I’m ba-ack.

I don’t exactly know where to start. The trip was exciting and relaxing and boring all at once. I don’t want to throw up a travelogue; I’ll do a little of that when I get my pictures developed.

It took me days to learn how to relax. I’m not very good at that anyway, but long rolling days at sea with all the books I wanted and lots to drink helped me get through it. By the last day, I was a puddle of mush sliding off the seat to the deck.

When we were in ports, I happily jumped back into my old routine of being everywhere on time. That was where being alone came in handy; I could slip through the lowing herds and do whatever I wanted to without interference. I got to shop where I wanted and stop at a crab feed without consulting anyone. I got to go on exciting trips, and I always got to sit in the good seat because other people had to make committee decisions and I didn’t.

I drank too much and I napped too much, and I ate far too much. I’m not a big dessert eater, but I made myself in the spirit of cruising.

I spent a lot of time talking or just sitting with my grandparents, but I was alone too much too. It’s really weird going on a spectacular vacation like that without someone to share the joy. I had a hard time with depression as a companion, who doesn’t care if you’re supposed to be on the trip of a lifetime but shows up uninvited anyway.

Coming home was even harder. As I raced to get the dog before the kennel closed, I had purpose, but once I walked around my empty house, everything came crashing down. I just want to crawl in a hole and pull it in after me, but I had to get out and go to work, and tonight I have to get the kids so I have to look lively whether I want to or not. It’s not fair that I should feel so down after what was supposed to be such a good trip. If I had time for any emotion at all, I would feel guilty, but instead I’m just a wooden stick figure, with joints that move the steering wheel and strings to make my mouth look like it’s smiling when I’m supposed to.

Nothing external can make this all better, and I don’t know that I have the strength of will to pull it up from the inside yet.

But I’m glad I went on the trip.

Bit by bit, I’m getting ready for the cruise.

I’ve ordered plenty of books to read and a class to try to do, although I’m not really optimistic about getting much done on that. It will be my last-ditch entertainment if the ocean days turn out to be that boring. A cruise is about having fun and relaxing, after all.

I’ve got my work situation settled, although I have to go in the hole on vacation hours and therefore won’t have any days off for the rest of the summer, and after I hoarded for months for the other company. I have bug spray and binoculars. I put extra film in my good camera case. Marci gave me some fancy new brown eye shadows and I bought an unexpired mascara.

I bought a paper journal to work on, that has a nicely textured cover to entice me. I have half of my clothes packed and I’m wishing we could bring more suitcases. I do like to be prepared, and you never know when you’re going to want your good cowboy boots. I’m a little torn between bringing the cowboy boots or the hiking boots, which will probably be more practical on things like boats and glaciers, but less stylish around town. I don’t think I’ll have room for both.

I suspect the suitcases I do get to bring will be bulging—I’m already thinking about dumping the briefcase with the class in it.

Email me your addresses, and I’ll send you a postcard—ooh, I need stamps!

I think I like the preparing as much as anything.

I’m still sore.

This weekend was a yard work fest of unexpected proportions, and I worked my ass off.

My landlord had promised to come over and rip out the ugly shrub that blocks the view of traffic and the ancient shed in the backyard. I figured to help them, but I hadn’t counted on four dump loads—two with a 16-foot trailer.

We ended up ripping out five ugly shrubs in the front yard, leaving only the roses and a nice tree along the side. Connie said it was up to me to keep them or not, which surprised the hell out of me since she’s been the driving force in not changing anything since I’ve lived there. Marv pulled one of the stumps out with his truck, but the others are waiting for the big yank. I get to plant more roses in there, but I’ll wait until bare root season in January.

Then we started dismantling the shed in the back. Marv had recycled it from the Air Force 20 years ago, and I’d only used it to toss my old bike and some yard stuff into. I haven’t been able to get the doors open for at least three years, but I hadn’t tried very hard either. I figured there had to be a baseball-sized black widow in there by now.

Behind the shed and along the fence was where Marv had left some bricks and some wood for kindling. I was never real big on burning painted fence boards indoors, so I never used it, just put my own woodpile in front of it. Then when I broke my leg three years ago, I got behind on splitting and using the firewood, so some of it started to rot.

I’d moved all of the good wood to another location when the gardener did his cleanup last month, so everything left there was rotten. I took a load of very light, termite-infested antique wood to the dump, but when we got down to the bottom, it was so bad that we had to use rakes and shovels to get it out of there. The floor frame of the shed was just as bad; it looked like an archaeological dig since the gophers had thrown up dirt around the frame and the termites had eaten out the structure.

Two days of hard work later, and it’s all clean and we’re all sore and sunburned. I’m going to move some of the dirt to fill in the holes the dog has excavated, and then I’ll be done. My yard looks naked though. After I get back from the cruise, I’m going to plant some trees—maybe a nice Ash in the middle and some fruit trees along the back fence. It looks like I’ll be here a while, and I might as well make it pleasant to live in.

About five years ago, my buddies and I were out deer hunting. On the road, Dennis saw a truck that looked familiar, so we got out and talked to one of his old cronies, a bear hunter named Don.

Don was running dogs and listening to a chase at the moment, so we listened with him and followed them for a while. Dennis told stories of hunting with Don and Randy; mostly of really hairy stuff like having to go in a cave to get a bear out for a guide client and treeing a mountain lion and getting pissed on before he knew it was above him.

