My life

It is frustrating to let so many days go by in between posts, only to write and be totally repetitive.  ”Hey, I’m traveling!”  ”Oh, I went on this trip too.”  ”Yep — going places — again!”

Shaddup, already, girl!

Well, I went on another little trip — a mini one this time in order to visit my sister at her lake cabin.  I don’t know if visiting relatives can necessarily constitute a trip, especially when those relatives are a handful of hours away, but hey, I left home (again) and returned a few days later, hence a trip . . . no?

This was a last hurrah, of sorts, for teacher inservices begin on Monday, August 16.  I felt that I had to get out of town just one last time in order to sow my not-so-wild oats.  (Funny what parenting does to those formerly wild oats, eh?)

Then again, perhaps I was running away from my domestic duties, for my laundry pile is becoming frightening and all the household chores I’ve been keeping up with all summer are overtaking my home like some sort of monster.  I ran.  I ran for the hills.

I enjoyed a relaxing weekend, however.  We had some good (but HOT) weather, which is fine when one has access to a boat and a lake.  We spent some hours toolin’ around the lake and letting the kiddos swim, and we headed to a nearby small town in order to support a local candidate for sheriff.  There’s something so comforting about a small town celebration.  Most of the line-up is predictable: candidates, beauty queens, fire trucks, policemen, a few tractors, and a smattering of classic cars.  The scene is probably the same all across the USA, each celebration hosting its own cutesy name that reflects some aspect of the town’s history or legacy — Railroad Days, Sweet Corn Days, etc. People line the city streets with their lawn chairs, sipping bottles of water or bottles of beer, the kids clutching Wal-Mart bags in preparation for their mega candy haul . . . then the town’s fire truck begins blasting its sirens, causing toddlers to commence crying — that is, until the first load of candy hits the street, then all is forgiven.  Every year is basically the same, no matter which small town celebration you attend, but it’s a comforting sort of predictability.

At the start of the parade, I noticed that the grand marshalls were seated on a horse-drawn wagon.  Not surprising, really, but I always think about those horribly tragic news stories where the horses got spooked and people were killed or injured.  (Yep — that’s me — thinking about the worst case scenario during what should be a relaxing afternoon!)  Honestly, I wonder why people are surprised by these stories, especially when I notice where this particular horse-drawn wagon was positioned:  behind the Legion float, that had randomly-firing guns, and in front of the fire trucks that were blasting their sirens.  Gee, I wonder why some horses get spooked.

In short, the weekend was relaxing and I am now sinking into my regular routine of not being able to sleep and getting up way too early because I’m afraid that I forgot to do something.  That was last night for me, and now I’ve been up for a couple hours after basically tossing and turning all night.  The school year is staring me in the face . . . and I’m trying to calmly meet its gaze.

As if my last vacation didn’t make me road-weary enough, my hubby and I decided to hit to road again for our own vacation.  The kids were shipped off to Grandma’s, and we headed east.  Beyond that, we didn’t have much of an idea of where we were going, but we certainly knew why: to get the heck out of Dodge for a few days.

Hubby and I are familiar with this style of loosely-designed vacation.  We started this trend when we were dating and were wild and crazy enough to drive anywhere just because we could.  During our first trip, we took off from South Dakota for the West Coast, and that trip remains one of my favorite memories, even though it the details are now fading after 12 years of being embedded in my ever-fraying memory.  We headed through the Black Hills, raced across Montana (which didn’t have a speed limit on some roads then), wound our way through the parks in Idaho and California, and ultimately ended up driving Highway 101 while we gazed at the ocean, which neither of us had ever seen before.  We spent nearly two weeks on the road, which seems unbearable to me now.  Heck, we just spent 2 1/2 days on the road, and both of us were more than ready to come home after that time.

Yup, we’re old.

However, in our defense, we had seen the country we were driving before, so our eyes were not nearly as entertained as when we saw the ocean.  We headed east in order to drive through the small river towns lining the Mississippi, something we had done a couple years ago.  But there are many miles along the Mississippi that we hadn’t traveled yet, so we decided to go back.  Perhaps our bones were screaming for some fresh cheese from Wisconsin — who knows.

The trip was quick, but we achieved our goal of loading up with some Wisconsin cheese and seeing some beautiful country.  Why no pictures?  Well, it’s kind of hard to snap pictures through pouring rain, which is exactly what we drove through for the majority of the trip.

The last night of the trip, my husband and I experienced one of the worst hotel fiascos that we’ve ever had in all of the travels we’ve done around this great country.  We were ushered into a room, and I noticed an odor that smelled a lot like old sweat.  Thinking it was my imagination, hubby and I headed out for supper.  When we returned, however, it the odor was even more obvious, and I went down to the front desk to see if they had any other rooms available.  There was another one a few doors down, and we moved all of our stuff, hoping that we were finally able to settle in for the night.

