Suzy Vitello's Blog

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A forensic artist confronts a crime against her own family when her brother is shot when he hires an old friend as surrogate for his child, while MAGA politics, racism and violence rage in a small town in the Bitterroot Mountains of Idaho.

Set in the fictional town of Steeplejack, nestled in the Bitterroot Mountains, Hazel Mackenzie provides law enforcement with sketch art and victim reconstruction following suspected crimes, through her one-woman business, Bitterroot Renderings. Trouble strikes twice when her husband dies in an accident and then soon after, her gay twin brother Kento is shot by a member of Steeplejack’s growing anti-LBGTQ community during a gender reveal party. The party was coordinated by Corinda, the surrogate hired by Kento and his husband, Tom. It was Corinda’s estranged husband who pulled the trigger and subsequently abducts and brainwashes her into believing the lie that he shot Kento in self-defense as an edited video focuses on the antique Kwaiken knife in Kento’s hand.

As Hazel launches her brother’s defense with help from an attorney friend, she finds the town she grew up in increasingly polarized and dangerous. When she uncovers an ugly secret about her late husband, it leads her to the discovery of letters written by her great-grandfather during the second world war. He was a first-generation Japanese-American who was recruited by the US military while the rest of the family was interned in a prison-like camp. Now, some eighty years later, the same racism and prejudice threatens to strip Kento and his husband of their basic rights to their baby. Hazel must now confront her own intergenerational trauma as she battles for herself, her brother, and a town that has been torn apart by hate.

Hello, hello friends. New year, new scheme. I’m thrilled to offer my rejigged newsletter/blog, Let’s Talk About Writing, now on the Substack platform. Join as a free or paid subscriber. Link here to find out more!

 

above photo by Kyle Lin

Many years ago, like Joe Biden, I was suddenly widowed in my twenties and tasked with raising two young children on my own. Unlike Joe, though, I didn’t stay in the town where my husband was killed in a car accident. I didn’t stay, because, unlike Joe, I was bereft of mandate, purpose and voice.

I did, however, have a vision. It was a small vision, foggy, illusive, and easily drowned out by the voices of others. Somewhere in my heart, I realized that the normative Catholic marriage I’d latched onto had no center without the normative Catholic husband I married. I’ve written about this before. This post isn’t about that, though. It’s about what happened next.

In the tight cocoon I built around myself and my two children, I hatched a plan that would give that fetal vision the nourishment it needed to grow, and, after a slew of false starts, I wound up in Portland, Oregon. This was 1989, well before the cultural moment, and back when you could buy a house for under 100k, which, given that I’d just sold a house in a bedroom community of New York City, worked well for my bank account.

Fast forward a year. Fully moved into a comfortable house at the edge a park, I began to have anxiety attacks. These attacks came along with cul-de-sac ruminations of doom peppered with questions like: What have I done? I am a stranger in a strange land here. No family. No support. What if I get sick? What if I die? You know how that goes. By the time I finally got the okay from my health insurance company to get tested for a variety of disorders, it became clear that my panic attacks were impinging of my ability to be the parent I needed to be for a toddler and a preschooler. Back in those days, private health insurance didn’t cover mental health (thank god for Obama Care, by the way). So, I dipped into my dwindling savings and booked a few appointments with a shrink.

After a few introductory getting-to-know-you sessions, I worked up the courage to relate my worries. On the fourth or fifth appointment, the what ifs at last came tumbling out, escalating to a crescendo of full-blown panic. The counselor calmly helped me navigate the narratives, prompting me with questions, such as, “And then what?”

He, and-then-whatted me to my deepest, darkest shame. That perhaps I had made choices that were putting my kids in danger. “And what if I die? I’m all they have!”

“And?” he asked.

“And? Well, clearly, they’ll be fucked up for life?”

“How do you know that?” he asked. “How do you know that if you die, your kids will be fucked up?”

“It’s obvious,” I said. “Isn’t it?”

He just looked at me while I wrestled with my assertion.

As 2020 (and the four years of the Trump presidency) comes to its ugly close, I return to that very session with that shrink often: pushing chaos, division and fear to their projected endpoints, and for me, that process is rooted in art. Specifically, in creating stories.

