We're Home

That's pretty much the whole story. We have water. We have power. We have fish alive and well. It's good to be home.

Day Six In Baker

The insanity of Christmas carols at the Gordon celebration.

I got clever and called our house in Cima this morning. I got the answering machine: power is, indeed, restored. With any luck, it came on in time to save the fish. We haven't heard anything about our water, so I'm guessing the part did not arrive yesterday. Now that it's the weekend, I suspect we are sojourning in Baker at least until Monday, more likely Tuesday. Huzzah!

Playdough Is Much More Fun Than ...

... a house without water or electricity! Today, my aunt and uncle were visiting us. We had lunch in Baker and then toured one of the volcanic landscapes in the park. Darcy, Michael, and Nick descended all the way into the lava tube. Ellen and I watched from, let us say, the vestibule. We stopped at Kelso, of course, and then tried to tour Cima House on our way to dinner in Nipton.

No lights. No power. No filter and heater running in the fish tank. No heat in the house. Nothing. Ah, the joys of a house without power or water. After dinner, we parted ways with Nick and Ellen, who headed back to their hotel in Las Vegas, and we drove back to Baker. We got word almost immediately that it wasn't a power problem that had anything to do with the water work, so we called the electric company. According to their recorded message, our power went off at 1 and was turned back on at 8. We're keeping our fingers crossed that it's really true. We don't want two dead fish and a freezer full of defrosted food when we get our water back.

Of course, we haven't had an update on our water situation today. Michael's colleague who let us know about the power hadn't heard that the fix the other day didn't work, so he couldn't help us on that account. With any luck, we'll hear something tomorrow!

At Play!

One alteration was made in the plans for my parents' house once there were two grandchildren in the picture. The unfinished storage room upstairs was made a little smaller to accommodate a play area (later to be a sleeping loft for little girls' sleepovers). The play area was a hit. Here are Darcy and Liana in tutus with everything collected on the table.

Here they are playing with my cousin Gideon's daughters, Tamara and Aviva. Liana and Tamara were taking full advantage of the costuming props.

And another crew of children during the Gordon family Christmas/Hannukah celebration. From left to right, we have Daven, Dabiela, Darcy, Lilith, and Jordan. It was a loud celebration.

The Advantages Of Life In The Middle Of Nowhere

Anyone who has actually talked to me about life in Cima knows the downfalls: no stores, no services, no kids for Darcy to play with, and the recurring issues with our water supply. And, of course, we're currently in the midst of a water supply issue which has us living in Baker again temporarily (with any luck, very temporarily).

But every cloud has a silver lining, as they say, and here is ours: people living "near" each other in the middle of nowhere help each other out. Here's today's lesson.

While we are having a water crisis, our post office is having multiple crises of its own. Following the crazy snow, our M-T-W relief postmistress quit. Can't blame her. She's 83 and was snowed in for three days, not even in her own house. Last Wednesday was her last day and so our Th-F-S relief postmistress is doing the whole week for the time being.

Except that she isn't.

Her boss (not exactly sure what position she holds or where she's located) came to inspect the building and (not surprisingly, given that the toilet isn't working, among other deficiencies) told our postmistress not to come to work until further notice. As in, until the owner has brought the building up to snuff.

Today is bookmobile day. It comes every two weeks for about a half hour. Darcy loves it. I had thought about driving down to Cima and meeting it there, picking up some stuff from the house, etc., but then decided that was silly because the bookmobile comes to Baker right after Cima. But I had told our postmistress I'd be there, so I kept trying the post office number to see if I could catch her while she was there for the bookmobile. I did and she told me that I had packages she wanted me to get today given that she doesn't know the next time the post office would be open.

And here comes the advantage: my postmistress lives far from me, but we've gotten to be friends because I take Darcy down there most days to visit. It's not a busy post office. My bookmobile librarian lives very, very far from me, but we're friendly because Darcy and I rarely miss a bookmobile visit and she only gets three or four people per stop.

So my postmistress gave my packages to my librarian and they were delivered to me when we met the bookmobile in Baker. Heartwarming, isn't it?

Of course, there's still the not-so-small issue of how we're going to get our mail until the post office status is resolved. I'm hoping I can walk over to the Baker PO this afternoon and ask if they'll deliver our mail to Kelso Depot, the visitor center where Michael works. They offered and followed through on that when our post office was closed for the snow before Christmas, so I'll just hope they can do it again.

More Water Woes and Christmas Baking

So we are once more in Baker, camped out in our old house while another water issue is solved. This one is not actually AT our house, but at the source of our water, several miles away. We're unclear about the exact nature of the problem, and know only that it requires a part that is supposed to arrive tomorrow. With any luck, it will arrive very early in the day, be installed without problem, and there will be no need for elaborate testing of waters before we are allowed to go home. In the meantime, we have extremely minimal furniture in our giant former house. The upside is that it leaves me with few things to do during Darcy sleep periods, so I can go through more Christmas pictures without feeling guilty about not doing laundry or dishes or meal prep and without the temptation of television in the evenings.

One of the activities Darcy talked about before we went to NY was "painting" cookies. I had tried to explain Christmas cookie decorating to her and it left her with an excitement for painting and eating cookies. Here we are cutting the first round of cookies. Darcy's participation was minimal. Mostly, she watched. Until she got bored with watching and went to play with her trains again.

But the painting! She was so excited about doing it. She just couldn't wait. Again, until the time actually came. Then she painted the somewhat green crimped circle at the bottom right corner of the platter and stopped. That was it. Eating cookies turns out to be what she's really good at. Luckily, she can't reach very high, so her cookie consumption was able to be closely monitored. I suspect that next year will see more participation in cookie creation.

In the meantime, there's not much Darcy likes more than looking at books or being read to. Here, the cousins take advantage of the landing for a light morning read.

A Taste Of New York Christmas

We took well over 400 photos during our week in NY, so there are lots of pictures to document what was a very fun trip for all. It takes time to crop and resize and select and such, so y'all (I recently have been converted to y'all as a gender-neutral pronoun) will have to be patient. Here's a small sampling of the fun.

There was snow when we arrived, but it was actually raining on the drive home from the airport, so that snow wasn't very fun. But then we got more! Enough for some sledding, which Darcy enjoyed, as you might be able to see. The quality isn't great, but the expression is perfect.


The whole week was the Darcy-and-Liana show from morning to night. They had a lot of fun together and amused the rest of us in the process. Darcy took to standing at this corner, leaning into the dining/living room shouting, "LIANA! LIANA!" Here, they are showing off the matching Christmas dresses Grandma made them. Their footwear was not coordinated, but the hand-holding added a little extra something.