Connections

Connections come easily in the Las Vegas Valley. A flattened water bottle seen in the dark of midnight while walking Tigger shows a Fresh & Easy logo, and that's got to be from the Fresh & Easy very nearby.

An FYE bag blows past while walking Kitty the next early afternoon. The Boulevard Mall on South Maryland Parkway doesn't have one, so it had to have been from the location at the Galleria at Sunset mall in Henderson, the only one in Southern Nevada, and in fact, the only one in Nevada.

Emotional connections come easy here. You either like Las Vegas, or you hate it, or you like certain parts but hate others, or you're ambivalent about the whole thing, but like to visit to try to dig deeper into what makes you ambivalent about it. In this case, I mean the connections you make that remind you of where things are. Not just the water bottle or the FYE bag, but other things too, such as the Carl's Jr. burger box I found laying in dirt in one of the empty lots where I walk our dogs.

Unlike at Pacific Islands where there's dumpsters everywhere and you don't have to put the garbage out on the curb, but just toss it into one of those dumpsters and see it picked up by the garbage truck later in the week, it's nearly impossible to find a place to throw out litter. For one, I'm not touching that tall Four Loko Alcopop can sitting in front of one of the parking spaces next to the island where Tigger and Kitty also do some of their business. But even if it was, say, the flattened Pepsi cans I found at the intersection of Lane I, across from enormous bushes and willow shrubs that remind me dearly of Boulder City, I couldn't throw them out anyway. The only dumpster we have, this long 30-ton container, is on the other side, on the senior park side, separated by a gate that's locked at night. It should really be our dumpster because I thought they had their own and besides, we're paying for it in our monthly garbage fee. Otherwise, you have your own garbage bin in your carport area, and I'm not throwing out other people's trash in there. I am conscious of my surroundings, but there are just some things you can't do, much as you'd want to keep your home clean. Plus, the heavy wind we have tonight blew everything god knows where, maybe to the tiny apartment complex across the street from the back end of our mobile home park. It's unfortunate that our desert might also be home to so much trash, but we do what we can.

Anyway, getting back to that Carl's Jr. burger box, I think I know where that Carl's Jr. is. It is nearby, a mile from me, on East Bonanza Road. It's a generally rundown area, with a Walgreens and CVS following along on the path to the Strip, whichever path you might choose, and even though I'm not sure exactly where it is, I know that it's in that vicinity. One of these days I'll find it exactly.

When I looked at that Carl's Jr. box, I knew that it came from that particular Carl's Jr., close enough to us. Back in Florida, when I saw a Publix plastic bag, I knew it was from the Publix near Muvico (now Cinemark) Paradise 24 in Davie. If I saw a Winn-Dixie bag, it was from the Winn-Dixie in the shopping center across from Grand Palms, where I lived. It's more of a matter of collecting information about where you are, to make it more familiar to you, like Flamingo Road is to me, having walked nearly its entire length, except for where the Vegas Towers Apartments are, because that's a pretty sad looking spot, although that wasn't my reason for not walking there. I was only going as far as where the Clark County Library was on Flamingo Road. When I got there, I turned into it and left the rest of Flamingo Road to others. All I need are my libraries.

But in order to make those connections for the sake of directions and gaining a sense of home, you need to be interested in where you live, and really like it, soon to love it. I already love Las Vegas and the Las Vegas Valley. It took some adjustment in switching from being a tourist and then reading all about it from Santa Clarita while waiting to get here, to becoming a resident and seeing it all every day. It's not disconcerting in that way, and it's never been disappointing, but here you can see whatever you want, look into certain areas, look for the history of those areas. From Santa Clarita, Las Vegas seemed like it would be home to me and it would definitely be more home to me than Santa Clarita ever was, where I only existed. But after getting here, I had to figure out what I wanted from Las Vegas, what I wanted to find here, which is much bigger than simply reading about it.

