Sorting It Out – Vacation Prequel
Well. It’s over.
Why do vacations seem anti-climatic? I suppose everything feels that way after you’ve waited weeks (months) for something to happen and then it HAPPENS and suddenly…….
It’s over.
It’s like the day-after-Christmas feeling, I guess.
One thing though, it really makes you appreciate coming home that much more. Don’t get me wrong, vacations ROCK, but it’s sooooo nice to finally get home, back on home turf and surrounded by familiar things and routines.
Traveling used to freak me out. And when I say freak out, I mean freak out. (i.e. bitchy). It’s like if I dared to forget something we were all doomed because God FORBID I would have to go into a foreign drug store and buy whatever I forgot. I used to get so uptight when I traveled, just ask Kevin. I really don’t know what my problem was.
But now? I’m a lot more laid back about things – more so than the rest of my guys, I’d say.
When we travel, it’s like I go into a zone. I’m relaxed, only I’m not. I think I’ve finally learned to just trust God and take whatever happens and just sort of … deal with it. It’s hard to explain. But like when we’re on a plane, and there’s turbulence, and Dude shoots me a terrified look because so much of how he reacts stems from my reaction, (he’s always been that way – he uses me as an emotional radar which is a challenge because I’m, um, emotional), and I’m sitting there with my arms crossed, looking a bit bored on the outside and tightening up on the inside because hello, I’m human and I get just as nervous as the next person whenever the plane bumps and jiggles, and yet, I’m not truly scared because I honestly believe, in my heart, that we’ll be okay.
It just doesn’t occur to me that something bad could happen. It goes beyond confident … it’s more of a deep-seated faith sort of thing, I guess.
Like I said, it’s hard to explain.
Where was I …
Oh yes. Vacation is over. It’s back to reality.
*sigh*
Don’t get me wrong, I like my life, I like my reality, but it’s sooooo nice to get away from every day hassles and do something fun with the entire family. It’s so rewarding to actually have a conversation with my sons at the dinner table instead of them scarfing down their food, answering my questions with monosyllables and then rushing off to get back on their computer / video games.
When we’re on vacation, we’re a family. We laugh, we connect, we bond, we have FUN.
And then we come home and every one is off doing their own thing – myself included. It’s like there are too many distractions when we’re at home but when we’re on the road and on vacation, we don’t have Internet access and there’s so much to see and do that we don’t have the resources to do anything but just BE together – we’re FORCED to interact with each other and though I know that probably sounds lame, it’s true.
I think that’s one of the biggest reasons I love our family vacations – we connect, we laugh, we get to know each other and see sides of each other that we were either too distracted to see or didn’t take the time to see before.
I have a TON of pictures to sort through. We all had our own cameras so we all took a lot of pictures. I always find it interesting to see what the boys took pictures of – their perspective is often times so different than my own. It’ll take me a little while to sort through them and post them to Flickr. Especially now that I’m in the middle of reformatting my main computer, but I’ll get there eventually.
I’ll go into more detail about each aspect of our vacation later but for now, here are our initial thoughts:
New York
Kevin liked it.
The boys did not. They thought it was too crowded and WAY too noisy and confusing.
I liked it, though I wasn’t too crazy about Times Square. I had major sensory overload what with the building-sized advertisements, the crazy noise and the sheer number of people pressing in on me from all sides. I’d like to go back to Times Square simply because I know what to expect now and would be better prepared to actually enjoy it. I can’t imagine how crazy it must be New Year’s Eve.
Cruise
Kevin had a chance to rest and recuperate from the New York days. (More on that later).
The boys loved it. They got to eat when they wanted, they got to sleep when they wanted, they had their own cabin, i.e. space, and they spent the majority of their time in their cabin, though they did spend a lot of time in the video game room, too. The boys get a taste of freedom when we go on cruises (we keep track of each other by walkie-talkie so they do their thing, we do our thing – perfect. I mean, where are they going to go??) and I think they really dig the independence.
I fought to maintain my equilibrium nearly the whole time we were sailing because this was the first cruise that the boat REALLY rocked. I had to take three Draminine and though that sounds terrible, it really wasn’t. Once I had taken the Draminine and had laid down for a few minutes, I felt much better. So it sounds like I was sick the whole time, I wasn’t, and this absolutely does NOT deter me from future cruises – I still love them.
Canada
Kevin was pretty tired from New York and yet somehow found the strength to tour Saint John and Halifax. He loved it and felt frustrated that he didn’t have the strength to explore it more.
The boys really seemed to enjoy the history story told by our guides. Both Saint John and Halifax has some interesting history which I’ll be sharing with you all next week.
