This Sign Says it All.

Forty Eight Hours of Annoyed

Last week, exhausted after a frustrating day and sad about the end of summer I sent my poor husband the following email.


Annoying things that have happened to me in the last 48 hours.

Unsecured metal shower curtain fell on my head while shampooing.

Dog's unwiped butt spread poop all over my newly laundered bed spread (two nights in a row)

I still have no sink in my bathroom.

Two trips to the Giant foiled when all baskets were spoken for so I took only what I could carry, which was enough to feed one of our three children for one meal. Oh and also there was no parking so I had to walk three blocks with my purchases.

My basement has been completely over run by aggressive and entitled cockroaches. All sleepover activity has been suspended since "cockroach gate" when one infiltrated the tent my daughter and her friend were sleeping in.

I spotted two rats looking like they were planning a coup in my backyard.

Speaking of the backyard, the unchecked growth of weeds and other undetermined plant life now rivals the pictures I see of the Amazon Rain Forest.

The last few "free" things I tried to do with my kids ended up costing me hundreds of dollars (cab fare, parking, food, etc.)


The last two attempts to play ball out front on the sidewalk resulted in the ball rolling in the street and quickly down the slope of the alley to be lost forever.

The entire front facing wall of my bedroom is collapsing from water damage caused by a leaky roof.

My larger dog is suffering with some sort of vile ear infection.

I have picked up ripped garbage bags and their former contents no less than two times today. (Again, thank you dogs)

My kids are screaming and wrestling in my living room seemingly unable to hear my pleas for quiet and calm.

We are out of checks and the cleaning lady is giving me the evil eye as she sweeps my filth and waits for my lame excuse.

Renew,Restore, Replenish

I love the beach. We are home now, I am still unpacking and frankly it's making me want to run back to the minivan and head straight for the ocean again. Almost everyone suffers from a "woe as me complex" as they watch the sun, surf and sand fade in the distance of the rear view mirror, but this vacation was so good that I found myself getting melancholy and misty eyed two days prior to departure. All I could think of was how poorly my real life measured up to my beach existence. I tried to give myself a mental "snap out of it" slap, because who am I to complain really? "You don't have it so bad!" I chided myself. Then suddenly I heard my mothers voice.

"You know who has it bad? The loincloth clad guy sleeping in the brush in sub Saharan Africa with a bush baby perched on his head, waiting in terrifying darkness for the man eating lion pride that devoured his whole village to come and finish him off. Now THAT'S a guy who's earned the right to feel sorry for himself missy, not you".

True, but i still want to have my rear end planted firmly in a beach chair while I watch the waves roll in.

Images From the Beach

Despite the angry face, she was actually having a smashing time with her extended family. I do admit, the intensity she is eyeballing me with is unnerving.

To Pool or Not to Pool

This picture is the best argument I've ever seen for joining the pool.

Every year we toy with the idea of re-joining our local pool at the Hilton (also known as the Hinkley Hilton) to enjoy the many pleasures a cold refreshing dip can offer.

The summer money hemorrhage has begun to take it's toll with sports and leisure camps raising prices (in DC it's almost mandatory to attend) and our vacation rental climbing steadily upward every year. The extra thousand or so it costs for three months of pool membership starts to look far less appealing.

Confessions of a Borderline Aerophobic

"Life is either a daring adventure or nothing."-- Helen Keller

There is nothing I love more than traveling to far flung places and soaking up all that these destinations have to offer. I also revel in the fact that I have , for the most part, vanquished a demon that threatens to snuff out the embers of many a potential globe trotter. Fear of flying.

Let me start with full disclosure. I was raised by parents with vastly different attitudes toward risk, the Jekyll and Hyde of adventure. My mother was was the white hot fist of fear and my father was a fly by the seat of your pants, devil may care reckless type. I would watch my mother white knuckle it on every flight we ever took together(until we started drugging her), while flashing an uneasy smile so as not to panic me. My dad, on the other hand peered fearlessly out the window enjoying every turbulent moment in the air. I have vivid memories of sitting quietly on the hood of our Chevy Impala just outside the landing strip of our local airport and glancing periodically at my mother's agonized mask of terror while we watched my father take flying lessons for his much sought after pilot's licence. Knowing my mother as well as I do, I also suspect some of that horror came from knowing they had let their life insurance policy lapse and a life of leisure would not be ours were he to perish in a fiery crash.