I'll give you a more recent example. Early yesterday evening, we finished our load of errands at the Food 4 Less in the shopping center next to Pacific Islands on North Green Valley Parkway in Henderson. I don't know the name of the shopping center, or even if it has a name, but I do know that I can walk out of Pacific Islands, to the McDonald's that backs right up to the railroad tracks, get whatever I want, and go back home in far less time than it would take to get to the Rebel gas station/McDonald's at the beginning of that section of Vegas Valley Drive from our mobile home park. I don't know a great deal of directions in Henderson yet, but it is a start, just like intimately knowing Flamingo Road is a start in knowing the rest of Las Vegas.

After Food 4 Less, we stopped at China Garden, which will inevitably become our regular Chinese restaurant. We've eaten there once and taken out numerous other times, including for Thai tea and slushes, and we'll probably single-handedly keep them in business after we move to Pacific Islands. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if that's where we eat on our first night there in September.

We were at China Garden to get a coconut slush (for Dad), a strawberry slush (for Mom), a peach slush (for Meridith), and a pineapple slush (for me), the latter three with tapioca balls. There were a few orders ahead of us and those slushes take time to make, so I stood next to the door, watching a bit of Family Guy high up on the wall at the back of the restaurant, watching these astonishing cooks work magic with strongs flicks of their wrists controlling these huge woks, going from one dish to the next with such knowledgeable ease.

I felt so comfortable there that I felt, yes, this could be my neighborhood. It was nice, quiet, you did your errands and you went on your way. But you could linger, if you wanted. You could walk this shopping center, see if there was anything that interested you, and even if nothing did, just enjoy the gentle peace of it. That seems rare coming from a shopping center, but Henderson is where lots of the true residents are, those who are here for the long haul and aren't only staying a year and then leaving for another state. Henderson is quite spread out, perhaps more than Las Vegas (Lake Las Vegas, with Ravella at Lake Las Vegas, which you have to drive a ways to get to, is considered Henderson, and so is the Railroad Pass casino, outside of Boulder City city limits, on the way to Hoover Dam. I can't believe that that's considered Henderson, what with how far out it is, but there it is), and yet there are pockets of community here. It's not apparent community; there's still a feeling of overall disconnect, but you go where it suits you, go for what interests you, and you find many friendly people. It's apparent what some cities are right when you see them. Henderson isn't one of them. It gradually unfolds to show you what it is and then let you decide what you feel about it. It doesn't want to give everything away all at once, much like the Las Vegas Strip.

As we were ordering the slushies, I picked up two of China Garden's business cards to use as bookmarks. I look at them and I think about that shopping center, that railroad track, and Pacific Islands and I begin to get a sense of where I am there, what street that is, what the intersection is away from that shopping center and Pacific Islands, and even where the Galleria at Sunset mall might be from there. That business card is a connection to that area, that shopping center.

Connections don't only come from people in this valley, not always in the face-to-face sense. Yes, people were responsible for that shopping center I appreciate, for the pineapple slush I liked, for the apartment complex I can't wait to explore more thoroughly after we move (even though the temptation will always be strong to walk over to that wall facing the railroad track, stand there and stare and think and wonder and be inspired), but I mean in the sense that one thing you see leads you to think about what it relates to, and in turn, what it means to you. Every piece I find, every blown bag, every flattened water bottle, every business card, presents more and more of home, in places I've been to, or that I haven't been to but I want to go to, or that I didn't even know about until I saw that particular item and now I want to go there, wherever there is. Through these connections, I build a street, a collection of houses, a shopping center, sidewalks, traffic lights, a city. I see all that, but I don't truly know it until I look that closely at its trash, at what it brings along with it to show off or just to let fly into the wind. I need to see that logo, that card, that piece that lets me know my home better. This is the first time since Florida that I see something new every day. I don't know what it will be, but today I will see something new, something that will make me want to know even more. I'm even fostering that connection with plants, wanting to know exactly what I'm looking at, so I checked out a slew of books about plant life in Southern Nevada. At least one of them has got to know about those shrubs, the trees, those tiny yellow flowers. I need to know. I want to understand. I am home, and I want to be home even more. This is how I do it.

