BYE!

I've decided to leave, just pack up and go. The dogs and I will be out of here first thing in the morning. There's no peace here, none at all, no comfort, nothing soothing, the colors are all wrong. Still and all, I did it. I came to an unknown place and found my way and lived my life. I saw new things, looked at other mountains, walked on different streets and, in that sense, I did what I came to do and my trip was a success.

The dogs see me packing, carrying things back and forth to the car, and they're jumping around, excited. They know we're going home!

God bless our home.

Selah.

FLYING AWAY

I've been to Safeway more times than I want, Walmart too, just for something to do. I've been to the movies twice. Yes, there's a movie theater here, a duplex with turquoise carpeting on the walls, the only theater between Tucson and the border. I've eaten at the Arizona Family Restaurant, place of meetings in its private room, the Twist & Shout 50's Diner and I've bought a scale which shows I've lost 7 pounds.

I cannot wait to leave.

I've been listening to Jars of Clay's bluegrass "I'll Fly Away" - listening over and over again. I want to take up guitar again just so I can play this song. What a blessing of a song! How old it is! and I've never heard it before. I want to fly away.

TUBAC PRESIDIO

I've learned several things on my Summer Vacation. The first is to never again rent a house sight unseen. The second is that a Presidio is a fort.

The Tubac Presidio is one exit north of the mission at Tumacacori and the two were somehow connected, the cavalrymen stationed at the outpost protecting the mission against various Indian revolts and raids. The Tubac Presidio is now a state historic park which contains a dozen stops on a self-guided walking tour.

The day I went, I was the only visitor which I found a little spooky. There's a visitor's center and the man who admitted me admonished me to enjoy myself and take my time. I was already wondering why I had come and told him I'd be gone before he knew it. He truly looked sad.

Basically I went only to the museum, a large group of rooms with many exhibits. The museum was in total darkness inside. As I walked, the lights turned on above the exhibit where I stood - shutting off as I moved on. I could see that if there were many people in the museum the lights would all be on but, since there was only me, every turn I took began and ended in darkness. I started to wonder who or what lurked around the bend. Could I even find my way out?

I couldn't wait to leave.

I skipped the church and schoolhouse, the underground re-created ruin (what if I got trapped?), the captain's house, went again through the visitor's center and found my way out.

A note: Entering and leaving the Presidio, one drives through La Paloma De Tubac, a series of touristy shops on both sides of a dirt road housing what's advertised as "a collection of 10,000 items of folk art". Perhaps it's fun to look in the stores but, the day I went, all the shops but one were closed.

DIGRESSION

While I'm away I have someone checking up on my house, making sure the toilets flush and the air conditioning cools and such. Also she forwards my mail. Today I receive a letter from a community college I never heard of telling me I owe them money. I call the phone number on the letter head and I'm transferred to campus security. I am being charged $55 for a parking violation: a silver Infinity with California plates and student decal was parked in a faculty lot. The car is assumed to be mine and until the fine is paid I'm not allowed to register for courses. Thing is, I don't own a silver Infinity much less with California plates.

I asked the woman I'm speaking to how she got my name. Well, she said, she called California DMV and the Infinity was registered to someone with a similar name to mine. So she searched "the system". The system, meaning all the community colleges, threw out that I had once taken a non-credit T'ai Chi course at one of the branches. The woman at campus security added everything up and the car I don't own parked at the school I never heard of pointed to me. But, she said, I don't have to pay.

AGAVE

On the side property of the rented house there are two agaves, each taller than the highest surrounding trees. In the dusty 50 mile an hour winds last night, one fell over flat on its face landing in the wide and sandy public area between this house and the next. The poor thing made only a small thump when it landed, exposing its shallow roots.

This early morning, when the dogs were doing their business in the back, a man and woman called out, "Hello? Hello?" I didn't answer. It was very early. One of them tried again, "Hello?" I said hello.

