Vacation Revelations

Things I learned on my Vacation:

I learned my children all have ADD or ADHD. They can’t sit still for 5 minutes unless they are feeding their faces or sleeping. They lack the ability to amuse themselves. Despite what THEY say I am far from ‘high maintenance’ when compared to them. Oh, and they don’t mean what they say and they go back on their word on a whim. Daughter #3 said I must sit in the back and be seen and not heard for the trip down and back. That’s exactly what I did - although I did relent and drive for 2 hours each way. She did nothing but complain after we got there about how tired she was because she and her father drove the ‘whole long way’ and I did nothing to help. Never mind that it was SHE and not me who decided I would sit in the back and mind my own business, which I did quite successfully, I might add. When she and/or her father were driving like maniacs I didn’t complain or yell or even GASP out loud too much. I prayed. A LOT!!!! I made deals and bargains and such with God as we careened south. If I hadn’t highlighted my hair before we left I’m sure a whole new crop of grays would be glaringly apparent right about now.

I learned that daughter #3 can’t drive without the Mp3 player plugged into the dash and the volume dialed up to 956 decibels, or there abouts. Apparently the car won’t start without the key AND the Mp3 player plugged in.

I learned my children can listen to deafening music, as they drive, but they can’t stand to hear themselves think. Assuming that they actually do think, which I question at this point. I wondered how she would hear a police car or ambulance siren should one be following her. In all fairness though, we did have to drive with the windows down the whole long way because - shockingly enough - her A/C isn’t quite up to par in that car so no windows means no air whatsoever. The mancub and I sat in the back, windblown and sweaty and said little. No surprise there. The mancub wouldn’t have said anything if the backseat was on fire and his clothes right along with it. He slept a lot which is no wonder really. I drifted in and out of slumber. I fought hard against the wind to try and keep my eyes open and read my book but it was an uphill battle all the way and when I was weary from the effort I would take a nap. You do what you have to - to survive, eh?

I learned that ‘Experience is the best teacher’ does NOT apply to your offsprings’ driving skills. Daughter #2 drives like Janet Guthrie in the 1/4 mile turn at the Indianapolis 500 - ALL the time. The ex and I are still nursing semi-severe cases of whiplash at the hands of her ‘driving skills’ and I use THAT term very loosely. Somewhere back in the far reaches of my addled brain I recall teaching her how to drive successfully enough that she procured a drivers license from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. If they could see her now. WOW!!!! They’d yank her driving privileges in a New York minute. She gets behind the wheel and it’s like Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Some crazed fiend takes over and she drives like a cabby hunting for a cross town fare at La Guardia during rush hour.

I learned that taking 5 people out of their natural habitat and plunking them down in a hotel room is asking for trouble. Their faults are magnified exponentially and they basically have NO redeeming qualities in a single room. My kids turn the TV on and magically hone in on that same 956 decibel volume level as the Mp3 player. I think the hotel clerk in the lobby 3 floors away could hear what they were watching on the TV - 24/7. No sense turning it off when we go out or go to sleep. The electricity is included!!!! Never mind about being environmentally responsible and saving our resources. Run the electricity night and day and day and night. It was like an ‘eternal flame’ memorial for the founder of television.

I learned that 2 men, OK, a man and a mancub, which is a man and a half, cannot be trusted in a hotel room where A/C controls are within reach. We would leave the room to go out and have to scrape the mirrors with the ice scraper retrieved from under the front passengers car seat when we returned. It was so cold in that room you could hang meat! I would turn it up and they would turn it down an extra 5 degrees to make up for the time the room temp. was near normal. I would turn it up when I went to bed and the mancub would lay awake till I fell asleep and proceed to turn it down to tundra-like temps. When I would wake up in the morning I had no idea what the weather was like outside. I couldn’t see past the frost on the window but I could see my own breath!!!!

I learned it’s near impossible to keep your eyes open to read a book while barrelling down the interstate at 70mph with the windows down.

I learned that testosterone is to blame for individual A/C units and the urge to fiddle with them is caused by the same. It’s also to blame for elevators and a man’s need to push each and every floor button whenever he exits the lift. This is done with a snicker, a high five, and a smug self-satisfied look.

