From a Distance

I went to my 30-year high school reunion last weekend.

The original plan was to go and stay with Mom and the Mountain Man and I would go to the reunion while the kids stayed home with the grandparents. (The Mountain Man went to the 20-year reunion, so he's met everyone already.) However, Mom had hip replacement surgery in early June, and understandably enough, was not yet feeling up to having her rowdy angelic grandchildren all to herself for an entire evening. And rather than drag all of us 5 hours each way so they could sit in a hotel room, we decided I should just go by myself. Now mind you, the last time I went anywhere all by myself, I came home to a less than happy household. But we decided to risk it. I arranged to stay with one of my former classmates.

Packing was a fascinating experience. It was only overnight and only for me. I didn't have to pack for the kids, or get the house (i.e., pets) ready for us to be gone. It took 10 minutes. I kept thinking I must be missing something.

I managed a visit with a college friend on the way, and stopped by my grandmother's and took her to the grocery store, which is something I haven't been able to do in a long time, given that I usually have everyone with me. We had quite a pleasant visit.

On to the reunion. I got to my friend's house early enough that I could go with her to help set everything up and we got to do some good catching up. Our class had 26 members. Two of them have since died. Fourteen showed up for the reunion, plus three spouses, and five folks who had been in school with us for awhile, but went on to other schools for senior high. We even had one of our teachers come visit! (And we found those people through Facebook. An interesting phenomenon.)

Overall it was a really good time. I did notice that at the 20-year reunion, people mostly talked about kids and jobs (at the time I had no kids and an office job, now I have kids instead of an office job). This time around? Bifocals and menopause. I guess at the 40th we'll be talking about colonoscopies and AARP.

The thing that made me so incredibly sad was the number of people for whom high school was the highlight of their lives. In the ensuing 30 years they haven't managed to do anything better than be a football star or the most popular. I often heard the phrase, "These are the best years of your life," and I couldn't imagine how that could be possible, but there are indeed people for whom it is true. They honestly feel like they have nothing else to look forward to. They had children but take no joy in them. Their careers are going nowhere. They haven't learned how to be happy in their own skin. Granted, it took me many years to learn how to do that. I wonder if I would have learned how if I had enjoyed high school.

In other news, we're trying to pack as much swim and sun as we can into the summer before it's over. We had a lovely week at Edisto Beach, SC with my sister and her husband and daughter. Very peaceful and not crowded. We'll see you off with some photos (the first four were taken by my brother-in-law, the rest by the Mountain Man).

                                            The Queen in front of our rental house. 

 

DeBoy embraces the sea.

   The view from our house.

All of us on the beach. The one in pink is my niece.

At the dinner table.

At the Serpentarium. If you look closely you'll see snakes on nearly every branch of this tree.

The kids got to pet the ball python. (So did I!)

A walk on the beach after dinner turns into a dip.


The Queen and her castle.

At Botany Bay.

A Post in Need of a Title

Forgive me, Bloggers, for I have not written. It's been 2 months since my last blog post. (We seem to be experiencing technical difficulties - has my background disappeared for everyone, or just me?)

I sent an email to Suldog a month ago in answer to his inquiry, and am revising that email for the first part of today's post.

April and May were very very busy. The Mountain Man and the kids threw me a very nice little birthday party, complete with a decorated cake. My beautiful 6-year-old daughter - who can now read! - wrote me a birthday card all by herself. It said, "Dear Mom, You are the best Mom I ever had. I am never going to give you away. Love, the Queen."

Here's the cake. Didn't they do a good job?
Because of all the snow days, and because we had no school on election day the 18th (all the schools are polling places), we had to have school on Saturday the 22nd. The Queen's dance recital was also May 22, with rehearsal on the 21st. VERY long day. Then she sang in the children's choir at church on the 23rd, and we played soccer games that day.

After the dance
The Queen (purple - for royalty, of course!) scores a goal.
DeBoy shoots . . .

. . . and scores!
We went rock climbing on election day to celebrate the day off. I still had not fully recovered from the pneumonia (actually still haven't), but getting outside felt very good.

On the 26th the school loaded up the buses and took the K-3 grades an hour away to the nearest Gattiland. A number of misguided parents including myself followed. Gattiland was singularly unprepared for 300 kids to be playing games and collecting tickets (although they had plenty of food), which I found interesting since they knew we were coming, as we got there before they officially opened. Whoever invented Gattiland (and its equally evil twin Chuck E. Cheese) should spend eternity standing in a line surrounded by loud music, flashing lights, and screaming kids who constantly break line of front of him/her. Knowing the whole time that he/she does not have enough tickets to redeem the prize the child dearly wants.

Because we don't have enough pets, the Mountain Man helped the kids make worm farms. It's pretty interesting to watch the new tunnels they're making. The kids have kind of lost interest now that the initial glamour has worn off, but I'm enjoying checking on them more than I would have expected.



I did a bit part in Charlotte's Web, which opened June 2 with two school shows. We had a Sunday matinee for the general public on the 6th. Fortunately I only had 6 lines, so I went to the blocking rehearsal and didn't have to go back until the last two weeks. I also helped with some of the costumes. The last day of school was June 4. We hit the county pool yesterday. It rained a bit, but no thunderstorms, which we've been running into most days. I want to get in as much swimming as possible this summer. School starts back August 3. Not much time.

