kids

Thankful

Posted on November 26, 2013 by Debora

The list of things I’m thankful for is a mile long this year. Rather than trying to include everything, I’ll just dedicate this year’s Thanksgiving post to the people I’m thankful for.

(There are folks who apparently have nothing better to do than to cause trouble for people I mention by name on my blog, so I won’t do that, but my friends know who they are.)

So to begin: I’m thankful for the friends who supported and encouraged me during last year’s legal ordeal and put in a good word for me to the custody evaluator. They helped keep me grounded and functional.

I’m thankful for the Texas friends who offered the kids and me a place in their home when we made the decision to leave California. They made it possible for us to make a fresh start in a much better place, and have given us a wonderful “acclimation buffer.” This move would have been a vastly different experience without their generosity.

I’m thankful for the friends who agreed to store some belongings that we didn’t want to let go of but couldn’t take with us right away. The relocation would have been so much harder, especially for Luke and Elizabeth, if we had been forced to leave those sentimental treasures behind forever.

I’m thankful for the then-strangers, now-friends who adopted Gericault and Brodie and gave them a happy and loving home. We could not bring the dogs with us to DFW and no one else could take them. The fact that strangers were willing to take in two large, active, middle-aged dogs with unknown breeding and a penchant for infighting seems like nothing short of a miracle to me. You guys rock.

I’m thankful for the friend who took good care of Mahogany for me until I could find a place for her here. It was very hard for me to drive away from my horse and trust that she would make it safely through the complicated procedures involved in transporting a horse across state lines. I can’t say it was a smooth process, but it was all handled beautifully by my friend and by the vet who did the Coggins test and health cert. This same friend also took in three kittens who were orphaned by their mostly-feral mother shortly before we moved. We found them under our porch and bottle-fed them, but we couldn’t bring them with us. Now they have a wonderful home.

I’m thankful for the relative who came and helped us pack, and rented, loaded and drove a U-Haul truck from California to Texas. There are no words for what that meant to us.

Thank you, every one of you. You make the world a better place with your good works.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Categories: Animals, Cats, Dogs, Family, Friends, Horses, kids, Life, Love, Travel | Tags: gratitude, Thanksgiving | Leave a comment

Water Tower

Posted on November 24, 2013 by Debora

The big elevated water towers all over DFW are still a novelty to me. I don’t recall ever seeing one in California, but they’re everywhere here. I think they look like alien spacecraft.

The one in that pic isn’t far from where we’re living; I always enjoy getting a glimpse of it when I’m out and about. I’ve started snapping pics of it during my walks, even when the rest of the view isn’t particulary photogenic.

Gotta love those perpetually-under-construction freeways. Here’s the same tower behind Luke’s school:

The tower itself is in a residential area. I think I’d feel like aliens were always peering over my shoulder if I lived that close to it.

Anyway, a forecast of showers turning to sleet and freezing rain scuttled the plans the kids and I had for today, since they involved freeway driving and that’s scary enough when the roads aren’t icy. We decided to go on a short walking expedition instead, to find out how close we could get to the water tower.

Luke spent most of the walk grumbling that I had promised him warm winters in Texas. For the record, I had promised him milder winters than the ones in Anza. So far that’s been the case.

This is as close as we could get before we hit a fence and had to turn back:

So, almost right to the base of it. There was a locked gate with a sign that had information about the tower. Fun fact: the tank holds 2 million gallons of water!

Aside from a cold, misty rain, the day was gorgeous.

I didn’t get to visit Mahogany this week, it’s been too cold and wet. Hoping for sunny weather next weekend.

I’ll close this post with a pic of the breezeway between the Library and City Hall in Colleyville. I’m not sure why I love that building so much, I just think it’s wonderful.

Categories: environment, Family, kids, Life, trees, Weather, Winter | Leave a comment

Walkies

Posted on November 17, 2013 by Debora

Fall is in full swing now.

The resident stable dog has started accompanying Mahogany and me on our rides, at least when we stick to the river trail instead of exploring the paved roads.

When the kids and I were first planning our move to DFW I had a vague idea, based mostly on Google maps of the area and my own SoCal experiences, that Bedford was a sea of cookie cutter housing tracts, apartment buildings and shopping centers. I knew there were lots of good things here too, parks and libraries and museums and great schools, that’s why we chose DFW. But I would study the satellite images and trace the greenbelt along the Trinity River and think to myself, “At least we can go for hikes along the Trinity whenever suburban life feels too crowded.”