As Bruno Bettelheim posits in his oft-quoted THE USES OF ENCHANTMENT, “In order not to be at the mercy of the vagaries of life, one must develop one’s inner resources, so that one’s emotions, imagination, and intellect mutually support and enrich one another.”

It is why, after years of pondering the likely possibility of a catastrophic earthquake in the Pacific Northwest, I set out to write a book which eventually became FAULTLAND, due out next year. My obsession with “the vagaries of life” found purchase in a narrative that pushed me fully into “what if” and took me out the other side.

Likewise, I’m now NaNoing my way into a new project, set in a speculative dystopian future, only my obsessions have built on the themes in FAULTLAND (the physical destruction of earth as we know it, the exacerbation of white supremacy, the degradation of justice and democracy), and have taken them into a new level of doom. The central question I’m exploring in my new novel is this: At what point in the evolutionary road to extinction will we be forced to abandon personal freedom in favor of salvaging the species? Who will be chosen to make the biggest sacrifices, and who makes that call?

I realize that I’m getting into THE HANDMAID’S TALE territory here, but, returning to Bettelheim, my exploration of these questions is not just an intellectual exercise. It’s an active way to amalgamate my emotions, imagination and intellect with the end result being enrichment and agency. And just like thirty-two years ago when I had to move across the country after I was widowed in order to find a path to my voice, I turn to creating dystopian landscapes so I can wrestle the monster into something I recognize and can then vanquish.

 

TRIGGER WARNING: death and disease.

A few winters ago, my now-dead baby sister hit her threshold when the shitty cancer she had seeped into her spine. Pain that had been manageable took a turn, and her oncologist directed her to seek admission to the hospital. She lived in a small town sixty miles from Manhattan. I was flying in from Portland as her condition escalated. By the time I arrived at her rural farmhouse, her husband was warming up the car for the drive. It was around 6:00 p.m.

From the backseat I tried to comfort, but her pain was a ten, and she could barely eke out a moan, despite the oxy she’d taken.

We knew from the outset that there were no empty beds on Oncology, and the doctor told us the only way to be admitted was to go through the ER. “They should have a bed for her within a couple hours,” he assured us.

What followed was a long, drawn out nightmare.

There was no pandemic, no national emergency, just a regular winter night at a big city hospital. A big city hospital named “top five” in the nation, no less.

I followed my sister’s husband as he wheeled her into a closet-sized cubicle that already held a patient—an elderly woman moaning and groaning. There was no curtain or anything separating us, as this cube was made for one. We helped my sister onto a tiny bench-type “cot” and managed to find a chair to wedge in next to her. Her husband and I took turns sitting in the wheelchair and the proper chair, and for several hours we tried to comfort her while we watched the hustle and bustle of critically ill people and an overtaxed staff attempting to administer emergency treatment.

“Why are you here?” said a nurse, eventually.

“The doctor said…” my sister’s husband began.

“That this was the way in to an over-census hospital?” said the nurse, rolling her eyes.

Apparently, the ER hates when doctors employ this work-around, and they don’t even try to hide their disdain. Also, it’s very, very common.

Hours passed. A man with a pus-oozing leg triple the size of his other leg, sat on a gurney just outside our doubled-up cubicle. The nurses knew this guy by name. He was a regular customer. He kept begging for pain meds; a frequent flyer, people like him are called. The groaning lady in the next cot was basically ignored.

After a few hours, a hospitalist doctor peeked in and asked to get up to speed on my sister’s case. Her husband has a steel-trap mind for details, and articulated all the values and data and drug info while the doc nodded and promised she’d have a bed “shortly.”

Fast-forward to four a.m.

The after-bar crowd arrives with their cuts, bruises, barfing.

No bed at the inn, still. My sister’s pain unabated. No IV morphine administered.

I decided to go for a walk. Get some food for my sister and her husband (though my ninety-pound sister was in too much pain to eat). It was snowing outside. My phone claimed there was an open McDonalds a few blocks away, so I zombie-walked to the fast food spot for a few sausage biscuits and troughs of coffee. The shock of having a healthy, relatively young family member suddenly come down with a fatal illness has a surreal quality. The ground not really being the ground. Similar to a 4:00 a.m. walk through uncharted urban territory in the snow. Add to that the experience of being met with an over-taxed medical environment that can do little more than placate with vague promises, and it’s a recipe for despair. But still, I summoned faith. Surely, I thought, my sister’s bed would open by dawn.