Later that night, I was taking off my makeup in the bathroom and I noticed a pair of gray underwear on the floor that had obviously gotten smashed behind the door.  I took a closer look and noticed some dark smudges on the underwear — no, not that kind! — as if the undies belonged to a “workin’ man.”  (The hotel desk clerk tried to explain away the stale sweat odor by saying that they had a lot of construction workers who stayed there.)   But why was there a pair of underwear on the floor when neither my husband or I had had a chance to shower in the hotel room?  I walked out of the bathroom and glanced hopefully at my husband.

“Um, honey, is there any chance that the underwear on the floor is yours?”

Hubby looked at me with a pained expression on his face.  ”Uh, no.  I was hoping they were yours.”

I looked at him, incredulous.  ”Since when have I started wearing gray Men’s Hanes?!”  Hubby just shrugged, but the reality dawned on us: there was some strange guy’s underwear on our floor.  This led to other conclusions, of course — that the hotel room hadn’t been thoroughly cleaned.

If it had been earlier, I would have gone down and complained (again), but it was about 11:00 p.m., so I did what brave women have been doing for ages: I took one for the team by lifting the undies up with my index finger and throwing them in the garbage.

Then I doused my hands with gasoline and burned them.

I’d love to say that our experiences with poor room cleaning ended there, but the short version of what followed the next morning is that my husband questioned me about a washcloth that was in the shower, as I obviously had not had a chance to shower yet.  Nope, it wasn’t mine.  Dirty construction worker strikes again.

Well, live and learn.  I’ve done hotel housekeeping before, and I know that they pay is poor and the help is less than enthusiastic.  It’s a sucky job, really.  No one is jumping up and down to go clean up after random strangers.  Knowing this, I left a note to housekeeping, letting them know of our lovely discoveries and encouraging them to be a more thorough in their room checks.

That hotel room comprised our last night on the road, so needless to say, we were ready to get out of there and back into our quality-controlled room (in regard to cleanliness) at home.

In other news, the school countdown had begun.  Ten days for me, twelve days for the kiddos.  Ack!  I’d love to say that I’m organized and ready, but that would be a lie that would permeate down to my soul.  I’m not ready . . . at all.  In fact, I’m thinking of starting a 12-step group that begins its meetings with admissions like, “Hi, I’m Jen, and I’m not even remotely ready for school.”

All together now:

“Hi, Jen!”

Last week, my sister and I were feeling particularly brave, young, and healthy, so we did what those sorts of people do: we packed up all five of our children and drove across the state of South Dakota to the Black Hills.  Of course, upon arriving, we discovered that while we still could be considered brave, we were not feeling particularly young or healthy — in a mental capacity, that is.  But we have gone and we have returned, and I’m feeling a bit more rejuvenated for the effort.

Because I grew up in South Dakota, the Black Hills tended to be an obvious vacation spot.  I went out there each year during high school for a church summer camp, and vacations followed after that.  In fact, I tried to count the number of times I’ve been out to “the hills,” and I came up with a number of 15, at least.  I’ve seen Mount Rushmore more times than I probably need to. I’ve driven about every curvy, pine-lined road out there.  The highway numbers there are as familiar to me as my own local street names.  The odd thing is that a trip to the hills seldom gets old.  In fact, it only gets more magical.

Any native South Dakotan knows that the land between Sioux Falls, on the east side of South Dakota, and Rapid City, on the west side of the state, is really a no man’s land.  There’s not much to look at aside from a sprinkling of small towns and a lot of grassland.  Because I’ve taken this journey so often, I’ve tended to break the trip down into sporadic interesting parts — the parts I look forward to along the way.  For instance, the journey from Sioux Falls (where we started) to the Missouri River (Chamberlain) is not that bad, because the trip’s just beginning and the diversions are fresh.  It’s actually a surprise when I-90 begins to curve and the car begins to descend into the Missouri river valley, because until that point, the land has been so flat that you were sure it’d never end. All of a sudden, your eyes are treated to a beautiful expanse of rolling hills surrounding a wide, sparkling blue river.  It’s a shot of caffeine for the brain, really.

All who have made this trip know that once you hit Chamberlain, the logical stop is Al’s Oasis.  Part rest stop and part tourist trap, Al’s Oasis is a traditional stop every time I’ve headed to the hills.  There’s a decent restaurant and a smattering of shops to test your spending willpower before you get to your actual destination of the hills, where you’ll REALLY need such willpower, unless you enjoy buying every worthless trinket known to man. (If that’s the case, make sure to stop at Wall Drug, for which you will see about 80 billion signs along the I-90.  Free ice water! the signs scream.  5 cent coffee!  Can’t miss it!   Well, I usually do, but that’s because one visit was enough for me.)