I fell in love with Canada. The countryside is beautiful and the people were super friendly. I’m really looking forward to going back and exploring more towns and provinces.
I also wrote down a few things that I wanted to remember and didn’t really have a lot to do with anything else – just snapshots of vacation moments. For example:
- I can’t tell you how many times we laughed over the word “undulating.” The boys told us that when they spent the night with their cousins, one of them (the youngest – 14), commented about how a snake was undulating behind a bush in a game they were playing. They burst out laughing, having never heard the word before and laughed even louder when they found out it was in fact a real word and means “to present a wavy appearance.” It was funny that a 14-year old boy would use the word and Kevin CONSTANTLY used that word in every possible context you can imagine for the ENTIRE vacation. It got old, but was somehow funny each and every time.
- I’m not a big beef eater. I like beef, and I’ll scarf down the occasional steak now and again, but for the most part? I’ll pass and take chicken instead. We had steak at dinner one evening. And it was delicious. I like mine well done (and dry), Kevin likes his medium and Dude ordered his medium rare. (Jazz didn’t order steak, of course. He’s a VERY picky eater). Kevin and I were shocked that Dude liked his meat that bloody, but the boy ate every bite. The next day, at the buffet-style lunch, they were serving the same kind of meat. For some weird reason, I grabbed a pretty sizeable chunk thinking we would all share it because I only wanted a few bites, not the whole thing. Only, the guys were not interested in eating it and it was under cooked and bloody so I wouldn’t have eaten it even if I liked my meat cooked that way so … I ended up throwing the entire piece of meat away, untouched. I’ve felt so guilty about that ever since! What a waste! Shame on me!!
- The only “free” beverages on the boat were water, lemonade and tea. You had to pay for soda (and Dude was the only one who drank any soda when we were on the boat – guess how much ONE can of soda cost? $4.50!!!! WTH?!?), so Kevin requested lemonade and I got it for him. We were eating lunch when Kevin reached over and knocked over his lemonade … directly into Dude’s lap. Poor boy had to walk back to his cabin to change his pants with a huge wet spot on his groin. Talk about embarrassing!
- We ended up in a handicapped room for Kevin. And though this room was nice and big, it was right next to a Pool machinery room. I don’t know if that had anything to do with the LOUD and OBNOXIOUS banging that we heard at 5:00 in the morning, every morning, or not, but all I can tell you was that it was extremely annoying and woke us up every time. We think it might have been the hot water heater because we would hear a valve open, fill with water, then when it shut off, it would rattle the pipes and they would end up banging together from the pressure. This would happen at 5:00 in the morning, right about the time people would be getting up to take their showers. We complained to Guest Services, but it was never fixed. They sort of blew us off (which really ticked Kevin off), but we figured they needed to know. If nothing else, it might help fix the problem a little sooner for the people who stayed in that cabin on later cruises.
- We were in Times Square. And we were getting ready to cross the street when we heard an ambulance. Only, it looked like it was pulling over and we went ahead and crossed the street. Unbeknownst to us, until the thing was practically on top of us, it had only slowed down to bypass some traffic. It came straight for us.
Here’s the ambulance.
Here’s Kevin, walking across the street slowly and with his cane.
Here’s me, watching the ambulance barreling down on Kevin.
It was like a Matrix moment. Everything was vivid, colorful and in slow motion as I witnessed the ambulance screaming toward the love of my life as he hobbled across the street. I had a bird’s eye view of potential disaster. I yelled at Kevin to hurry up and get across the street and to the man’s credit, he MOVED. That was the fastest he has walked since his accident. He insists that the ambulance wasn’t that close, but I can assure you, it was. It scared the bejeebees out of me. How IRONIC would that have been? A man who has only been walking for three weeks to get hit by an ambulance? I’m pretty sure I lost ANOTHER three or four weeks from that incident alone.
That’s it for now. I’ll be going through pictures this weekend and should have them ready by Monday. In addition, I took a few videos as well while we were there and I’ll post those, too.
In the meantime, thanks for reading about my little adventures. Enjoy your evening!
(Jazz’s “serious” face just cracks me up!)
Audio Post
Thanks for listening!!
Talk to you soon!
Take Me, Please
I feel sorry for used books. More specifically, I feel sorry for the authors of those used books.
Don’t get me wrong, I adore book sales – the sea of books, the pleasantly blank faces of browsing patrons, the dusty, moist aroma of old pages. I love these slightly new, slightly read, slightly treasured books. I love the atmosphere, the smells, the sheer overwhelming urge to take all of my clothes off and dive into the middle of a huge pile of books and wallow around like a walrus amongst the dusty book jackets and yellowed pages.
