The Left Side of the Moon

What I Learned on my Summer Vacation

Taking a vacation with your kids is not at all relaxing. It's a great deal of work, and while it can be fun, it most assuredly will not be fun the entire time and will absolutely cause you to question what drove you to subject yourself to the ordeal that is traveling with children in the first place.

It seems to me that vacationing with your kids is much like many sexual fantasies - somehow it's not as much fun as you thought it was going to be.(ie. In the movies when they have sex on the beach, how come the sand never seems to get into those places sand should never be? And how does one have sex in the shower without worrying either that it's not clean enough or you're getting bleach rubbed vigorously into your skin? Not to mention the concern of getting seriously hurt trying to balance on a slippery surface.) At the end of three hours in the car with my children, the only thing I'm ready for is to take a flying leap off a cliff. They had their Leapsters, coloring books and crayons, toys, but all they did was fight over everything and throw their toys at each other. I do have a traveling DVD player I bought for long trips, but the darn thing is finicky as all hell and never seems to work when I put it in the car. In the house it works fine, put in the car, it won't play. Just another thing about traveling that's a pain in the ass.

My kids did enjoy Storyland, but I don't think I'd go back, and Blackstone has already informed me that he WILL NOT go back, so there you go. The boys have been and they're done . . . period. I'm not shedding any tears. LT's still too short to go on most of the rides there by himself. Since Blackstone gets motion sickness, that leaves me standing in line with the kids and whirling around in circles all day. It doesn't make me sick, but damn have I had enough at the end of the day. I've also realized it's a good idea to go to ANY AND ALL theme parks in a bathing suit. I knew to go to Sesame Place in one, but I wish I'd done the same with Storyland. The rafting ride in particular will soak you. I let Blackstone handle that one while I tried to get my head to stop spinning. Also a good idea to stick to water shoes or sandals, and under no circumstances should you attempt to walk around barefoot. Blackstone singed the soles of his feet at Sesame Place.

I am not a good traveler. I know this about myself. I have sinus problems, allergies and back problems. I'm used to the temperature and humidity of RI, sleeping on a tempurpedic mattress and pillow, and in the winter, using a humidifier. I travel with my pillow, so does my husband. When we stayed at the Marriott in PA, that went very well. The air quality was good, for once my sinuses weren't killing me. The beds were comfortable. The room was clean. It's about all I ask from a hotel. The condo we stayed at in NH was nice. It did have the stale, musty smell of a place that spends too much time closed up. The bed was not up to my high standards. But the view was gorgeous, we opened all the windows and aired the place out real well, and we had ample space. The Best Western we stayed at in MA on the last night was horrendous. The carpets were filthy, there were water stains on the ceiling in the bathroom, the beds were uncomfortable and the air quality was terrible. There was also a dog show going on at the hotel. I've never seen pets in a hotel before. It hadn't occurred to me to ask. There were bugs in some of the pre-packaged muffins at breakfast. I didn't see them, but Blackstone told me about it, eewww! All that and the vile coffee found me leaving the hotel with a splitting headache, nausea and  caused me to vomit on the car ride home. It is unlikely that I will ever book a room in a Best Western again. Somehow I thought I could manage one quick overnight just about anywhere, but that is definitely not the case. Go ahead and call me a diva. If I have to book at the Marriot or better in order to sleep, breathe and eat it in peace, then so be it.

The next trip we take will be without the little hellions. And as much as I may be a bad traveler, that doesn't stop me from wanting to travel. I can't wait for our next trip, which will be to the Dominican Republic in April, to stay in a nice adult resort, where I expect much of the food, beds and air quality. I just put down the deposit today. And I will spend almost every blessed minute of the travel experience saying prayers of thanks that my children are not with me, that I don't have to referee over who has what toy, or pull over the car because they're throwing crayons out the window.

Twilight Insanity

No one has gone more insane over the Twilight series than my friend Curls. And, I mean no disrespect here, because I'm quite gone over the series myself. It was rather surprising, though, she usually doesn't like fantasy. We're reading Breaking Dawn for our next book club in August. Curls wanted me to go to the midnight madness at Borders with her on Friday. I may have acquiesced, but alas, I have a benefit dinner that night. I have to go be a grown-up instead of embracing my inner fifteen-year-old. I'm rather certain I'd have more fun at the midnight madness.

It should come as no surprise that we already have plans to go see the movie when it comes out on opening night in December. It was Curl's idea to get a hotel room and spend the night in the big city, making it a real girl's night out. She's already reserved the room. This is a BIG DEAL, you know? And man, come the middle of December, I'm sure I'll need a girl's night in the worst possible way. I hate Christmas. They may have to carry me back to the hotel in a drunken and blissful stupor. We may have to get a hotel room in December every year from now on. I think that sounds like a fabulous tradition. Just don't expect me to scrap book about it.

