Anyone know what to do with an 82 year old hoarder who refuses to allow anyone in her home, needs to go into assisted living, has no savings and a huge credit card debt, and ...
I’ve been enjoying reading Tuesdays’ Random Posts around the internets. So, finally, today I am giving it go…
I went up to our favorite beach on the North Shore yesterday with Hubs, Daughter, and Border Collie. The Boy opted for hanging out with his friends. Big surprise.
First thing I did was take my beach walk with BC. While walking down the pristine, near empty stretches of white sand,
BC decided to both surprise and embarrass me when he raced ahead, paused two feet in front of two women lying on the beach, and pooped right there and then. Granted, I clean up after him, but still…
On the way back, he did the same thing a foot away from a young couple.
The couple was nicer about it.
I really need to work on BC’s manners.
After snorkeling, I’m getting all comfy in my beach chair and getting ready to read my book. Hubs asked me where I packed his I-shuffle. I informed him it was in the front zip pouch of the beach bag. Since he was getting his (and mine was right there next to it) I extended my hand, palm up, for him to pass me my I-shuffle.
Hubs looked at my hand and said, “What?”
“Hello… I-shuffle please.”
To which he surprised me with this response, “Follow the man rules and ask out loud for what you want. We men don’t read minds, as much as you women think we should.”
What the fuck has he been watching?
Man rules???
We almost lost BC to the horizon. He likes to swim in and check on me when I’m snorkeling. But he wasn’t keeping tab so good. He swam out to a lady on a boogey board, and when he realized it wasn’t me, he just kept going, on and out towards the horizon. Hubs had to call him back.
I happened to look up from where I was to see my dog swimming about 20 yards out. Later, on the beach, Hubs told me my dog almost swam to my homeland – California.
Daughter rolled her eyes and informed her dad that since we were on the North Shore, BC was heading toward Alaska.
We stopped in Hali’ewa for Mexican food at Cholo’s where you can sit outside with the dog. Our table faced some shrubbery and a crew of kamikaze sparrows were focused on our chips sans salsa.
Twice they tried to dive onto the table and steal a chip. I was more worried about the cocktails.
Birds really freak out Daughter and so she asked her father to get rid of them.
Instead, he did this.
For more Random Tuesday Posts, head on over to The Unmom.
I go back to work next week Tuesday. If you want to see how I feel about this, here are a couple of posts from a year ago, when I was a silent tree falling in the forest.
This summer, I spent the first five weeks of summer break mostly staying home. Decluttering, computer projects, house and yard projects. Lots of reading, writing, and quiet time. Long walks with Border Collie.
I’ve hardly been home the last few days.
Last Hoo Rahs.
The other day I had a Town day with Daughter. Lunch. Movie. Mall. Daughter also had a dentist appointment.
While she was at the dentist, I cruised the Mall.
I was walking past a women’s dress shop. Beautiful dresses here. They specialize in evening gowns and this store is the scene of my daughter’s senior prom dress purchase.
The store also has flowing, breezy, fancy, schmancy dresses. The type I could picture wealthy women wearing at pool parties.
Personally, I have never bought a dress for myself at this store.
As I walk past this store, a man stands outside, his back to the store window, watching his toddler daughter.
She is performing gymnastic type maneuvers in front of him. As I pass her she begins to add in a slightly loud song/chant to her antics.
I smile. I guess since I am not the one accountable for her, I think she’s pretty darn cute.
After I pass I hear her father tell her, “We never should have let Mommy go in this store.”
The hubs cannot handle lizards or toads – they totally give him the willies. I’ve seen him crush a B52 cockroach with his bare hands, so the lizard thing does not mean he is a pansy in all things creature creepy. Geckos are quite prolific in Hawaii. They have the reputation of being good luck – the opposite POV being that to kill a gecko in one’s home may be bad luck….