Okay fine, I’m the only one with that urge.
And yet, I can’t help but feel sorry for the little guys. There they sit, all perfectly lined up, all hoping that some avid reader will pick them, take them home, read their fine print, and caress their pages. These poor, pathetic, slightly damaged little books all hope that someday, somehow, their dreams of being placed in the coveted, and much-loved bookcase will come true.
Used books are like skinny, pathetic, mature dogs at animal shelters whose eyes are bigger than their whole bodies. It just breaks my heart to see so many of them passed by. People prefer puppies because they are small, they are full of promising entertainment, and of course they’re cute.
New books are cute, too. See their shiny covers? Do you hear how the spines moan and creak when you part the pages? Have you noticed how the fluorescent glow of the bookstores’ lights bounce off the glossy jackets? They are tempting, true. The thought of buying a book that no one else has likely touched – the pages have not been sullied with the oils from another human finger. The pages are crisp; they crackle with pleasure as you turn them. New books are like a new puppy; they are exciting, fun, and hold so much promise of many entertaining hours ahead.
But alas, new books are expensive. And they quickly depreciate in value once you’ve stepped over the threshold of the bookstore. They grow old quickly, their pages yellowing, the ink fading from rich oil blackness to the dull, matte like finish of weathered asphalt.
And then no one wants them. And then they end up in a used bookstore. The most they can hope for at this point is some old woman with missing teeth snatching them from their wire bins, gutting their innards, ripping their pages out, one by one, and lining her shopping basket with them to protect the cans and bottles she collects for their recyclable value.
Book enthusiasts must unite. We must form an organization to save “mature” books. They didn’t ask for this treatment; they were born to please, to entertain, to illustrate dreams and provide a backdrop for the imagination to freely paint a picture.
And how do you think the authors of these books feel? Do you think they ever pore over the books in a used bookstore and gasp with surprise when they see their baby, forgotten and abandoned, among so many other orphans? All of their hard work has been reduced to bargain bin prices. What must they think?
I often wonder what my reaction would be, to see my work offered for the low, low price of .10 cents. Would it bother me? Would I feel cheapened, perhaps even used in some discarded bookish way? I’ve thought long and hard about this, weighing realistic reactions to fantasies of saving the books and carrying them out of the store like Richard Gere carried Debra Winger out of the factory in the movie, An Officer and a Gentlemen.
Would I cringe when I watched people pick my book up, lightly scan the blurb on the back and then promptly slip it back into its slot? Or would it be worse to watch them carry it around for a bit, weighing the entertainment possibilities, and then deciding it wasn’t worth their time, to toss it haphazardly down, the book sticking out like a white puppy surrounded by black canines because now it’s sitting in the wrong genre bin. Would my heart lurch with pain? Would I hyperventilate with sorrow?
It’s hard to answer that with certainty. I’m sure I would feel a measure of disappointment, sure; I’m human after all. However, I don’t think it would crush me. I don’t think I would take it personally. Because you see, I’m not writing for fame and fortune, though that is certainly a sideline perk, but rather, I write because I enjoy it. It releases some sort of unseen, indeed, unknown, tension deep inside my soul and I feel satisfied that I was able to extract it before it spoiled and turned to rot, distorting my outlook on life in general. I write because I want to leave a small part of me behind. I write because of the personal satisfaction and the knowledge that my words might very well jump start someone else’s imagination – for creativity seems to be a dying art in today’s world. And last, but not least, I write in the hopes that the reader closes my book feeling better about themselves specifically and the world in the general.
Tell me, why do you write?
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This was originally published on Write Anything, April 28, 2006.
Fiction: Eve’s Empathy
It takes great courage to faithfully follow what we know to be true. – Sara Anderson
“Hey Eve,” a man in a tight turtleneck sweater said while rushing past. “Piper can’t make it in tonight, can you cover?” He continued his fast pace and didn’t wait for her to answer. “Thanks! I owe you!”
Eve sighed and watched the head of Human Resources make his way back to his wonderfully posh, and sweet smelling, office. She’d love to hole up in his office sometime, just to get away from all of the musty hospital smells she was forced to endure on a daily basis. She wouldn’t do much, just sleep. Was that too much to ask?
“Think he’ll ever pay up?” Vicki, Eve’s best friend, said practically in her ear.
The emergency room was hopping for a Thursday night and between the crying, the groans and the general loud talking over the equally loud television, it was sometimes necessary to get right up on someone’s ear in order to be heard.
She turned to her friend and gave her a weary smile. “It’s doubtful.”