I learned that testosterone will cause the indiscriminate use of a remote control in a hotel room small enough that you can reach the TV controls from the bathroom. A word of advice, get into the room first and remove one battery from the remote. That same testosterone will prevent him from going to the front desk and asking for a new battery. To testosterone, that is akin to asking for directions. It’s NEVER done. Tell him if he wants to ’surf’ to hit the beach!!!!!

More Vacation Relevations to come. . . . .(I have to go move a mountain - of LAUNDRY!!!!!)

Bucket List

One thing to cross off my bucket list -

Swimming in a rooftop pool at twilight - it was magical!!!!!
The colors of daylight painting the sky into a horizontal evening rainbow - absent the rain.
Muted colors washing the horizon into quiet summer stillness.

Surviving the first part of vacation with the ex - with a smile :o)

Looking forward to the next few days with my children.

Anticipating coffee and a sunrise over the Atlantic ocean in the solitude of dawn.

Finishing another book and wondering what I’ll pick next.

Taking a shower - greeting this new day <3 <3 <3

Muse Flash

I watched a movie at work yesterday. Steel Magnolias……still a tear jerker after all these years. I knew going into it I would get emotional and still I went ahead with it anyway. It makes me contemplative….about life…..love……family……and surviving. It hits close to home…..all the emotion in that movie. I lived a similar life experience nearly 23 years ago……soon I will write about it…..after all these years I might finally be able to find my voice and share the life altering experience.

Preparing to go on vacation! What a huge undertaking. Does anyone else drive themselves crazy with all the details or do you just pack your bag and hit the open road? I am my own worst enemy. I guess I really do make things more complicated than they have to be. There is a house to consider. Dogs to be dealt with. Bills to be paid. Who needs what before we go. The only thing I have ready are my books. They are one of the most important ingredients of a successful vacation…..to me, anyway. The only thing missing is a good cup of coffee and a beach!

Senior pictures are today. Yes, for the high maintenance almost 17 year old. She has been impossible for the past 2 days. I would rather wrestle a rabid crocodile that hasn’t eaten for 2 months than to deal with her when she’s acting like this. Luckily, she is very photogenic so her ugly mood won’t be apparent in pictures. She’ll look like an angel in one dimension. I’m the only one who won’t be fooled. I’ll bear the brunt of her wrath like I always do.

Hardly anything on my ‘To Do List….’ is done. I make lists of things to accomplish before I go on vacation so I feel like I did something to deserve one. Probably a self-defeating move. I don’t feel as if I should go off and enjoy myself if I haven’t done ’something’ to make me deserving of it. I survived the last year. By all accounts it’s been one of the worst in the history of me. That alone makes me deserving….if I really think about it. There will be difficult times to deal with soon enough. The one year anniversary of it looms large. I should vacation and enjoy it for all it’s worth. The memories of it will buoy me and lend some perspective in the days and weeks ahead. Dark days…..sad days……days of sorrow filled with what if’s……and ‘if only’s’….

I’m reading Erma Bombeck. I was reading her book in-between watching Steel Magnolias. I bought the book for vacation but the temptation was too great. I was crying with sadness at the movie and crying and screaming laughing at the book. Thank God it was a quiet day at work. If anyone reviews the closed circuit video from the survelience cameras…..HA! what a laugh they’ll have watching me.

I survived the picture ordeal. She did look beautiful. Lovely even. Hard to believe another will be grown up. Some days it seems like they were babies a mere 20 minutes ago…..I don’t feel any older…..but the proof I am is behind the wheel of a car - not the handle bars of a tricycle. I have one left to go through senior pictures. It’s the mancub. That will be my reward for the hair, makeup, jewelry, not to mention the blood, sweat, and tears that all went into getting 1, 2, and 3, ready to roll. The mancub will grunt a few times, ball up the shirt I painstakingly iron, and head off to get his pictures taken with little to no preparation or fanfare.  He’ll come out looking just as good as the girls with minimal effort and ZERO words spoken, no whining, and no stressing about what to wear. Men really have it SO easy. He’ll roll his eyes at me when I ask if he wants me to go with him. I may have to follow 3 car lengths behind him in a borrowed car and disguise but eventually he’ll be glad I went although he’ll never admit as much to me.