Yeah, it’s not like that at all. We’ve come to enjoy exploring the suburbs more than the river trails. There’s nothing cookie cutter about the neighborhoods here. I feel weird about taking pictures of peoples’ houses and putting them on the Internet, but even the streets and sidewalks themselves have character.

The city (suburb, whatever) is crisscrossed with canals and runoff creeks that you can follow sometimes for miles.

Sometimes, in the spaces between one neighborhood and the next, I find wooded trails that feel like wilderness.

I have discovered three community gardens so far within walking distance of where we’re living, plus a handful of “guerrilla garden” patches tucked alongside creeks and canals. And parks. Holy crap, so many parks. According to Google Maps there are 58 public parks within a 10-mile radius of our house. Can confirm, they are everywhere. We have even found a stretch of walking and bike paths that includes a series of six “workout stations,” spaced a few minutes apart, with gym-quality equipment for strength and flexibilty training. I’ve been giving those a lot of use on my afternoon walks.

I’ve also started taking picures of the water tower that looms into view at odd moments on my walks.

But I think that’s a subject for another post.

Categories: Animals, Dogs, environment, Family, Gardening, Horses, kids, Life, trail rides, Weather | 1 Comment

Grasshoppers Are Cool

Posted on November 4, 2013 by Debora

This weekend’s safari trail sighting: just the llama this time.

Yesterday I showed the kids the paved trail system I discovered last week. Elizabeth said that my pics don’t do justice to the size of the power poles, so here is another one for scale:

When the kids and I moved here this summer and first started exploring, there were grasshoppers freaking everywhere. I tried and tried to get a photo of one, but they were very skittish and never let me get close enough. Now that it’s fall there aren’t as many around, but the ones I do see seem completely fearless. So I feel kind of obligated to snap a pic of every one that I find.

Is it weird that I think they’re beautiful? I love the detail on their little exoskeletons. Maybe I’ll dedicate a race of aliens to them in my book, there’s always room for one more.

Categories: Animals, environment, Family, kids, Life, trail rides, Wildlife | Leave a comment

Fall Stuff

Posted on November 2, 2013 by Debora

Anza sits at 4,000 feet above sea level, so temperatures go up and down with the sun. In the summer it’s not uncommon to get into the triple digits during the days and down into the 50 or 60s at night. Winter nights there are always cold, but winter days might feel like January or July.

DFW isn’t like that, at least from what I’ve seen so far. Summer felt like summer, whether the sun was up or not. And now that the weather has turned to fall, it has stayed there instead of getting all fickle and whimsical. Now the colors are creeping in, and squirrels are gathering acorns everywhere I look.

Signs of fall are all around.

On weekday afternoons I like to go for walks. I take a slightly different route each time and explore new streets. I enjoy looking at the houses and businesses; I just really like the way things are built here. Someone told me that the reason most of the buildings have so many different angles on their roofs is to deflect high winds and make it harder for tornadoes to get a grip on them. Someone else told me that that’s not the case, that people here just like funky roofs. Whatever, I like them too.

On yesterday’s walk I stumbled onto a dedicated system of walking and bike paths. I started out walking next to roads, but ended up on a trail that followed a line of massive power poles.

At first all I could see was those enormous poles, but by the end of the walk I barely noticed them. They’re almost kind of pretty, if you squint and tilt your head just right.

I’m looking forward to showing the kids those paths, it’ll be nice to have a trafficless place to walk that doesn’t involve driving first.

Tomorrow we set back the clocks. The spring time change feels like years ago on a different planet. So much change crammed into eight months.

I’ve begun to really miss my garden and orchard. Today I bought a young sage plant so I can have fresh sage for cooking; hopefully it will have time to get established before winter sets in. I think I’ll get some lettuce and kale seeds next, if the weather stays mild. It’s funny the things I miss and the things I don’t miss at all. If I could just find a local, organic pomegranate orchard my autumn would be complete.

Categories: Animals, environment, Family, food, Gardening, kids, Life, trees, Weather, Wildlife | Tags: autumn, squirrel | Leave a comment