“Why do you think Piper’s not coming in?”
Eve shrugged while replacing one chart and taking another. She gave it a quick once-over before answering her friend. “There’s no telling. Maybe she has a hangover. Or a hangnail. You never know with Piper. She’s such a wuss.”
“You can say that again,” Vicki nodded in agreement. “Oops, there goes my pager. Gotta go. Coffee later?”
“If not sooner!” Eve called after her friend as she scurried down the hall, the soft soles of her shoes squeaking slightly on the hard tile floor.
“Make way!” a man’s voice called and Eve looked toward the emergency room entrance. Her eyes widened in surprise when she recognized the man.
“Troy? Troy Wilson?” she asked while moving around the front desk.
Troy had his arm around a woman who was bent over with pain and obviously very pregnant.
“Eve Michaels?” he asked in surprise. “Wow. I didn’t know you went to med school.”
“Nursing school, actually,” she said and moved to grab a wheel chair. “Who’s your friend?” she asked while smiling at the woman and helping her into the chair.
“My wife,” Troy replied and Eve gave him a sharp look.
“Your wife?”
“Yeah, you got a problem with that?” the woman in the wheelchair growled between clenched teeth. Her growl quickly turned into a groan as a contraction ripped through her.
Eve laughed. “Not at all. Troy and I knew each other back in college. God, eons ago, right Troy?”
“Another lifetime ago,” Troy responded while making sure his wife was comfortable, or as comfortable as she could be, given the circumstances.
Eve helped them check in before taking hold of the wheelchair. “Let’s get you set up in your room, shall we?”
The woman opened her mouth to reply, but promptly closed it as every muscle in her body tightened with pain.
“How close are the contractions?” Eve asked.
“I’m clocking them about three minutes apart,” Troy said.
Eve nodded, suddenly all business. “Then we need to hustle.”
Together she and Troy moved his wife to the room and she left to give them privacy while his wife changed into a gown. After exactly five minutes, she re-entered the room and began taking the woman’s vitals while filling out her chart.
“You’ve called your doctor?” Eve asked, her eyes trained on the chart, her left hand busy making notes.
“Yeah. But he’s out of town, of course,” Troy grumbled. “I think they said that Dr. Lowe would be helping us?”
Eve smiled while she replaced the chart. “You’re in luck. She’s awesome.”
“Oh? The doctor is female?” the woman asked and sucked in a breath as another contraction hit. “Of course she is,” she ground out and grimaced with pain. “Troy will have her eating out of his hand in no time.”
Eve grinned at Troy. He hadn’t changed much, apparently. “The anesthesiologist should be along shortly,” she said while patting the woman’s hand, “hang in there.”
The woman snatched her hand away and gave Eve a dirty look. “Were you and Troy a couple in college?”
Troy sputtered an awkward chuckle while color flooded his cheeks. “Hardly. We were just friends.”
“I find that hard to believe,” the woman snapped and turned her back on the two of them as she tried to find a more comfortable position.
“Eve, I’m sorry about …” Troy helplessly gestured to his wife.
She held up a hand to silence him before he said something he might regret. “No need to apologize. She’s in pain and well … given your track record with women, I can understand her assumption.”
The woman laughed and turned her head to give Eve a good look. “I like you already. Thanks for your help.”
Eve patted the woman’s leg and nodded. “Any time. Good luck with the birth. I’ll check back in on you two later.”
Troy nodded, but only had eyes for his wife.
Eve re-read what she wrote on the woman’s chart and frowned. That wasn’t right, was it? She squinted down at what she wrote and then noticed her mistake. Correction, make that more than one mistake. Clenching her teeth in frustration, she erased her earlier notes and re-wrote fresh instructions before replacing the chart in the slot in the door.
She snuck a glance at Troy and his wife, but they were pre-occupied with getting through several contractions.
Eve unconsciously exhaled her relief. That was a close one.
She rubbed her eyes as she exited the room. It always got worse when she was tired, which was most of the time, quite frankly. She really should go see someone about her problem, but she was afraid that it would jeopardize her job. But at the same time, if she didn’t see someone about her problem, it could cost a patient his or her life.
Her heart jumped at the thought of being responsible for someone’s death all because she was too stubborn, and embarrassed, to do something about her Dyslexia.
“Did you get Mrs. Wilson settled in?” the head nurse asked Eve when she returned to the nurse’s station.
“Yep. She’s ready for her epidural. I hope they get there soon, her contractions are three minutes apart and she’s got that “look,” you know?”
“That look?” the head nurse repeated while raising her brows. “That’s a pretty technical diagnosis, Eve. I’ll have to remember that the next time I can’t be bothered with coming up with the correct technical term.”