DVD Reviews Since....August

I've continued writing DVD reviews after a month away from them to readjust my priorities, to remind myself that I'm still writing them in order to keep an updated portfolio, but this time reviewing only what truly interests me, despite the temptation to ask Acorn Media for everything they have, which would put more pressure on me to review everything I've requested and to spend more hours in front of the TV than I'd want to because I have more books I want to read than DVDs I want to watch. As long as I don't look at the wholesale section of Acorn Media's website, which includes a list of upcoming titles, the temptation passes.

However, a month's hiatus means nothing in this blog because I just realized, while thinking about posting links to my latest reviews, that I haven't posted any links since August 8, a month and 6 days before we moved.

Here we go then, with my reviews since August, up to today's review of the Michelin Guide documentary Three Stars:

The Devil's Needle and Other Tales of Vice and Redemption

Dennis the Menace: 20 Timeless Episodes

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

Lisztomania

Holy Flying Circus (One of my favorite reviews of late)

The Sinking of the Laconia

The Decade You Were Born: The '40s

Red Green Show press release with a little from me at the top

The Callers

Master Qi and the Monkey King

8:46

Airport

The Decade You Were Born: The '50s

James Bond Gadgets

50's TV Classics

Secret Access: The Presidency

The Good Wife: The Third Season (My final review before we moved to Las Vegas)

The Halloween Tree (My first review after we moved to Las Vegas)

Battle Circus

Kiss Me

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Complete Series

The Raw and the Cooked

The Clintons: An American Odyssey

Hazel: The Complete Fourth Season (My other favorite review of late)

A Simple Life

Three Stars

Next up for me is seasons 5 and 6 of That '70s Show and The Carol Burnett Show: Carol's Favorites (Collector's Edition), which came out on September 25, but I'm catching up on earlier DVDs since moving took priority as well as seeking full-time work.

A New Collection

When I was eight, nine, 10 years old, I had a baseball card collection. I don't know why. I never watched baseball and I liked basketball more. It didn't make any sense. The bottle cap collection I had from Publix milk and orange juice made more sense. I even collected the rings around the caps and those came in handy when Mom helped me make a science project in elementary school that was a ring toss game.

I had a few pet rocks, and when I was heavily into aviation in my teens, I wrote to airlines and got from them those emergency information cards. I also got issues of their inflight magazines which led to my first published writing: A sidebar about Y2K prevention for Meridian Magazine, the inflight magazine of the now-defunct east coast-based Midway Airlines, when I was 14.

On our first or second visit to Las Vegas, when we ventured into Henderson, we stopped at the Smith's in a shopping center that includes a AAA office, Brooklyn Bagel, Popcorn Girl, the Cracked Egg restaurant, and Ohana Hawaiian BBQ, our favorite Hawaiian place so far in Southern Nevada. In that Smith's, I spotted a toy flour truck, which was hauling sacks of flour, and I bought it. It reminded me that when I was in kindergarten, I collected Matchbox, Micro Machines, and other kinds of toy cars. But this time, I wanted to do it differently, and so about a year before we moved, I began collecting toy working vehicles. I have a garbage truck, a school bus I bought at Six Flags Magic Mountain, a gas truck, an ice cream truck, a food truck (hot dogs, hamburgers and sodas), an airport fire truck, and countless others. I haven't found a taxicab yet, but I want one. Maybe construction vehicles, such as a cement truck, but I'm not sure yet. The only police car I've bought is a vintage Nevada Highway Patrol one that I ordered online, and will likely be the only one for me since it relates to my home. I'm not sure about fire trucks. I see them around all the time anyway. Maybe a Nevada one.

At Sprouts late this afternoon, I pulled basil from the rack of one of the refrigerated cases, basil that you can grow. I opened it up so I could smell the salty complexity of my favorite herb, and Mom asked, "Do you want to grow it?"

Me? No. Not here anyway. If I eventually decide I want to, I'd rather wait until we get to Pacific Islands in Henderson, after we get settled. But I'd rather buy ready-grown basil to use right away.

As we walked into the aisle where lip balm, ointments, pollen, and other natural products were, I thought about another collection. But nothing I'd have to physically collect. Something different from the norm of collecting.

