2012 A not so Empty nest and the World did not End

Dixie and Greg Goode

Christmas Card 2012

Merry Christmas 2012 and Happy 2013 to All of us.

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And since it is Christmas, I am assuming we all outlived the Mayan Calendar

This was a year of change for us, but we are finding ourselves at the end of it with a lot to be thankful for.  Emerson Graduated from Del Norte High School in June, and while he sent out a ton of thank you cards, let me say “Thanks” again.  We had an incredible outpouring of love and support that gave him a good start on this year at college.  Then he had worked hard and gotten good grades and managed to get scholarships enough to allow him to start Fall at University of California at Santa Cruz, as a UCSC Banana slug.

His girlfriend graduated high school with him and is also going to Santa Cruz, so Emerson and Lula are doing amazingly rapid growing up and changing every day and yet, staying steady and wonderful through it all too.  She is wanting to be a math teacher and he is interested in math and in designing computer games. They both go to class and work in the dining hall and the campus is a lovely redwood and deer filled meadow parkland on the hills overlooking the Pacific and the Santa Cruz beach boardwalk.

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 Austin was working at Ray's Market as a cashier and on the dock's helping take care of the Crab boats loading and unloading Crab and shrimp, but now he has started going out to sea with the crab and tuna trips of the Barbara Marie.  No, I don't watch "Deadliest Catch."

He has introduced us to a couple wonderful people who have become a part of out family since July.  Raelene is Austin's age, and has been his girlfriend for 6 months but we love her for herself too and she’s around even when he is at sea. She is the Mom of an 18 month old girl named Angel, and the two of them moved here from Arizona to live with her sister.

  Angel is a lot of fun to have when she visits and very different for Greg and I after only having boys around.  Raelene just started working and then her daycare lady had a heart attack, so Greg and I got to babysit some while a new place was located. 

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Greg says this is the best year he has had in a long time. He loves the classes that he is working with this year. Most years he has some he loves and some that test him and try his patience, but this year he keeps being amazed that they are all fun.  He is in that busy time of year, preparing for concerts at school, and in the community Choir he sings with. He just turned 50! He is also setting up a spring Train trip to San Francisco from Klamath Falls and being really intensely into a computer game so that I have to get between him and the computer before I have his attention.

 I published my third book this year. A different kind for me, in that it required a lot of research. Double Time On The Oregon Trail, is about two girls, both traveling the trail, but one in 1850 and one in 2002.  This one is fun because the 5th grades teach the Oregon Trail here, and one of the teachers ordered a class set, (36 books) to teach - and a book reviewer in India read it and raved about how everyone should read it even though she had known nothing about the history before.

This is Emerson’s View from his Dorm. UC Santa Cruz is a long way from us, and every trip there ends up being about 1,000 miles driving, so we are thankful for things like cell phones and facebook.

 Austin's Blind, loving dog, Ford (Pronounced "ferd") stays

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with us while Austin is out at sea.

Austin has been in the boat or down in the harbor at Bodega Bay quite a bit this Fall.  He was amazed at how many different kinds of dolphins he saw, and at the whale swimming under them that was bigger than the boat.  He was way out at sea where the albatross fly and fishing for tuna but crab season has not started yet. Raelene and Angel and Greg and I played with Ford and went to eat and took Angel to the park and I realized how much harder it is chasing a toddler than it was just 17 years ago.

So, the empty nest hasn’t happened, but it isn’t filled with quite the same birds either. Speaking of birds we do still have a couple of parrots, the Amazon and the green wing Macaw, and a cat, but the greyhounds died and Ford is just an off and on replacement.

the changes have kept us on our toes and feeling pretty good about what life is like this year. And when you like the things in your life it is easy to be optimistic about the coming year.

Hope you have a wonderful 2013, For us, I hope we get to see family again. It has been 3 ½ years since I saw my brother Brett and his kids and 2 ½ since we saw my Mom and Lance or Greg’s parents.

The miles between seem to get longer and more expensive every year.

