This Post Brought To You By The OC's Wild Hair.....

Weekends around here are pretty humdrum......usually.

Last weekend was different.

The OC had to go to California for a meeting, and got an unaccustomed wild hair and asked if I'd like to go with........

"Yes! Yes," emphatically, before he had a chance to change his mind!

We had our coffee here at home on Wednesday morning. In the afternoon we snacked on a pretzel in Las Vegas, and had dinner that evening with the company high mucky-mucks in the mountains outside Sacramento. Next morning, while he went off to his meeting, I snoozed and had a luxurious read, and when he returned we set off driving north, to Redwood Country and the Rebel Rose.

When my children were little, I could not have begun to imagine not seeing them for a month, let alone a year, or longer. My mind could not wrap itself around that concept and never thought it would have to. But time sped onwards, I blinked, and youngest daughter, our Rebel Rose, is living on the opposite coast, and between horses and dogs and the convolutions of daily life, work, and animal husbandry, she cannot break away to come to our side of the country. So here we are coming to her side of it, and looking in wonder at the gorgeous creature who wraps her arms around us in the hotel parking lot. Some fast blinking is needed to avoid a spillover.

She has dressed up, since we're headed out to dinner. No jeans, no chaps, no cowboy boots, but instead a very pretty sundress. When did I last see her in a dress? And heels?? Was it her big sister's wedding? No, surely more recently than that! Was she always so slender? And so tall? Maybe she looks taller because there's less meat on her bones! Only the best hay and oats for the horses, and the finest kibble for the dogs, but what about her? Does she eat enough? I suspect she does not. Her features are leaner, so that the similarities to her siblings are more pronounced than before. The girl looks like she could use a little fattening up. We only have three days. We'd better get started!

We've lived in California before, but not where she lives. Her California is like the alps with sunstroke. Beautiful mountains,




hair raising switchbacks, stunning vistas of sweeping valleys,





golden mountain meadows,




dark spreading oak trees,




lazy eagles drifting on invisible currents




--- no wonder she stubbornly stays, though it's not the easiest place to make a living.

It's a place to make you believe in God.


More tomorrow. I promised Rise!