No matter where we go shopping, be it Sprouts, Walmart, Smith's, Vons, Target, or even when we're just visiting shops on the Strip, I always look at the back of products to see where they come from. In fact, I did that at Sprouts, finding out that some kind of orange-infused lotion came from Salt Lake City.

Then I hit upon it: I want to collect city and town names. I don't mean Googling a state and copying those names into a Word file. I mean looking up whichever cities and towns I spark to and studying them, learning their history, even if I might not want to go there, such as, say, a town in Alaska (it always sounds too damn cold for me). The real beginning of this can be pinpointed a few months back, when we were new here and I decided that I wanted to learn more about Florida than I felt I did when I was there. I was born in Plantation, but we lived in Sunrise at the time. I really don't know anything about Plantation, nor what it was like in 1984.

Odd-sounding names will of course be part of it, as well as cities and towns in New Mexico, including, naturally, Taos. I want to do more than just looking at the back of a product and seeing a city name. I want to know where it is, what it looks like, what the population is, what kind of government they have, all of that. I'm already doing that with Boulder City, having begun studying it long before we moved, and I always have a yen to go back. But I want to know more of the United States. The biggies, such as New York City, Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco and others, stay out. I want to know about the not-so-obvious cities, the history of those that are content with the size they are. It might help my writing, since I have two road trip novels in mind, but mainly, I want to know about what I can't see, what I can't experience every day because I'm here, and those cities and towns are there, over there, way over there, and waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay over there. I think this collection will be as fun to maintain as my toy working vehicles.

The Generosity at Hoover Dam

On the same page in Boulder City: Passages of Time that made up the previous entry, I also found this, which deserved its own entry:

"One of the unique features is the cafeteria-style lunch-basket room. The men file through, take an empty box, and fill it with whatever they wish. Sandwiches, pieces of pie, etc., are all wrapped in waxine bags. If a man wants only six pieces of pie, he can have them. By this method all are satisfied and there is none of the proverbial grumbling about the grub in the lunch boxes." -- New Reclamation Era, November, 1931.

Under that paragraph is this, which shows that generosity is possible anywhere, even during the hard work of building Hoover Dam:

"...We work it this way. I bring the sandwiches, another fella brings the fruit, another the cake. If we have anything left we give it to the guys who don't have anything to eat." -- Buck Blaine, Nevadan Magazine, Las Vegas Review Journal, 8/26/73.

They Began Badly, Too

Yesterday, I wrote about how I ate badly during our first few days as residents in Las Vegas, and that it eventually took its toll on me. Only after our mattresses were delivered, and when we began shopping for groceries, did I improve and turned my attention to becoming acclimated to Las Vegas as a resident, away from my days as a tourist.

In state history, I'm not the only one who did this. I put a book on hold from the Boulder City Library, commissioned by the Boulder City Library in 1981, called Boulder City: Passages in Time by Angela Brooker and Dennis McBride, the latter Boulder City's most famous historian. I checked this out of the Whitney Library last Saturday.

There's no page numbers in this book, but I found this at the beginning of the chapter about construction of Hoover Dam:

"It is a fact that there were a great many heat deaths in the canyon during the first summer down there. That was for two reasons. One was because of the heat, and the second was that the people working in the canyons had been on one or less meals per day for quite some time. And when they got down there and saw the Anderson Commissary there, with all this food stacked up to eat, they just couldn't believe it. They just gorged themselves and then went down in the canyon, and the heat'd hit 'em, and they'd keel over. The government, at that time, when all the deaths were occurring, asked Harvard University to send out some scientists to see what could be done to combat the heat. And they came up with the salt tablets to prevent dehydration. And every employee at the dam working in the canyon and those that weren't too, I guess, were required to have salt tablets in their possession at all times, and to take about one an hour. And it was determined that this did a great deal towards combating the heat prostration, although, once the people got used to eating regularly and not quite as much as they did when they first came there, it was all right." -- John F. Cahlan, Reminiscences of a Reno and Las Vegas, Nevada newspaperman, University Regent, and public-spirited citizen: typed transcript of a tape-recorded interview conducted by Mary Ellen Glass, Oral History Project, Getchell Library, University of Nevada, Reno, April 1968.

