Just got back from mom and dad's.

We have sent the kids to Lansing, for part of this week of summer, the last couple of years, just so we could finish up life here at home and take some time in our classrooms prepping for life there. It is SUCH a stressful time of year, ending summer, and beginning again the "school rush." I tend to get so grumpy and tense, so to head that off, tonight, here, I am listing ALL of the stuff that taking up brainspace in some way. Creatively, frustrationally, organizationally. Call it therapy, call it insanity...I don't care...but let's just see if it helps.

1. My house needs to be DONE...been working on this bathroom...and it is still not done...but it is at a place where it can be "done-ish." That is kind of annoying. Still, I have to let it go for now.

2. My house is about 3/4 clean...and tomorrow, before I spend time doing the final touches on my classroom, I have to get HERE under control. Why?

3. I have gained 5 pounds this summer, happily, but now is the time to take it back off.

4. Devin and Gwynn are both growing TOO fast...shoes are going to bankrupt us!

5. Slips are weird. Cleaning out my room, and my lingerie drawers, I found that I have about 5 slips, and I really can't tell you the last time I wore one. One is very cool and I ought to wear it as a Halloween costume some year. Remember Meg Ryan in the film "D.O.A?" She was running around a Halloween party, with a hunky Dennis Quaid, in a slip with the letters FREUD pinned to it? Freud. Freudian Slip. Get it? Couldn't tell you about the rest of the movie, but, for some reason, that stuck with me.

6. Again, along the lines of cleaning out our room, I THINK I cleaned the last droplet of formula off of one of our pieces of furniture. I know, after Gwynn was born, when we'd feed her in our room at night, we'd sprinkle the bottle on our wrists or forearms to check its temperature. I swear for years I was finding little sprays of dried up formula, here and there, on the dresser, or the molding. Well, I think I found a last droplet, on a back corner of our cedar chest, 10 years later. This can certainly be seen as sentimental. Or it can paint us as the slobs we truly are. You be the judge.

7. I am a clothing hauler. I hold on to few pieces of clothing. Still, I have all this weird old jewelry, that I will never get rid of, even though I never wear it. What is that about?

8. I started converting the hangers in my closet to the velvety covered ones at the beginning of the summer...I just finished the transition. Also put a garbage bag full of old plastic hangers down by the road. It disappeared within hours! People are such scavengers.

9. Music finds of late...the new Colbie Calliet, Jack and White, Ellie Goulding, and Foster the People. I spend WAY too much money on music. God I love it, though! Funny, too, how some music is "headphone music." Ellie and Foster are very much this...cool on the stereo, or in the car, but even cooler in your ears. In your head.

10. Read "Talking to Girls About Duran Duran" by Rob Sheffield in two days or less. If you were a big 80's music fan, read this book. You will be glad you did. (then read his other book, "Love is a Mix Tape.")

11. Why am I having a strong urge to re-learn French?

12. Saw, randomly, on the net, that the movie "The Rum Diary," is finally going to be released this fall. SO psyched as this movie was being filmed, at our hotel, the Hilton Caribe, and around San Juan, when we were in Puerto Rico in 2009!

13. Note to self...Writer's Group...

OK, I feel better now. Like I could actually relax with my hubby tonight, tackle tomorrow, and the next week and a half, and everything could really be fine. Wow. The power of words.

You know, for as much as we travel, Tim and I were talking on our recent trip, while the kids swam, about the fact that this past trip was the first one we had taken alone with the kids. We've been to Lake Placid, and Disney with his whole family. We've been to Maryland, Key West and NYC with mine. We have taken them to Boston, Toronto, Niagara Falls and Philadelphia, but those trips were touring trips paired with family obligations, so a little different that the solo, nuclear family sightseeing trip, which this one surely was.

We had been teasing the kids all summer, heck, all of their lives we have been teasing them, that our favorite trips are visiting historical sights, and that it was time to introduce that affliction to them. Tim visited some historical sights as a kid for sure, but my upbringing was chock full of them. My brother and I used to refer to them as "hysterical" sights, and we endured the extensive drives, multiple carsickness episodes, and hotel wake up calls way earlier than we wanted to be up and moving, so we could get out there and see what there was to be seen. I have struggled to work that bug out of my system. I have finally conquered the "we need to go go go" monster, and now, when I travel, there is a blend, of fun and frolic, rest and learning. I don't fault my dad for pushing us along the way he did. He worked a "real job" with only a few weeks of vacation in my younger days. He had to make the most of the time he had with us. We have all the time that a teaching job currently affords, to relax, enjoy, and also teach our own little family well.

Our trip was fun. We saw historic sights and sights of natural beauty. We shopped, ate great food, and caught a beautiful fireworks show. In the time together, no one fought, really. "Thirteen" only reared its ugly head a few momentary moments, and truthfully, the outbursts were more fueled by just that, a need for fuel. Phew, that boy EATS! There was backseat noise for sure...lots of it...but only once or twice in much road time did we really have to use the "Cut it out!" voice. Only once did I utter the words, "If I have to pull this car over..." and it was somewhere in the first hour and a half of the trip.