"How did this happen?" The woman pointed to the tree.
"I don't know".
"You don't know?"
"No."
"Well, when did it happen?"
"I don't know. I guess last night some time. I wasn't watching".
"You weren't watching?"
"No."
"Well," the man said, "at least now no one will drive through the sand." And the man and the woman moved on.

BORED DOGS

This is what I found: 10 or so empty cellophane wrappers from Starlight Mints scattered over the house. Mischief by Peppy Mint, perhaps searching for his namesake. He came up to me with a look of innocence and scraps of hard candy under his chin and in his hair. Later in the day he came up to me just as I was about to sit down to dinner, and puked it all up.

SAHUARITA

If you take Duval Mine Road and make a right and go over Highway 19 and pass by WalMart and then The Dollar Store and the tire place and the Twist and Shout Diner and then you take the first left, you will come to a shopping center with a Frys and a Sorrentino's Coffee and a Subway, a cleaner, dentist, Mexican restaurant, Italian restaurant, a Long Real Estate, and then you go under a Spanish-style arch and now you are in Rancho Sahuarita. This is a huge big Master Planned Community in the Town of Sahuarita which started being built in 2001 and still is not quite finished. The catch words for Rancho Sahuarita are "amenities" and "community" and it looks to be a fun, family-oriented place.

There are many builders in Rancho Sahuarita, all building brown-roofed homes in communities off the main road which runs through the development about 10 miles from one Mine Road exit to the next. There are 19 miles of paved trails in Rancho Sahuarita for your walking pleasure, as well as a bark park, playgrounds, miniature golf course, sports bar, lap pool, water park, splash pond, water slide, fitness center, kiddy train, playgrounds, and community pools.

It is quite the place.

A central attraction is a 10-acre man-made lake and with an urban fishing license you can catch and release catfish and rainbow trout. There is a park and a picnic area around the lake and also a walking trail. Since this is a public place, I parked in a lot and walked around the lake. It was hot but pleasant.

I also went to see several brown-roofed model homes. All the houses I saw were attractive and livable and not crazy with glam. In one of the model homes, the real estate agent asked where I was from. When I told her, she knew exactly where. Before she moved to Sahuarita, she had been nearly a neighbor.

NEIGHBOR

My temporary next door neighbor is also the cleaning lady for this house. She is 80. Over and over she's told me she cleans with Clorox, only thing that gets rid of the germs. There are plastic bottles of Clorox in the bathroom cabinets, above the washing machine, and under the kitchen sink in this house. She cleans with Clorox. Also cleans with a new mop head every time a renter leaves. The headless mop resides in the 2nd bedroom along with a vacuum cleaner which is not hers. My temporary neighbors brings over her own vacuum cleaner to clean the house after a renter leaves and then changes the bag so she doesn't bring the renter's germs back to her house.

Yesterday, my neighbor phoned me at 7 AM to remind me to put out my garbage pail. At 7:30 she called to tell me to straighten it out, the wind knocked it over.

Today I looked out the kitchen window at 6 in the morning and she was on the patio, watering the cactus and lantana. A few minutes later she was standing in the side yard, hose in hand, shooting jets at mesquites and agaves. She is perched on a hill, a woman who wears a First Alert device around her neck "for when", she tells me, "not if" she falls.

I ask why she does this and she says she wants the neighborhood to look nice.

And so, who is my neighbor?

TUMACACORI

Father Kino, the Jesuit priest, came to Tumacacori in 1691 bringing with him fruit trees, winter wheat, cows and goats. The Pima Indians welcomed him. Before his arrival they had built for him three little buildings, one in which to say mass, one for a kitchen, one in which to sleep. The gifts of meat, flour and fruit meant that the Pimas could now feed themselves.

Mission San Jose de Tumacacori was founded on the east bank of the Santa Cruz River. Today, it's 19 miles north of the border town of Nogales and run by the National Park Service. Parts of some buildings stand, including some of the church.