That's exactly what it was, with the food, but without the heat. I had gorged myself when I was a tourist and did it again without care in our first few days here, just for energy, while rapidly becoming exhausted at the same time. I can relate to those workers, and thankfully, just like they were, I'm settled here, and much more mindful.

Breathe Deep

"I now live in a village in the desert. Although we have left the city, it has taken my body months to slow down, to recover a rhythm in my heart that moves my body first and my mind second. I am learning that there is no such thing as wasting time, as whole days pass inside the simple tasks of making a home, meeting new neighbors, watching the ways of deer. My ears have just now stopped ringing as they adjust, accommodate this quiet, this calm in this landscape of time." -- "Red: Passion and Patience in the Desert" by Terry Tempest Williams

In Florida, I smelled the rolling ocean, the salt lingering invisibly in the air. I smelled suntan lotion and the dampness of the sand in Fort Lauderdale and Miami Beach. In a stroller at the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World, smoking was permitted more widely in the park and a certain brand of cigarettes today, though I don't bother to find out which, triggers memories of Walt Disney World, because those were the cigarettes in the Magic Kingdom, like the brand was a proud sponsor of Walt Disney World. I remember walking into the late Lox Haven in Margate and the heavenly heavy and salty smell of lox hit you as soon as you pushed open the door nearest to the carts on the inside. You'd have to push past the old Jews to get a number at the deli counter and then wait, and jostle them some more after your number was called and you wanted to get the attention of the man behind the counter before he went on to the next number. Being a young Jew long removed from Florida, I miss those old Jews, may they rest in peace, which seems likely by now. You never know what you miss about a place until you're existing where you don't want to be.

For nine years, I forgot how to smell, I forgot how to breathe. I couldn't bring myself to make more of Santa Clarita than was already there, which was a nothing of epic proportions. I'd go to the Pavilions supermarket every Friday and get close to the roast chicken, just to smell something different than nothing. The flower displays at the Ralphs supermarkets looked so dismal that I feared if I got near them, they would dramatically collapse ("No! Don't come near me! I'm hideous! It's not going to get any better!"). Malaise is the right word, the only word, for those nine years. I was relieved whenever we walked into the restaurant at IKEA in Burbank because Swedish meatballs, the way they had them, were at least a welcome change for what I usually faced every day, and every week. One of our last visits to anywhere outside of Santa Clarita before we moved was Golden Corral in Hesperia, our beloved buffet that we hadn't seen since Florida, this being the closest location for us in Southern California. The others were in City of Industry and El Centro, as close to the Mexican border as you could get without crossing it.

When we walked into Golden Corral, I wanted to fall to my knees and thank god for recovering part of the life that I knew, although it was a temporary relief. No matter, though, because we moved to Las Vegas not long after this visit. I still believe there should be a Golden Corral in Henderson, along with a White Castle on the Strip, and an IKEA somewhere in Las Vegas. There are plots of desert that would suit it perfectly. And besides residents' dollars, IKEA would also enjoy tourists' dollars. I think they forget about that when they say they're not going to put one here. But they should.

Finally escaping Southern California after nine years, we arrived in Las Vegas as residents last September 14, which now makes it five months that we've lived here, Valentine's Day being that marker. And yet, even though I was mindful that I was going to be a resident, I still traveled badly. Breakfast at McDonald's at Barstow Station in Barstow was two Sausage McMuffins with Egg, a hash brown, and a caramel McCafe Frappe.

