Tag Archives: holiday

SSDD

June 16, 2010

summer-vacation-photo-contest_slideshow_imageFriday we hit the road for Wisconsin… again. This time, we’re coming back in a quieter vehicle. This time, we’re leaving the kids behind for summer. It will suck, so I’ll make the best of it and force the time to go quickly.

Yes, I said that.

And my younger self, the 12-year-old that lives just under the surface, is crying a little bit. Summer vacation used to mean the beach and sun, BBQs and picnics, relaxing and giggling and making memories. It meant wishing it would drag on forever and school would never start again.

But I have work to do.

I have a short story due next week that I still need to fix. I have an article due in July that I need to pull from an old blog and make pretty. I have another story due in August that I haven’t even started beyond musing and the first paragraph. I have a novel that needs to be finished before the kids get back in August. And when/if there’s downtime or I need a break, there’s a Big Mac vampire novel to be written. It’s crunch time. I’ll be going back to twice a week blogs and spending a ton of energy beating the muse until she’s bruised and bloody and begging for me to go to the beach, just so I’ll leave her alone for a day.

But right now I’m taking a smoke break and daydreaming of summer vacations past—because I’m a memory lane whore.

I remember fishing and swimming, snorkeling and tubing, and sitting in the canoe just floating with a book at the cabin. Fireworks on the water—both Lake Superior and at the cabin. Moonlight on the big lake, with a boy or a beer, or both. Laying around doing absolutely nothing other than communing with Ra. Bomb pops and ice cream cones. Reading books in the big loft doorway of the garage. Movies and sleepovers. Hanging out with my boyfriend, or the girls, or the gang, as the day dictated. Babysitting and climbing trees. Upgrading from the 10-speed to mom’s car. Train tracks in the rain. Jumping from the lighthouse. Four-wheeling in the pit and flashlight tag in the graveyard. Fires on the beach and parties at the point. Long quiet walks in the woods and picking rocks along the shoreline at sunset.

And writing in my notebooks.

Because even back in high school, when I saw summer vacation as a lazy-fest of do-nothing-and-like-it, I was writing. Poems, short stories, strange passages that would lay dormant until remembered, and occasionally used, years later. Even then I had words to spew, blood to spill. I never traveled without my smokes, my shades, and a pencil in my back pocket.

Some things never change…

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Resolutions

December 31, 2009

Blah blah, new year’s, blah blah blah… whatever! I don’t want to know what your resolution is. I really don’t. I don’t care. It’s a promise to yourself, it’s for you, it’s not about me.

Of course, I am interested in knowing if you’ve ever succeeded in the past.

Not just new year’s resolutions, but self-promises in general. It doesn’t matter if it’s spoken aloud, uttered to a small circle of friends, or whispered desperately in the dark to nothing but the starlight, you’ve promised yourself something. It may have been, “I swear, if the tests come back negative I’m quitting smoking now!” It may have been, “I will not eat another dessert until I lose one size.” Or it could be something profane, silly or pertinent, “God, if you get me out of this, I’ll never fill-in-the-blank again.”

I have failed. Repeatedly. To quit smoking. I successfully stopped chewing my nails right after high school. I failed horribly at dieting, then succeeded. I’ve hit self-promised deadlines for change. But I’ve also missed them… sometimes I’ve been so far off the mark, the mark stopped talking to me.

blah blah, new year’s, blah blah blah… yeah, this is the last coffee talk of 2009. It’s been a crazy year. A good year. And 2010 will be even more so—crazy and good. There are changes coming. Reinvention. Self-promises. For the last coffee talk of the year, don’t tell me a thing. Just think about it. Think about your resolutions, your self-promises. Made at year-end or on a Tuesday in June for no good reason. You’ve made them but have you succeeded in them? Which ones? Why did you succeed or fail? And are you ready to make another one? Because the worst kind of broken promise is the one you make to yourself.

Happy New Year—see you on the other side…

*fade to black*

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Tradition

December 25, 2009

This year I got presents from NBC’s Sally, Edgar Allan Poe, Trogdor, Lycos and Nicky (for no particular reason on that last one.) These were in my stocking.

Because in my family, stockings equals insanity.

The point to stockings isn’t fruit or coal, small toys and toothbrushes, like it may have been when we were children. Oh no. Now it’s insane, odd, weird and wonderful items that you find for your brothers, sister, parents, etc that scream “I’m so completely off the wall you should give me to X.” And they’re made even odder by the gift tags. You see, none of them come from anyone in the room. Well, they do, but not according to the tags. In theory, the tags are a clue to what’s inside from someone else, i.e. a chocolate bar with a million dollar wrapper would be from Donald Trump. Get it? Glittery make-up would be from Lady Gaga. Get it? Ok then…

I know, it’s strange and silly, but hey, that’s our family. And while I head off to take a nap and get ready for another 19 hours on the road (but yay! home in on the other end!), why not pass the coffee cup around… that’s right, it’s a christmas coffee talk!!  So what crazy traditions does your family have for Christmas? For that matter, if there’s nothing crazy, what traditions do you have in general. And I don’t mean stockings or ham, I mean those odd little things that make it Christmas for you. Would it still be Christmas if Uncle Ernie didn’t wear that older-than-god Santa hat and chase all the young kids around growling at them? Would it still be Christmas if grandma didn’t make her “special” eggnog? Yeah, those things… what makes Christmas for you? And so help me Gawd, don’t even try to say family, friends, good wishes, giving, or any of that other Hallmark crap!