I took a guided tour of the church which is built of adobe brick and I found it a place to look at, rather than a house a worship. I didn't feel a spiritual jolt either Christian or Indian, and the ground beneath my feet felt more governmental than holy. None-the-less.

What I loved best were the hollyhocks blooming tall in a garden behind the visitor center, the surrounding guava, persimmon and fig trees full and flowering and bearing fruit. This around a plaza tiled and centered with a fountain. Graceful influence of Spain.

MODEL HOMES

Today's adventure took me across the highway to check out a huge community of upscale homes for people "better than" 55. I wandered through the models stunned by the grandeur of stainless steel appliances and granite countertops displayed bravely in this faltering economy. The home prices were high, the salesman delighted with their amenities and size, the living rooms large and lavish and set up for entertaining. But entertaining whom? The married children? It was hot outside, well over 100, and looking at the houses was depressing. There was a sense of great lonliness about them, empty and large as they were, situated with nothing around but a golf course and club house. I thanked the salesman for his hospitable bottle of cold water and said the houses were not for me.

A/C

The temperature outside is 105 and the inside thermostat is registering 80 degrees. When I spoke with the owner's parents I told them that the a/c is not cooling properly and they said that could not be so! The a/c had to be cooling properly because the unit had recently been checked! Whatever. The a/c guy came and went up on the roof - it's an old house with the unit up there on the roof - and added freon. The house is cooling down although the system lets out a big THUMP now when it turns on.

What a vacation! I don't feel like me! I feel stuffed with sawdust, a stuffed person.

DIVERSION

A woman I've not recently seen comes up to me in the supermarket one of my first days home. She gives me a hug. "I hear you've been away," she says.
I answer, "Yes".
"Have a good time?" she asks.
"Not really," I say.
"Wonderful!" she replies, and walks away.

COPPER MINE

This was my day to take a tour of a working copper mine. As you go toward Green Valley there are the lovely Santa Rita Mountains on one side of the road and, on the other, miles of fort-like piles of whitish gray treeless dirt flattened at the top. This is the used-up dug-up left-over part of a mine, called - I now know - 'the tailings', and knowing its name does not make it more attractive. In future days and years these tailings will be planted with trees and eventually become a bird sanctuary. But for now it is not.

To take the copper mine tour you go to Pima Mine Road, advertised as "only a 20 minute drive south of downtown Tucson". There is a big tower sticking up out of the desert saying "mine tours" and you follow the road in. There is a visitor center with a film about uses of copper and some copper displays and, of course, souvenirs.

I paid the senior rate and got on a dusty little bus with several other people. The drive to the area being mined is 6 miles long. The bus goes up and down hills, the whole time being within the walls of tailings. You cannot see the outside world and nor can it see you. This mine world is the entire world.

At the end of the 6 miles I stood outside the bus and looked down down all the way down at the mine and its huge and heavy equipment. There were heaps and piles of grey and tan and white sandy and dusty and gravelly material all around.

I felt myself to be within a Julia Spencer-Fleming mystery, having to find my way back down 6 miles to the main road with dirt caving in around me. I had only 1/2 bottle of water with me and it was already warm! Help!

I enjoyed the tour and learned new words like "slurry". This sounds like a strawberry milkshake but is not.

But the highlight of the tour - I got to see wild horses, 3 beautiful dark brown little horses grazing in the desert wilds.

The neighbor who minds the house called and asked if I like the house. I said no, it is a shit box. Those weren't quite the words but that was the jist. She asked what was wrong and I launched into a whirlwind of complaints - the gross smelling furniture, weak A/C, uncollected garbage, dirty area rugs, patio furniture with the wheels falling off.

A minute later the neighbor was in the house on my cell phone. She called the owner's parents. They were all on their way to an Alaskan cruise. Dare I ask - with my rent money?

There ensued a flurry of phone conversations back and forth. Me with the owner's parents, the parents with the owner, the neighbor with the parents, the parents with the neighbor, the parents with me.