I wasn't thinking. All we had in our empty house in Saugus on the early morning that we moved was a box of Cookie Crisp. I was starving. I just needed energy. Surely a bad way to go about it and it got worse, because that night, we picked up dinner from the Hawaiian place in Henderson that we like, in that shopping center on North Green Valley Parkway that includes Smith's supermarket and Brooklyn Bagel. The next night, we went to Wing Stop. You can see where this is going, without vegetables, without fruit. Add to that unpacking boxes and sleeping on the floor for a few nights after arriving and after ordering custom mattresses from a nearby mattress maker (which thankfully only took two days), and changing our licenses at the DMV, and getting my library card at the Whitney Library while totally exhausted, and I was a mess by the fifth day. I quickly learned that you have to immediately establish yourself in some way when you arrive in Las Vegas as a resident, some kind of routine to establish even as you're moving in. Otherwise, this city will eat you alive. After the mattresses were delivered and I finally got some decent sleep that night, I found my footing. I began the process of applying for a full-time job in the Clark County School District, first as a campus security monitor, and now as an elementary school library assistant. The process still has a little more time to go, but it will happen soon, and it needs to happen soon because Blue Shield of California is cutting off the medical insurance I pay for on my own, being that they've found that I don't live in California anymore. Well, duh. Four months since I've moved and they've only just looked at the address they were sending my bill to?

However, it took more time to become accustomed to the landscape around me. No matter how much I read and studied while I lived in Santa Clarita, while waiting impatiently to move to Las Vegas, none of it compared to actually being here. Now, I'm not an in-a-rush type of person like Dad is. I want my life to be as easygoing as possible. But silence here is different than silence in Santa Clarita. At our house in Saugus, you might hear a train whistle in the distance in that bowl-shaped valley at two in the morning, but you'd hear basically no traffic. Some coyote howling during the summer months, but not as much as the dark morning hours stretched on. No traffic in the neighborhood.

Here, you have to listen differently. Being that this is a 24-hour town, there's a nervous energy, a nervous humming underneath all of Las Vegas. It's constantly moving. When I walk the dogs at 11 p.m., there are cars still going by on the street outside my mobile home park. People are going to work, people are coming home from work, people are going out to gamble, whatever they're doing. Anything you want to do here, you can do. But even in Florida, living in Grand Palms in Pembroke Pines, I never heard this much traffic at night either. Things slowed down, tucked themselves in for the night, left whatever needed to be done until the morning. Dad was more surprised about this than I was, but I was still a bit flummoxed by it. I'm still amazed at how people manage to live, those who work at night. And yet, there's my North Carolina neighbor at the end of my block who's a member of the cleaning crew at the Thomas & Mack Center, coming in after the event or basketball game is over to go to work. He comes home early in the morning and goes to sleep until the afternoon. That's where the work is for him and so he goes.

But it's not so much that. There's a slower rhythm to the desert. You can go to the Strip and have a blowout time, but you can also search for the Las Vegas of old. There are museums here for that. They allow for reflection. And libraries in Las Vegas, Henderson, and my dear favorite in Boulder City all carry books about what Las Vegas used to be. The city gives you a choice. You can do whatever you want here, even drive out deep into the desert and let out a primal scream. I've never done that and have no reason to do that since I'm content here. Yet the desert looks after me just as it would look after you. Slow down. Take your time. Figure out what of Las Vegas would fit you and then pull it close to you to enjoy. Whatever you want, you can have it. That goes for residents just as much as tourists. As a resident, once you've balanced yourself soon after arriving, you're good to go.

That all ties into my learning how to breathe again after nine years of nothing. Soon after we got here, one of our early nights saw a steady wind throughout the valley and I was first relieved because this wind couldn't potentially spark a wildfire like the winds in Southern California could, what with all the mountains, but then I was so happy because I had waited so long to feel a true desert wind. It's always windy in Palmdale, just part of the landscape, but here, the wind feels like it dances with the landscape. There are nights when it's still and calm and yet when we drive toward Las Vegas from Henderson, we can see all those lights in the distance and they're all twinkling, seemingly without the aid of any wind. When I felt that first wind, I stood totally still when I was out walking one of our dogs and let it wash over me and all around me. I wanted to feel every moment of it, and I wanted to know it well. I breathed it in and it felt like the wind was made of all of us in Las Vegas, present and the past. Frank Sinatra was in the wind and so were the blackjack dealers on the Strip. Liberace was in there somewhere, and the cocktail waitresses at Caesars Palace were taking drink orders from in there too. The water show of the Bellagio was also dancing in that wind. Also in that wind, Bugsy Siegel was barking orders. I believe that the ghosts of Las Vegas only make their presence known when it's gloomy and raining. But the wind lets off a tiny bit of them, a reminder that we are here because of them, because of what they did before, because of what came before. I like that. It broadens my love of history.