Love, Dixie and Greg

Austin fishing again

Emerson Graduating High school

The light of my life

2012 - The world's not ending, we're just taking over

Prom night for Lula and Emerson

Camping at Howard prairie

The best day are the simplest

Austin's boat on Howard prairie Lake

Dropping the Banana Slugs off for Freshman Year at UCSC

Dropping The Crabber off for his Maiden Voyage

Greg's Captain's chair

Christmas 2012 

Helping "Grandpa" wash dishes

Thanksgiving
So much to be Thankful for

One Goode Book Deserves Another

NaNoWriMo 2013 Participant

I #amwriting again of course

Yesterday was November 16, and that has been a special day to me for 20 years now.  It is the anniversary of the day my husband and I stood in front of the Judge and promised to Love, and cherish the 6 month old boy who had been ours since his birth Mom handed him to me when he was 14 hours old. Adoption Day has been a joy. A celebration of the world recognizing what we already knew. But this year we are lonely for him, he's grown and working on a Crabbing boat 400 miles away from home, and I still celebrate being his Mom.

but writing means needing to reward myself with apple custard pie

 But it is also National Novel Writing Month.  I love November for the rush of typing a novel with all the emphasis on the story and non of the worry about editing it until later.  Some of my books have taken 13 years to edit so the intensity of jut doing story, while hundreds of thousands of others encourage and challenge me, is delicious freedom.  Writing is lonely, and has to be, to allow me to hear the soft voice of characters who live nowhere else but in the point where my fingertip meets the keyboard. For now

lots of fog and that is both in my mind and in my yard

 Usually I am good at this month long dash, but sometimes it doesn't work.  This year it is working, but not according to the rules so I am going with it and joining the group who call themselves nano rebels. I am still trying for the 50,000 words in a month, but with two books competing for my attention.  The third in my Duffy Barkley series is now at 60,000 words but didn't start here. I just can't stay way from it when something exciting comes into my mind for that story.  The other book, the new one, is a story of two boys facing destructive volcano eruptions 1901 years apart. But it uses the same device to communicate between times as I used in Double Time On The Oregon Trail.

snuggling the dog can count as work if I'm plotting the story

I work better with this guy in the house

 So Life is all about words on paper here this month, but of course it isn't. Today was proof of that.  My husband was just home after 48 hours away at a music festival, I got up early to write and brewed a 12 cup pot of lovely coffee all over the counter and the floor in my kitchen, so mopping happened. Then It is my sister-in-laws birthday and then My brother texted me about Christmas plans and a friend wants to come visit and someone else needs me to substitute teach and another friend needed to talk.  Family is hurting, to angry or celebrating, and actually all three. Life doesn't stop just because I have A NOVEL TO WRITE FOLKS!

And you know what, I'm glad it doesn't. I love so many people and I am not the best at letting them know sometimes, but They let me know, even when the timing isn't convenient, that good times and bad times, lonely or not. I'm not alone, even though it feels like it.

Good night

Thankful For Family This November

Mom and Dad

My Mom, Her Aunt and Grandmother in Wyoming

Dad & I

So all over facebook there are people posting about the things that they are Thankful for, at least one a day for the month of November.  I did that last year but a lot of it just came down to one thing.

My husband's parents at their wedding

 And it wasn't a thing. What I kept writing about in my list was the people who are my family and friends.

When I was a child, Family was My Mom and Dad and I, living a long way from any other relatives in Cheyenne, Wyoming.  I thought family was a rock solid, unchanging concept.

Great Grandma Emma Lafferty Slack and I

Then when I was only a couple years old, we moved diagonally across the state from the South East corner to the North West. Back to the part of Wyoming where my Mom's family had long roots.  Suddenly I had Grandparents and great Grandparents and Aunts and Great Aunts and cousins by the dozens and I was happy with the change.  Adding more family was great.

And we added more.  When I was nearly 5 we adopted my baby brother, and when I was 12 another brother was born and more cousins came along and family was a growing, entity.  A wonderful circle of loving security.  I am grateful for those years.

