I mentioned in a recent column that we would be road touring the vast and empty spaces of southeastern Oregon and jumping the borders between Washington and Idaho before heading home. It was a great trip. The vistas were endless, and road signs that declared “No service for the next 45 miles” were abundant. It was paradise.

But here’s what was not paradise: the fact that we’d planned the trip as a series of one-night stands. It seemed like a great idea when we looked at the map, but in practice, we realized that the Wake Up/Pack Up/Leave model was not for us. From the start, it was clear that this was going to be a trip to the Land of the Lost. Witness:

• Our first night out in Condon, Oregon, we realized that we were missing an entire bag of toiletries, including my thyroid pills, an excellent medication to have handy when you don’t have any thyroid glands. In the morning, we went to the lone drugstore to buy replacements. Toiletries were easy. Medication … not so much. The pharmacist there didn’t make an appearance until 10 a.m., so we called our next stop and picked it up there. I now know that I can survive a day without thyroid medication, but I did put on 20 pounds. I deserved it. I was the one in charge of that bag, and when we got home, it was sitting in the upstairs hallway, right where I’d left it.
• The next day, three pieces of clothing were left in the hotel room in Condon, all mine. Three! And I didn’t even realize it until two days later. Two!
• We checked into our cabin in Joseph, Oregon, and headed to the Wallowa Lake Tram. We rode to the top and walked the trails, gazed into the heart of the Eagle Cap Wilderness area, and ate lunch at the Summit Grill. After descending from 4,000 feet, we returned to our cabin where The Sainted One couldn’t find the keys to get in. We dug through all the bags that were still in the car, pawed through the console, peered under the seats. We took the half-hour trip back to the base of the tram and checked to see if anyone had turned them in. On one last, desperate scramble through the car, they were found. It’s a mystery how they managed to stay hidden from us. The other mystery is why The Sainted One, who always wears cargo shorts with at least a dozen pockets, didn’t use one of them for the keys.

I’m convinced that if we ever attempt a full-blown cross-country trip using this one-night model, you’ll end up seeing us on the news, because we’ll be standing naked at the Atlantic seashore, patting non-existent pockets looking for money, keys, clothing and missing brain synapses, and our car will most likely be parked somewhere back in the Poconos.

You can reach Pat Detmer — who knows full well that most of these issues were hers and not her husband’s — through patdetmer.com.

On the other hand, The Sainted One and I are quite excited about our summer vacation. We’ll be celebrating our 30th anniversary and my 65th birthday with a road trip through Eastern Oregon and Washington, with stops at the Painted Hills, John Day Fossil Beds and a microbrewery festival in La Grande. We’ll spend two nights in Joseph and our last night in Wenatchee. As our virgin passports gather dust at home, we’ll be making dust of our own, following thin dotted lines on maps in search of something interesting, visiting small town bars and chatting with the regulars, searching for geocaches, and because we’re Vacation Book Bingers, plowing through two or three books apiece.

Our highly mobile friends appear to accept us even though we regularly decline invitations to join them on safaris and cruises. The Sainted One and I often discuss this anomaly of being surrounded by world citizens while we stay close to home, and we’ve come to understand why we’re so inclined.

Pat Detmer

We had similar Midwestern upbringings, childhoods of constant movement and transition. I came from a middle-class family whose father never said “no” to a promotion, this in the day when it was career suicide to take yourself off the corporate treadmill in pursuit of a different form of happiness. We moved an average of every two years and had barrels of goods that we hauled from place to place but never emptied to the bottom. Why bother? The Sainted One’s transitions were more frenetic: a mother with many boyfriends, quick moves out of state and back again when things didn’t work out, time spent with Grandma while Mother disappeared for a while, living with a buddy’s family in order to be able to finish high school.

Once the choice became our own, we dug the tent stakes deep and declared ourselves done. We enjoy our little road trips and tours throughout the U.S. and come back to the same home we’ve lived in for almost 25 years. And once we get back here, there’s no one to surprise us with the news that once again, we’ll be moving far away.

And that, in itself, is journey enough.

You can reach Pat Detmer — whose virgin passport will finally be stamped during a February trek to Puerto Vallarta next year — at patdetmer@aol.com.

I’ve had newspaper columns for nearly 15 years, and I’ve always promised myself that I would try to keep the picture accompanying it fairly current. This the result of having won a charity auction get-together with a columnist and being surprised by the lined face of the person I saw at lunch versus the smooth face that I saw in the paper at breakfast.