I believe the reason geckos acquired the reputation of being good luck is that they eat insects. Which means if you allow a gecko or two to live in your home, you don’t have to kill too many ants or spiders.
We have a gecko living downstairs and we let her be. However, when new ones come inside or the grand lady has….what does she have babies? Eggs? I’m not interested enough to look it up. At any rate, occasionally we find a youngster gecko out in the open and I am always called to catch it and put it outside.
I think the thing that really creeps my husband out is the whole tail dropping thing. Or that geckos are so squishy and delicate, and one really has to be careful not to squash the poor thing when one catches it.
The geckos living outdoors pickup some color. But the ones I’ve seen are all translucent.
Nothing like the fellow selling insurance.
In case you are wondering where I am going with this, I am almost there.
Yesterday was the annual cleaning out of the garage. Every summer we take all the shit out and hose down the garage, reorganize, and put the stuff back. We have a lot of crap along the sides of the garage.
I bought shelves five years ago. The shelves are among the crap lying along the sides of the garage. Mr. Pseudo is not the tool belt handyman that my dad made me think all the male version of our species grew up to be. Ah, well. One of the reasons they make you take vows…
Can we all just say gecko poop??? Crap? Shit? Along one side, where the garage cement slab meets the wall, was a combination gecko freeway and gecko outhouse. So disgusting that I did not even grab my camera, I could not hose that shit out fast enough.
We did not find one single gecko though.
Maybe all the neighbors have trained their geckos to come do their business in our garage.
Finished two books in the first five days. Body Surfingby Anita Shreve. A friend had passed it on to me months ago, but all these last few months I had barely been able to finish the monthly book club selection. Actually, there were a couple of times I went to book club without reading the book. Yeah, I was THAT person. Nothing to add to the conversation, but went anyways just to hear the sound of my friends’ voices and to enjoy the company. Oh, and the wine.
I enjoyed the book; I’ve read a couple others by Shreve. But the book was deceptive, seemingly light but oddly depressing. I think one of my favorite things about this novel was the setting - a beach house. The same beach house from Shreve's book The Pilot's Wife.
I also read A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khalid Hosseini (my book club’s selection for this month), finishing it last night. I could not read it straight through over the weekend. Had to take breaks. Beautifully written, but heartbreaking. To get under the burqa of the two women who are the main characters and see the hardships of life that is “endured.”
See that badge in my sidebar? Women for Women International? After reading A Thousand Splendid Suns I felt like the thirty dollars I give monthly to that organization to help women in war torn countries is the proverbial drop in the bucket.
To balance out the heaviness of my reading, I had the TV on all day yesterday while I folded laundry and putzed around the house. These days with grown and driving teens and a husband who works weekends, I find myself occasionally stranded at home without a car. It might get old later, but so far I love it.
I watched the Oxygen marathon of America’s Next Top Model, season eight. Never had interest in this reality show before, but caught last Sunday’s marathon, maybe the last two episodes.
Yesterday I actually found myself turning the TV on at 8:30 in the morning. Hushing my husband when he came home from work at 2:30. Only intermittently watching the NBA playoff game with him, while I jogged upstairs to the TV in our room.The judges on America's Next Top Model are way more entertaining than most reality shows, especially Miss J. He’s got a book coming out in November, Follow the Model: Miss J's Guide to Unleashing Presence, Poise, and Power. The two girls that made the finals would not have been my picks, but hey, what do I know?
Any other irreverent TV series I should check on reruns?
Ahhh Summer…. What teacher does not love summer? Those other breaks are just a chance to catch up on grading and lesson plans. It’s really hard to feel like you are on vacation when you have over 150 names on your class rosters.
This song reminds me of my childhood summers. Play it while you read the post to set the mood if you like.