Of course there was no “bed” by dawn. The only way there would be was for a patient to “expire” or be discharged. Discharge orders aren’t typically given until after morning rounds. It’s a numbers thing. The numbers are finite. After eighteen hours in an overstuffed big-city ER during “normal” times, my sister finally was admitted to the top-notch hospital. Was finally given appropriate relief for her pain and attention to her spiraling disease. She died eleven months later, and I wish I could say that her illness was met with unfailing competence and care. The insurance red tape alone an obstacle no critically-ill person should have to confront.

As I type this, Sunday, March 15th, I’ve learned that at this moment there are 269 positive COVID-19 cases in NYC. ICU beds are currently at 80% capacity.

Stay home, folks. Cancel that bellini brunch. Limit exposure. Keep a distance. Save lives. Do your part.

Kahakuloa

We’re halfway through our Maui trip, and I’m proud to say I’m not sunburned, nor am I sporting the hideous rash I, of the pink freckled skin, typically sprout in tropical climes. Thanks to a floppy sunhat and 40 SPF mineral (reef-safe!) sunscreen, life is good.

My husband and I are frugally tip-toeing through paradise, eschewing helicopter rides, snorkeling cruises, tchotchkes and resort accommodations, in favor of a comfy, though modest airbnb condo a few blocks from the fire-twirling, luaus and sunset catamaran excursions. The one luxury I insist upon though, is occasional fancy dining. It’s the only thing Kirk and I aren’t 100% in agreement about when we go on vacation. In fact, after last night’s delicious $150 meal, he woke up this morning asking if we could cancel tonight’s dinner reservations, in favor of grilling turkey burgers across the parking lot on the poolside Weber.

Not a chance.

Tomorrow we’ll return to Safeway sandwiches and $3.50 Prison Street veggie tacos packed in a cooler with the pineapple and mango we bought at the farmer’s market on our way to the condo from the airport, but tonight, give me my seared ono and Hamakua mushrooms as we gaze out over the sea.

It is fun to do low-key stuff that doesn’t cost an arm and a thigh, however. Case in point. This morning, we puttered off to Honolua Bay in our rent-a-wreck (the check engine light blinked on halfway there), and found a shady spot on the road to stash it. We followed a gentle, sandy path to the rocky bay and snorkeled for an hour in the coral-rich shallows, swimming alongside a variety of brightly colored butterfly fish, wrasse, Moorish idol, and blue-lipped triggerfish.

I love snorkeling. Like, a lot. It’s one of the few activities where my brain turns off and I just … am. Which is weird, because I’m not a super strong swimmer, and not much of a pool person. Not drawn to water the way many of my friends are, and don’t enjoy being thrashed around in waves. Forget water-skiing or motor-boating. I’d probably die of the bends if you dunked me in the deep with diving gear. Sailing is too complicated. But drop-kick me into a quiet bay with my shorty wet suit, water shoes, and snorkel, and I turn into Suzy the Sea Witch.

Photo by David Clode on Unsplash

The sea creatures are endlessly fascinating.

Last night, at Mala Ocean Tavern (see the aforementioned $150 meal), the manager, Caleb, promised us a table close enough to watch the honu feeding on the sea grass from rocks that hug the foundation (it was Kirk’s birthday, after all). Their tiny heads and speckled flippers bobbed up from the rolling waves every few minutes, adding to our delight as we feasted on complimentary puréed edamame and chips, served in a lava bowl that must have weighed five pounds (we speculated on how the restaurant stored these hefty serving dishes in their petite kitchen).

After a dinner of ahi and purple sweet potatoes, we wandered outside to watch the turtles for a few more minutes before strolling hand in hand to the Safeway where we’d illegally parked the ailing PT Cruiser. A woman who was also watching the honu told us a passer-by had just offered his unsolicited opinion that “they” should “do away with” the turtles because they “attract sharks.” I was gob-smacked by the privileged audacity. “Do away with?” I asked. She shook her head.

Our cheapo rental car is on its last legs.

