Errant Dames

We are packed!
We each have 1 carry on (32L ) and 1 personal item ( tote) for 2 weeks in Portugal 🇵🇹
I have one million things to do on the flights to keep me calm and creative, snacks (oatmeal cookies and granola) electrolytes to stay hydrated and a ton of PPE.
😷
We also have our vaccine cards and negative test results.
I think we are ready!!

The weather in Phoenix is finally livable again. It’s perfect really, and one of the reasons we all stay here through the living-on-the-sun summers.
🌞
We’ve been walking everyday and hiking on weekends in preparation for taking on the hills of Lisbon next week.
🇵🇹
This hike was at
If my wife is reading this DONT scroll to the last photo- it is a picture of the Western 🐍Diamondback we saw on the trail. The first I’ve seen since moving to AZ.
Thank you to the kind hikers that alerted us to its presence before we stumbled upon it.

I haven’t posted much lately. We are in the process of downsizing our belongings which is sometimes overwhelming but ultimately freeing.
I came across a small box of some of my grandmothers things. Things she salvaged from her home in Austria after it burned down.
She lost so much overnight that she couldn’t part with the few things she found in the rubble.

The fire started in my bedroom. I wasn’t there at the time, and I was too young to grasp what had happened but it became a part of the family story over time- how and where the fire started.

A lifetime later my own house burned down. An electrical fire, like my grandmothers. It happened on the anniversary of her death.
It’s hard not to think it is all, somehow, connected, part of the family story - cleansing by fire.
This pocket watch and picture frame were in the box.
It’s time for me to let them go.