Road Tripping with the Ex

Vacation beckons. Do I heed the call? It’s complicated - no, I’m not Denise Richards in disguise. Ha! I wish my life was as ‘complicated’ as hers! She needs to get a grip and get over herself. Don’t get me started on her!!!!

The ex has invited me to go on vacation with him - and our two younger children to visit daughter # 2 in South Carolina. I want to see my daughter and Charleston, where she lives (It’s my favorite city) but I also want time alone away from my two children who share my world on a constant day to day basis.

My son is no problem really. I will miss the grunting when he is away. The freezer door will miss him more. It won’t see any action while he is away unless I find frozen food on sale and buy it for his eventual return.

It’s daughter # 3, the one who is most like the bulldog that I need some R&R from. She is tedious and high maintenance and SO impatient. She can also be scathing and a tad mean, ok, more than a tad. I need the solitude while she is away to steel myself for her eventual return. She could talk the ears off a brass monkey, as my Mother likes to say. She also told me, when child #3 was born, “That one is going to make you eat your elbows”. I know, that sounds funny and is seemingly impossible but my mother was SO right. Yeah, I said it, “My Mom was right!” No one knows how many times over the years I thought of that saying in relation to my daughter and wished eating my elbows was ALL I had to do to get through her childhood. My sister used to say, “If she were mine, I’d snatch her bald”. She’ll be 17 in a few weeks and by all accounts I probably deserve a medal for lasting this long without benefit of medication. 8 days without her is a welcome substitute for a medal of honor.

So, the question remains, ‘To go, or not to go’?

Here is where most people would be contemplating whether or not they could stand their ex for 8 days and a 15 hour car trip up and back. Yeah, not me.

I wonder if I can sit in a car with child #3, her car, mind you, because the ex thinks we should take that on this long trip to make sure it’s safe. My child informed me if I go I am relegated to the backseat. She and her father will be driving. I am to be seen and not heard. Now, I don’t know about you but the idea of riding for 15 hours with your Mp3 player, a few good books and magazines, your favorite pillow and snacks does not a punishment make. I said to my daughter, “You mean I don’t have to drive, I can read and listen to music, I can nap at will and only wake up when the car stops and it’s time to eat? I am SO onboard with that.” I get to be ‘her’ for my vacation. The center of my own universe! Ha! What’s not to love?

The ex keeps asking if I am going. I keep stalling. It won’t cost you anything he said. No gas money. No hotel costs. No food costs. You should come, he keeps urging. I personally think he’s very very afraid of the idea that he alone will be responsible for two children and he alone will bear the brunt of #3’s almost 17 year old raging hormone induced fits and flights of fancy. Our son will simply grunt from the backseat periodically, so he’s no help and certainly not an ally. He wants me to be his wing man or maybe just his flack jacket. The big chicken.

Seriously though. I am going. I want to see daughter #2 way worse than I want to avoid daughter #3. I’ve built up an immunity to her over the years. I can tune her out like a fly trapped in the house on a hot summer night. I want to see my beloved Charleston. I want a free vacation because I won’t be getting one otherwise.

Mostly though, I’m going for a 700 hundred mile ride to snivel and whine periodically, throw tantrums about how hungry I am and how unfair life is, and to kick the back of my daughters seat like she’s done to me for the past 17 years. Ahhhh……Paybacks!

Live well (on your ex’s money)- it’s the best revenge :o)

Mourning a Gentle Giant

I am in mourning. For three days I have been wearing basic black. No one around me has noticed. If they did they would criticize me, telling me to “Get over it, already”, ”It’s no big deal”, ”Get real” or “Be serious”. Well, I’m not over it, it IS a big deal to me, I’m as ‘real’ as the next guy, and I’m as serious as a heart attack! 

A brief but violent storm passed through on Sunday. In it’s wake - chaos. I wasn’t home when it happened. I heard about it before I actually saw it. I didn’t realize I would take it so hard.