Oh, and Blackstone was rather irritated in one of my last posts that I made sex sound like a chore. I was just in a sarcastic mood, you know, the one I live in. I certainly don't consider sex a chore. You all know me well enough that that goes without saying, right? Well, I've said it anyway.

PS - I feel the need to add that I mean no disrespect to those of you who scrap book. They make beautiful keepsakes. It is just not something I have the patience for. I am so not crafty.

Exercise in Greed and Stupidity

It never ceases to amaze me how greedy and stupid people can be. When I inevitably hear a new example of someone's new amazingly stupid action, it makes me think of the song Flagpole Sitta, particularly the lines:

been around the world and found
that only stupid people are breeding
the cretins cloning and feeding

Sometimes I feel those lines are all too true. Case in point, the woman who's supposedly suing the owner of the building I work in because she claims she was trapped in a bathroom stall. Now, the lawsuit part is here-say from the woman at the dry cleaners, but there's a good chance that's true. The woman kicked down the two stalls of fiberglass in the ladies room. Now they've been reinforced with two-by-fours. The bathroom is a pain. The stall doors never close correctly, they don't line up right. How many public bathrooms have you been in where they do? The toilets constantly stop flushing. One of them is the old fashioned kind, where I know to lift the lid and pull the chain up when it won't flush. But in eight years, I've never been trapped in the bathroom. And lord knows I use that bathroom like twenty times a week. There's only two stalls in the bathroom, you need a key to get in, and the door locks behind you automatically (at least it did before the locks were changed). The vast majority of the time, there's no one else in the bathroom with you. Why would you force the stall door closed in such a way that you couldn't open it again? And honestly, while the doors don't line up that well, they're not that bad.

This woman doesn't work in the building. She got the key to the bathroom from the sandwich shop downstairs. Now what's happened is the locks have been changed and the sandwich shop will no longer have a public key available for the bathroom. All because one woman had to go and be a complete pain in the ass. I look at problems that I encounter in my life, like toilets not flushing, and see what I can do to improve the situation. Other people seem to look at these problems and think, how can I make a lawsuit out of this? And trapped in the bathroom stall? You have to be about as moronic and/or greedy as the person who sued McDonald's because they burned themselves on hot coffee, resulting in the warning label you now see on coffee cups that the contents is hot. I don't know about you, but I could have figured that one out all by myself. Though at least I can see that the woman who was burned had a point. McDonald's serves their coffee about 20 degrees cooler these days. She effected some change. And other than the fact that there's now a bunch of two-by-fours supporting the stalls, and the public has been banned from using the bathroom, I don't see how this woman's going to accomplish anything other than try to get some money for herself. I hope she doesn't breed.

What I Don't Feel Like Writing About

I could write about our recent trip to Sesame Place, but while it was fun, I have no interest in re-living it now. It's a great place for kids, they'll have a fantastic time, that's about all you need to know. And I already mentioned my horrendous speeding ticket. Do they ever actually come in the less than $200 range? I don't have a ton of experience in this area, and the two I've gotten were both for going about 80/mph. This last one was dismissed on my good driving record, a state perk, more than 10 years ago. This one was a speed trap in CT where the limit dropped to 55 and I hadn't noticed. He could have picked any of the dozen cars in front of me, but it must have been my lucky day.

I could write about how today is my ninth anniversary, but somehow I'm not finding that inspiring. We have no big plans for our anniversary. It's good to cherish your marriage and all that, but I don't think I need to  put a bunch of expectations on the anniversary date itself. We just took a small family vacation and did a ton of eating out. We went to a concert a couple of weeks ago. Some combination of that can be applied to what we did for our anniversary. You pick. I don't care. And I can't have sex tonight either, due to the biopsy I had yesterday (I'm fine by the way, thanks for asking, all very common place). Good thing we already got that out of the way this week. We'll apply that to the anniversary too. So basically the anniversary festivities are already behind me, I'm at work, and today is just another day.

I'm thinking it might be more fun to tell you what a violent drunk I am. Not so much now, I try to keep the drinking in check. I'm rather old for vomiting in public to be acceptable, and hangovers when you have kids are just the worst form of torture. I still have friends who love to see me drunk because apparently I'm very entertaining. At these times, I always remind them of the last time I puked on their floor, and how I'd really prefer that remain the last time. Driving home from clubs, Blackstone used to know I was going to hurl before I did. He'd have already pulled the car over and opened the door before I realized I was going to be sick. Forget the flowers and candy, nothing says true love like that.

