I went ahead and read the Melissa Sue Anderson book. I want a refund.
If you want a humorless, scene-by-scene synopsis of each and every Little House episode, buy this book and love it. Otherwise? Dang. At least Melissa Gilbert kept me interested in her drama.
I am back from a mini-vacation, spent with my mom and Thor, down in Austin. I love Austin. It is one of my favorite places to be.
Recently, I was asked what was my favorite vacation. I really couldn’t come up with a favorite. I have enjoyed every trip I’ve taken as an adult. I think I enjoyed every trip I took as a child. I’ve certainly had some disasters, but with a sense of adventure, those turn into great opportunities for fun.
Of course, my most memorable vacation is the Contiki coach tour of Europe I took with Renae. Between the viral infection shared among us by the twit who decided that a coach was a great place to spend her illness, the predator who was our tour guide, the drunken, shameless Australians who made up the greater part of our group, and the American who so thoroughly baked her brain in Amsterdam that she was paranoid and sure I was trying to steal her camera for days…well, how could it not be memorable! Factor in all the sights we saw, and that would be hard to beat.
My favorite story from that trip, though, has to do with food.
We had been laughing to each other about how the Aussies and the few Europeans on the tour thought we were Fat Americans, and given our excitement over every meal, we weren’t doing much to dissuade them. Our first night in Florence, Italy, we were attending a buffet style banquet. We were directed to tables, to be seated, then Renae and I made our way up to the buffet line.
We filled up our plates, cooing to each other over the selection and spread, then returned to our seats and had both started eating when we realized we were being watched by the other people at our table. We were informed that we were supposed to have waited to be called to the buffet, table by table. And we both giggled, shrugged, tucked into our food, and then, when it was our tables’ turn to go, went on for seconds.
That we were both zaftig (then, Renae has gone on to exhibit the sort of will power rarely found outside of Hollywood, and has been slim as a reed for the past ten years) did not at all discourage the Italian suitors we enjoyed along the way. Including the one who kept telling me I was “beautiful like an angel,” at which I could only giggle back, swatting away the cartoon hearts that were circling his head and invading my space, “You are.” I’m eloquent like that.
So, memorable.
I think the vacation I have most enjoyed with the family is a road trip we took up to Manitou Springs for the 4th of July a few years back. Thor was 2-years-old and in a spectacular mood for most of the trip, but was unusually foul when we went to the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo. He did not want to be there. He did not want to look at animals. He did not want food, or drink, or piggyback rides, or anything other than to sling himself back into the lining of his stroller, turn his head, close his eyes, cross his arms, pout out his lower lip, and say with deep, serious wrath, “I do not want to lookat dos bears/giraffes/monkeys/snakes/lions/etc.! I do not like-a dos bears/giraffes/monkeys/snakes/lions/etc.! To this day, B and I will say to each other, “I do not like-a dos bears!”
The only thing that broke him out of his mood was the trip up to the Will Rogers Shrine, where it was like the sun had broken through the clouds, and he was suddenly the happy, bubbly boy we knew. He like-ad everything about that place!
I hope all of my American friends had happy4th of July celebrations, and all of my other friends had great Wednesdays.
Here’s what I like about Facebook: It gives me instant access to the wit and wisdom of people I would otherwise never encounter, and those people frequently make my days. Right now, I’m thinking specifically about my friend, Mary. She just made me laugh so hard that it lifted my whole being. If not for Facebook, Mary and I might never have reconnected, given that she lives in another state and we haven’t laid eyes on each other since my sophomore year in high school.
The other day, I was listening to NPR and caught part of show wherein the guest was talking about how the internet had made it possible for bad ideas to go viral. I have no idea what else he said because that sent me off on my own rabbit trails of thought, and I started considering how small the world is on the internet.
When we’re online, we aren’t bound to countries or cultures. We are citizens of the internet. Citizens of the world.
I have friends in Spain (hi, Isabel!), Australia (hi, Cat!), Canada (hi, Elspeth!), England (hi, Sandy!), South America, India, Germany, Russia…the list goes on. And when we are interacting online, it is with an ease and comfort that certainly transcends a passport or a postage stamp. It drives home to me that we are truly the same–just People. Not Russians, or Germans, or Indians, or Australians, or Americans, or New Yorkers, or Texans–we’re just humans.
Of course, that made me worry about the humans who have no rights, and Third World Nations, and starving babies, and trafficked children, and political systems that treat their populations as currency. And that made me sad. For a few seconds I wondered if we could really be one nation, and if we could find a way to overhaul the world so that we were under a single government, taking care of our citizenry and helping one another to achieve success. Then I remembered what was happening in the EU right now, and had a sad. Then I remembered that we can’t even agree on Obamacare in this nation.
For the record: As I have aged and experienced more life, and as I have seen people around me experiencing life at difference levels and for various reasons, I have come to believe that healthcare should be considered a basic human right.
But that’s all so serious, and Mary just made me laugh so hard that I was forced to shed the skin of the week past, and am now shimmying around in a new, sleek, happy set of mental togs. To sum up: Thank you, Mark Zuckerberg, hello, Friends, and let’s try to help people who need it as we are able. And also, yay for Mary!
When Thor moved out of his crib and into a twin bed, I took him to Toys R Us and told him he could pick out a bed. I thought he would be excited at the prospect of getting a race car, or Thomas the Train, or something else equally as huge, plastic, and attractive to children. I thought that getting his buy-in, and letting him be involved in the selection process would aid in our attempts to get him to spend full nights in his own room. I walked him down the bed aisle and he oohed and aahed over each, petting them, and considering them. I asked, “So which bed do you want?”
“I don’t need a bed,” he answered, shaking his head and waving one hand at me, his face serious, but unperturbed. As he toddled away from the beds, down toward another aisle, he called, “I have yours.”
I ended up buying him a bunkbed, because I had always wanted one, and he was terrified to sleep on the bottom bunk. So I took the slats out of the upper half of the top, put them in the lower half and built him an observation deck, complete with captain’s wheel. That way, he had a place to play (and put his animals), and he could see the ceiling.
I’d like for you to guess how much good that did me.
We sold the bunkbed a year later.
Thor has asked if I could produce a sibling for him, so that he wouldn’t have to sleep alone in his room. It made me remember how much I hated sleeping in my room alone, at his age. It seemed so unfair that my parents got to stay in their room together, but I had to be shut out, alone, left to my own devices. The life of an Only Child.
Y’all, I still want a bunkbed.
The Outside Lane 