I remember the summer this song was popular, I was eleven and we had just moved from the San Fernando Valley to the Surf and Sand Mobile Home Park in Malibu. I went back to the Valley and stayed for a week at my best friend's house for her annual birthday party sleepover in July. We had the radio playing outside and were jumping over a rope into the ivy in her front yard. Landing on it like it was a pad for the high jump and laughing like crazy. This song was playing, we were young, and life was good. Afterwards, her mom broke all the girls up into groups and we went around her neighborhood on a scavenger hunt. Does anyone do that anymore in this day and time? It was so much fun; kind of sad that the world has changed and neighborhood kids don't come knocking at your door asking for eclectic items. Hyperventilating with excitement and glancing across the street to see if the other girls are racing back to the house with a completed scavenger list.
I’ve always loved summer. EVERYTHING ABOUT IT. Summer cook outs, camp outs and road trips. Beach days and hiking days. The smell of freshly cut grass, salty air, and balmy nights. Summer movies and summer sunsets. Picnics and plain just eating outside at every chance you get. The chance to reinvent oneself. To make lifestyle changes and have enough time to see if these changes become a part of a new you.
Top ten plans I have for this summer…
10. Sleep more and take more naps.
9. Exercise and mix it up so nothing feels routine. Walks to my favorite park and yoga on the pier some days, and long walks on the North Shore beaches other days. Body boarding and snorkeling. Hiking on the ridges. Living room work outs with my hip hop buddy, Shaun T.
8. Meditate. Or should I say try to meditate. I have never been able to conquer the jabbering and endless list making that goes on in my head, but when I was on chemo I was able to focus on mantras at least. Giving it another shot in the arm this summer. That time slot got preempted by blogging during the school year.
7. Write. Write. Write.
6. Blog. Blog. Blog.
5. Lesson plans. I could leave it off the list, but the truth is, teachers worth their salt work over the summer. Summers between school years where I switched teaching lines I worked a lot. Next year will be my third year in sophomore English, so I won’t have to work too much. There is a new unit I am planning as well as a project. I also have notes and reflections from last year that I need to go through and use to tweak the units that I will be repeating.
4. Help my mom. Details of which could be another post or ten.
3. Read. Read. Read. Tackle that stack of books on my nightstand. Read the books for the new unit I am planning for my students.
2. Home projects. I never get to all the great project ideas I have, usually because of budget constraints, but sometimes just because of all the other things on the list. This summer my big idea is to plant a vegetable garden. We’ll see how that goes.
1. “Staycation” days. This is what we call it over here when you have no money to travel so you make it a point to enjoy some days on the island as if you were a tourist. At least once a week I hope to have a great day doing something fabulous. The particulars will depend on petty cash availability and the company I’m keeping on said day.
I know where I’ll be at the end of summer, long after I’ve gone back to work. My girlfriends annual Laborless Labor Day. For more spins on summer plans, head on over to Sprite's Keeper.
I go back to work on Thursday. Granted, there are no students until next week Monday, but in a way that makes it even worse. At least when the students are there, one does not have time to think about what one is missing. Thursday, however, is called "Admin" day. Which means sitting through ENDLESS speeches, introductions and Powerpoint presentations. The irony is that the word in vogue lately is DIFFERENTIATION and whilst admin is providing professional development for siad catch phrase, the professional development will in NO WAY reflect differentiating for faculty. Soooooooooooooooo, those of us who have worked at the school 10 or more years will be treated to the same day and information as first year teachers and teachers who come in from out of state.
I have two days to think of something to bring to do during this time so I don't pick out my eye balls and offer them up in a raffle just to entertain myself.
And don't get me started on why Hawaii's powers-that-be think a year round schedule and sending the kids back in mid-July with steaming heat and very few schools with air-conditioning is a great idea. Maybe they just want the tourists and their children to have the beaches all to themselves for the rest of July and August... Meanwhile, my students and I will be sweating it out big time while we get acquainted.
Some days are a fuck fest no matter what you do. While California is burning, I have been busy trying to put out fires in my personal life. Is it the heat? Is the perfect beach weather not got that great a spin on it for the days when the teens are home and the husband is off work? When the laundry needs to get done and someone has to make lunch?