As the miles from home ticked away, just as they do when we travel without the kids, our edges softened. We all got into a certain zen. We looked around and saw new places and things. We sang songs and told stories. Tim and I tortured the kids playing old Billy Joel. The kids were funny, and adopted some of Tim's and my jokes. He and I will occationally high five eachother and chide "WooHoo, bad parents moment!" at the times when the kids feel we are being meanies. We really don't care if we are seen as meanies, because, quite frankly, we are driving the bus. Still, they were "banding together" on this trip and high fiving "bad kid moments," thinking they were getting away with stuff here and there. They coordinated ways to share the backseat civily. They did goofy stuff on their iPods together. There was even one fleeting moment, when we were stuck in some traffic, and tired post fireworks, that I think someone said, in a silly voice, "I really love you..." but I will never truly know.

I think it just comes down to the essence of what travel really is. It is time away. We get away, not only from home, and our everyday obligations, but from ourselves. In a new environment, alone, or with our closest family, we are who we really are. There is no fear of having to be the person everyone thinks you are. You are just yourself, out there, seeing the world, thinking your thoughts, exploring, making memories. You are Happy.


As a musical footnote, too...

"Turnstiles," STILL is the best Billy album ever, in my opinion.

And, off of "Piano Man," "Ain't No Crime," really speaks to you differently when you've been married 18 years...

"You got to open your eyes in the morning
Nine o'clock comin' with out any warnin'
And you gotta get ready to go
Well now you tell me you love somebody
And you'll love 'em forever
You may love 'em forever
But you won't like 'em all of the time
Well now you tell me you need somebody for the rest of your life
You might have somebody
But you won't want 'em ev'ryday"

I mean really, did Billy hit the nail on the head or what?!
Tim and I both heard those lyrics, looked sideways at eachother and just cracked up!

"Sleeping with Fans"

My relationship sleeping with fans is a long and difficult one.

As a kid, we had a big box fan in the second story of our suburban split level house without air conditioning, which my father would position in the window in my brother's room. He had it, smartly I know now, forcing hot air out of the house, and pulling cooler air through. At the time though, I just could not understand why that fan had to be blowing out. Every ounce of my being wanted to take that fan, first of all, from my brother's room to mine, and then have it blow ON me until I felt cooler.

I had a karmic recurrance of this parental frustration when my freshman year roomate, in our 12 by 14 dorm room, insisted on sleeping with a big 'ol box fan blowing directly on her at full speed. I may add that she slept a lot, too, and at odd times, sometimes. On the floor, we all mocked her, and her fan. In fact, somewhere, I think I even have a picture of her sitting on the floor, with her fan taken apart, lovingly cleaning its blades. At least she was neat.

Well, now, we have an old farmhouse in Upstate NY without air conditioning, and we have an assortment of fans that we postition differently throughout the house to keep things cool. It works well for most of the summer, barring the inevitable hot as Hades night where I lie in my bed and curse that my father instilled in me a practicality that scorns air conditioning. There is another inevitable as well, the cool night, where you go to bed and realize the fans are not needed. You shut them down, crawl under the covers, and end up COMPLETELY unable to sleep.

That was last night here.

It was the night where you realize that that sound...the constant whirr of the motor...has become your white noise, and instead you are now alone, in the dark, with a snoring husband. In an attempt to tune that out, you hear every car that drives down the road. You hear insects, and with insects there are surely bats, and you start to think of the fact that they could be circling your house right now, determined to find their way in. You toss, you turn, you just plain don't sleep. You start to make lists. You sing song lyrics in your head. You worry, perseverate, fret. Insanity sets in.

Then the next day, you drink your coffee in the morning, and iced coffee in the afternoon, less for pleasure and more for survival.

Tonight, temperatures be what they may, that fan will be a blowing. Lake breeze or no. Yes, tonight we will begin our relationship again, my fan and me. I know that in the fall I will have to make the break, and go back to a white noise free existence...

But it's not fall yet!

Thankful...

Another hot day, sticky, but there is a breeze off the lake, and I am thankful.

Today is a limbo day, laundry, errands, haircuts, simplicity, and I am thankful.

Half a summer is gone, but half remains, and I am thankful.

I enjoyed good music and good friends last night, and I am thankful.

There is a half a pot of leftover coffee in the kitchen, which will go so nicely, this afternoon, with my Almond Joy creamer, over ice of course, and I am thankful.

My daughter swept and mopped the floor in the kitchen without being asked, and I am thankful.
(On her job chart that means I owe her $3 but hey, it's done, and she did a good job too!)

My son actually asked where his summer project for advanced science was, on his own, and I am thankful.
(He didn't actually work on it, but it's the thought that counts, right?)

Our patio is done, and looks great, due to my husband, and I am thankful.

My parents are taking the kids for four days so Tim and I can jaunt off on one of our adventures, alone, and I am thankful.

As cliche as it may be, I know that there are many times I forget how good my life is, how blessed I am, and I can even get down in the dumps, wishing for something different, or for something more. Still, sitting back, and taking stock, and, litereally, counting my blessings, I realize I have it all.

And for that, I am thankful.