When I began to fly with some regularity, she began to crack a bit around the edges, dropping little fear nuggets about the "odds", keeping track of crashes and and airline safety records. "Quantas is very safe, they've never crashed" she'd parrot, sounding eerily like Ray Babbitt.

I began to wonder if the fear of flying itself was a metaphor representing something else entirely like the fear of letting go or fear of some new age cliche like not spreading your wings and being all you can be and embracing success. Then I realized that I didn't have that much hidden potential stifled away and it was probably just the residual effects of my mother's morbid imaginings of the kind of terror that is exclusively reserved for those going down in a terrible aviation disaster. "Just think" she'd ponder aloud "of how frightened and helpless those poor people were right before the end". Thanks mom, ick.

I was determined to fight back against the crippling wave of anxiety even if I had to brainwash myself and drug her (eventually I did both). Helping her understand the principles of aviation and the sensationalized media response to accidents did some good. However, I had no clever come back for her main concern about the high casualty rate per incident. "There are no fender benders in the sky" she'd chirp.

Over time I learned to sit back, relax and really enjoy every trip. Layovers became a time to people watch and read long ago abandoned books. Flights had fascinating (and sometimes famous) individuals to talk to and final destinations were the start of a whole new adventure.
Dad still jet sets and we still have to medicate my mom, but she takes her pill joyously and passes out cold until we wake her and help her down the tarmac to begin the next leg of our journey..the dreaded taxi ride. That, however is a whole different story.

Oh My God, I am Hardly Sorry

Recently my son and his second grade class rocked the third sacrament like a bunch of professional Catholics. They even scored some wine on the way back to the pew , a coup that gave them major cause for celebration as they high fived each other and snickered. We let them have their tiny victory and waited for the reception afterward to use our morality speeches about alcoholism and the perils of ending up living in a wilted cardboard box underneath a highway overpass. Triumphant, they ran away to the jungle gym hopped up on super sweet cake and juice boxes.
Just a few months prior to this we had a completely different group on our hands. Somber and racked with guilt, these same children waited endlessly on a seemingly never moving line to confess their sins . I had jokingly mentioned to my son that any sin forgotten is a black spot on you soul that grows and rots until it crosses the border from venial to mortal. Then you are shit out of luck. This was the example given to me (minus the shit out of luck line) by Sister Angelica, hater of children, and destroyer of dreams. Her harrowing account of what could actually happen to your sparkly little soul in days flat was astonishing. You could actually feel your airway start to constrict with fear when she spoke of the fate that clearly awaited anyone with a poor memory or a bad case of the confession booth jitters. Hell.
You were going to hell, where you would be hung upside down over eternal fires, prodded by evil imps with spears, separated from everything and everyone you loved and be made to listen to that "rock and roll" on an endless loop. This fear was instrumental in helping us hone our memorization skills, and our ability to repeat the Act of Contrition flawlessly. The ignorant few that made the mistake of writing this prayer on their hands for quick reference just in case they had a senior moment in the booth paid dearly. They were rewarded with a swift crack on the head and an extremely painful hand washing ritual that made Karen Silkwood's radioactive scrub down with metal sponges, poisonous disinfectant and men in hazmat suits seem a breeze by comparison.
That is why my mouth dropped open when I saw what each second grader was clutching in their sweaty little paws. Cheat sheets. Steps one through eight with a bold, underlined title. "How to Go to Confession". After my initial shock wore off, it dawned on me. This was absolute brilliance. What I wouldn't have given for that tiny little life line when I was a freckled, pigtailed panic stricken kid. It made me want to find Sister Angelica (if she was indeed still alive) at whatever retirement home for angry nuns they stuck her in and paste a thousand copies of it to her window. Here it is you crazy loon, proof that tiny souls can still be wiped shiny clean and new even with the use of helpful hints.