We're participating in the Summer Reading Program at the library. They have something every day for various age groups, but we go on Wednesdays and Fridays. Wednesday is storytime with crafts and Friday is a special program. The first Friday they had folks from Kentucky Down Under, who brought various animals native to Australia: a blue-tongued ginko, bearded dragon, a kookaburra, a wallaby, and a border collie. That was the best behaved dog I've ever seen. The trainer led him around the auditorium, though we were not allowed to pet him. Then she let him off the leash and parked him on the step next to me (overflow crowd). After a bit I looked at him and he took one step toward and put his head in my lap. I broke the rules and petted him, and he didn't move until she came back for him. I guess he knew a dog person when he saw one.

If you're looking for something to read, I highly recommend Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series. The first one is The Eyre Affair and there are 4 sequels: Lost in a Good Book, The Well of Lost Plots, Something Rotten, and Thursday Next. They're incredibly inventive and he refers to and/or parodies most of classical literature. In addition, he's written the Nursery Crimes series, which so far includes The Big Over Easy, and The Fourth Bear. In the first one, Humpty Dumpty's death turns out to be murder and Jack Spratt is the detective in the case. I haven't actually read those yet - the library only had The Eyre Affair, so I did the rest through interlibrary loan. I'm also halfway through Charlaine Harris' vampire series featuring Sookie Stackhouse (those are the novels on which the HBO show TrueBlood is based). And I reread the Harry Potter series and Zimmer's Avalon series.

None of my family were hurt by the flooding in Tennessee, but plenty of folks I know had a lot of property damage. It will be years before it's cleaned up.

A number of you kind folks asked about my Mom. She has fully recovered from her radiation therapy back in January, enough so that she just had hip replacement surgery last Tuesday. She was up and around the same day, and went home on Friday. She gets out of bed and out of a chair without assistance and does pretty much everything she wants. She is not supposed to climb long flights of stairs for about 2 weeks. She has done remarkably well with this thing. She's a survivor, my Mom is. She reminds me of that Knight in Monty Python, missing all his limbs and yelling, "Come back and fight, I'm not dead yet!"

Last but not least, I'd like to bid a fond farewell, but not forgetting, to Sarah at Slouching Past 40. She has retired her blog, in a truly touching last bit of poetry. Even if you don't read her, you will be moved by this piece. She didn't say, but I'm hoping that she has retired her blog in order to devote full-time to writing a book. At least one!

I am so far behind in reading blogs. I can't just read the latest post. I have to go back and read everything I missed, because it's like reading the first and last chapters of a book without reading the middle. But I do think of you all often, and will visit soon.

Addendum to Previous Post

Here I am as Don Quixote in our 4th of July show.And here's a ghost crab on the beach.
And for more really excellent pictures of our vacation, go here and here.

July!? Already?!?!?!

You may be detecting a theme here. (And can someone explain to me why Blogger has made it EVEN MORE DIFFICULT TO ARRANGE PHOTOS ON THE BLOG?!?!?!?!?!?!)

More baby birds
More projects
(And yes, the Christmas cactus bloomed in June.)
Strider is all better now!

VACATION!!!!

The Queen and DeBoy with their cousin, Princess L

The house on the left is the one we stayed in on Harbor Island, SC. There were 20 of us and it didn't feel crowded. We saw lots and lots of these pelicans.
sunrise

Access to the beach on Hunting Island (southeast of Harbor Island)

Wading in the waves of Hunting Island

Airborne!
Hunting Island lighthouse
This part of the beach felt like stepping into the land of Mordor or the Neverending Story, or Yoda's swamp (depending on which of us you asked).

The Queen climbs the lighthouse steps. Unfortunately there was a height limit. We didn't know that until we got there (NOTHING ON THEIR WEBSITE REFERS TO THIS!!!!!!!) DeBoy was dreadfully disappointed.

At the top
the view from the top (that's the gift shop)
We went on the nature trail. These are sand crabs and fiddler crabs. Very tiny. It was a lot like watching spiders scuttling around. Except for the fact they were going sideways.
We got to pet a turtle and a snake at the nature center. This turtle was born without claws on her hind feet, so she wouldn't have survived in the wild. We don't know the girl with the kids.
lighthouse reflection
my three favorite people

the Queen in the sunrise

sunset on Harbor Island
Back at Princess L's house, enchanted by Enchanted.
Happy Father's Day (it was also our 6th anniversary!)!
Washing dishes whilst in my niece's tiara. Back to reality (albeit in my sister's house).
I know it's a lot of pictures, but we took 680, so really you got pretty lucky. In addition to vacation, I was in a 4th of July variety show. I sang 2 songs and we did the skit I talked about last month. (See previous blog post.) There is a rumor of pictures. Hopefully I can post them before August. We've gone to the pool a few times and had the summer reading program at the library. School starts in one month. I feel the need to do as much fun stuff as possible between now and then.

Hallie at Wonderful World of Weiners is holding a huge raffle/fundraiser. Lots of prizes! Go check it out.

And I'll leave you with this video of DeBoy with DeWii at DeBeachHouse.

We Are Here *

* Or we will be by tomorrow.