We're Back

We're finally home. Got back Wednesday afternoon. We're so freakin' tired we feel slightly more insane than usual. We spent three days/two nights on the road instead of the standard two and one. On both nights, one in Ashland (home of the Shakespeare festivals of southern Oregon) and one in Portland, the cat whined and cried most of the night away. We're old softies, so we petted and tried to talk him through it. He became increasingly more cranky and intolerant of us as the hours in the truck and the motel nights wore on, until he was finally reduced to hissing at us or simply nodding in abject resignation.
The reason we pushed poor Bonsai to his traveling limits (instead of pushing on and heading straight for home) is so we could spend one night in Portland with our 31 year old nephew Ross who was in a horrific car crash on February 10th. He had been driving up to the mountains on a lovely Saturday morning to go snowboarding, when at 10:00 am, two people in a Honda driving back towards Portland crossed the lines and hit his pick-up truck head-on. The Honda driver and her passenger were both killed. Ross and his passenger survived. They had severe, but non life-threatening injuries. He has a broken jaw, broken clavicle, broken vertebra, and a cracked sternum. He will not be able to eat solid food for another six weeks. Still, he knows he is lucky to be alive. So how could we drive through Portland and not stop, spend the night, and take him, his wife and his mom (our sister-in-law who traveled up from Mexico) out to dinner? Ross sipped some very spicy Thai soup through a straw and later had some ice cream that was blended just for him to liquid perfection with milk. He showed us photographs of what he looked like just 16 days ago. His recovery is truly remarkable.

So, we're home. The yard looks to be in the grip of winter still. The mice have moved into the garage. The garden is weedy. The small backyard lawn is literally covered in mole hills. We will try not to make mountains out of it. We have our work to do.