Now excuse me, there’s a nap in order…so that I may fight old man winter, a few blizzards, some freezing rain and oh joy, ice pellets to get home for Christmas part 2. Merry HoHo, everyone!!!

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Fish, Family and Friends

November 30, 2009

It’s an old rule in our family, “Fish, Family and Friends are only good for three days before they spoil.” My own house is more relaxed, perhaps because I don’t like fish all that much so I give friends more time. Or perhaps it’s because I’m still in the honeymoon phase of actually living near my friends, and in some odd sense am stuck in this perpetual con loop… I keep expecting the weekend to be over. But there are no more planes. I moved. I did. Eventually, that will sink in, take root, and I’ll say it without a look of shock and feeling of incomprehension. But I digress…

This trip I was in Wisconsin for over a week—rather than dropping off one weekend and picking up the next with far too much driving in between—well past the three day marker. And it was ok. I was gone from home for too long, but I wasn’t at my mom and dad’s for too long. I don’t get to see them much anymore, and it was the holidays, and there were family and friends and it wasn’t just me sitting on their couch like a lump. Though, truth be told, I brought work with me and did spend quite a bit of time sitting on the couch like a lump, but I was working and getting paid to be a lump.

Technically, I went bad sometime on Tuesday with the fish. But I was quick frozen, rejuvenated, whatever, by the injection of friends at that point. My new expiration date became Thursday, but my brothers were there by then and I was pardoned again to spend time with them.

But the point is, I didn’t spoil. Maybe it’s because I’m lucky—and know it, appreciate it—and have a family that gets along. My siblings and I don’t fight and argue whenever we’re together. We’re nothing like the families shown on television. We’re a sitcom, but not because of the infighting, more because of the insanity. We giggle and laugh well into the night. We have midnight margaritas. We catch up and then toss real life aside in the name of silliness. We have serious conversations and intelligent debates, and then we do a feeb count! My family is mental, and I wouldn’t have them any other way.

And as I sit like a lump on mom’s couch one last morning, and wish the clock would fast forward to drive time—because even though it’s 19 hours of hell on the road, the other side of the rainbow equals home—I’m thinking over the last eight days. I’m asking the family questions and remembering what made this vacation, this Thanksgiving, worth remembering…and am damn glad I’m not a fish.

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Turkey Day

November 26, 2009

I’m not getting the turkey I wanted for Thanksgiving this year. But that’s ok, I’ll still have it this year, maybe on a Tuesday, not the official turkey day, just because. Just like I remember what I’m thankful for the other 364 days of the year. Because thanks shouldn’t be about one day a year. That’s stupid. It’s like Valentine’s. You should only appreciate your partner one day? I call bullshit. You can have turkey whenever you want, send/give flowers whenever you want, and damn it, you’d better be thankful for what you have every day.

Oops, didn’t mean to get ugly there. Didn’t mean to yell or lecture. There’s just a little bad blood in my veins this week, as I’m in the wrong state for the holidays. But on the up side, I get to see my family, and I LOVE my family. They’re crazy and insane, supportive and stern, and I wouldn’t have them any other way. I read because of my father, I blow bubbles because of my mother. My siblings have made me both harder and softer on the inside over the years and can take responsibility for some of my Sybil behavior. I love them. I’m thankful for them.

And here it comes. Because you’re expecting a “I’m thankful for” blog today, aren’t you? Most people will do that. It’s almost expected. But I’m not most people.

Oh I’m thankful. I tell a certain Hippie on a regular basis that I’m thankful. I tell my parents, my friends, my boss. But that’s people, and that’s been done to death, and well, according to that second paragraph up there, you should do it all the time. So let’s switch gears here. Let’s look at that dirty blood running through my veins. Let’s open our minds and thank the negative things that have happened in our lives, or maybe just events themselves, rather than the people…

A fairy princess once yelled at me, because that’s what best friends do… and I’m thankful I ignored her. I had a crappy marriage but I am thankful for it because I now recognize the good. I’m thankful for the horrible jobs and bosses I’ve had over the years, they taught me to appreciate what I have now. I’m thankful that my mother moved us a lot as children, so that I’d have the balls necessary to move my life across the country. I’m thankful for what I have, rather than what I wish I had. And I’m thankful for any and all of the negative, bad, horrible incidents that may have happened to get me here. Because I’m where I belong. And I’m the person I’m supposed to be.

The old saying about not being able to change the past is dead on, but the author should have continued the thought… Accept the past. Embrace it. Learn from it what you can and move forward. And above all, remember to be thankful that it happened the way it did, because it made you who you are and gave you what you’ve got and there was a reason for whatever pain and suffering may have happened.

And if you’re suffering now, remember how it tastes—because one day you will be sitting in front of a turkey and someone will ask you what you’re thankful for, bitch*.

*look ma/lu, no preposition at the end!

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