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The Summer of
'06:June 9-25 (On the Road, Part 1)
Honora, Out of the Recliner (and
Susan, Out of the Garden!)
I had to fly to Austin June
9th, so I went through security at the airport for the first time since having a
metal plate and a bridgework of pins put in my foot. (When I first saw the
x-rays after surgery, I said it looked like the Army Corps of Engineers had been
on hand for the building project!) But I didn’t set off the bells and whistles,
much to my surprise.
My friends (for 40 years!)
Barbara and Bob Youngberg met me at the Austin airport and treated me to a
lovely Mexican food dinner and I got to taste a Sangria Margarita. Yum! This was
truly a mission of mercy, as I have suffered severe Mexican-food deprivation
since we moved to the Midwest.
The trip to Austin was
supposed to be work, as I’d been asked to act as an adjunct advisor on a
doctoral candidate’s program approval committee. No, not for the University of
Texas—for the Union Institute and University in Cincinnati. (It’s too long a
story, really!) The meeting was actually quite fun since the candidate will be
writing a novel instead of a traditional dissertation. I really enjoyed all the
new people I met who are also on the committee, and after we’d approved the
program, we went for some homestyle cookin’ at Threadgill’s restaurant, a sort
of landmark in Austin, where we dined on comfort food and bought “Armadillo
World Headquarters” T-shirts.
Once I got back home again,
my daughter Bridget delivered her two boys, Robin (almost 11) and Ryan (8), to
us for two weeks while she moved from Reading, Pennsylvania to Indianapolis.
Figuring we didn’t want their noses glued to the television for the entire two
weeks, we packed them and three neighbor kids into our van and headed to
Nashville for two days (strangely enough, my husband Jay opted to stay
home—can’t figure out why.) The kids had a high time with swimming, a trip to
the hands-on science center, and a visit to the Opryland Hotel indoor gardens.
(Hey, you can’t go to Nashville without visiting the gardens!)
On Saturday, our only day
home between trips, we took them to visit a friend in Evansville who has kids
and a huge trampoline—and Ryan was in heaven! Not only did he make new friends,
but he got to jump for more than an hour (it’s always been very difficult for
this kid not to jump on beds—I think perhaps he is a transmigrated kangaroo!)
And on Sunday we packed the
boys up again and headed for Branson, MO. Now, these boys are very well-behaved
travelers, so Susan and I took the opportunity offered by a 6-hour drive to
polish up a short story we’ve been working on. This is the first of what we hope
will be enough stories to fill a book, and the idea had its genesis at the
Malice Domestic conference in April. We’ve been working on it whenever we get
the chance, and now it's finished - and we've submitted it to Ellery Queen
Mystery Magazine!
There’s a lot to do in
Branson. First thing out of the box on Monday, we went to Ride the Duck—this is
a modern bus version of the WWII land/sea mobile. So we got a pretty interesting
tour of the southwest side of Branson, in the middle of which we drove down to
Table Rock Lake and went onto the water, all in the same vehicle. And Robin and
Ryan were the first volunteers to captain the boat and do the steering. There’s
also daily swimming, and yesterday the boys got to check out a basketball and
practice their free-throws. We also signed the boys up for every crafty event
the resort is offering; so far they’ve made casts of their hands and painted
them like little animals, followed by a workshop for shaping balloons into
animals and hats, etc. This was followed by a wine and cheese party with
entertainment by performers from 13 shows currently playing in Branson. And
Susan and I were the 14th act—we got a chance to flog a book talk
we’ll be doing here at the resort tomorrow afternoon. Today was relatively
light, with shopping, swimming, one show in the late afternoon (singer John
Tweed, who has a four-octave range), and a free dinner at a local restaurant.
(Okay, there’s no such thing as a free lunch, but there are sometimes free
dinners!) Tomorrow we’ll have more swimming (Robin and Ryan’s favorite activity,
have you noticed?), plus a tie-dye workshop, our book talk, and a dinner with
Blue Grass music as the entertainment.
Are you exhausted just
reading this? Well, we’re not through yet. When we left Branson on Thursday, we
stopped for lunch with some friends in Columbia before traveling on to Hannibal,
MO. Yep, Mark Twain country. Susan and I are plotting another series that has
Twain characters in it, so we figured we’d have to go to Hannibal sometime. So
for the next 2 days we explored Tom Sawyer’s caves, took a paddlewheel ride on
the Mississippi, walked through the old town buildings and museum, and picnicked
in the park. And back at the hotel, the boys did a lot more swimming!
Finally we made it back to
Grayville, where we had a week to regroup before...
The Summer of '06:July 2-31 (On
the Road, Part 2)
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