Once leaving Al’s Oasis, it’s important to get the good stash of music, movies, and other distractions ready, because this is where the trip takes a monotonous turn.  Travelers will see a lot of prairie, and then some more prairie, and then a little more prairie, and just when you thought you couldn’t stand any more prairie, a little more beyond that.  It’s pretty dull.  However, just when the brain is beginning to pickle itself with prairie views (there’s a reason that homesteaders suffered from “prairie fever”), that’s when the Badlands come into view on the horizon.  The smart traveler will veer off the Interstate to drive through the Badlands because there is nothing like it. Not only will it pamper your eyes with raw beauty, but the trip through the park will riddle your brain about the creation of this earth and why, in the middle of the prairie, this outcropping of hellish rock formations pops out of nowhere.

After the trip through the Badlands, the Black Hills lie only about another 80 miles away.  Any questions got how the hills got their name will disappear once they come into view on the horizon, for they do indeed look black.

As I’ve said before, a trip to the Black Hills is nothing new for me.  However, I never tire of exploring them, mainly because of the history they hold.  The hills is where Gutzon Borglum spent 12 years creating one of the world’s most awe-inspiring works of art, Mount Rushmore. Towns like Deadwood hold the history of the nation’s cowboy days, where icons like Wild Bill Hickok lived and died; and scattered within the hills are towns founded by miners who dared to live the epitome of the American Dream and enjoy the pursuit of happiness.  Evident in every part of this natural wonder is the reason that Native Americans consider the Black Hills sacred.

We rented a cabin in Terry Valley, which is right next to Terry Peak – a popular skiing resort.  Renting a house in the hills just makes the experience so much more magical, for we had no neighbors for most of the time we were there, and we were able to explore and enjoy the pine-scented air.  Every other time I’ve visited the hills, I had gotten a hotel room in one town or another, but that’s no way to enjoy the Black Hills.  Rent a house or a cabin in a beautiful spot, and spend a lot of time outdoors — not stuck in a hotel room watching the same HBO you can watch at home.  Go on a cave or mine tour; visit the town of Lead and see the legacy of the Homestake Mining Company; spend a day in Deadwood and follow the legacy of gun-totin’ cowboys; drive through Custer State Park and look for the buffalo herd; gaze up in wonder at Mount Rushmore; hike through the wilderness; rent a boat and soak in the sun at Lake Pactola . . . whatever you do in your lifetime, make time to visit the Black Hills.

This is not a public service announcement, but it should be.

And now for some visual entertainment.  It’s not much — just a short collection of video and pictures from the trip.  The video is small, as I didn’t have hours of my life to devote to uploading a larger version.  But hey — it gives you a little sampling of the hills and the Badlands, if you’ve never been there.  It’s a vacation on a screen, all set to John Hiatt’s “The Open Road.”  Enjoy!

There’s nothing better for the soul than getting together with old friends.  They keep you real.  They remind you of stupid things you’ve done in the past so that any danger you may have been in of harboring an overinflated ego is gone.  Needless to say, my soul is happy and my ego is within the healthy range after the activity of the past few days.

I have had three friends visit as of late: Alex, one of my college roommates; and then Scott and Kate — two people I taught with in my very first school.  Alex is also part of that latter group, but I separate her because she knows a little more about me than the other two.  She knows way too much, actually, but I also have similar knowledge about her, so we’re even.

When the four of us taught together, it was the first job for Kate and me, but Alex and Scott were in their 3rd year of teaching.  I had landed the job after Alex called me and suggested that maybe I’d like to interview for the empty English teacher slot that was opening at her school.  I had been a couple years out of college and my then-current job had me going down another possible career path, away from education, so I said no.  Alex did what a kind, caring, sensitive friend would do: she didn’t take “no” for an answer and she had the principal call me again to personally invite (beg) me to interview.

Oh, okay, then.

The rest is history, as they say, and I was teaching with my college roomie and I met Scott and Kate.  Scott and Alex would move on to other jobs after that year while Kate and I stayed on, but we all had a year of teaching together, and that was enough for a plethora of memories.  For what we couldn’t remember, I stepped up and provided what all good friends need at certain times:  proof on video.

I had happened to take a couple of snippets of video from the good old days.  WHY, I don’t know.  All it really did was highlight how inept I was to have my own classroom in those days.  I mean, it was supposed to be class, yet I was allowing kids to video each other.  Helloooooo, teacher of the year!  It was obviously the end of the year, but I still wonder what was going through my head.  While watching the video, which showed various teachers trying to manage end-of-May chaos, it was evident to all of us: none of us knew what in the freakin’ world we were doing.  We all went to college and had our education degrees, obviously, but not even student teaching prepares people sufficiently for what they experience in their own classrooms and the dilemmas we’d have to face.  You wing it, really, and no teacher who is honest will say otherwise.  Even a teacher who prepares his/her lessons down to a T during that first year can deny that when it comes right down to it, you wing it.  After all, there is no preparation for dealing with teenagers on a daily basis.  There is no class that can possibly cover it all.