The mighty oak in my backyard didn’t bend, it broke. That tree was like an old friend. I counted on it’s shade in the summer. I counted on it’s ability to shield us from the cold winter wind. I counted on the privacy it provided. Now there is a hole in the sky where it’s branches once soared high and spread wide. By all accounts that tree was in excess of 250 years old. A long and productive life, to be sure.

The subtle changes it has left in my world are unwelcome. The early morning light that floods the kitchen is different. It’s not what I’m used to. It feels foreign and therefore, unfriendly. Is it stupid to feel this way? Perhaps - but I do none-the-less. I am a creature of habit and I dislike change. I’m sad because that venerable, stalwart, stoic sentinel no longer stands guard. I wonder if the animals miss it. The squirrels raced up and down it in the solitude of dawn. Have they noticed? Does it make a difference in their lives? I can’t say with any authority but I know it makes a difference in mine. Crazy? Maybe! I know it’s absence will alter the balance of nature in my yard and perhaps in the creek beyond where the tree stood.

It crashed into the creek, well, it fell across the creek and now forms a walkway from this side to that. How much damage it did on the other side I can’t say. I have yet to go have a look. It crushed the fence along my property line and that presents a problem for me. I’m sure the dogs are ecstatic at the notion that their great escape might be made easier because of it’s demise. I wonder if they’ll miss chasing the squirrels up it. It was daily entertainment for both.

I’m awaiting the insurance adjuster to view the scene and pronounce a verdict. Is it a covered loss? Or will I have to pay through the nose to have the mess cleaned up.

It could have been worse. Way worse. If it had fallen the other way the tree wouldn’t be the only thing not standing today. The house was directly in it’s path. It would have taken out two fences, a storage building, and a section of the house itself. I consider myself lucky it didn’t fall this way, but that. That doesn’t make me miss it any less though. At 250+ years old I can only imagine the stories that tree had to tell. I ponder if important people took refuge under it and plotted and planned heroic or daring adventures. I wonder how many secrets it kept over that long fruitful life. Did Natives take refuge under it or use it as a landmark? How many lovers met under it’s branches? How many children attempted to climb it? How many succeeded? How many people have fond childhood memories of that tree, besides my four?

I wonder if I’ll miss the acorns that no longer fall. What will the groundhogs do now? Will I ever get used to the hole it’s left in my horizon or my <3 heart?

Until further notice basic black is the dress code.

P.S. Trees - are the answer!

Who’s got Talent!?

I read a lot. I read blogs, articles, books, poetry, (labels on what ever happens to be near me). I read the news from current events to the latest in Hollywood happenings. I read the paper and every magazine that comes my way. I watch TV from time to time. Usually whatever my kids happen to have on when they’re in the same room with me. I’ve seen American Idol a fair few times. I usually watch the auditions in the beginning. I always end up wondering about one particular thing. How much ‘undiscovered’ talent is ‘out there’ just waiting and hoping for the chance to strut their stuff and become one of the discovered? How many actually will have that opportunity?

Chances are….not nearly enough will get that break which would bring attention to their talent. I dislike the nepotism of the ‘rich and famous’. How is it someone like Paris Hilton can become ‘famous’ (I use the term loosely where she is concerned) for attending parties when she contributes nothing but mediocre looks and talent? If you dummy her down she isn’t really that attractive. If she wore the clothes we wear and had the responsibilities we have and worked the way we do she wouldn’t be nearly as attractive as she is perceived to be.

That’s the key! It’s all in the perception.

If you or I had someone to groom us, polish us, pamper and pet us, we too would be famous for our mediocrity if someone placed us on the right red carpet at the right time. 

How many famous people’s children/siblings/parents/et al become famous or well known simply by virtue of genetics? I’m not saying all are talentless. Kate Hudson got a break because her Mom is Goldie Hawn. Kate Hudson is pretty and talented and funny. Angelina Jolie became known because her Dad is John Voight. She’s also got a laundry list of looks and talent going for her. But in all fairness, would either of them (or the countless others like them) have gotten noticed if they didn’t have the coat tails of a famous parent to grab onto for their easy glide into the limelight? Or would they still be pounding the pavement and attending auditions in relative anonimity, talented but unrecognized?