I’m not a fan of getting photographed, but years of corporate promotions, company websites and columns have inured me to the pains of the process. Looking at old photos for inspiration, I came across one of me and The Sainted One taken at a studio soon after we’d fallen in love. It is horrible: back to back with arms crossed, heads cocked just so, big fakey smiles. We found each other late in life, and were desperate to create a solid, tangible history and do it quickly. But getting past the theatrics of the pose and looking at my face, I noticed something odd.

I had a lower lip. I have one now, of course, but this was a seriously plump, full, seductive lower lip, so overwhelming that it appeared to be something I might be able to put on and take off like a hat or a wig. Looking in the mirror now, I wonder where it has gone. In the past decade, most things have gone to my hips, but that’s quite a long trip from my face, so I’ve probably just absorbed it somehow.

I wish I had it back.

There are reasons beyond vanity. When my lips are at rest, my mouth naturally curls down at the corners. The arc of my mouth is, in fact, a perfect bow. Unfortunately it’s bowed in the wrong direction. I can be relaxed, happy, at peace, thinking cheerful thoughts, and people will say, “What a grumpy face!” or they will pretend to pull up the corners of their own mouths to signal that I need to make a better effort to smile. I’m always surprised by this, because the position of my lips doesn’t reflect the posture of my mind. If I had a fulsome lower lip again, maybe I wouldn’t look so much like Scrooge.

Genetics may play a part in my dour visage. I have a picture of my great-grandmother in my office that was taken in the late 1800s. She cuts quite a figure in her feathered finery, but even though she’s a young woman, her lips are a thin line. My sisters and I have laughingly referred to it as “The Face That Lips Forgot.” But who’s laughing now?

Rest assured that I will do my best to take a happy, smiling picture, one that will not frighten your small children or make your dogs whine. Even if it kills me.

You can reach Pat Detmer — who you may see at the Y doing lip push-ups — at patdetmer@aol.com.

Yes, it can sometimes be a bit time-consuming, which is why I was elated when I opened the PSBC website and saw a large button that said, “Donate online!” For a nanosecond I pondered how it might be accomplished — Via USB port? Would one need broadband? — and then I realized that they had yet to find a way to siphon my blood over the ethernet, but instead were seeking monetary donations.

The Sainted One gives plasma, and his blood type is such that it mixes with all other types, which means that his plasma is as coveted as Seahawks season tickets at the 50-yard line. When he’s due for a session we get a persistent but pleasant phone call a day from a volunteer until he books it. He gets his own TV and blanket while he donates.

Admittedly, I do get cookies and a choice of drinks when I’m done, so it’s not as if my needs are ignored. I always choose V8 because it makes me feel like I’m replenishing what I’ve lost. They have yet, however, to stock the little bottles of vodka that I keep requesting.

But something has begun to mess with my desire to donate. My iron levels are sometimes not high enough for giving. For a quarter of a century I’ve had the right stuff, and even though I’m not eating differently, and even though I love kale, spinach, seafood, a good steak and Almond Roca, my numbers have gone down. According to the folks at the PSBC, that’s not unusual, especially for women. And according to my doctor, my levels are not “low” by medical standards, so there’s nothing to treat.

So here’s where I take a moment to apologize to the white-coated PSBC technicians who prick my finger to get the blood drop for the iron test. I sit in the tiny room that feels eerily like a Catholic church confessional, and because I believe in mind over matter, I will chant in my head: “Be the iron. Be filled with lots of iron,” and then I’ll wait breathlessly for the result. And here’s why I apologize: Because when I don’t pass, I swear like an inebriated longshoreman in spite of all attempts to amicably shrug and say, “OK. Maybe next time.”

The Bloodmobile will probably be rolling around again in January. I am now taking a 65mg iron tablet a day. I’ll show them, those #!!?#?##!!!

You can reach Pat Detmer — who will give her signed book to anyone who donates at the Newcastle Y Bloodmobile for the first time in his or her life — at www.patdetmer.com.

I don’t understand his attachment to them. Here is a man who has one tuxedo, one suit and three blazers, and yet he has 15 pairs of cargo shorts in constant summer rotation. I think that my irritation might be rooted in jealousy. I carry the bulk of my weight in the hips and thighs (“Well thanks for the compliment on my jodhpurs, but I’m not wearing jodhpurs!”) so the last thing that I need are huge, bulky pockets in spots that already scream of excess.

