Prepping for the Road

It feels surreal to be spending energy on anything seemingly pointless compared to the news these days, but here I am, blogging. I will do my darnedest to make this interesting, even when I can’t feign cheerfulness.

We have a week and a half left before we hit the road, and the pressure is on to get as much done as we can while we still have full hookups, a mailing address, an easily accessible laundry room, yadda yadda. And there is a lot to do.

Lucky for us, winter is finished in Brownsville, and we have stellar weather—just in time for us to be working! Seriously, we haven’t been to the beach together a single day here, and, according to our schedule and current high tides and next week’s wind, it might not happen. Friends say, “You have the freedom to go anywhere and do anything!” when we haven’t managed to spend one day at the beach (that’s 20 minutes away) in three months. Freedom ain’t just another word for nothing left to lose, that much I know.

Stealing Time Outside

We are spending time outside whenever we can, sitting with our laptops behind the trailer (out of the wind) during the day and sitting in the tent at night. We even pulled out the beloved Firefly board game that works well only on the big table in the tent. Oddly, I won, thanks in part to Tracy getting caught by the Alliance cruiser over and over, losing all his contraband during inspections checks and then getting on the wrong side of Niska, for whom his crew was trying to complete a job. You never want to be on the wrong side of Niska. Reminds me of someone else.

Repairs and Reorganizing

Good weather has meant Tracy’s been able to tackle major repair work and spread parts and tools outside, like our kitchen sink here, upside down on top of the picnic table. He’s also worked on the toilet, the trailer door, and the hitch. I don’t think he’s accomplished all he wanted to, but he’s also not at that stage he was earlier when he wanted to shove the whole trailer off a cliff, so that’s progress.

Prepping the Knee for Hiking

I’ve been working absurdly hard at rebuilding strength in my surgical knee leg, as evidenced here by my daily view of Banjo from my yoga mat. Adan the physical therapist tells me that after a big injury and/or surgery, the baseline for your strength level in that limb drops, and you have to work extra hard to bring that baseline up to normal. When you injure yourself again (like me falling down in June) that baseline drops yet again. Apparently, the brain flips the same breakers to your muscles that it flipped before. Danger, danger, Shelly’s muscles! Turn off for the long haul!

So, I’ve been seeing him three times a week and working that leg every day in between, and, I’m very proud to say, finally walking without a limp and, for the first time in 14 months, without a cast, brace, sleeve, or even therapeutic tape on that knee. It still doesn’t feel normal (Adan said it might never; he had ACL reconstruction 10 years ago and still has to ice sometimes) but, like Tracy and the trailer, I no longer want to push it off a cliff.

Report from the Fun Department

We went back to the brewery and tried to have fun, but, out of three pool cues at the pool table, exactly zero had tips on them. Oh so Brownsville.

We went to lunch at the one fancy restaurant and sat out by the resaca. What’s weird about this place is that each entree is from a different part of the world, which seems to me a bad sign. Pick your specialty, Chef. Pictured is my shrimp wrapped and fried in thin rice sticks over jicama and cucumber slaw. Not pictured: my ecstasy over the spicy mescal behind it. I could go to that place every afternoon and sit there with the ducks, asking the waiter to go to the bartender over, and just watch the other customers, the only people who drive luxury cars in a town where the average household income is about $25,000. That restaurant is a weird place. With a great bartender.

A win for the fun department was this evening when I invited three couples to hang out. You (and I mean me) hate to stereotype people, but in a park full of political conservatives and in a time of divisiveness, your best bet is to ask over all the lesbians you know. I’d have asked others in the LGBTQ+ crowd , but there are none here. Seriously, in a park of about 300 people, I felt good inviting all of six people over. But, I did it! And we had a fun time. Safe travels, Sandy, Vicki, Sara, and Cathy! Mandy and Sydney, hope to see you around the park before we go.

Our short-term plans are back to Houston so we can get the trailer brakes worked on. That will involve a bit of trickery; stay tuned.