Even American Idol, which is supposed to showcase talent only really’ does so if you’re perceived to be ‘the whole package’. You have to have talent, looks, charisma, and most importantly you must be marketable! If your teeth are crooked it negates your ‘talent’. If you’re overweight it’s a strike against your ‘marketability’. It isn’t really about pure unadulterated talent at all. It’s about which contestant fits the preconceived notion the powers that be have decreed as talent which in translation means ‘perfection’.

How many Idol contestants who really do have God given talent are culled and passed over because they’re not attractive enough? How many actors and actresses and writers and comedians are over looked because no one is looking at what they really have to offer?

I often wonder what we as a society are missing out on because we’re too superficial. There was a time when it mattered little how you looked and it mattered more what you had to contribute. Too often today we’re conditioned to judge people based on the wrapping without ever bothering to see the gift we’ve been given.

HINT:

The best things in life don’t come wrapped in designer paper with highend logo’s stamped across them in a monochromatic raised letter theme. Most days they don’t come wrapped at all. They pass by quietly without fanfare and it’s up to the recipient to see the treasure within.

This is one instance where ‘regifting’ is not only allowed but encouraged.

Pass these kinds of gifts on. Often!

News I don’t want to use!

I watched the news last night. Well, I had CNN on while I was working. That never bodes well for me. I have been instructed by my boss to play games on the computer but please – PLEASE do not watch the news. He hates when I do because invariably I get all fired up about some injustice I see or hear and proceed to rant like a madwoman. He has to put up with me so he would prefer I play games and leave ‘reality’ alone.

 

I just don’t understand the world–at–large. There is a two year old child missing and it appears the people who were supposed to love her more than anything and protect her from all the bad things might have actually been involved in her disappearance and/or death.

 

There is a former police officer with a dead wife and a missing wife who is presumed dead and he’s busy running off at the mouth about how he should have cremated the dead one to ‘avoid all this trouble’ and how he’ll be tried and acquitted for the missing one before her body is ever found and then he’ll be scot-free because of double jeopardy.

 

I can’t fathom how people can perpetrate violence against other people. People they are friends with, are related to, or supposedly love. I’m not talking some stranger you don’t know and couldn’t care less about (but even then I can’t imagine hurting or killing someone ‘just because’.) I’m talking about mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers and husbands and wives and sons and daughters. Parents killing children. Children killing parents. Husbands killing wives. Wives killing husbands.

 

It’s a line that is crossed all too often these days when once upon a time it was virtually unheard of. It used to be an anomaly but lately it seems like the norm. It sickens and saddens me.

 

I watched the video footage of the missing two year old and wondered how anyone could harm her. It’s incomprehensible to me. I don’t know how a stranger can harm a child and live with the guilt. How can a family member? A MOTHER?!?!!? It’s a contradiction of the very essence of motherhood.

 

I must be stupid – naïve – or both. I simply can’t wrap my mind around it. There is no real mystery as to why I prefer fiction to ‘non’. I get to pick the scenario that delivers me a happy ending.

 

Stop the world – I wanna get off!

Summer Reading List?!?

Every day I pass a book warehouse on my way to work. Currently the sign on the marquis advertises ‘20% off summer reading list’. Every day I wonder what they mean by that. I love to read. I become engrossed in whatever I happen to be reading. Sometimes I must read to the exclusion of all else. I have blinders on when I have an engaging book with in reach. It’s an annoying habit. Not to me. Just to those around me. By that I mean my kids. They don’t understand the lure of a good book. They aren’t transplanted or transformed by the written word the way I am - hence their inability to comprehend.

Alas, I don’t have a ‘list’ of books that would qualify as my summer reading list. I read what I can afford. I read books or magazines that other people give me. I search yard sales and thrift stores and the clearance rack at any book store I happen to wander into. My reading list (winter, spring, summer, or fall) is dictated by my pocketbook - not my imagination. There are current best sellers I wish I could read but can’t afford to buy. I make a mental note of them, file away the title and try to search them out in my travels. Eventually I will find them. Of course they’re usually long removed from any best seller’s list by the time I do. I wish things were different. I wish I had a ‘budget’ for books but it isn’t in the cards. That’s where the beauty of the written word pays off. Once committed to paper those words will live in perpetuity in someones attic or basement or on some dusty old bookshelf until they tire of it and ‘put it out there’ for some voracious reader, like me, to hunt for it, find it, swoop in, buy it, then take it home, cherish it, treasure it, read it, and revel in it.