Anyway, I was talking about how I was violent. I like to hit men when I'm drunk. I usually have no memory of doing it. There are about half dozen or so guys that I have smacked or knocked on their ass. Not that I'm particularly strong or anything, but it's not that difficult to knock a guy on his ass when he's sitting on a folding chair and doesn't see it coming. Other girls may get questioned on how they went home with that guy, but I get questioned as to why I hit one the morning after. In my defense, some of these guys truly deserved it. A couple of them, I wasn't even that drunk, just pissed. But some of the others, well, I have no recollection what-so-ever. I realize I'm probably lucky that none of them has ever hit me back. To that end, I try to avoid getting too drunk, because I'd like to keep it that way.

What's a Virgin?

I remember asking my mother this question after hearing Madonna's song Like a Virgin on the radio. I was 8 or 9, so I guess it's not all that surprising that I didn't know yet. She told me honestly, which I really think is the only way to go when your kid poses a question like that. You don't really want your daughter going around thinking it's a bird, now do you?

Maybe it's just that I'm getting older, but some of the music and the videos today, well, they make me uncomfortable. Now I'm no prude, and I'm not for abstinence-only sex education. You're just fighting too many hormones and primal instincts for that tactic. I also believe in the freedom of the press and free speech, but then I see Jesse McCartney's new video for Leavin' and my skin starts to crawl, because what is he? like twelve? Yeah, I know, he's twenty-one. Way past legal and old enough to drink even . . . . He still looks twelve to me. And to see him and this equally newbile actress/model is such an overtly sexual video, it just seems wrong. This is what I'm thinking watching MTV on the cross trainer the other day.

Trouble has his own pop music pet-peeve lately, the song I Kissed A Girl by Katy Perry. Every time it comes on the radio, which is about every twenty minutes on PRO FM, he says, "Mom, you put it on again," in a sincerely annoyed voice. I've explained to him that it's the radio playing the song, not actually me. The song really seems to bother him. I suppose this would be a good opportunity for me to explain gays and lesbians to him. Thus far, I haven't. He really seems to take offense to the idea of a girl kissing another girl. I guess that only makes sense since he still thinks boys and girls kissing is yucky. He may not be ready to hear about lesbians or sexual experimentation.

And while I'm on the subject of the music scene, what do you think about NKOTB reuniting? It's not so much the reuniting that bothers me as the video for Summertime which features the group members dancing with a myriad of scantily clad young girls, one the same newbile actress/model as Jesse McCartney's new video. At least she's his age, fellas.

Local Celebrity

You may not have known that I was a local celebrity, at least I used to be, courtesy of my Grandpa. Now, my Grandpa was truly a local celebrity. He was the sports caster for a local radio station all my life, until the day he died, when I was a teenager. He died suddenly. Went to work that day, went to bed and died of heart failure in his sleep. Along with doing the sports, he also did the weather. People used to tell him that they only followed his weather forecasts and wanted to know how he was always so accurate. "I look out the window," he would tell them.

My Grandpa drove me home from school every day from first grade through sixth grade. He drove me to dance lessons too. He had a VW beetle in baby blue at first. I used to call it the Mickey Mouse car because it sort of looked like Mickey Mouse and it squeaked. I also called milk "mook" because cows said "moo" and cows made "mook." Yeah, I was a strange kid. He eventually replaced it with a Dodge Colt, which would become my first car when I was seventeen.

I was also rather precocious, and my Grandma had this habit of making tape recordings of me. She had dozens of tapes of me when I was about three or four, reciting stories and singing songs - The Three Little Pigs, Goldie Locks, Eggbert the Easter Egg, and Take Me Out to the Ball Game. My Grandpa must have had a real soft spot for my rendition of Take Me Out to the Ball Game. He brought it to work with him, and he would play it on the radio at the opening of every baseball season. It was rather embarrassing once I got to be a teenager, but I never paid much attention to sports, nor did I listen to AM radio, so it's not like I had to suffer through it. But one person or another would always tell me they heard me on the radio after he played it.

I hadn't thought about that tape recording in years. Blackstone contacted a fellow Mason who works at the radio station for some reason. He remembers my Grandpa, and me from when I was a kid. He said they don't play the tape at the beginning of baseball season anymore. He said he thinks it was destroyed per my request. I don't remember ever making such a request, but I suppose it's entirely possible. I guess my fifteen minutes of fame are up, but how much can that matter when I had completely forgotten about them?

