Day #41—Tucumcari, NM to Stillwater, OK--Saturday, July 2, 2011

I'm home. Got here about 3 PM. Jeff was stunned. He thought I'd get in much later. I was up very early and simply showered, dressed, and took off . . . before 6 AM mountain time, 7 AM CST. Not much interesting in my drive today. Good to be home with the puddies, Jeff and Lucy. It is very hot here 108F on our deck thermometer. Makes it hot when one moves around inside, even with the AC on. All the outside plants are wilted (dwarf bamboo, vinca, lantana). This will happen every day and then we water at night and the temp drops, so the plants revive to wilt again the next day. Eventually they cannot make a comeback if the heat persists. The grass is crunchy dry . . . but, Oklahoma is like an oasis compared to AZ and NM, which are brown, sandy, and treeless along I-40. 

After I‘d driven into OK for a bit today, I thought I‘d entered the Emerald City. There was roadside green grass— except for one section near El Reno where the June tornado must have rolled through. Here ODOT was clearing stumps and fallen trees. In other places, tall green trees lined the road, as well as some sort of low blue flower. All was looking green and good after so much western desert and rocks. 

I had a wonderful time with Sarah and Tiger in their mountain aerie. We sistahs must get together if not each year, then every other. Though we had a couple of growls, we got along well and also had many good laughs. Being together was a wake-up call for both of us. Though we have not spent much time together in our lives, we mirrored each other with the same traits, many of them irritating: mumbling rather than speaking clearly, causing the other person to say "What?" continually; always talking to other drivers on the road: "Buddy, get over on your own side of the road"; reading all the roadside signs, sometimes in unison; beginning a sentence and then getting distracted by something and never finishing the sentence; not listening carefully or not hearing so repeating what the other has said, causing us to frequently say, "That‘s what I just said"; continually interrupting; responding with an irritable edge to our voices; assuming we know what is best for the other, and thus charging incorrectly off in that direction; and saying "awww" to all roadkill, even if the roadkill turned out to be a rug . . . Actually this mirroring was good for both of us, and we vowed to try to eliminate some of our more irritating behaviors. 

Someone once asked me if I thought I had ADD. "Of course not," I replied self-righteously. But, now I am seeing that I must have it to a degree as I make little eye contact, lose my focus often, and can certainly be distracted. Eye contact for ADD sufferers is distracting. Suddenly one is looking at the other‘s teeth, or eyeliner, the way the lips move, or some other characteristic, and ZAP! the mind takes a right turn. I think that this is why I like to write. Writing gives me time to organize, revise, and consider. 

Okay. Enough introspection. 

Stats: All told, my 41-day trip covered 8567.6 miles, seeing me in 20% of the fifty states: Oklahoma, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Arizona, Nevada, California, Oregon, Washington, and Texas. I paid about $450 for gas (Sarah split the gas costs for our Yosemite and Olympic Peninsula trips), and spent about $2500 in addition on lodging, food, and extraneous things, so got away on less than $100 a day. Not bad at all for a long vacation today.