How about the lesser than less fortunate? Who’ve been up all night sucking on a glass pipe?
Hmmm
So, the other day, I was waiting at a light at a busy intersection and a crazy person walked across the street against the light. With a white hoodie pulled way over his or her head, I couldn’t see the person’s face at all. It had a rope in one hand, twisted with a noose coming out of its fist. Waving the noose as it strode across the boulevard and walked RIGHT INTO THE PATH OF A CITY BUS. The bus was barreling along with the light in its favor, probably 45 miles an hour. I’m stuck in my car, waiting to turn left and the proverbial train wreck was not watchable. I closed my eyes. I covered them with my hands. I felt my entire stomach do a gymnastic routine worthy of Olympic tryouts. And when I looked again, merely peeping at what I expected to be far flung body parts, the crazy was standing an inch past where the bus had pummeled through, screaming in outrage. Then this person proceeded across the intersection in a haphazard path, striking each car with a swing of the rope. “A whack for you motherfucker!” So I called 911 and, after being put on hold for a few minutes for a nonemergency, asked if anyone was not too busy could they come and make sure the person swinging a rope couldn’t be somehow taken somewhere. Maybe for iced tea or something.
You’d think that was enough excitement for one day, but NO. Of course not. Once I made that left hand turn and drove up the street to the post office, I failed to detect danger in the guy hanging out outside, listening to his earplugs. So I was totally unprepared to come out of the post office two minutes later (much to HIS SURPRISE there was no line) and find him looking into my tinted back window. I thought I was smarter, but for a second I wondered if he might have a legit reason for what he was doing. Despite his “I’ve-been-in-the-heat-for-two-days-at-least-in-these-clothes-look”, I thought perhaps he was using the tint on my window to make sure his hair was pretty. Then he leaned in closer, pressed his face against the glass and cupped his hand around the side of his face to keep the glare out. At which point I yelled, “HEY!!!” For a split suspension in time he looked at me like he might rush me and pound me into the pavement. And I wasn’t all that scared because I was still standing in the open door of the post office. But instead he pulls a second t-shirt out from somewhere and throws it over his head. Like a t-shirt doo rag, without tying it nicely. Then he walks across the street into the maze of apartment complexes.
The 911 operator was much more excited by this event than the last one. Hurried me off the phone to get an officer out there. Wanted to know if I would wait for the officer.
I spent an hour in that same post office parking lot last week waiting for AAA to come and give me a battery charge. It was NOT FUN. And it was HOT. I also remember distinctly waiting for an hour and forty-five minutes for the police to come when our house was burglarized a year ago. They never caught any of them or got our stuff back.
So I was thinking, noooooooooo. I had an appointment to get to anyway. I have a friend in town and we were meeting for 11am Bloody Mary’s.
Put into perspective, today’s teen dramas and hostile husband reaction don’t seem as life sucking as I thought.
But what I wouldn’t give to be back at the hotel with my friend sipping on a Mary and chomping on a celery stick.
Every time I go to Big Sur I have to go to Nepenthe. It’s a cathedral to the Gods, a vista a la supremo, a place where conversation is unnecessary, and where, for a couple of hours all is right in the world and I can imagine myself actually, someday, freeing my mind from endless thought patterns and sliding into the serene meditative world that has alluded me so far.
My husband and I discovered Nepenthe on our honeymoon when we stayed in Big Sur for a few days. We liked to sit outside where the patio opens to the most magnificent view unimaginable. And just sit. Have some fries and a couple of beers.
A decade and some later we had a family reunion at a campground in Big Sur. My children were seven and ten at the time and enjoyed running the river on inner tubes with their cousins, floating down to the River Inn, sometimes stopping in for a drink or snack. On the way back down the Coast to my mom’s house, we stopped at Nepenthe and I have pictures of the kids on the Nepenthe patio. The backdrop is so awesome it almost looks fake – a Sears rendition of sorts. Life so good it seems unreal.