 

Having just finished Liz Prato’s excellent book that features similar statements from mainland tourists, I was enraged anew. But as I thought this over, I realized that I myself am guilty of knee-jerk responses to unpleasant “infringements” of the natural world. Not nearly as egregious, perhaps, but I had zero qualms about hiring a yellow jacket nest eradicator last summer when two nests on my property threatened mayhem while setting up for a garden party. Perhaps privilege lives on a spectrum of dominion? Still though, to suggest “doing away with” an entire species because you perceive it a potential encroachment to your unequivocal ability to enjoy every aspect of nature with zero threat is not only cruel, but, well, scarily insane. (I’m reminded of Trump recently banishing his Chief of Staff for coughing in the same room he occupied.)

Oh, the humanity.

Tomorrow, we head upland. We’ll probably need to swap the car for something without a “check engine” light, but it’s all going to work out in the Maui way.

Mahalo.

Hey folks! Email brought me a fun surprise yesterday. Seems my debut YA novel, The Moment Before, made a list! A list comprising nine realistic young adult books which Ezvid Wiki included in this fun video! I’m honored to have Brady’s story alongside these other terrific books.

For many years, as the holiday season wrapped up, my writing group would get together and verbalize our individual intentions as they pertained to our creative projects. You know: I resolve to finish my novel and find an agent. Or: I resolve to submit one short story a month. That kind of thing. As much as I enjoyed the practice of concretizing intentions, this year feels different. Feels like it’s asking for a bigger effort. A paradigm shift.

2018 was rough on so many of us in the tender heart population, as we witnessed the daily subjugation of goodness in favor of greed, racism, misogyny and hate. Each morning I’d reach over and consult the techno-box next to my pillow to see if there’d been a school shooting, or if Trump had appointed yet another Nazi, fearful of what I might find, and yet rubbernecking just the same. Marching, and tweeting and contributing and voting—none of the typical civic exercises seemed to put a dent in the downward spiral. Until November.

November, 2018 heralded the first glimmer of hope in two years. This week, my heart lifted in something close to joy with the swearing in of the 116th congress. The beauty, texture and humanity of our power-washed House with all of its diversity and freshness made me feel like dancing. (Also, that 10-year-old AOC Lisztomania joy vid was the perfect adjunct, so thanks, asshole dude who dug it up and spliced it expecting to cause a stir!)

Still, though, there’s much work to do to reverse the course and build momentum for a future of kindness to the earth, to our fellow citizens, to fair and equitable treatment of women. So, where do we go now? And how do resolutions fit in to the plan?

I’ve given this a lot of thought. 2019 is special to me for many reasons, but topping the list is it’s the 30th anniversary of my move to Portland. And to honor that single, most important decision I made back when I was still in my twenties, I’ve come up with twelve themes I plan to explore this year. Twelve components that speak to the joy I hope to grow as I move through the year. I’m thinking of them less as resolutions or intentions and more like the gestation of sustainable joy. Because, the longer I live, the more I see the connection between joy-building and humanitarian momentum.

So, in alphabetical particular order (because, hey, I’m a word person), here they are:

Adventure – Doesn’t have to be big. Adventure can be walking down a new road or trail for the first time. Anything that rattles the curiosity muscle, or makes you a little afraid.

Attention – Multi-tasking to get housework and chores done works well for me. But as a way of life it’s a spirit killer. More and more, split attention causes the feeling that whatever you’re doing, you should be doing something else. For me, social media has become that once two-way-street friend who’s turned into a bottomless pit of need. Am I going to quit IG, Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest? Nope. But I’m determined to find a balance that feels authentic and thoughtful. When I’m working (whether on my project or someone else’s), I’d like to be immersed in the land of story and character without checking to see if I got my steps in yet, or whether that Amazon item is on its way, or whether Trump’s fired yet another cabinet appointee.

Beauty – I never realized how important beauty was to me until this year. If that sounds shallow, let me elaborate. When I speak of “beauty,” what I mean is a balance in form, color, texture and uniqueness. In the realm of writing, beauty is a combination clarity and particularity. A sentence that arises from authenticity. A rejection of received text. The evocation of a miracle. In landscape, beauty grows from the audacity of nature to perpetuate life in the face of chaos. Objects that are beautiful defy the oppression of sameness.

