My Big Spring Break Hangover

I don't think I'm terribly fond of Spring Break anymore.  I don't think I even want to talk about it.  The reasons I don't want to talk about it are thus:

1) I went to a place in which I know lots of people but have strong obligations to the grand parents (I put a space in there because they are divorced) via Huck.

2) I'm worried about complaining about visiting these wonderful people and that if I complain they will think I don't love them.

3) People who I ALSO want to see and hang out with live nearby and I didn't see them or hang out with them and I don't want them to know I was in the region because I don't want them to think I don't love them, it's just that the limited time we had was already occupied.  And I was already harried before I thought about calling to hang out, and then the thought fried my brain entirely and no one wants to hang out with someone that smells like burning brains.  But I'm worried that will just sound like a lame excuse, and not a perfectly active one, or that they will think "Oh, I'm Sarajoy's one-too-many-things-to-do freak-out last-straw, Thanks!".

As you can see, my main problem with spring break is that I want people to love me and if they know I don't like spring break or they know I could have visited but did not, then they might not love me.  And so that is why I don't want to talk about it.

But I'm going to anyway because I am going to break this people-pleasing habit. I am writing this because I am challenging myself to work on my people-displeasing more.  IE:  I am going to BITCH like you've never heard before, at least from me.  And if you don't like it, if you feel left out, if you think I'm ungrateful and an unreciprocating crap-head, then I am so sorry.  I totally did not mean to hurt your feelings and now you've made me cry, are you happy now?

trombone mouth piece and ear plugs

The trip began, as most of our trips do, with at least a week of organizing the house and farm and laundry so that people could pack CLEAN things into their suitcases and the neighbors would have everything they need to manage our fairly complicated farm (one cat stays in, one goes out, two chickens in one coop, six chicks still inside, three cows, three water troughs to fill, five kinds of feed, with medals for neighborly sainthood to be awarded soon).  In the midst of which, I made a huge batch of pumpkin hummus from our own well-wintered pumpkins and garlic and which I planned to eat every day as part of my complete gluten free lunches because if I have learned anything from this life it is that no one gives a shit about what I am going to eat.

Once I was thoroughly exhausted, we began our butt-numbing, pants-pissing, journey over the mountains to arrive directly into Seattle's glorious screeching halt traffic at 1pm on a Saturday.  "And this," we told the kids, "Is Seattle!  Where hours logged in carseats are considered a major stage of childhood."

The next day, I discovered that my hummus was gone! It was kindly, mistakenly, slopped into the garbage and churned because someone thought it was their take-out curry gone bad from a few weeks ago.  I ran to my room and cried like a spoiled brat.  What the hell was I supposed to eat! For some dumb reason it threw the entire oblivacation into a tailspin from which I did not recover.

And I couldn't figure out if I was supposed to be playing with my kids a la "family time" or relaxing (totally different things, honestly).  So when I was relaxing (ie: napping for three hours a day) I felt guilty I wasn't playing with the kids.  And when I was hanging out with everyone I felt bitter that I wasn't getting in my requisite five-hours-per-day of alone time.  I was completely confused.  The whole trip, to me, in a word: confusion.

concerns about the gum wall

And another thing: there was no privacy.  I am a very private person, especially when it comes to sex.  That doesn't mean I don't enjoy it.  It simply means I don't like to talk about it, or do it within earshot, or behind uncloseable and unlockable doors.  So ... needs went unmet ... and tempers inevitably flared, in lieu of passions.

Also, and probably on a related note, I don't know how he does this, but Huck drives by an amazing form of triangulation.  I have deduced that he knows where to point the car because he figures that the road must be located in the ONLY place he is not looking and that is how he knows where to go.  I don't think he even knows what color asphalt is because he has never actually looked at it.

We opted for the "scenic" Highway 101 route to Lincoln City.  I wanted this route because when I was 10, we went to Astoria, OR and I fell in love with it and for the 26 years since, I have been collecting articles and ideas about great museums and the history of Astoria and parks and at least three gluten-free restaurants! and the Columbia Bar.  And now was my chance to return to my one true love of a town.  Only, once we got there is was pouring rain and no one else wanted to do anything and so we had tea and left.  Democracy SUCKS ASS!

Now I have traveled the world, and all parts in between.  And I have always been filled with a wander-lust of the next bend, the next corner.  I have travelled with a panicked urgency to explore the earth and this village and that corner.  And now! How quickly agoraphobia sets in!  My excuse is that 1) we were going to places I have been before ergo: no sense of exploration and 2) travel is totally different, and unrewarding, when it involves children with bathroom needs and familiar-food fetishes and group decision-making and places with tv's in every room so that kids sneak off at every possible moment to turn them on and then scream when you find them and turn it back off, and people who want to talk while you read newspapers.   It's not the same as hiking Chiapas or being blessed by sadu's of the lingams in India (no, that's NOT a metaphor!)..

But of course, it was sunny every where we went, every day, and can anyone remain grumpy under that big lover in the sky? (The answer is "yes").  Sunny Golden Gardens, sunny Pike Place, sunny Aquarium, sunny Taft Beach and Depoe Bay blow hole, sunny Pacific Beach, and then there was Dumping Rain Farms in Stanwood.  And the meals I was served, or supplemented for myself, were the grandest of West Coast fare, straight from the nerve-gratingly fabulous pages of Sunset Magazine: salmon and more salmon, prawn tacos, chiopino, gf pasta from Pike's Place, and more salmon.  I ate like an Amazon executive.

can you read the sign? Dismal Nitch

And we saw everyone that was important, despite not being able to see people who are equally as important.  We saw great grands, aunts, an uncle, a brother, a sister and all the grand-parents.  We saw it all, except for you, and I am so so sorry about that.  And OMG am I glad to be back, on Lucky Farm once more, master of my meals, loner in my basement office, locker of bedroom doors, planter of good things, and relaxed mother of un-TV-ed, well-rested, re-obedience-trained children.