Growing up in Southern California during the late 60’s and early 70’s, our family made a road trip every summer. Some camping. Some motels. No matter what section of the Western States or Canada we were off to, our first stop was ALWAYS the Redwood Forest. I’m not sure if my parents were naïve or if times were just different, but as young as ten or so I was allowed to wander the trails and woods on my own and with my little sister. I can remember perfectly the sun beams coming through the Redwoods like effervescent spotlights that seemed, if you looked at just the right angle, with perhaps a squeeze of the eye, to be lighting on woodsy mythical gnomes. The ferns and moss, the fallen over rotting logs, the musty live smell of damp earth. I remember crossing the river on a bridge made of a single redwood split in half. How on the other side of the river the woods had a wild feel to them and how we knew, as young as we were, that this side of the woods was place a child could lose themselves and how, without any adult harping to us, we respected this and didn’t wander too deeply away from the river and into that part of the forest.
I have a picture of myself the last time we made this annual pilgrimage, before my parents’ divorce, and our family’s subsequent slide into predictable LA suburbia fractured lifestyles. In the picture I am sitting inside a redwood tree’s trunk. The cave, or burrow, is big enough for several people but I am alone and it might be night, or it is just the darkness of the cave. The flash of the camera captures me sitting cross-legged, my long, straight, early-seventies hair hanging down to my waist. I’m not smiling, but starring straight at the camera. I’m wearing jeans and a dark blue sweatshirt.
The lump I feel in my stomach when my sister sends me links to the latest news on the Big Sur and Santa Barbara fires feels almost as large and gross as the nausea I experienced from chemo a couple years back. And I can’t shake the feeling that the fires are more than just fires, but a loss of one more thing that was right in the world.
There are three weeks left of summer “vacation.” Which means three and a half weeks are gone already. Boom. Blast. POW! Just like that.
Week one. Worked three days on curriculum committees. Spent two days on the North Shore snorkeling. A somewhat imbalanced trade off.
Week Two. It’ a blur. There were “spring” cleaning and organizing projects of house and computer files. 20+ hours of curriculum writing. I think I might have done something fun, but I don’t remember.
Week Three. Camping. OK That was pretty awesome. Two to three walks a day down to the point and back, surfing, lazing, board games, campfires, s’mores, and crab walks at night on the beach. Cell phones out of power. Teenagers actually talking in person.
Week Four. Two days of cleaning up the camping gear and storing it away. Plus I think I have to go and make a list to figure out just how much shit I need to get done before I go back to work.
We leave for a week of camping on the North Shore today.
On the plus side this means disconnecting from electronics, errands, LISTS OF THINGS TO DO, and writing up curriculum. Those time suckers will be replaced with long walks on the beach, reading lazily under the shade of a tree, chatting it up with family friends, and the lovely sunset cocktail hour. Evenings I can choose to engage in card or board games or sit by the fire and watch the teens burn marshmallows and try to outdo each other in storytelling. There’s the infamous crab catching walk every other night on the beach followed by the now anticlimactic crab race. When the kids were all young it was very exciting. Now the high point for the teens is seeing if they can ditch the parents (who are focused on the youngest of the herd) and sneak off down the beach. This is especially true when the family friends all bring a “new” friend so that they can ALL experience the thrill of racing hormones. Let’s see, what would I have been more interested in at 15? Crabs running out of a bucket? Sneaking off down the beach with a pack of teens that included cute new boys? It’s such a close call I’ll have to think about it.
Watching my kids with all my friends' kids running around with a sense of freedom that is rarely attainable in modern society. Squabbles. Adventures. These kids have grown up together. They’re more like cousins than a lot of blood cousins I know.
I’m in such a mood that I forgot what the down side of camping is. I guess we’re off.