This year, we purged a junk-ridden storage room and, with the help of a couple professionals, turned it into a cozy, colorful and spacious bedroom. We also transformed an ugly toilet/laundry room into a clean, bright uniquely tiled bathroom. Beauty is transformation. It’s dynamic. It’s an assemblage of elements that work together to soothe, excite or awaken the senses. I crave beauty the way some crave sunshine. Instead of seasonal affective disorder my depressive moments come when I choose not to seek beauty. The good news is, beauty is all around. Just ask the wise and lovely beauty-hunting goddess, Jen Pastiloff.

Bodylove – Moving is good. Flexibility is good. Strength, energy, health. But, I’m a woman. So, if my body is Congress, my head is constantly voting it in and out of favor. How to stop that? What is bodylove, exactly? I’m working on this. More answers soon (I hope).

Commitment – The joy that comes from working diligently enough to arrive at a “done” thing is a particularly satisfying type of joy. That said, dogged commitment sometimes leads to blinders-on workaholism, which is very un-joyous. The challenge with commitment is to develop a specific intuition that compels us to (to quote lovely Lidia Yuknavitch), make art in the face of fuck without turning ourselves into single-focus machinery. Which brings me to …

Fun – The other night a friend of ours spontaneously invited us to “trivia night” at a local pub. I suck at trivia. But it sounded sort of cool, and Kirk is really good at trivia, so we went, and we laughed, and we did really well at first. And then we flamed out. C’est la vie. Fun gets harder to build in as we adult ourselves through the slog of middle age. Everything seems to be breaking all the time, so how do we have the nerve to pause amid the anxiety of deconstruction and dance? Or even visit a tavern on 50¢ wing night and throw caution to the wind—even on a school night? This question is particularly vexing. I’m determined to squeeze joy from it.

Humanity – Eye contact with strangers makes me super uncomfortable. But interactions where there’s an energy exchange mitigates the discomfort and often results in shared joy, even if only for a minute. In 2018 I contributed to at least a dozen GoFundMe campaigns, and yet, with each contribution I felt a measure of grief for the person’s situation. I felt that I hadn’t done enough to reverse the hardship. Money is easy. Really. But time. The investment of time when a person or community is in crisis—that’s a truer form of giving. This year, I pledge to move in the direction of offering more human exchanges in the form of empathy and active listening.

Nourishment – It seems that every week there’s a new food item I need to cross off the list. Tummy troubles have plagued me in some form since childhood. Wheat, onions, legumes, dairy—so many categories now on the caution list. And I’m not talking fads or dieting. I’m talking about a rebellion between my body and the variety of foods I feed it. A 57-year-old female body is a troublesome thing. It apparently requires low calorie, high-density nutrition on the reg to keep it functioning. Like, at all. Which sucks because eating is joy. Eating tasty, mouth-pleasing, sweet, salty, savory foods with impunity–that, my friends is joy. But the plop-plop-fizz-fizz reality – not so much joy. What to do? It’s a work in progress that possibly has no real solution. Deprivation doesn’t work. Fasting is the enemy of metabolism. Nutritious whole foods are time-consuming to prepare. I’ve tried the whole subscription meals thing and found it less than Hello or Fresh. Maybe the nourishment-joy relationship is super subtle and must be approached on a micro level and in combination with other items on the joy list. Eating the season’s first blueberries on a sunny patio, for instance. Or thinking in terms of tasting rather than eating because digestion gets sluggish with age. Oh joy. Really. Off I go to buy a One Pot because new kitchen gadgets are always fun. I will report back.

Partnership – File this one under love, compromise, growth and stability. Ten years of marriage to husband number three, and I’m pretty sure this one will stick until the end of time. One thing I know for sure is, marriage doesn’t start out in partnership, it grows into it. Part of that growth happens as the result of conflict, and some of it is the result of finding solace in the small things that tie two people together and figuring out how to problem solve as a team. I’m an autonomous creature, and I like my solo forays to cafés and matinees—however, big picture: I’d go crazy without my dude. Like, cat-lady crazy.

Sprightliness – is fun mixed with mischief and vigor. There’s a terrific relationship between vigorous mischief and joy. I’ve been watching this Instagram account for a while (even the name, silverdisobedience speaks to me), for inspiration on what sprightly aging looks like. More of this in 2019!

