Dandelion Wine
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Finally, in 1983, Paul and I had enough money to get an inexpensive apartment in the South End of Albany. It was on Green Street, in “The Pastures” area. The city had just finished putting up a new development with two- and three-story buildings made to look like brownstones for “section 8” housing. We were […]
Although we had anticipated a rough adjustment, it turned out to be rougher than we’d hoped. It was the end of the school year, and I had made sure that Jessie and Justin were both learning along the way. They had, in fact, learned some things that most adults haven’t yet learned about navigating your […]
The plan to make the best time we could went slightly awry when we made a necessary stop for gas and bathrooms and inadvertently left our cat at the truck stop. We realized as soon as we got halfway up the entrance ramp, which was longest ramp I’d ever been on and was also very […]
As we were leaving Salt Lake City, Paul and I realized that the trip was going to take a lot longer than anticipated unless we could figure out a low to no-cost way to repair the bus. Now, we were really glad that we had made a stop in Reno before hitting Salt Lake. We […]
I almost forgot to write about one last thing that we needed to do before leaving the West Coast. Remember our cat Autumn who’d had her first litter of kittens behind my chair on the night of Justin’s concussion? Before we could get her spayed, she had another litter of kittens. As soon as they […]
We found a rental at a trailer park in Beaver, Oregon and had to downsize quite a bit. We were always flexible and quickly figured out how to make do with a much smaller residence and a tiny fenced in yard. We were still in the same area with the same community, and we had […]
Paul was always one for “bad” jokes and puns, so he started telling at least one joke a week. It was an immensely popular segment of the show. Most of them were real groaners. After a year of hearing these jokes week after week, folks started getting tired of it and came asking me to do something […]
Deciding to move out of the city was hard. We were feeling settled for the first time since we had been together, but Paul was out of work again, and we had unexpectedly come into some money between our tax return and a small inheritance. It was enough to get us resettled in our new […]
Reconnecting with an Old Friend We were feeling quite settled in Portland. Jessie was loving kindergarten, and living right on a main bus route made life pretty easy. I took the kids to the library at least once a week, went to Saturday Market every weekend, had settled into my childcare routine, and we were […]
Music and Parenting At that time in my life, my life was once again filled with music. We continued to play at Saturday Market every weekend, sometimes both Saturday and Sunday. One day we were doing our usual thing when a TV crew came by. They were from Sapporo, Japan which is a sister city […]