Moonshine Junkyard

A is for Addie. Addie was so excited to host our Thanksgiving morning festivities. She has cable this year, so we were actually able to watch the Thanksgiving Day parade on tv like we did when we were young. She made monkey bread for all of us and Mama helped make eggs and tempeh bacon.  The kids played and the grown ups had mimosas and Dolly and her family showed up with baskets of walnuts for the kids to crack, and we had a super cozy gathering, just the way the day should begin. B is for Beanie.  On Monday before Thanksgiving, we took her to the vet. She had been super sick over the weekend, and we thought she was dying. Her health has never been super strong; she's 14.5 years old,  very shy, with a chronic upper respiratory infection. She was so bony, hadn't been eating or cleaning herself, and was just resting in one place all the time. Worst of all, I saw drips of brownish blood underneath where she was laying. I thought surely her systems were fa...

We took a little overnighter trip a couple weeks ago to travel  over Sonora Pass , a fall drive I've always wanted to do. From our home in Placerville, we head straight south on the tiny, historic, curving Gold Rush Highway 49 all the way to Sonora. Then we make a left onto Highway 108, a spectacular alpine road that takes us winding through and over the Sierra Nevadas to the east side and Highway 395, where we head north and eventually back over the mountain passes to the western slope again.   We left after work and arrived just after dark at the Wildwood Inn in the heart of the tiny mountain town of Twain Harte, basically at the foot of Sonora Pass. The little lodge is modest and unassuming; we were pretty disappointed to find out that the hot tub was not up and running!  But we had a cozy sleep there in the middle of the tiny town, walking distance to a good coffee shop and the city park in the morning. Plus nighttime Spongebob on the car...