Eve blushed and offered a small, apologetic smile. She knew the head nurse wasn’t exactly impressed with her. Especially since she had already discovered a few charts she had screwed up. She had been pretty diligent in making sure she double and triple checked her notations, but the head nurse had noticed them before she had.
That had been awkward to say the least. She was fast running out of excuses for her poor performance. Her stomach tightened at the stress of having to deal with her problem. She had worked so hard for this job and she loved it, she couldn’t imagine having to give it up because of her learning disability. But then again, how could she live with herself if it led to a misdiagnosis or worse, death?
Mixing Facts with Fiction
I think we should legalize marijuana.
Did I get your attention? Yeah, I got my public speaking teacher’s attention in college, too. (Sorry to keep talking about my college years, but they were monumental growth years for me).
Our assignment? – to write a persuasive paper on a controversial issue. After sitting through scads of boring, put-me-to-sleep arguments (which really weren’t arguments because the issues were no-brainers, why we shouldn’t allow smoking in the dorms, etc.) I decided to shake things up a bit. Yeah, I know, big surprise. *snicker*
So, taking my audience into consideration, I began to run through a gamut of topics – college students, young, cool … what about drugs? But what drug specifically? I needed to pick something that I could effectively argue for or against, depending on my stance.
So, I picked marijuana. After researching the topic exhaustively, I decided to argue for legalization. I practiced not only saying the words so they flowed easily, but my facial expressions, my hand gestures. I looked at the issue from all angles effectively recognizing, and then rebutting possible arguments. I addressed all of these issues in my paper – I was ready.
The professor asked to see all papers and to approve the subject matter before we got up in front of class to give our presentation. Somehow, mine slipped through the cracks and she didn’t actually see, or read, my paper until it was time for me to give my speech. She pulled me out into the hall, pale and shaking. There was no way she could allow me to give my speech. It was too persuasive and given the type of audience, I could very well convince my fellow classmates to hurry out and fire up some giggle weed.
At first, I was angry. I worked hard on this paper, spent a lot of time checking and double-checking my facts. I was prepared and ready to go. But after stepping back from my injured pride for a moment, I realized, she had a point. I couldn’t, in good consciousness, stand in front of thirty some-odd students and convince them that the act of smoking itself was more harmful than the actual drug.
So what happened next? Was I given another chance to speak on something else? No. Did I get an F for the assignment? No.
I gave my speech, but with a minor adjustment. I had to tack on “for medicinal purposes” at the end of each “marijuana should be legalized” bit.
I wasn’t happy about this, but I certainly understood why we had to do this.
I’ve since learned that writers have a huge responsibility to their readers. That what we write about might very well persuade an opinion, or goad a person into action. It was a humbling, and somewhat awe-inspiring lesson.
The art of persuasion can be applied to fiction, too.
I recently finished a book called “Desert Wives” by Betty Webb. It’s about polygamy, well, murder in a polygamy camp, to be precise.
Ms. Webb handles this sensitive issue with aplomb. She keeps the story centered on the murder but liberally sprinkles the story with various facts about polygamy. I was truly horrified by this lifestyle and very nearly turned off from finishing the book, but only because of the polygamy issue, not because of the story itself. I never once felt Ms. Webb was trying to hit me over the head with facts or was trying to persuade me that polygamy was ok or otherwise and that got me to thinking. Why don’t we see more fiction handle sensitive issues? Why aren’t we taking full advantage of our voice to educate people in subtle ways? Oh sure, fiction is meant to entertain us, but writers can slip in facts and information, tricking the reader to come to their own conclusions.
Ms. Webb includes several factual pages at the end of the book about polygamy: the history, the crimes associated with the practice, the birth defects because of inbreeding, how they slip through law loopholes, how taxpayers end up paying for the children because the men divorce them only to marry another but keep the women as common-law wives, so to speak. It goes on and on. Inserting this information at the end of the book was just the medicine I needed to swallow this disturbing issue. The story teased my curiosity just enough to make me want to learn more about the practice, and Ms. Webb headed me off at the pass, providing me with the information I needed.
I closed the book feeling impressed. Impressed that Ms. Webb was able to balance facts with fiction, to entertain me and yet inform me, no small feat. I wouldn’t recommend this writing style as a general rule; it takes a certain finesse to carry this off without coming off too preachy, but the technique is certainly thought provoking.
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This was originally published on Write Anything, April 14, 2006.
Dog’s Best Friend
I would totally do this …
… if I had a dog.
Hope this brought a smile to your face.
Write From Karen 