The day that I decided to do the list thing I was very motivated. Part of my motivation stemmed from the fact that no matter what I did accomplish each day, my mind tended to focus on what was left UNDONE.
For instance. Spending a day at the beach with my family. A glorious time was had by all. The snorkeling was something that most people only get to watch on the travel channel; my son and his friend took me out to a place past the reef with dramatic 40 foot drops of underwater cliff covered in coral, schools of rainbow fish feeding in a frenzy, then bursting in all directions like a fourth of July firework display when I swam into the middle of them. I had the fun of watching free divers exercising their lungs by jumping off the reef holding mini boulders. While I floated on the surface like a tourist, these guys would plunge straight down to the bottom. One of them sat crossed legged and mimed transcendental meditation and I had to wonder if it was something he would normally consider doing or if it was just for me and the boys. His friend reenacted Blue Crush and jogged along the floor of the ocean with his boulder. Since I had loaned my snorkel and mask to my son’s buddy and was instead goggling the show with swimmer’s goggles, I had to bend my head back for great gulps of air. Twice. I was very impressed with everyone else’s lungs. The whole scene reminded me of a grown up version of playing tea party on the floor of my friend’s swimming pool as a kid.
After spending two days up at the North Shore, my next day back home I felt overwhelmed by tasks left undone after a week of summer.
With only six weeks now left I went with the list idea.
Which worked really well the day I started it. That day I:
Wrote a blog.
Wrote a chunk of the stuff I’m doing for work.
Balanced my checking account and paid some bills.
Took my son to the orthodontist.
Made the meal and shopping list for the summer camping trip.
Went to three separate stores and bought the food/supplies for the summer camping trip.
Got my son to clean the yard.
Got my daughter to vacuum the house.
Fertilized the potted plants.
REFILLED OUT my daughter’s college financial aid paperwork, since her college says the online version we did two months ago had missing information and that they had been having this problem A LOT, so to please do the whole shebang AGAIN on a hard copy.
Best for last. Cleaned my bathroom. Not a regular cleaning. EVERYTHING. The cupboards, drawers, medicine cabinet. Organized. Pretty. Someplace one can go and actually take a leisurely bath ( I located the leisurely bath items - including candles, incense, and bath beads that had melted into one giant blob- under piles Costco priced TP) It’s a good thing I’m NOT AT WORK and therefore can choose to ignore both symbolism and irony in my own life.
Things on the list I did not get to included filing of crap in the office and cleaning the ceiling fans. Ah. Well. Still a day where a task oriented person can be proud. Even if one is trying to reconnect with one’s creative side and NOT BE TASK ORIENTED.
The next day I woke up with a migraine and had to spend half a day laying around napping and waiting for the Imitrex to do its thing.
I think the headache was more from sleeping in a bedroom still reeking of the smell of bathroom cleaning supplies than from the actual work itself.
I’ve chosen to take the attitude that the half day was NOT WASTED. I had meant to put napping on the list in the first place.
1. Know when to say NO. Nada. No WAY JOSE. 2. Pick your fights. You don’t ALWAYS have to react when one of your teenage children annoys you. Purposely. 3. Make lists. I realize this does not sound like the free and wonderful summer of yore childhood. But facts are facts. And even if the long walks on the beach and the lazy afternoons curled up with a book are a big chunk of WHAT ITS ALL ABOUT, there are the creative projects you had imagined doing (hm em siad blog writing) home projects you had put off doing all school year that, once done, you will feel fabulously about having completed, and, let’s face it, regular errands, doctor and dentists appointments, blah, blah, blah, yada, yada, yada. A list with items crossed off reminds you of what you HAVE completed. Otherwise, every evening, the demented part of your personality will try and make you feel guilty over what was NOT accomplished. The big ol’ FUCK ME 4. Keep a nice variety of alcoholic beverages on hand. 5. Know when it’s OK to hang up on someone (see item #2).