I got a little hooked, and Don promised to take me the next year, so I bought a bear tag. During regular deer season, each licensed bear hunter can only have one dog, so the houndsmen are usually pretty happy to have rookies with tags along—they can run more dogs. After deer season, they can run as many dogs as they like; Don usually has one or two good trained hounds and a couple more learning the ropes.

So that next year, Dennis took me hunting with Don and his hounds. We ended up getting a good strike down in the valley, and we busted our butts to get up the side of the mountain to it. Some other houndsmen friends of Don’s were running with us, and they had come at it from the top, so they were sitting at the tree keeping an eye on the dogs and waiting for me.

The bear had already come out of the tree it was in once, made a charge at the dogs baying around it, and zipped further up the mountain. Meanwhile, I was doing my best to get up there in time, but I’m not the fastest person in the world, and we were headed straight uphill, over rocks and scrub and under poison oak, just crashing through it all as fast as we could.

Dennis went on ahead to see if we were close, and hollered back that I was almost there when we heard a shot. The bear had had enough, and had come out of the tree after the dogs, so the guys had to shoot it. I got up there before it even fell out of the tree. I was bummed and so was the guy who’d shot it, even though it was a great bear. It was still early in the season, and he hadn’t wanted to spend his tag so soon.

We dressed that bear out and dragged it back down to the trucks. Five guys rotated carrying the thing (it was big) and I carried assorted backpacks, firearms, and led dogs. It took all five guys to lift it into the back of a pickup, and we were all exhausted.

Don felt bad too—he likes to take new hunters under his wing and get them their first bear, so he promised to take me the next year.

The day after Thanksgiving the next year, I got a call from Dennis.

“How soon can you be ready?’ he asked, and I told him a half hour. We loaded everything up (including some turkey sandwiches that Jeff?s mom made us) and headed up to meet Don. We spent the rest of the weekend trying for a strike, and Don was about willing to call it a day by Sunday morning when we finally got a good one.

Dennis and I hiked off into the woods to follow the dogs by ear while Don stayed with the truck and tracked their radio collars. They were moving around a little, and at one point we lost them entirely. We got ourselves up to the top of a ridge and found them again, and then Don picked ups up in the truck. They’d gone past a road, so he dropped us off closer to where they were. It still took us a good hour to get to them, Don with us that time.

We went down a ravine and had just started going back up the other side when their barks turned to treeing bays. They had the bear right close to us, and they were getting really excited about it. I could see it in the tree, a smallish brown-phase black bear, so I got around uphill from it and tried to take a little breather so I would be able to aim.

I didn’t get much of a rest though, because that bear was coming down. Don was worried about his dogs. The bear stuck a foot around the tree and I shot at it. Then it stuck its head around to see what was going on, and as soon as it peeked around the trunk, I whipped my rifle up and drilled it between the eyes. I never had time to find an image in my scope or aim, but it was a good shot anyway. The bear flew out of the tree towards the downhill side and started to roll away. Dennis thought it was still alive and jumping for the dogs, so he shot at it too with his pistol, but that bear wasn’t going anywhere.

I was so excited; I thought my grin would split my face. Don said it was a small one, but well within legal limits, and it had a nice coat on it. We gutted it out, and I was all for skinning and quartering it so we could share the load. Dennis vetoed that because we had forgotten the camera and he wanted to get a picture of me with the whole thing, so he insisted on carrying it all the way back to the truck. It was a good 150 pounds, so I wasn’t much help in the carrying, but he did it the whole way back.
 

When I got back down home, I went over to Cowboy’s aunt and uncle’s to show it off to everyone, and then Cowboy and I went home to skin it. That was a hell of a test of a relatively new boyfriend; helping his stinky girlfriend skin a bear in his yard under the light. He was a good sport about it though.

I took it to a taxidermist to the north, who said he’d have it done in about fourteen months.

Thirty months and one dumping later, I finally have it:
 

The next project is to mount it to a sheet of plywood so I can hang it on the wall without ruining it. It looks smaller than I’d remembered, and there are moments when I feel bad about killing such a young one.

I’d intended to eat the meat, but I couldn’t find a cutter who would touch it, citing trichinosis, which is apparently much more prevalent in wild bear meat than it ever was in domestic pork. I didn’t want to risk feeding my family with something iffy, so I wasted the meat. I still feel bad about that, and may never kill one again.

But it was certainly a memory that I will never forget, and I’ll definitely go hunting again. I’ll just stick with the houndsmen, who usually tree the animal and then leave it for another time. They don’t kill most of them; they’re just in it for the hunt. I already have this year’s bear tag too.

I’ve had to jump through incredible hoops this week, and it’s more than a little ridiculous.

See, the company I worked for was a wholly-owned subsidiary of the company that actually had the contract. I worked for them because I needed the extra salary more than I needed some of the benefits. But they decided at the last minute last week to switch me over to the parent company.

So I had to send in a resume and fill out an application and all that crap. For a job I’ve been doing for seven years, four for them. Then I had to sit through an orientation to find out what my benefits would be. Yes, essentially the same as I had, except now I have to wait another year for my 401k to start matching again. Oh, and now I have to go to training in Virginia during the height of hot and hurricane season for more training that I’ve done just fine without so far. Do I know anyone in Virginia?

And I lose all of the vacation time I’ve been hoarding, and two weeks before my cruise. They will make that work, or they’ll find themselves scrambling to fill a job nobody else wants in a place no-one wants to move to. This is stupid. Sure, the sick leave is better, but I’ll never use the education benefits because the college isn’t going to be completed before my job is done.

I was hoping for a raise to make all this worth it, but that seems not to be.