Sunday, March 24…We Can Fly From Here (The Buggles)

It rained last night; there were a few rumblings before the rain started. I briefly thought about Kim’s helmet but didn’t act on my thoughts. He always hangs his helmet on his throttle grip…it makes a nice little bowl when it rains. Stayed snug in bed and figured it would just have to set in front of the fan…again! 

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   Woke to a definite coolness in the air.  This was predicted…in the 80s yesterday and lows 60s today.  What made it cool was the breeze.  It started last night and apparently didn’t want to give up come the morning.  Dark clouds approached from the south and by mid-morning it was raining again.  And yes, Kim’s helmet was still hanging upside down out on his bike.

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   My mom flew into the Phoenix-Mesa airport this afternoon.  This morning, the truck got cleaned out, all the laundry was washed and dried, lunch was eaten…and then we sat around waiting to leave for the airport. I suggested we leave early to have another try at the geocache down by the state park. A try was all it was as we ran out of time before we found the cache. Hope to try again before we leave.

   The plane was due to arrive in Mesa at 3:25 p.m.; it’s a small airport, so we left in time to arrive at 3:15. At about 2:11, I received a text from my brother, who was apparently tracking the flight, that it was now expected to arrive 29 minutes early due to a very good tail wind. “What?! No way are we going to be there in time.”  I texted her when we were 15 minutes out and told her to hang tight.  No problem, she was going to be sitting outside the rental car area.  And sure enough, that’s where I found her. 

   This is the fourth time she’s visited us out in Arizona; it’s the first time she’s flown in during the day. Flying out of Traverse City meant departing at 10:30 p.m., and arriving in Mesa at about 11:30 p.m.  Considering the airport is an hour away, we usually didn’t get into bed until almost 2 a.m.  Today, she flew out of Grand Rapids at 2:04 p.m., with an estimated arrival time of 3:25 p.m.  What that means is that we can get to bed before 2 a.m. Yay! Of course, she’s dealing with a three-time difference so there’ll be jet-lag in her future at some point.

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   We treated Mom to supper at one of our favorite food trucks…Comadres. I think we’ve tried most of the Coolidge food trucks and picked out our favorite foods at each one.  They all do a good job with carne asada quesadillas, which is what Mom and I had.  Kim likes the carne asada burrito at Comadres. After supper, as we watched a couple of nature shows narrated by David Attenborough, everyone’s eyelids started drooping….and it was only 8 o’clock.

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   Worked on the hedgehog today.  I’m not following an instructional pattern of any sort, just following a picture I found.  Again, I’m going for cute, not accuracy. And I must admit that I had it looking like a pale shrunken head with hair before I got it looking like the vision in my head.   

   My mom was surprised at the size of my critters; from the pictures I’d posted, she assumed they were much larger than they are.  I try to keep them in the 3-4” range.  I don’t have enough wool to make them bigger and I like the challenge of making them small, figuring out the proportions, etc.  It’s still a learning experience: Sassy the Snake’s head is too big for her body and Jackson the Monkey has the opposite problem; his body is too big for his head. I’m all about the head/face. Get that right and hopefully, the animal is recognizable; that’s my goal.