Last night we left our kitties with Aunt Marg and this morning we got up early and headed south in our car.  We have to get our stuff out of storage in Oregon and take it up to Lynden.

On our way down we stopped in Auburn, WA to visit my first published author, Delores Warner.  We have carried on a long distance friendship ever since I edited her book, but we wanted to meet in person.  I knew right away that I was at her house because she had a peacock statuette near her front door.  When we rang her doorbell she opened her door and gave me a big hug.  She has a lovely home, and she’s so gracious.  She made coffee for Mark and hot chocolate for me.  Then she and her son, Derek, whom I feel I know even though I’ve never communicated with him before, sat down at table with us and we visited for about an hour.  One thing I learned from them was the power of vitamin E to heal skin wounds.  Derek showed us his back, which should have been a mass of scars after a bad accident he was in, but there were only a few small scars left.  It was very convincing!

The thing that inspired me the most about our visit with Delores was our conversation about her book, Don’t Buy Too Many Green Bananas.  It’s been a little over a year since she put it on Amazon.  At first when I asked her if she anticipated being able to recoup her costs, she didn’t think so.  However, her sister-in-law helped her digitize her book so that it could be sold that way as well, and her sales have soared.  I asked her today if she thinks she might be able to recoup her costs, and Derek said he thinks she’ll be even in another two or three years.  Beyond that it’s all profit.  I am so proud of her!

We arrived at my mother’s home around 3:00 in the afternoon.  She informed us she had cooked up a storm in preparation for our visit.  That was a matter we had to work out.  I was scheduled to go “bouldering” with my son at 5:00, so we ended up having dinner around 4:15.  My son doesn’t normally eat before he goes bouldering, but I think it was a good thing that I had eaten because even at that I was a little shaky by the time I was through.

So when my son was describing bouldering to me months ago, I had an image in my head of big boulders laying all over the floor that you could climb over.  My image turned out to be wrong.  I have seen rock climbing gyms before.  It’s something like that but with some major differences.  At a rock gym, you are scaling a straight up and down surface and you wear a harness with someone at the other end of the rope in case you fall.  Bouldering isn’t like that.  There are some straight up and down surfaces, but there are also some concaves that are much more challenging.  In bouldering, people at various expertise levels might climb the same wall, but they are guided at different levels by different colors of tape on the various hand holds and foot holds.  I spent the evening working at the beginner level.  I would start following the trail of hand holds and aim for the top of the wall.  The first wall I scaled had a convenient set of stairs I could climb down after I reached the top.  None of the rest did.  Once I climbed to the top I had to climb back down again.  Sometimes I would jump before I reached the bottom.  Once I misjudged how far it was to the ground and I twisted my ankle when I landed.  After a few minutes of massaging it I was good to go again.  The floors are thickly padded so that if you do fall, you won’t break anything.  Jamey is, of course, at a higher level of ability than I am because he’s been at it longer, but I was proud of my stamina.  I was able to make it through about an hour of climbing walls which required me to pull myself up by my arms and legs.  The old girl can still keep up with her son!  We got pictures on Jamey’s phone, but I’ll have to post them at a later time because he hasn’t sent them to me yet.

After bouldering with Jamey, he and Sarah and Mark and I went to a restaurant.  As I say, Jamey doesn’t eat before he goes bouldering, so he and Sarah needed dinner.  Mark and I had some dessert with them.  It was good to get another chance to visit with them.  I’m hoping they’ll be able to come up to Tok to visit us this summer.

Tomorrow, Mark and I are going to be busy moving out of our storage unit in Oregon City, so I have asked my most recent published author to write a guest blog for me.  Be watching for a blog from John Greaves III.

One last note before I end…Today was the memorial service for the mother of my friend, Wendy.  Wendy, I want you to know that you were in my thoughts and prayers today.  I hope you gained comfort and support from the folks who attended.