Holiday Newsletter, 2012

96 and 98 at Yellowstone

Greetings from our home to yours!

Oooh, boy, I'm late this year. Given the cookies that need baking, the ingredients that need assembing into our traditional Christmas lasagna dinner, the presents that need wrapping, and a house I might more easily bulldoze than clean before company for the holiday, I'm pretty sure this will be a January newsletter and not a December one. Alas.

This is not the part where I was going 85 ...
this is the part where I was going 3

Continuing my policy of "travel domestically and ignore the complaining", our summer vacation this year took us first to Yellowstone, then on to scenic Billings, Montana, where we met up with my sister for the Mt. Rushmore leg of our journey. Continuing another theme, the "teenagers, let me tell you a story about teenagers" theme, the highlight of Yellowstone for the boys was the day each, separately, got to stay alone in the hotel room, without having to see the lake, or the Continental Divide, or Old Faithful, or Mammoth Hot Springs, or a single bison or any of the myriad wonders boring nature stuff to be beheld within the country's first national park. Yes, that would be the hotel without a landline, or cell service, or wifi, or tv, or fm radio, or air conditioning. Honestly, it's hard not to take this stuff personally, but then I remember that my favorite part of the vacation was the 48 hours of no bickering and no poking while I toured alone with one while the other stayed at that hotel without a landline, cell service, or wifi ... although the long, straight, empty stretches of Rte. 90 with its 85 mph speed limit (aka, "a few miles below optimum speed" friendly advisory) came in a very close second. 

Nick Clifford, author and carver;
98; 96

At Mt. Rushmore we met Nick Clifford, one of the monument's original carvers. He worked on it from 1938-40. Yes, we bought the book. Autographed!

Agent 96, at 16, is midway through his high school junior year and has started looking at colleges. On the short list at the moment are Columbia, Brown, and Cornell. It looks like we may take a trip to Chicago this summer to see Northwestern, too. He's investigating journalism (heh, heh) as a major, but ask him this question again next week.

98, Graduation Night

Agent 98, almost 15, ended 8th grade with a bang this past June, getting his braces off the day before graduation; achieving a science award for straight "A"s in the subject; and earning the Amelia Chebator Award, which came with a small scholarship. He earned the award, in the words of the presenter, for being "always ready with a friendly smile, a kind word, or a caring deed." His favorite class this, his freshman year, is world history. He's decided to drop bowling for a while and this year has taken a spot on the debate team at school.

The animals continue to entertain, comfort and irritate ... occasionally somehow simultaneously. Zoet's unbridled enthusiasm keeps her ever-charming; Scruffy's growing purr, once barely audible is now almost a small bellow, I hope signalling his contentment; Momo's decided she's now an indoor cat and spends most of every day in a sunroom window, looking out. But not in a longing to experience it way ... more like an "I can't believe those silly cats forget there's a bed and food in here. Oh, snap, more for me" kind of way; and little Pixel divides his loyalties evenly among us all, leading each of the humans to believe he or she is his favorite. Clearly only Pix and I know the truth.

Gene Display inscription
DFCI, Boston, MA

We wish you the very best this holiday season
 and throughout the New Year!

Going Places and Doing Stuff

As I mentioned previously,when we were in Denver last summer en route to the Grand Canyon we took a voluntary bump in exchange for $400 in United travel vouchers, each. So that was $400 for my sister, who used them to fly up to Boston last fall, and $400 each for 98, 96 and me.  I felt like I had won the lottery. If I recall correctly, we arrived at our destination within about an hour of our original arrival time, so, except for when I cried in the middle of the airport, it was a win all around.

So what do I do with the $1200 in vouchers I received? The vouchers that say right on them, "Cannot be replaced if lost or stolen". Yeah, those vouchers. I had big plans for those vouchers. Big plans indeed. Said plans involved girlfriends, and the Windy City, and, most importantly, no damn kids. So what do I do with them? I leave them at my sister's house. Stupid vouchers not growing legs and opposable thumbs in order to get themselves into my luggage like I expected them to.

Given their transferable status (anyone could bring them to United and book flights; the names on the vouchers did not have to match the names on the new tickets) my sister wisely carried them with her when she came up to Boston (using her vouchers)  a couple of months later. But somehow, despite seeing each other daily for her whole trip neither one of us thought to grab those vouchers. Those same stupid vouchers never once thought to holler out, "Hey girlfriend, don't forget us! We're in here waiting for you!" How rude.

So Jeanne left them at my mom's house, and I guess as a lesson to me now the vouchers decide to grow those legs and thumbs and hide in a folder with some other paperwork. No match for my Mom, though, the vouchers finally surface, literally 24 hours before I decide to buy the tickets and give up on ever finding them. Now I feel like I've won the lottery all over again.

Only now it's not "Chicago with girlfriends" anymore. It's omg-not-again vacation with the  kids again.

Hotels booked. Car reserved. Triptik ordered. Now we just have to listen to that incessant tick-tock tick-tock of the clock ticking down until ... "omg-not-again vacation with the kids" time.