A decision was made to call in Stanley Steemer.

The neighbor made the call. The neighbor called the owner's parents. Stanley Steemer would not come without a check up front. The parents called the owner. The check was put in the mail. The parents called the neighbor, the neighbor called Stanley Steemer who will come after they receive the check.

So the furniture continues to reek.

DUNCE!

10:30 in the morning. I've walked and swam and walked the dogs and fiddled around on the iPad looking up this and that. I was going to write a bit, a cup of coffee at my side. I put the coffee in the filter, the water in the tank and turned the appliance on. Came back a few minutes later to see coffee spilling over the countertop, down the cabinets, and puddling on the floor. Forgot to insert the coffee pot. Ye gads!

MISSION SAN XAVIER

I went to the Mission San Xavier del Bac today. It would have been Arnie's birthday and it seemed a good way to observe it. I bought a candle with a picture of the mission on it and placed it under one of the statues of Mary, the Annunciation. I thought of the candle and the statue as Arnie's mother announcing his birth. Who knows. It was a comfort in its way.

The mission is hundreds of years old, some of it from the mid-1700s. I thought of the priests in their heavy black robes and wondered if they suffered in the heat.

The Mission, on Tohono O'odham land, is white white and reaches to the sky. So thick with heavy wood pews and doors and statues and angels and gildings and paintings, dark paintings of The Last Supper and Pentacost, rosy cherubs, statues painted and gilded and looking up or straight ahead, arms open, head bowed, and Jesus small on a cross. Sitting in a carved wooden pew, I felt the air heavy with spirits. Such a holy place. And on the Table of the Lord, a white tablecloth designed with The Nation's own holy image of man, The Man in the Maze.

It's 2 o'clock on a Monday and these are today's accomplishments:

I found the post office.
I figured out how to use the DVD player.
I correctly placed the green garbage pail outside so the garbage could be picked up.

Some of my neighbors have only garbage enough to fill one small plastic supermarket bag. ("Plastic okay for you?")What do these neighbors eat? Do they finish everything? Where do they put their trash?

There is a large angry bee circling around the front door. This is no 'birds and bees' bee. This is a Cujo of a bee. Will his fury hold me hostage indoors?

Something to worry about:
This could be a Killer Bee

Today is today. I'm sitting in the shade on the front patio. There's a dry wind blowing and there's smoke from the Murphy Wildfire in the air. I walked about 2 1/2 miles, did some Elliptical at the fitness center, washed the hairless dogs (who not only stank but had paws full of desert sand), cleaned up the bathroom, washed their towels...

And so...

I've now been to the Titan Missile Museum which is about a mile from where I'm renting and is the premier attraction in this immediate area. The Titan Missiles were the cat's meow during the cold war and this particular missile facility was out in the middle of nowhere in the Arizona desert.

When visiting the museum, there's a tour that lasts about an hour. I was one of two females on the tour and, by far, the oldest person there. It was hot and smokey outdoors in the desert and I had no idea what the tour guide was saying.

My thoughts were centered on:
(1) Getting out of the sun
(2) Acquiring the tee-shirt in the gift shop that said "I am the center of the universe." (I never did buy the tee and, home now, I do have some regrets about letting it go.)

Eventually the group went down below ground - into air-conditioning! - and saw the actual missile and the area where the crew worked. It was interesting enough, this back in the day stuff, and then finally the tour guide stopped talking and it was time to go.

Something is making my dog Rosey-Petunia sick, like with the mushy poops. All 3 dogs reek. They smell disgusting, like a combination of mildew and chemicals. I smelled the upholstered chairs and gagged. The dogs smell of the chairs. They've absorbed the terribleness of this odor into their skin.

I had to push Peppy off the bed because he smelled so bad. He gave me a sorrowful look. In the morning I found pee on the floor along with a pile of stinky poop.

Things could be better.