Stewardship – This year, I vow to not buy any food that is packaged in plastic clamshell. I mean, China finally put the kybosh to sorting all of our filthy detritus, and who can blame them? We have to be better consumers. Smarter. More thoughtful. Cloth bags in the car. Reusing containers. It’s hard because Mama loves her convenience, but seriously, folks, this planet is inflamed and sick. Think before adding another plastic Starbucks lid to the pile.

Whimsy – This final component of joy is a mish-mash of things. Different than “fun” and “sprightliness,” whimsy reaches into the imagination and, I think, it’s the source of joy on the page. Whimsy invites the artist to leave the normative swamp, whether diving beneath it, or hovering above, it’s the rabbit hole of delight. The reason why I write.

Tune in next week, when I chat more about January’s focus: Beauty.

Life has been more down than up for us lately, and because of that, I turn to the kitchen. Also, it’s January, and every January I reignite my passion for food that calms, nourishes, and resets my happiness meter.

Shortly after Christmas I purchased a new cookbook (also a New Year’s tradition). McFadden’s Six Seasons: A New Way with Vegetables incorporates some new techniques and philosophies regarding locovorism. From declaring summer a three-season food experience to insisting on cooking with extra virgin olive oil exclusively (even for sautéing), there are some breakout sacred cows, and I’m loving the adventurous combinations of ingredients. Parsnip olive oil cake? Yes please.

Kirk and I were lucky enough to be invited to a fish chowder dinner at a friend’s house recently, and we caught the bug, so tonight I followed McFadden’s insistence on homemade croutons from farm style bread and sprinkled them atop my own chowder, and man, what deliciousness.

In service to spreading the love on this season of cold, windy, rainy (or bomb cyclone) weather, read on. I developed this recipe as a smerge of various online recipes + wisdom from McFadden. It’s a stick-to-your-ribs-without-tummy-ache sort of recipe (at least for me, the queen of tummy aches). It’s lighter than most chowders, and it just might fight off a chill.

Suzy Vitello’s Warming Fish Chowder

Ingredients

One pound of whatever combination of fish won’t cost more than $15 cut into chunks (I used a combo of shrimp, cod and halibut fillet–only a 1/3 lb. of halibut because that shit’s expensive!)
One quart of fish stock (splurge! You can also substitute chicken broth)
4 bay leaves
20 sprigs of fresh Thyme, stripped
1 Meyers Lemon
2 Tbs olive oil
2 Tbs butter
1 yellow onion, chopped
1 leek (the white part with just an inch of the green part), chopped
1 stalk celery, minced
1 carrot, chopped
5 Yukon gold potatoes, mostly peeled and diced
Four strips of uncured bacon
1 ½ tsp pink Himalayan (or kosher) salt
Fresh ground pepper
1 loaf good quality bread torn into chunks
2 additional Tbs olive oil
1 cup 2% milk

My helper, who thinks he’s a centerfold.

Steps:

Preheat oven to 375°

Bake bacon in oven (I use a broiler pan) until brown but not crispy. Chop into small pieces. Leave oven on for croutons.

Bring a quart of salted water to a boil. Add bay leaves, celery and carrots and juice from half the lemon. If your halibut came with skin like mine did (for $23 a lb. you’d think they’d cut the slimy shit off at the New Seasons fish counter before selling it), slice it off and plunk that in the water as well. Hopefully your finger won’t be an accidental addition.

Immerse a colander containing the chunks of fish into the boiling water for 2 minutes (or until just cooked) and then remove and set aside.

Simmer mixture for 10 minutes before removing fish skin.

Sauté onions and leeks in the 2 Tbs olive oil and the butter.

Add fish stock, remaining lemon juice, and the homemade fish water concoction.

Add potatoes, bacon and thyme and cook over medium heat until potatoes are tender. Salt and pepper to taste.

Meanwhile, mix bread chunks in 2Tbs olive oil, salt and pepper. Spread on cookie sheet and toast in oven until light brown (7 or 8 minutes). Remove from oven, set aside.

Once potatoes are tender, stir in the milk.

I like to keep the fish separate and add to the individual bowls of hot soup.

