Good Morning -Oh, I'm back. It's good to be on my home computer, rolling around on my yoga ball chair while I drink coffee and commune with you.
The Virgen you see above is from Tuesday, July 29th. I would know it was from Tuesday even if I didn't know it was from Tuesday because there's an image of Root's Market on it and Root's is only open on Tuesdays.
Whenever we go to PA to visit with my partner's family, we make sure we have a Tuesday in the line-up somewhere so that we can go to Root's. It's one of the best food market experiences one could hope to have.
Stalls and aisles are lined with fresh veggies from the field down the street, exotic veggies from distant lands like Hawaii, fried oyster sandwiches made with squishy white bread and served by Mennonite women, fresh cream-filled donuts and other baked goods, and flea market tables that run the gamut from cheap plastics from China that just got unloaded off a dock this morning to antique bowls that are older than the country.
We got a bunch of local produce to bring back - beets, potatoes, tomatoes, corn, cabbage (green and purple), radishes, carrots, rhubarb, spinach, cucumbers, peas, and a watermelon that was too sweet not to eat that evening. When we go to PA, we always pack lightly in big suitcases just so we have room in them for fresh produce.
(I want to write of my ideas about farming from this last visit home, but don't know that I have the clarity on my 4-of-the-wrong-hours sleep to do it justice, so we'll save that.)
After Root's, we headed to Wilbur Chocolates to get some buds and other such delights to bring home. Buds are like Hersey Kisses, only they were made before kisses, the chocolate is significantly better and, unlike Hersey, which moved its chocolate-making to Mexico and attempted to lobby the FDA to decrease the amount of cocoa used in chocolate, is still made in PA where it started a billion years ago.
After taking our chocolates and produce back to the house, we headed out to my partner's favorite Vietnamese restaurant for some egg rolls. In the last year this place changed ownership and, while the won ton soup isn't as good any more, the egg rolls with their sweet vinegar dipping sauce are still superb.
We took our egg rolls to Lancaster County Park and ate by a creek under a canopy of green, green trees. We were blessed with amazingly low humidity and temps while in PA, so it was delightful to be able to sit outside and enjoy nature without being burned, bitten, or boiled.
After egg rolls, we divided and conquered to release a little stress. We both spent $60 to do this, but I used mine to get a massage and she used hers to get two cardigans, a pair of pants, and a dress shirt from a big sale at the mall. To each her own.
There's a lot of change and potential right now, and stress is up a bit, so we both needed to check out and in. My massage was wonderful - especially considering it was found via the local phonebook. The image of the woman on the Virgen is from their brochure and I would recommend the place (Bushwhacker's) to any hardy enough to handle it.
(I know it might seem...however... to spend money to get a massage while on vacation. Normally I wouldn't, but I woke up on Tuesday with a big kink in my neck and knew that it was a slight wrong move away from total immobility. It's taken me a while but I'm in touch enough with my body now that when it communicates needs with me, I listen. Obviously I don't always hear her (or I wouldn't have had the tense mucsles I did) but I do at least catch her now when she gets persistent while there's still time to adjust or relax or check in.)
The woman who did my massage was tall and seemed sweet - so much so that I was worried that she wasn't going to be strong enough to really work out the significant kinks in my neck and back (my favorite place to store my long-term stress - stomach is my favorite short-term storage unit).
Even though I was worried that I might have been better off paying a local farm kid $10 to walk on my back, I followed her back to the room and explained where it hurt. She instructed me to start on my back and left me to get undressed.
When she returned, I explained that I'm quiet, so wouldn't talk aside from answering feedback questions she might have. I also explained that my hair wasn't in a particular style that day (any day), so she didn't have to worry about messing it up.
She got started with my neck and I instantly knew that I was going to get the deep work I had hoped for. Oh, my God. There were times when she was working on my neck that I felt like a chicken on the block, minutes away from becoming dinner. There were times when she was working on my hips that I felt like a side of beef being sliced into different cuts.
She was strong and deep enough that at more than one point, I had to breathe through the pressure and tried to channel to her images of baby ducks - "Think of the baby ducks. You're holding a soft, fragile baby duck. I'm not a side of beef. I'm a baby duck."
I should have known that a massage from farm country was not going to be some light and airy urban thing but strong and deep and done by a woman who, very likely, first learned of muscle insertions and exits from the animals slaughtered on the family farm (Oh, I know. Not everyone in farm country lives on a farm. My partner grew up in this county and didn't do 4-H or have her own chickens. That said, there is a strength - physical and otherwise - that comes to women in rural living.)
After our respective stress therapies, we went to Oregon Dairy to get some peel-and-eat shrimp and other snacks to take to her brother's place on the Conestoga River. He lives in a great old mill that has been turned into apartments - old brick, wooden floors, and right on the river. He's lived there for 30 years - first as a renter, then as the landlord when the owner decided to sell 9 years ago and he didn't want to risk the new person destroying the great places that they are.
We sat on the back deck and watched the water move and the sun set. Fantastic.
So - that's Tuesday's Virgen - Roots, Wilbur, a fortune from the Vietnamese place, and a deep, strong farm massage.
Yesterday was all about travel. We left Lititz around 11 (after stopping to get a Nino's sub for the road), drove down to BWI, had a picnic in the terminal while waiting for flights and then took off on our respective itineraries - I to Atlanta and then Phoenix, she to Charlotte and then Tucson.
The Virgen you see from yesterday is from an Airtran ad in their in-flight magazine. I had two hours to wait for the next shuttle once I arrived in Phoenix last night, so found a spot between elevator doors where I could charge my phone (using the outlet between the doors - the only visible outlet in the area), eat the other half of my Nino's, and make the Virgen.
Airtran is doing some promotion with a race car driver named Danica. I know nothing of her, but this ad's image of a plane seat racing around in a circle is somehow connected to her promotion. I thought it was a great image for a day spent commuting.
That's it. This morning I pick Boris up from the boarder's at 9, then it's back to work.
Here's to vacation. Here's to good food, good love, and good green.
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