So this past Monday night, we visited, we remembered, we laughed a lot, and we enjoyed some margaritas.  Life was good.

Although Scott and Kate had to return to their responsibilities in life, Alex is staying with me for a few days, as her home is in Colorado and it would have been a really bad idea to send her driving back there after a few margaritas.  This has given us some time to go back and reflect a few years before our teaching life, and true to my way of doing things, I dragged out another handful of videos of our escapades in college.  Some observations we had during viewing:

1) We had no idea how good we had it: three good friends (Alex, me, and another girl named Suni), living in brand new apartments, working jobs we loved, and having a lot of time to “hang out” in between classes.  We had a nightlife.  We talked about a lot of boys.  Stupid boys, yes, but that social life was one happenin’ scene.

2) We were incredibly naive: at one point in time, all three of us roommates were dating members of the same social circle, and they were all jerks.  ALL of them!  We took too much crap and then whined about how hard love was.  Today, we’d probably just tell each other the grow up and suck it up and get on with our lives.   Life is too short to waste it on stupid boys.  We didn’t quite get that then.

3) We had no sense of fashion: college days were during the early 90′s, when the librarian look must have been in and everyone seemed to have overly large round glasses.  I had them, and so did Alex.  There’s a reason we took them off before going out for the night.  We had a vague suspicion that they were not conducive to the dating scene.  And I am so glad that I have the proof of my dorkiness on video.  Not.

4) Good friendships stick: I had known Alex since my freshman year of college, but I had know Suni, our other roommate, since I was five.  Among the three of us, there’s a lot of history and a lot of good times.  Although we all live far apart from each other, we can always count on life getting back to normal when we’re around one another.  We’re a little older, a lot wiser, but the good memories will always be imbedded in our ever-shrinking brains.  Even if one of us forgets, the other two will remember, and that’s how we keep the good times alive.

These past few days have reinforced the importance of keeping in touch with those old friends, no matter how many months or years it’s been since the last phone call or visit.  The people who knew you “way back when” are often the people who can remind you of who you truly are.  And these days, it seems that we gather more and more distractions that keep us from experiencing the joy of old friendships.  Sure, we can visit with them on Facebook  and keep up with their lives, but nothing beats being able to talk to friends face-to-face or at least over the phone.

The people who knew you back then are the people who keep you young.  Today, I feel about 21.

That’s me on the left.  For a weekend, I was a biker chick.  Well, without the bike, but whatever.  Minor detail, really.

Unlike most families, I don’t have a good ol’ standby tradition when it comes to the 4th of July.  Sometimes I’ll travel to South Dakota to stay at my parents’, because South Dakota is one of those fun states that still trust its citizens to put off fireworks all by their little lonesome; sometime I’ll travel to Minnesota to spend time with my in-laws or my sister and her family.  In Iowa, we are relegated to sparklers or a handful of other lame fireworks, or having to find a local show to watch.  I can’t even sit on my porch and steal a glance at some of the local shows, either  – too many trees.

This year I did something a little different. Read the rest of this entry »

A few years ago, while I was discovering my love of retro design, I also began to appreciate music from the 40s and 50s.  I had always been a fan of the “oldies,” as I became an Elvis fan in my early teens, and I frequently made mixed tapes of oldies that I’d play as my friends and I would cruise around town.  No, it wasn’t the “hot” music, but it was unique, and we had fun singing along to Elvis and many others.
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Remember that last post when I whined about how busy I was?  Yeah, I’m still in that frame of mind.  The spring semester is always busy, but it seems especially crushing this year, for reasons I haven’t quite determined.  I think it has something to do with going paperless in composition this year with Google Docs.  Yes, it makes things easier because the papers are portable, but I spend a lot more time grading things because it’s so easy to highlight and make comments without trying to squeeze it all in between margins.  More time spent grading = good feedback for my students, I know, but the clock and calendar have not cooperated by giving me any more time to catch up on my other obligations, i.e. things I like to do to unwind.
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A few weeks ago I took my sons to see Diary of a Wimpy Kid.  I was not familiar with the books at all, so I had no idea what to expect. The bottom line is that the movie is adorable and the creator(s?) obviously remembered middle school all too well.
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After watching Food Inc. a few months ago, it became very apparent to me that most people have no idea where their food comes from. (As a side note, a fellow teacher friend of mine wrote me to say that her class was watching this same movie, and she asked her class what the “big machine” was in the field. Not a single one of her urban kids knew what a combine was.)
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