My reading list, like my ’so called life’ is a mystery. It’s an unknown (to me and every one else). It evolves when I have a pocket full of change, a Saturday morning yard sale, and some free time to expand my collection, my list, and of course - my horizons!

What’s on your summer reading list? Do you have one? How do you decide what it should include? Any title suggestions I might want to hunt for? I’m as ‘open’ as the books I love to read. Please share.

At The End Of My Rope

I have one of those lives where nothing goes right. Everything is falling down around me. Literally! The shower upstairs is leaking into the downstairs powder room. The people who built and owned the house before me apparently had little regard for local ‘code’ and opted to skip putting in shut off valves to the upstairs shower. The only way to stop the leak is to shut off the water to the whole house. There is no access panel to that shower and the faucet is leaking, well, I think it’s the faucet. Who knows. At this point who really cares. So many other things don’t work around here I have my choice daily over which catastrophe to stress out about. The tractor doesn’t work so the grass doesn’t get cut. Well, I’ve been cutting it with the weed whacker. Yeah, slow, tedious, stupid, and a waste of time. What else to do though? I don’t have any money to get it fixed. I don’t have enough money to pay my bills. I can’t afford a plumber to fix the pipe problem. The window in my car doesn’t roll down, the motor is shot. No money to fix that and I can’t afford to use the air conditioning in the car (or the house for that matter) so I sweat everywhere I go except for work because they do have air there. The fridge leaks water daily because something is wrong with it too. It builds up under the drawers and runs right out the door and on to the floor. I’m sure it’s slowly ruining the hardwood floor in the adjoining room. I try to keep ahead of that by mopping up the water every day before it runs out on the floor. Some times when it’s hot and humid it happens before I catch it. My life is a series of slow leaks. I’m sinking without a life preserver. I’m tired of treading water, staying one step ahead of a catastrophe, patching things, and never accomplishing a thing. I’m at my wits end. At the end of my rope. I’m this close || to walking away from it all. My house, my kids, my family, my job, my ’so called life’ and just driving till I run out of gas (which won’t be very far because I can’t afford that either) and living life as a homeless person. I guess you can be homeless even though you have a car, eh? I’ve tried to convey to the people around me how desperate I feel and how hopeless my situation is/seems but they don’t seem to get it. I’m tired of thinking about it, talking about it, and living it. I want out. I just don’t know what else to do. There doesn’t seem to be anywhere to turn to for help. What’s a person to do?

Psychedelicatessen

That word - the title of this blog - is a word I made up to define me. HA! It’s a mouthful and it says SO much about me and the state of my union (Life)! I used this as my chat handle many moons ago. I haven’t chatted for years. For a few years all I did WAS chat. I would be online for hours and I mean 12+ a day escaping reality and chatting with people I didn’t know. It was a great escape…..from life, reality, and myself. I was in the throes of a serious depression - perhaps even a nervous breakdown. I can’t say for sure but it was a living hell. I’m not sure how I survived it and lived to tell. I would panic if I was away from the computer. I couldn’t concentrate on anything that didn’t have to do with the internet. I guess you could say I was addicted in a big bad way. It nearly ruined everything. I shut everyone and everything out of my life except online ‘friends’. As a result I am largely a ‘loner’ to this day. I prefer home to being out and about. If I don’t have to leave the house for a day - or a few days I’m as happy as a clam. Can anyone out there relate to this? I would love to hear from other people about similar experiences. I look back on those years and it seems such a huge waste of time and energy and yet I have to believe it all happened for a reason. I’m sure there is a lesson to be learned from it. I recognize how out of control I was. Hindsight is always 20/20. Please leave a comment if you have anything to share about your own experience. Psyche=mind and delicatessen=a mess of somewhat similar items. I was a mind mess alright. Somedays it’s difficult to look back on it-I was such a basket case. I wonder if I still am or if the potential for me to backslide into that dark abyss is lurking a heartbeat away.