Dexter

We finished watching season 2 of Dexter recently. Blackstone likes the show even more than I do, which just goes to show that I'm not the only one in this relationship with a dark sense of humor. There's one scene from season 1 that I think just exemplifies the rest of the show. Dexter's getting ready to cut up one of his victims into pieces with a chain saw, and he's thinking to himself, "If there's a God then he's here in this room with me. I just wish he'd brought an extension cord." This is from memory, so it may not be entirely accurate, but I think you get the point. The show is dark. The writing is great, though. It's not often you get to see the lighter side of a serial killer, nor one struggling with his morality. I wouldn't imagine most serial killers are that funny, but what would I know?

I have a few expectations or predictions, if you will, for the upcoming season. If you haven't watched season 2, you may not want to read any further because I'm bound to spoil it for you. I have to admit that by the last two or three episodes I thought Lila was going down as the Bay Harbor Butcher. He does drug his victims, so over-powering wouldn't be a problem. And the bodies are cut into pieces and put into bags. It could have physically been a woman, right? Not the way it worked out, so I was wrong on that one.

Now Harry's dad is his foster dad, but we know his mother was an informant for Harry and that they were acquainted. In fact, it's hinted that they were more than just acquainted in the flashbacks when Dexter is listening to the tapes. I'm thinking Harry may be Dexter's biological father, and that he probably knew it.

I also doubt that Harry committed suicide as the sergeant (I think it's the sergeant) explains to Dexter. Harry was a real loose cannon. Angry, beyond reason angry, when the bad guys went free. So angry he taught his son how to be a serial killer and go after these guys and deliver his own brand of justice. Harry may have been rather crazy, but I doubt he committed suicide. Much more likely he got wrapped up in something, found out something he wasn't supposed to, and was off-ed because of it.

I think Dexter also has to come to terms with the fact that his father turned him into this monster. He may have had murderous tendencies from the start, but Harry cultivated them instead of trying to help him. Harry has played a Dr. Frankenstein in all this. He was so wrapped up in his idea of justice, in teaching Dexter how to go after and murder these guys and get away with it, that he never stopped to think about what he was doing to his son. There's the scene where Harry walks in on Dexter cutting up his first victim and he vomits in repulsion, it's much like Frankenstein actually bringing the monster to life and then running in fear from what he's created - leaving the monster to now fend for himself in a world that fears and loathes him. The idea of vigilante justice may be all sunshine and victory in the fantasy, but in reality it's bloody, gory and nauseating.

Smarts and Stuff

It's funny to me that Liz commented that she doesn't comment much because it takes her so long to research and think about the things that I write. Bookgirl said something similar to me a while back, that when she describes my blog to people, she describes it as being very smart. I told her most people who've read my blog are just totally shocked that I write about orgasms. Honestly guys, thanks, I'm flattered, but it's really weird for me too. I know now that I'm a rather intelligent person, not Mensa or anything, but pretty smart. It took me a long time to realize that, though.

I grew up with a very smart group of kids. I mean Bookgirl's a Mensa member, that's pretty intimidating. Her grades were always way better than mine. And Polly, well, sometimes she uses words I need to go look up. Kind of funny since we met when she started cheating off me during our vocabulary quizzes in junior high. There were many kids who scored in the 14 and 15 hundreds on their SAT's in our classes. I was always an honor roll student, always in the top classes (except for English my senior year of high school). But I was also almost always (except English) at the bottom of the class when it came to grades in those honors classes. Part of it was that I split myself so very thin with all the extra-curriculars that I didn't sleep much and didn't study as much as I should have. Between theater, writing for the newspaper, playing the clarinet, and working part time, my schedule was booked very tight. Part of it was that I was way too horny to care about concentrating on my studies more. Hey, it's not only boys that have that problem. Which one of our friends was it that coined our tortuous state as "cunt throb"? I know it wasn't me. And then there was the drinking and the other less than legal substance, that didn't help.

My mother was always comparing me to another of my friends. My grades were always a few points lower than hers. It was so frustrating. We'd study together for math tests. I would explain problems to her, and then she'd always score a few points higher than me on the tests. I swear, I don't know which of the gods I pissed off, but someone was seriously tormenting me, that's how it felt. I had a teacher who asked the class once if we understood some new concept she was teaching us. When I nodded in agreement she said, "Well, if Diosa gets it, then you all get it." That's kind of the way high school rolled for me.