Last Friday, I finally mastered learning how to breathe here and how to smell again. The day was calm when I went to get the mail and I walked to the left, to the end of my street and then turned right onto Lane I, as it's called, passing one street and then entering the next one on the right, my favorite street in this mobile home park because how close the houses seem to be across from each other, but how homey it feels. This street feels like it's protected from the rest of the park, interrupted by little traffic, not hearing much of the traffic outside the mobile home park, with other houses bordering it.

As I walked my usual route, I smelled perfume which seemed like the Macy's kind. If it was a plant that I had overlooked, I would not be surprised because plants here have a certain kind of power, few as they are, but that they're few may be why they inspire awe. Hardiness in the desert. Survival. I'm not quite sure yet what I'm supposed to smell in the desert. I know I haven't smelled sagebrush, the state flower, yet, because I would definitely have noticed. Scents do linger here, though. I've smelled fresh wood, dust from the remodeling of bathrooms in the clubhouse, stagnant pool water, tree scents from the wind blowing as I've walked around, and a lot more that I should work to categorize. I've never thought about smells as much as I have here, but it's the kind of state that makes you thankful to have a sense of smell.

I know to breathe slowly here. Life happens, as it will, and there are tense situations and responsibilities to meet, but there is also such joy in the simplicity of things, of standing outside and taking in all that's around you, especially on days when pollution from Los Angeles doesn't create a haze over the Strip. I walked around my neighborhood that Friday, so content, so at peace. I'm not sure where I would belong in Northern Nevada, as I haven't been there yet, but I know I belong here in Southern Nevada, and in Nevada entirely. I feel like there's so much for me to explore each day, and so much for me to see and smell and hear and even taste at times.

Then yesterday, Meridith and I walked five laps around the large perimeter of our mobile home park, covering every corner from the dumpster near the gate that separates us and the senior mobile home park from the inside, to the maintenance area where those guys and gal store all their stuff for repairs in the park, to the two RV lots where RVs are usually parked, but most of them are gone, their owners having gone to explore whatever of the United States they like. We walked twice around the mobile home park, and then at the beginning of the third time, after we passed the clubhouse, we were walking by the first house after that, and I stopped. The door of that house was open and something smelled so good! It straddled the line between a roast something and barbecue, but without the grill outside. Or maybe there had been a grill in the small yard covered up by that wooden fence and I didn't notice. I couldn't hear anything sizzling, though. It had to be from the oven in the kitchen. After the fourth time, Meridith jokingly suggested that I call Mom and Dad, tell them that they can have dinner without us (pork roast, stuffing, and cranberry sauce), and we invite ourselves in for dinner at that house. I was sorely tempted. It was 72 degrees today in Las Vegas and it was that kind of day. Doors were open, windows were open and a lot of people were outside, taking advantage of this unexpectedly warm weather that leaves us on Tuesday. This was the warmest day out of the past three days, which was why Meridith and I went out for a walk. And as we did those laps, and Meridith was telling me about her cafeteria job lately, I felt that same peace I achieved on Friday. I know now that it's in me and it's not leaving. Every time I walk outside now, I'm curious about everything. I want to know if those currently empty mobile home lots might have been occupied years ago. I want to know what holds a carport up. I want to know what kind of plants I'm looking at across from the beginning of Lane I. I want to know what in that maintenance area hasn't been used in years, but that they don't throw away because they don't feel like it. I want to know more about the RVs parked here. I want to know what kind of bulbs are used for the noirish orange lights on my street and all around the mobile home park at night, how long they last, and when they possibly need to be replaced next. In our first week here, I saw the maintenance people with a cherry picker, one person on it, rising up to the lights, opening the glass to that light, and cleaning the glass on the inside and the outside. I had never seen anything like that before.