But he loves them. He’s been known to wear cargo shorts in 48-degree weather and claim that he’s not cold even though from 50 yards away his goosebumps look like a lesser range of The Rockies. He doesn’t like to wear jeans but knows that his sweatpants aren’t appropriate for shopping and dining, so as the days turn brisk and short, he’s especially depressed.

He gets like this, attached to specific pieces of clothing. He’s not an overly sentimental guy, but when it comes to certain well-loved pieces, he is a sartorial Richard Bach.

In fact for years he wore a sweatshirt that was frayed and faded and stiff from washing, which gives me hope for the longevity of our marriage since I am much the same. The cuffs were hanging onto the arms by threads and the collar was pulling away from the neck. I told him that he was one good sneeze away from wearing a T-shirt with matching necklace and bracelets. I was his wingman when we searched for the Son of Sweatshirt, and although he would normally walk into a clothing store, point and say, “I’ll take that” and be out the door within nanoseconds, in this case the process was excruciating:

No. Wrong neck. No. That’s sweater material. It needs to be sweatshirt material. No. That doesn’t gather at the bottom. No, I don’t want a zipper. It needs to be buttons. No gray, no black, no white.

Given our past experience and my disdain toward his shorts style choice, it was with some trepidation that I recently suggested — and I can’t believe I did this — cargo pants, the big-boy version of what he wears all summer long. His face brightened. “I never thought of that,” he said with a faraway look in his eyes, part wistful, part hopeful. “Cargo pants. Hmm.”

Can Son of Cargo Pants be far behind?

You can reach Pat Detmer — who hasn’t shopped with The Sainted One since the Son of Sweatshirt experience — at patdetmer@aol.com.

Jack and the ice cream man. Uh, woman. Truck. Small open vehicle.

I recently wrote an article about the overhyped tests that you can take to find out how old you really are. Who needs a test? While watching my 32-month-old grandnephew Jack a few weeks ago, I easily found out how old I really am, and discovered the same about him.

I am 8. Jack is 52.

Jack is a very smart, thoughtful and cautious child who went directly from observant silence to sentences like, “Mom, did you play with dollhouses when you were a little girl?” and who often begins conversations with, “Mom, I have an idea …”

I watch him every Tuesday for a few hours, and on that day several weeks ago, the stars aligned, the Summer Gods smiled and the ice cream truck came to our neighborhood while I had him. Jack was at the kitchen table eating blueberry yogurt when I heard the unmistakable sound of summer treats approaching. I popped up from my chair and cried, “The ice cream man! The ice cream truck!” Jack looked up from his yogurt. “Jack! The ice cream man is coming! The truck is on the way! Can you hear it?”

Jack heard something all right: me, yelling at full volume from three feet away.

Grabbing some money and heading out the door, I asked The Sainted One to keep an eye on our charge. I ran down our steep driveway and looked up the street. The truck was stopped at a cul-de-sac north of us, and our Good Neighbor to the West and her Lovely Daughter were paying for their purchases. I ran back up the hill, grabbed Jack from the porch where he was now waiting, and tugged him towards the street, but before we could get there, the truck took a tight turn and puttered away from us.

Hearing my wail of dismay, Lovely Daughter chased it up the street and around the corner but had no luck finding it. At the same time, The Sainted One was backing down the driveway to go to the store. Or so he thought. His new mission was to follow the sound of the truck and bring it back.

Jack and I hurried up to the main street so that we wouldn’t be bypassed, with me jabbering the whole way about summer and ice cream men and trucks. Within minutes, the truck slowly approached us with my husband in the car behind it, pushing it along like a sheepdog herding Merino sheep. Jack solemnly held my hand as the parade approached. I could almost hear his thoughts:

“I’m pretty sure that’s not a truck. I can’t define precisely what it is, but it is not a truck.”

“That is not a man. I distinctly remember hearing ‘ice cream man,’ but that is a woman.”

“That is not ice cream as I know it. Where is the ice cream? I see only frozen treats.”

Because Jack remained mute, I followed the suggestion of the ice cream woman and bought him a cartoon character Popsicle featuring bulging blue jawbreaker eyes that scared the hell out of him. He wouldn’t touch it. The next Tuesday, I chopped it up, put it in a bowl and gave it to him with a spoon. He liked it just fine.

You can reach Pat Detmer — who also used to get very excited when Santa came by in the fire truck — at patdetmer@aol.com.