Add croutons to individual bowls before serving, also, pick out the bay leaf.

Pour a God Damn tumbler of pinot gris and enjoy!

 

Back in the days I was traveling as a solo parent of two kids under three years of age, there was an inverse relationship between planning and crying. And I don’t mean the babies.

The first time I ventured up the coast, San Diego to Portland, I spent a week-and-a-half OCDing the fix for every possible malfunction or affliction. An extra full-size tire for my newish Subaru. Ipecac syrup in case one of the children Hoovered a poisonous plant. Cloth and paper diapers (who did I think I was kidding though. I never used cloth diapers on the road). Strained sweet potatoes and grapes cut up into non-chokable quarters. Labeled Tupperware for everything from apple slices to Zwieback. A highchair and a booster. Flashlights and binoculars. A portable crib. Two different first aid kits. Car toys for the one-year-old, and different car toys for the two-year-old. Earplugs for the mom. Rafi on the cassette player.

This little sweetie was a fireplug at age one.

This was pre-cellphone (and certainly pre-smartphone). Before insta-answers to everything on the internet. If you were planning a trip, you’d go to Triple A and have them map out routes. Possibly you would purchase a Thomas Guide for your destination city for granular information. If you got lost, there was no Siri barking directions out your blue tooth. You had pull over. Sometimes read by the map light. Do they even have map lights in cars anymore?

Everything so nice and neat. At the beginning.

 

Oddly, I had some déjà vu moments preparing for and taking this Spring Break with Whole30 and Rottweiler puppy trip. Even though technology has made getting lost impossible (and finding a restaurant with Kobe beef lettuce wraps easy), 1,050 miles is still 1,050 miles. Several days before we left I spent sleepless hours envisioning the various coolers and bins, ingredients and meal plans I’d be packing. Some pre-made and then frozen meals. A couple bottles of almond milk squeezed fresh just before departure. Then there was the whole Chinese box puzzle of packing it all in yet another Subaru, along with Jaxx, his crate, his food, his toys.

At least there was a husband this time around.

Just like in 1989, I over-packed. But not one tear was shed! Here are some hindsight tips:

Probably don’t make a whole tree’s worth of almonds available. You’ll pop them like M&Ms and your gut will be a tad pissed off.
Rewarding your dog with a bite of your hamburger patty seems like a good idea, but will resort in a day of vomit.
Boiled eggs are the bomb. Especially smeared with compliant baba ganouj.
Slicing up mangos is a delicate operation, and best not tackled while driving.
Shredded chicken wraps sound like a good idea. I envisioned finding a park and having a picnic. The weather was far too crappy, so I made them in the car and offered them to Kirk when it was his turn to drive, and it was mess.
Berries and grapes are terrific road snacks, but Lara bars are even better.
Thank God Jaxx is crate-trained. We could never do this if he wasn’t super comfortable spending hours in a crate. (Though, he’s much less happy about going in the crate after spending hours and hours in it.)

We stopped every 200 miles or so, at the direction of a Google-mapped dog park. Turns out, Jaxx has become a humper. Natch. An eleven month old in-tact male Rottweiler, under certain circumstances, can be a handful. Even one who is mostly trained. Especially when an unspayed female shows up. Luckily, Jaxx will do anything for a hotdog.

I stared those suckers down, but nary a bite.

Another Murphy’s Law sitch: the dreaded Spring Break grunge. With every mile, Kirk’s coughing and sneezing fits increased, so by Redding, he was in full blown hack. That’s when we decided a warm meal was in order. We enjoyed every bite of our thirteen dollar Kobe beef patties, and my darling husband is now officially un reset. I watched him devour half a platter of French fries, and contemplated having one. But one leads to thirty-six when it comes to fries, so I abstained. And it wasn’t terribly hard. But I will say, my “reward” of two-day old grilled shrimp once back on the road was a tad disappointing.

Even fresh cilantro and pom seeds couldn’t make this yummy.

We are now in Southern Cali for a few more days, enjoying our kids and the beach and all the fresh produce. Funny how my 1989 trip continues to linger as we map out all the meals, activities and micro-obsessions. Right now? I’d love … LOVE … a glass of Tempranillo. And some crackers. And a hunk of Irish cheddar.