Of course they couldn't last.  Sooner or later everyone learns that family isn't permanently growing, sometimes it is losing members too.

My cousins divorced, My great Grandmas both died at age 98 and another 18 year old cousin died of cancer, and another, favorite cousin came home from the marines safely only to be killed by a drunk driver.  Then my Mom's Dad died of Cancer before I graduated from High school.

And  I grew older and moved out and my home was just a converted garage with my 19 year old boyfriend in it.

Greg and I at 19

My wedding finery! just an hour after the JP married us

and then I was moving farther away, and the boyfriend became a husband and my family expanded to include all his, in-laws and nephews were great to add in. But all too soon there were days of driving between my family in Wyoming and us in Ashland, Oregon.

When My family came to visit Ashland, Oregon where I was in College

 and a month after we graduated from college in Ashland, my Mom's mother died.  I didn't like this part of family.  The losing ones you loved part hurt.

My Brother and parents at Niagara Falls

 but life moves on even when there is pain and the good years came back and my brother and I and my husbands sister were busy adding babies to the family and life was noisy and exhausting and wonderful.

Greg and I during our term as exchange students in Beijing

Some of the best years

 but all too soon my Dad, who loved being a Grandpa, was dead of esophageal cancer, as was one of my cousins.  My Mom and brothers were changing and moving on, and we heard from them but didn't get to spend enough time together, and family expanded to take in a Day care Grandma and day-care babies who lived with my babies from 7 AM to 5 PM every day and were more like siblings than friends.

Lance and my Mom after Dad died of Cancer

My Maternal Grandma and I

 And still life moves on.  My Mom is aging and her memory becomes confused. Talking to her on the phone is difficult and a strange trip into fears and confusion.  She had to move out of her house this year and my Brother Lance had to give up his 19 year job to move with her. Now in DC they are farther from me than ever, but closer to my brother Brett.

My youngest son and his lovely girlfriend

My sons are grown up and the family home is more a revolving door with people in or out and me never quite sure if it will be empty or full.  There are new children in our life, great nieces and nephews, a grandchild on the way, the babies of extended family. Life filling in the gaps because a vacuum is never allowed to remain

My oldest son working on a crab boat

My Brother Brett and his New wife

 So the family I am grateful for this year is not the one I loved as a baby, not eve the same one it was last November, but still, yes the family and friends are the part of my life I treasure the most.

Mom and my brother Lance

Running for Tuna & Harbor Repair

Back in March of 2011, I had two boys at home, in High School, when school was cancelled due to the earthquake and the knowledge that once again, a tsunami was heading toward Crescent City.

That Tsunami hit Japan a lot more harshly than it hit Crescent City, CA but it was no friend to the fishing fleet and the commercial harbor here.

That morning my oldest son, woke me to tell me, "Mom. the schools are closed today because we will probably get a tsunami.  I'm going fishing."

and his brother,

one year younger, decided it was a day to be spent sleeping.

They have never made the same choices, but I love them both so much that becoming a Mom, twice in 12 months, was like a tsunami to the heart, that wiped out everything I had once considered important and rebuilt in its place a whole new world.

Now my fisherman son has done two season's fishing on a commercial boat, one tuna and one crab season, and as the next tuna season has just gotten up and running, he is happy to be back on the Barbara Marie again

But the Crescent City Harbor is one gigantic construction zone at this point, replacing the docks and dredging, and repairing and trying to become able to withstand the next Tsunami, and there always will be a next tsunami here.

This blog has previous posts about tsunamis in Crescent City

http://echo-echosvoice.blogspot.com/2013/03/two-years-after-tsunami-in-crescent-city.html

http://echo-echosvoice.blogspot.com/2013/02/one-year-after-tsunami-we-shared-with.html

http://echo-echosvoice.blogspot.com/2011/10/crescent-city-still-dredging-out.html

http://echo-echosvoice.blogspot.com/2011/03/tsunamis-do-more-than-wave-at-crescent.html