{"id":486,"date":"2017-12-30T18:48:19","date_gmt":"2017-12-30T18:48:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gypsyjudge.com\/?p=486"},"modified":"2017-12-30T18:48:19","modified_gmt":"2017-12-30T18:48:19","slug":"17-my-heart-changed-my-mind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gypsyjudge.com\/?p=486","title":{"rendered":"17. My heart changed my mind"},"content":{"rendered":"
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  1. My heart changed my mind.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Sometimes, my life does not move in a linear fashion.\u00a0 Sometimes, my blog posts jump back and forth across time lines.\u00a0 Sometimes, I make plans but my heart changes my mind.<\/p>\n

    My last post was of losing my good friend and four-legged companion, Misty.\u00a0 This post speaks of things before and after that.<\/p>\n

    After finishing the Habitat build in Las Cruces, NM, on November 12, 2017, Misty and I took the motorhome north to Elephant Butte State Park, near Truth or Consequences, NM.\u00a0 Within the NM State Park system, you can stay in a park for two weeks, but then you have to leave; you can go to another state park, and come back to that particular park a week later.\u00a0 This generates an interesting cross current of RV\u2019ers moving around on two week schedules and creates a subculture of gypsy friends.<\/p>\n

    At Elephant Butte I became friends with Mary, a free-wheeling single female who pulls a large toy hauler with her diesel truck.\u00a0 She rides a Harley and rides it well. \u00a0Mary and I rode our bikes over to Hatch, NM \u2013 home of the famous Hatch chilies.\u00a0 I smiled at the spicy smell of red peppers in the fields.\u00a0 I\u2019m familiar with what you can smell on a motorcycle in Northwest Florida and South Alabama \u2013 peanut dust at harvest time, red clay recently plowed, pines after a heavy rain, and salty Gulf air. And then there are universal smells \u2013 meat on an unseen BBQ grill, a wood fire, freshly mowed grass, burned rubber, dead skunk.\u00a0 In Hatch, I added fields of red chili peppers to my two-wheel olfactory encyclopedia.<\/p>\n

    After two weeks at Elephant Butte State Park, I loaded the motorcycle into the bed of my truck, hooked the truck to the rear of the motorhome, and Misty and I drove over to City of Rocks, our favorite NM State Park \u2013 the place I found and lost Misty.\u00a0 See my blog post 16. Mysteries of Misty<\/em> for that story. And at City of Rocks, I crossed paths with Mary and two other RV\u2019ers I\u2019d met at Elephant Butte. \"\"<\/p>\n

    People wonder if I\u2019m lonely, traveling alone.\u00a0 The reality is \u2013 there is an amazing community of RV\u2019ers out there \u2013 friendly, helpful, and adventuresome. At the Habitat build in Las Cruces, I became friends with Dyana, another fulltime solo female RV\u2019er.\u00a0\u00a0 On Monday after I lost Misty on Friday, I met Dyana in Deming, NM, (about 30 miles south of City of Rocks), and we had lunch at the Adobe Deli, an eclectic place in the middle of nowhere that was once an old school and now slightly resembles a weird museum with strange antiques and stuffed\/dead animals perched in every corner, ledge, and open space, watching with glassy eyes as we ate startlingly good food.\u00a0 From Adobe Deli, we took a short ride south to cross the Mexican border into Palomas to shop at the Pink Store (they serve you free margaritas while you browse through a little bit of most anything Mexican that\u2019s colorful, beautiful, and unique.) With Dyana\u2019s encouragement and prodding laughter, I came back with a bouquet of brightly colored paper flowers for the too clean motorhome, because the flowers make me smile \u2013 and a black ceramic Day of the Dead tile of a happy dead dog, because it makes me laugh out loud.\u00a0 I\u2019m reminded that Misty is a happy dead dog \u2013 after eating serial last meals, stalking the rabbits, hearing the coyotes sing, and smelling every bone in Pet Smart.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t put my needs first and wait too long to deal responsibly with her new reality.\u00a0 Misty was not yet in pain.\u00a0 And her memories are outlasting my pain.\u00a0\"\"<\/p>\n

    After two weeks at City of Rocks, I drove through the desert alone, with colorful flowers and a black ceramic tile of a happy dead dog. When I get Misty\u2019s ashes, I\u2019ll bring them back to City of Rocks.\u00a0 But for now, I was heading west to an RV park in Benson, AZ (near I-10 and the New Mexico\/Arizona border).<\/p>\n

    Over the summer I\u2019d discussed my travel plans with my granddaughter; I explained I couldn\u2019t make two trips from Arizona to Florida and asked if she wanted me to be there for her September birthday or Christmas.\u00a0 She emphatically chose September.\u00a0 \u00a0So, I was in Florida for her birthday and then drove the motorhome back West in October. I had rough plans to return to Florida in the Spring; I\u2019d spend Christmas with friends in Benson, AZ.<\/p>\n

    But we\u2019d made those plans in the summer and I left Florida in October.\u00a0 This was December! To an eleven-year old, the world changes quickly.\u00a0 I checked into the RV park in Benson, AZ, on December 5 and paid for a month.<\/p>\n

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    OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA<\/p><\/div>\n

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    On December 8 I was comfortably seated in my motorhome in the desert, Face Timing with my granddaughter, when she said, matter of factly, \u201cDid you realize that if you were here on December 18, you could hear my Christmas choral program?\u201d\u00a0 I laughed.\u00a0 And by the time the sun came up in the desert, my heart had changed my mind.\u00a0 My mind had no choice except to rationalize what was coming next.<\/p>\n

    I put the motorhome in storage in Benson and drove the truck back to Florida.\u00a0 And I learned that 1,600 miles in three days is too far, too fast, especially in a small, light-weight pickup.\u00a0 But I got back in time to see my granddaughter\u2019s Christmas program on December 18.<\/p>\n

    On Christmas Eve, we went to Peg Leg Pete\u2019s on Pensacola Beach for incredible seafood.\u00a0 Everyone ordered something different and then shared.\u00a0 After much great Mexican food in the desert, at the beach I shamelessly gorged myself on fresh seafood – raw oysters, oysters Rockefeller, steamed shrimp and crab legs, fried shrimp and fried oysters.\u00a0 Then we waddled across to the Gulf and played on the sugar-white beach.\"\"<\/p>\n

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    my granddaughter a few days ago<\/p><\/div>\n

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    Me, a few years ago<\/p><\/div>\n

     <\/p>\n

    And now?\u00a0 I\u2019ll head west soon.\u00a0 The high desert is calling, and my mind is scrambling to justify the many miles between here and there.\u00a0 The simple rationalization is \u2013 I left the motorhome in storage, and the rent is due January 11.\u00a0 \u00a0\"\"<\/p>\n

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    My heart changed my mind. Sometimes, my life does not move in a linear fashion.\u00a0 Sometimes, my blog posts jump back and forth across time lines.\u00a0 Sometimes, I make plans but my heart changes my mind. My last post was … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gypsyjudge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gypsyjudge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gypsyjudge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gypsyjudge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gypsyjudge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=486"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gypsyjudge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gypsyjudge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gypsyjudge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gypsyjudge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}