Finally, I can breathe without worry, I can breathe without boredom, I can breathe knowing that every breath carries the full weight of the desert and all that it entails. I know that it gets mighty unfriendly in the summer, and I will experience that in due time, but to breathe this easily, and to really smell things, for them to linger like they do, this is where I belong. This place requires a thesaurus, but there are times when no thesaurus can ever help describe my experiences. I've done a little of that in this entry and in others, but it's not even a quarter of what I feel when I walk the dogs at night, which I'll be doing in a little while, nor when I visit Boulder City, nor when I'm on the Strip. I've said before that if you can't find anything to write about in Las Vegas, you should quit. I still believe that. But now I know that there are times when words can't do it. You can only stand still and let the wind embrace you. If there's wind tonight, or even a breeze, I will gladly give myself to it. Peace has never felt so good.

The Right Time

Last Saturday, at the end of a few hours in my fantasy home of Boulder City that included Goatfeathers Too (annex to the main, sprawling antique store across the street), Goatfeathers (the main store), lunch at Mel's Diner (a middle-of-my-best-list patty melt with onions and swiss cheese), lots of chocolate covered things ordered at Grandma Daisy's, and finding out that TuTu's Books was closed for maintenance until Tuesday, we stopped at the Boulder City Library, my temple, my sanctuary, possibly above all other libraries in this valley. I don't think other libraries to see in Henderson could possibly compare to this one, even though I'm fond of the tall bookcases at the James I. Gibson Library.

With no room on my library card, I used Meridith's for three books I wanted: Finding Casey by Jo-Ann Mapson, which I saw was set in New Mexico and wanted it right away; Father O'Brien and His Girls by David Chandler, set in Las Vegas, and which I found in the Nevada Room (I want to read all the books in there); and Dog Days at the White House: The Outrageous Memoirs of the Presidential Kennel Keeper by Traphes Bryant with Frances Spatz Leighton. Bryant was the White House electrician who was there from Truman through Nixon, but took up taking care of the First Dogs from Kennedy through Nixon.

Meridith checked out those three for me along with a few books to read to Tigger and Kitty, and then I spotted The Care and Handling of Roses with Thorns by Margaret Dilloway, a novel about a regimented 36-year-old biology teacher who severe kidney ailments who's a rose breeder. I'm interested in flowers, but those other details seized my attention, because I am as regimented as her in my reading. Nothing can get between her and her roses (though that will likely change), and nothing can get between me and my books.

I decided that since three books from the Boulder City Library seemed like enough since I had all those other library books at home, and more books on hold to pick up the next day, I would put this one on hold and pick it up at the Whitney Library, my usual branch, the Sunday after the following one. I did, but after we got home from that day, which afterward included exploring the M Resort in Henderson, I wished that I had given that book to Meridith to check out as well. I badly wanted to read it, and that copy belonging to Boulder City, that should have been enough incentive for me since I prefer Boulder City copies of any books whenever possible.

But, as has been my experience in the past, there are times for certain books, and they may not be right away.

Take today. I picked up The Care and Handling of Roses with Thorns at the Whitney Library, along with my other holds. I was finishing Finding Casey and determined that that would be the next book I started, since I had waited a week and couldn't stop thinking about it during that week.

It has been such a nice day today. Recently, I finally became accustomed to the slow rhythm of the desert, which merits its own post soon. I have learned to breathe slowly and really smell the desert around me, and I feel good. Finding Casey was a gentle, understated wave of a novel that made me more curious about the plants of New Mexico and its customs, and what better atmosphere in which to start The Care and Handling of Roses with Thorns?

I am where I want to be, living a life that will soon be fully formed with the arrival of the job I want, and finished a novel that held such promise and delivered on it. And the middle of the afternoon was just as gentle as that novel, as the desert, unseasonably warm, but a welcome break from sweatshirts, which I don't like, having been born and raised and spectacularly spoiled in Florida. I'm now on chapter 4 of The Care and Handling of Roses with Thorns, on page 40. So far, it has been worth the wait.