And  for some peripherally related content ...

So while 96 and I are having a our annual "Where do you want to go on vacationWhy do we always have to go places and do stuff?" conversation, I am saddened to learn that I have unwittingly doomed my grandchildren to boring, lonely George Jetson summer vacations filled with boring flying cars, mind-controlled 3-d antigravity video game consoles, and invisibility cloaks while their friends travel to Norway or an asteroid or at least Fresno for summer vacation because their parents weren't forced, forced I tell 'ya, to travel all day, every day, day-after-day, all summer long ten days a year. I have roooooined travel for 96 and 98. Don't mess with me:  I'm mean that way.

21°21′59.82″N, 157°47′49.06″W

My little corner of paradise is relegated to my memory banks, now. Soon enough it'll be back to the everyday mundane, but just one more vacation post, if you don't mind. I'm not much of a photographer, and my digital camera is usually just set to automatic, but here are some of my favorite photos from the trip.

Rainbow eucalyptus at the Hono zoo. I wish my photo did this tree justice. I think God must have invented Crayola crayons just so He could make these trees.

I love hibiscus. They remind me of Kwaj, and I really miss being able to have them outdoors, in the ground, year-round. Hibiscus is the antidote to winter. Hibiscus => sundress => tan lines on my feet => ahhh. You can't have any of those things in New England in the winter. I haven't mentioned recently how much I hate winter but I'm sure that'll be a post in about 6 months. I'm sure I'll write about about using my brand-new snowblower, which was delivered just after the last snowstorm of last winter, so the warranty should just about have run out the first time I start it up. If the flood didn't already do it in, that is.

Agents 96 and 98 weren't interested in climbing Diamondhead -- they were much more interested in being unsupervised at the hotel. So one afternoon I abandoned them with their comic books (There's this whole new marketing ploy for comic books: bind them together and sell them to parents as "graphic novels". I don't care how thick it is, it's still comic book, and I'm not going to pay you to read one) and their gameboys while I hiked up to the crater's edge by myself. I loved this little cactus I found trailside. I looks like it could be a landscape scene with trees and plants and gravel and boulders, but in reality it was about 6 inches across. When I got back from my hike the hotel was still standing and no police were on site, so it was a winning afternoon for all of us.

Another one from the zoo. You can see how it got its name, Bird of Paradise.

Interesting leaves always evoke Kwaj for me. I loved gathering leaves to texture my pottery. I think after the school year begins in September I'll start up with pottery again.Winters notwithstanding, Boston has its share of interesting textures, too, so I'll be fine; but one thing that's better on Kwaj: free pottery studio time!

This tree reminded me of the angry apple trees in the Wizard of Oz. The branches look ready to throw an apple at the next person who walks by. And I swear I see scowly eyebrows in the bark!

I think my favorite spot, my favorite moment,  on vacation was Pali Lookout. Too cheap to pay for, and not really interested in taking, a  bus tour, one morning we nabbed a bus company's guided tour itinerary, and picked a few of its most interesting-sounding sites to explore on our own. As we arrived at each one, we saw the bus companies carting their passengers to and from, but we were doing it for free and on our own schedule, making it all the sweeter. At Pali Lookout we were greeted by a flock of hungry chickens who enjoyed part of my sandwich, but by few other humans. We had the place almost to ourselves. A hot a humid day, a cooling mist fell as we left the parking lot for the short walk (too short to even qualify as an easy hike), but the clouds parted in time for breathtaking views. I couldn't pick a single favorite picture.

One of the boys, and I shan't say which one, bellyached that I was wasting time taking pictures of a bunch of branches, apparently unaware that this is a living Hau tree.

And besides, it's not wasting time, it's "being on vacation", thankyouverymuch.

Family Vacations are Like ...

Family vacations are like labor. There you are, too many people crammed into a too small room, and you're still only partway through it. “Oh, my God, what have we done? Get me out of here now!” you scream, out of control and unable to stop the horror.

Eventually it ends, and you have a pretty little baby or a funny refrigerator magnet (and maybe one or two unflattering photos), but somehow you don’t remember the awful parts.

Then, some amount of time later – six months, a year, whatever --  you have this great idea: Let’s do it again. The last time worked out so well, and I think we can handle it.


Then, there you all are, crammed once again into that too-small room, and the realization slowly dawns: “Oh, my God, what have I done? Get me out of here now!” you scream, wondering if it will ever end ...

Home Again. A Few More Photos to Share

We're all glad to be home. I can only speak for myself: I had a wonderful time, but I'm really not a very good traveller. I missed my own bed, and the cats, and the Globe in the morning, and 12-packs of Pepsi priced four for $10 instead of $1.99 per can.

A very pretty rainbow over the falls, from the US side.

Nope, on second thought, this addition doesn't improve on nature's majesty

Ah, here we go. That does the trick!

This was our last day on vacation. We stopped briefly on the US side before we hit the road for home.

During the long ride home, we took a break at Old Erie Canal State Park. What a lovely, serene setting.