DAY ONE

There is pretty much nothing to do in Green Valley. The big deal is Walmart. Day 1 I found my way there and it is big and full of people, everyone spending and looking pleased and happy. Children cavort next to their parent's cart. Walmart!
"What do you want to do today, dear?"
"Let's go to Walmart!"
"Oh, yay!"

After I returned to the house (and, believe me, I will not say 'home'), I went swimming in the neighborhood pool. It is a large nice pool and I was the only one in it although there were several dead bees. I also found my way to the community center which gave me a pass to the various recreational centers in the town. I was told that in the winter these places support various clubs and activities but now there was little happening.

I'm here now. Here in Green Valley. And honestly I don't know what to say. I was so excited getting on the road. Going someplace! From my house I can see Interstate 10 in the distance, the sun glinting off the metal of cars, trucks, everyone going moving going and now it was me.

From where I live in Phoenix to where I'm renting in Green Valley is two hours. An hour and a half on I-10, 75, 80 miles an hour passing on the left, traveling on the right, and the other half hour on I-19, veering off toward Mexico, with roads marked in kilometers, Indian Reservations, mountains all around.

And then there are some turns and there is Green Valley. And there is my rental house. My fears answered. Complete with funky smell and trouble with the WiFi and calls to Cox to get on-line and also the TV wasn't working and the dogs were anxious and jumping around and my mouth was dry from talking talking to Cox to get on-line and there was the need to go to Safeway and bring in some food.

How To Open A Bottle Of FISH OIL:

Cover palm of left hand with several paper napkins. Place around bottle. Mold a sheet of paper towel in right hand palm, lift hand, and quickly open cap. Remove paper goods and immediately scrub hands with odor neutralizing soap. Rinse well. Douse with lemon juice.

Note: hands will continue to smell.

I'm several days closer to leaving for My Summer Vacation and...
1. I still don't have the WiFi name or password for the house
2. My hands still smell of fish oil.

Since the school year is now officially over I've wrapped up the list of books I've read for the year. My list goes May to May. I've read 45 books. Not bad. I didn't write any of them but I was quoted in one. *

*Tasting the Universe by Maureen Seaburg.

Truth be told (a good idea usually), my 'I' was written as it happened and is transcribed in retrospect. I am back home now, thank God.

Selah

A Moment Engraved In The Mind:

A man and his wife enter the gate leading to the community pool. I am in the water swimming laps. The man wears a long terry robe, white tee shirt, long shorts, water shoes, and broad brimmed straw hat. The woman is dressed in bathing suit, long robe, hat and shoes. The couple is very old and the smell of their zinc sunscreen proceeds them. The man carries a tape player. He walks to the edge of the pool, places it down and covers it with a face towel. He takes off his terry robe, turns on the tape player - ups the volume - and there he is, back in the day, with Glen Miller.

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

How arrogant calling a journal 'I'! Yet that's what it will be. Of course, I could fudge it and title it 'aye' or 'eye'. But I won't. These thoughts are I. Intra and inter me.

And so...
A week from tomorrow I leave for Green Valley. This is a 2-month stay away from the summer broil of Phoenix. Am I nervous? Yes. It's a big deal for me to get in the car with the 3 dogs and drive to a new place without knowing any thing or any one. It's supposed to take 2 1/2 hours to get there although if I creep along it may take four. The directions are to go down 10 and then 19 and then a few turns and you're there. Well, I'm there. Unless you've decided to come along.

Some things I'm nervous about:

The house I'm renting may be creepy inside
I won't have WiFi and I'll be separated from communicating with the world, including my 30 friends on Facebook.
The dogs will poop or pee in the house.
The fire alarm will go off.
I'll get lost trying to find the supermarket or, if I find it, I'll get lost finding my way back to the house. I have the worst sense of direction and I certainly don't know north from south or east from west down there in Green Valley since where I come from east lands you in the Atlantic Ocean and not Nogales, Mexico.