When I started working at a convenience store and met kids that went to other schools, that was really the first time I saw people not only recognizing my intelligence, but also being rather intimidated by it. I was used to getting teased like I was an air-head. It was quite shocking to me. I had recently taken my SAT's and by my friends' standards done just okay. One of the guys I worked with asked me how I did and I answered honestly. His mouth fell open and he wouldn't tell me his score, he was too embarrassed. It was an entirely new arena for me.

Whereas many kids have trouble adjusting to college, the work load, competing with an entirely new and more diverse group of students, the transition was cake for me. In fact, it was way easier than high school. I no longer had this stereotype of being an idiot following me around. Teachers no longer treated me like I was the dumbest kid in the room. Of course, I only went to a state college. I'm sure it would have been different at a bigger, more prestigious university.

There are still subjects that if you were to quiz me on, I'd sound like a moron. I have trouble keeping politics straight. I usually write about it more for my benefit than anything else. My knowledge of history and world politics is abysmal. Geography is a serious weak point. I must have been in at least fifth grade before I understood the difference between a city, state or country. I can still get lost in a box. And if you haven't noticed, for a former English teacher, my spelling is atrocious when I don't spell check.

No, We're not in Kansas

I had a dream the other night that there was a tornado. I know, how often do we have tornadoes in the NE? But this is a dream, and in my dream there was a tornado, not a hurricane. The tornado hit very suddenly, without any warning. Trouble and I were in the house and we had to go outside to get LT. He was playing in the yard. The tornado was getting close and he was starting to blow away, but we managed to get him and bring him back in the house. Then I brought the kids down to the basement and tied us all together with a rope and then tied the rope to a beam. I don't remember anything after that. Somehow I think I felt safe once we were tied to the beam, though I doubt that would do much good if the house was struck by a tornado.

I think I might be a little stressed.

The Big Picture

I've been trying to figure out about registering for a class for next semester, but it's gotten so much more complicated than that. What I've been attempting to do is take the pre-requisite classes to apply to MA Computer Science program at the local university. I don't really want another under-grad degree, I have two. The problem is my BA is in English, and I can't just apply to MA Science program. So fine, I'll just take the classes I need as a non-matriculated student. Except the classes I need are not being offered at very opportune times. And even if I could get my boss to agree to let me change my schedule to take a couple of hours off in the middle of the afternoon, it'd require me coming in early or staying late. And since my schedule has to be the flexible one for the kids, it'd probably be staying late and require having the nanny stay with the kids extra hours. I don't want that, and I think professionally, it'd cause alot of problems and headaches for me.

So now I'm thinking I need to find another way to take classes. I could look to take classes and transfer them over to the MA program I want, but that's often easier said than done. And the classes I'm required to take for the program I'm finding a bit frustrating, because they're not directly related to my job and there are many far more advantageous areas I could be spending my time and money learning. And now as I think about all this, and after having faced the very real possibility of the company I work for being dissolved a few months ago, I'm not sure a management or MA degree is going to help me in the long run. I'm thinking one of the few reasons I'd consider leaving my job would be if it were no more, in which case I'd probably look to keep as many clients as I could and go into business for myself.

What I probably need to do is look into getting a degree online, The U of Phoenix or something. A place where I can broaden my programming knowledge a bit, but on my own time. Without having to worry about the kids spending more time with the nanny, or how crazy it is for me to pay someone to watch them while I go to school, when I already have a good job. On the flip side, if anything were to happen to the company I work for, I need some additional training. And I won't be able to sleep easy at night if I don't have some contingency plan in place.

After spending time and money taking two Calculus classes, I'm realizing I may have been wasting my time and money. I realize I could very easily become one of those professional students. The truth is, I like to go to school. I have this burning need to keep learning, keep moving forward, constantly have some goal I'm working towards. But now I'm not sure what that goal is any more, and it's very unsettling. I wonder why I feel the need to constantly work so hard, learn more, when there are so many people searching for a way to work less. And not having that goal, it causes idleness in my mind, and thinking too much about what's going on in the world, about my family's financial future, about the recent tragedies in Myanmar and China, about the political future of our country, about the tenuous state of our environment - it's overwhelming and depressing. It's much easier to just spend the evening doing Calculus until my brain hurts and there's not one spare brain cell left to worry about the future or my place in the world.

I'm wondering if I wouldn't be better off dropping the whole idea of additional education and taking the money and investing it. Or perhaps I should take a creative writing course and find some completely different outlet for my crazed and spinning mind. If I'm truly a creative and intelligent person, why haven't I found some invention, written some book, developed some business scheme to make enough money to retire. Or if I were truly socially, politically and environmentally vested, shouldn't we just quite our jobs, sell our house and move the whole family to some village in Africa where we help educate and feed those less fortunate than us?