Travel Planning

A couple of things about me.

One, I don’t keep secrets well. I have a very very hard time not talking about stuff that’s going on.

For the most part, my life is an open book. I have some stuff going on right now that I shouldn’t talk about, so I’m practically strangling trying NOT to post about it. This is keeping me from saying much at the moment.

So, sorry about the apparent writer’s block.

Two, the most ridiculous crap imaginable happens to me. If you hear that someone in my neighborhood was struck by lightning, it was me.

I’ll be fine, and I’ll walk away from it with nothing worse than a bad hair day, but if someone in my immediate area is gonna get hit with 1.21 gigawatts, I’m your huckleberry.

An old friend of mine used to call this the “bad luck of the Irish”. She meant that something terrible was always nearly happening to me. People who have traveled anywhere with me can testify to this, too.

Sailing across the Catalina channel at 2am, who gets hit in the face with a flying fish and has a black eye for a week?

Me.

Taking a water taxi from the mainland to a small island in Belize, who first hears the noise that signifies a broken crankshaft?

Me.

Landing in Jakarta, who finds out that they are the ONLY person that the tour company forgot, and has no plans, reservations, or transportation for?

Me, again.

Lost in Cancun at 3am on a Wednesday?

Yep, it was me.

Buying our bedroom furniture was an adventure that takes twenty minutes to tell, so I’ll give you that one later. Do you know the Spanish word for “nightstand”?

Neither do I.

I thought everyone’s life was like this, and it wasn’t until I started comparing notes with people that I realized that most of y’all have perfectly reasonable lives, where things go according to plan.

I cannot even imagine how that feels.

Anyway, this has come up recently because I’ve been talking to my husband about travel. I haven’t gone on any wild adventures in a while, and I’m feeling like at the very least we should visit the Grand Canyon (although I’d probably fall in, so maybe a shallower destination is warranted). I could get snakebite in the wilds of the desert or something.

Or some coastal sailing, around the Channel Islands might be a good idea. I’ve rolled a boat over in bad weather when I was alone, hours from shore, so this time I’m due for something safer, like slipping off the anchorage and running aground in the middle of the night.

He is a little hesitant. I nearly killed us driving to a cheap restaurant a couple of nights ago, and he is reluctant to go anywhere more dangerous than the back yard. (Which of course is full of big hairy spiders and marauding raccoons, so maybe that’s a bad choice on his part.)

It isn’t that Jesse is a coward. Not at all. He has rescued me from quite a few horrifying predicaments, so he can’t possibly be a coward.

He just knows that I will end up in brand new predicaments, and I will be laughing like a lunatic, thoroughly enjoying myself and he’s pretty sure that means he’s stuck with a crazy woman which by extension means that he’s crazy, too.

So I’m considering travel and insanity. Jesse is thinking of a protective restraining order, or a nice rest home. I’ll let you know who wins the argument.

I think I may have run out of Zen.

I was being all calm and stress-free and stuff, when things took a sudden turn and I started having to hack my way through a briar patch of stupidity.

So that I don’t give too much detail, here are a few notes to the guilty parties.

And if you decide that the shuttle is going to start waiting an extra ten minutes for late trains, I should find out some way OTHER than hearing two drivers gossip. I wouldn’t have noticed that, had I not been wondering why we were so effin’ late.

Of course, you don’t want it to impact you in any way except for the warm fuzzy feeling. However, I am taking public transportation, which is run by morons (see above), and glaring at me as I rush in the door from the bus stop will not make it any earlier. It’s only a two block walk; I promise I’m not stopping off to go shopping or anything on the way in. And since I ran part of the way, I am only three minutes late, so you should GET A GRIP.

And I warn you now, if you increase my interest rates on my credit card, I’m going to stop using it. I’m also going to move my money market account, wee though it may be, to elsewhere. Now you don’t have my interest income AND your cash reserves have gone down. I wonder if anyone there can do math? I suspect that the answer is NO, and therein lies your problem. I look forward to your demise.

However, I must mention your cupcakes. They are hella cute, I have to admit. I know you got a big book all about cupcake decorating, and you put a lot of effort into them. It really shows. You have them decorated like flowers, with little red M&M’s that you’ve drawn on with frosting so they look like ladybugs. They are adorable, and it must have taken hours.

I wish you’d stop bringing them into the office and hovering to make sure that everyone is eating one, though. Or, alternatively, that you would put even one quarter the effort into learning how to bake, because your damn cupcakes taste like Spackle with frosting on top. If I have to choke down one more of these vile lumps I’m going to lose it. I am all out of polite, so back off and take your adorable crapcakes with you.

It’s not even lunch time.

This is going to be a long day.

Back in the Saddle Again

Well, I’m healthy again. Healthy-ish, really.

Because I’m still pretty tired.

But a big thank you to all the people who wished me well – it was very sweet, and even in my delirium I appreciated it.

And of course, I’m behind again on posting.

There’s an actual reason this time – it isn’t that I didn’t have anything to say, but that I had something I didn’t WANT to say. Not terribly long ago, you might recall me posting about Duke, a neglected puppy with a burning need to love somebody. We spent a lot of time with Duke over the last couple of months. Walks, games, sometimes just getting on some clean grass and petting him for a while.


And now?

Duke is gone.

It turns out that my neighbors were not only lousy dog owners, they’re rotten tenants, because their landlord had specifically forbidden them to have a dog. They might have gotten away with it, had other neighbors not complained about the smell and condition of their yard. Anyway, one day last week, Jesse went out to get Duke and found an empty yard. Duke has gone to live with a relative, so the kids can still see him and he can kind of stay in the family. This relative has other dogs, so I’m really hopeful that Duke has gone to a better home. At least he won’t be alone so much.

As much as I know that it was better for Duke to get a new place to live, I do miss him. Jesse and I offered to take him, but I think they wanted to keep some ownership. I suppose it would be hard to watch your dog, living two doors down. And during the last couple of weeks, Duke had been showing a preference for our house instead of his own, so there might have been some hurt feelings.

I don’t know all the reasons they decided not to give him to us. He was a complete knucklehead, had too much energy, needed lots of training, and was honestly pretty obnoxious.

I miss him anyway.

I hope you’re happy now, Duke.

Good boy.