main arteries so getting around is easy. But geez, it shouldn't be this hard to find where to get my hair cut and my clothes cleaned.

Green with Joy

When the leasing agent showed me the apartment I moved into two weeks ago when it was empty, I was drawn to the forest views out of every window. I had that in my place in New Jersey and hated the idea of giving it up. Between the views and the layout (not your usual apartment layout), I knew I had a winner and got my checkbook out on the spot to secure it.

At that time, the trees outside the windows were just big, contorted twigs. There wasn't a leaf on one of them. But I knew that soon there would be.

When I moved in on April 16, there still were zero leaves. It was still quite pretty in an artistic kind of way and I knew to be patient.

Well, about three days ago, the first leaves popped out. Now I have a stunning mixture of green shimmering leaves and brown-grey asymmetrical tree trunks and twisty branches in my view. It's even more awesome than I anticipated.

The tree nearest my balcony has no leaves yet, and I wonder if it's a late bloomer or dead. There are remnants of two abandoned bird's nests in that tree. I'm such a tree dummy that I have no idea what kind of tree it is or what kind of birds would nest there. I hope the tree is alive and does end up majestically green but even if it doesn't there are plenty of luscious trees behind it to fill in the panorama. (When I find my digital camera, I'll take a picture and post it here....Okay, found it later when all of the leaves are out, and the pic is full-tilt boogie for the leaves.)

Who knew that leaves could inspire such joy? After a tough week last week, it feels good to be joyful again. Thank you, Mother Nature. Your timing is excellent!

Keyless in Columbia

My NASCAR key ring sits empty on the table next to my car keys for the first time in my adult life that I can remember. It's the strangest sensation....

I'm moving from Woodbridge, N.J., to Columbia, Maryland -- today. I moved out of my 2,400-sq.-ft., 3-story duplex in Woodbridge yesterday and turned in my keys. (I've been temperamentaly better suited to be a renter than a buyer for years. I like the idea of being able to change my life in short order, which is what I have done this time.) My furniture and "stuff" spent the night in a locked moving van in Jersey City, N.J., and the four guys from White Glove Moving Co. who loaded everything are on their way to Columbia as I write this at 6:00 a.m. from the comfort of a Marriott Courtyard in Columbia. I take possession of my new apartment in three hours.

So I will have been homeless for 17-1/2 hours by the time my new keys are on my ring. I spent nearly four of those hours driving from Woodbridge to Columbia in a merciless driving rain that actually slowed people down on the New Jersey Turnpike. Officially the speed limit was lowered to 45 mph along the whole 100-mile NJ Turnpike stretch of the drive, and people actually "only" drove about 60 in the normally 65-mph zone where traffic usually zips along at about 80.

The drive wasn't much fun. We -- my friend Michele from Seattle who's (thankfully) helping me move and I -- only saw one accident on the way down and it wasn't serious, but the rain was relentless and intense and the wind whipped at the car in bumpy gusts. It took us longer than usual because of the weather and we were both eager to get to the hotel to eat dinner and settle in for a long nighttime nap after our long day of moving. But our accommodations were (and are) comfortable (I love Marriotts) and a good meal at Red Robin ended the day on a happy note.

My move is occurring, unfortunately, on the two days of a nasty record-breaking Nor'easter. They talked about it on TV for days before it hit. Yesterday was the driving, pelting, soaking-everything rain, nearly 8 inches worth. (I thought I saw animals lining up two-by-two.) I hated the idea that my furniture and zillions of boxes and accessories would get wet and damaged in the few feet between my garage and the moving van. We'll see how it all ends up. Today, though, is the wind, and I mean major-league wind. On the news this morning they are saying it's gusting to the equivalent of a Category 2 hurricane. Gusts are up to 60 mph, averaging around 45 mph. The trees outside our 4th-floor hotel room window are swaying back and forth like animated dancing figures in a Disney musical. I hope the guys in "my" moving van are faring well on the drive down. Scary, this wind is scary.

So the few hours of being homeless for me are about as cushy and comfortable as they can be. I am grateful for my life and my blessings. Every day I am but this morning I am especially so. If the biggest thing I'm worried about in my homeless hours is a fierce storm (and how I'm going to fit everything into half the space I had in New Jersey), I'm in great shape.

Michele just asked me, "Doesn't it feel good to wake up not in New Jersey?" I laughed. More than that, it feels better to wake up in my new home town and tomorrow I'll wake up in my own bed in my new home in my new home town. The rain and wind will be gone and it will be warmer, in the 50s. And my NASCAR key chain will be full again.