FlipSide:Starting July 16, 2001

[an error occurred while processing this directive]

A journal of the trials, tribulations, and triumphs in the life of a woman in the 21st century.

Last Updated : Sunday, July 22, 2001 09:58:25 PM -0500

Home Current Week Archives NetWidows

Books Links Movies Music Recipes

Monday, July 16, 2001

« Monday »-·-« Tuesday »-·-« Wednesday »-·-« Thursday »-·-« Friday »-·-« Saturday »-·-« Sunday »
« Archive »-·-« E-Mail Me »-·-« Most Recent »-·-« TOP »

(Ed- She's still recovering from a short, stressful weekend, and breathing problems... She'll be back tomorrow. -- jd.)

Tuesday, July 17, 2001

I have been trying, very hard, to come up with something to write in this space that does not have to do with the depressing divorce saga. Unfortunately all my faithful sources have deserted me. My kids have done nothing exceptionally cute, precocious, or naughty; Jodi has said nothing terribly outrageous; neither Congress nor the state Legislature are in session; and my husband refuses to oblige me by doing something incredibly stupid or send me "email ammunition" for my column. What's a girl to do? As a result, I am left to my own devices to come with something cheerful or amusing (or at least not depressing) to write about.

Let's see, John has been busily planning our camping trip this weekend. Actually, planning is a rather benign word for what he has been doing. Maggie and I have taken to referring to him as Mr. Boy Scout. He has taken that "Be Prepared" motto a mite too seriously, I think. We are going to be in what amounts to a resort kind of camp ground. The kind of place that "real" campers, like my husband in the not to distant past, would sneer at. (There is a water park and mini golf and pony rides and a petting zoo and . . . you get the picture. We're not exactly going to be roughing it here. Which is exactly the kind of place I am suited for. My idea of roughing it is going without my king size soft sided waterbed.) He sends long detailed emails to Maggie and I, asking about this eventuality and that, wanting to make sure his family will absolutely want for nothing. Which, mind you, is a wonderful trait for a husband to have. It can, however, get a bit wearing after a while. However, Maggie and her family go camping on a regular basis, so all John's planning is, well, way more than she ever dreamed of doing.

In the news today, the Vatican is giving an African Catholic Archbishop 30 days to leave his wife and leave the Unification Church. It seems said bishop decided he had been celibate long enough and went to the Reverend Sung Yung Moon, who, helpfully, offered to find him a bride. The Reverend Moon, in his normal fashion, found the Archbishop a young South Korean bride and married the happy couple at one of his mass wedding ceremonies in May.

Now, having been Catholic all of my 34 years now, I am fairly certain that the Archbishop went into the whole priesthood thing full cognizant of the celibacy rule, it not exactly being an obscure part of the whole church doctrine thing. That rule kinda makes marriage for members of the Catholic clergy a no-no. A major major no-no. On top of that, joining another church, while still a member of the One True Church, as the Vatican likes to advertise itself, is also frowned upon. Especially when you are one of the church's leaders.

So the Pope has basically said, "Make up your damn mind. You're either Catholic or you're not." As much as I have been known to disagree with the Vatican on a whole host of issues that I just won't get into right now, I have to agree with them on this one. If you are a member of a certain church, you are expected to follow it's rules. Especially when you are one of it's anointed ones. How can you lead your flock if you are openly flaunting one of their biggest taboos? And, last I checked, you weren't allowed to belong to two different churches at the same time. If I understand the Unification Church properly, they believe that the Reverend Sung Yung Moon is the returned Messiah. I can guarantee you the Pope ain't goin' along with that one. Which makes the two religions mutually exclusive of each other. 'Course,then again, the whole situation puts the Vatican in bad situation. On one hand, they strongly advocate the sanctity of marriage and actively discourage divorce. On the other hand, they have this priest who really wanted a home-cooked meal . . .

Wednesday, July 18, 2001

It has been an interesting day. Let me just name a few of the strange occurrences today. Our barbeque tonight got cancelled, not because of rain, but because it is too stinkin' hot. Too hot to eat outside. Too hot to even be outside. In fact, we have gone past stinkin' hot into one of the higher levels of Hell. I believe we are in the 3 or 4th level. Complete with 73 degree dew points and 95 degree temperatures.

There was my husband, sitting behind his computer desk, giggling maniacally, playing with his WAV files. There's just something vaguely dirty about that. Definitely geeky, but vaguely dirty. And he promised to wash his hands afterwards.

There is Jodi, who was offended by the fact that I said, in my post yesterday, that she hadn't said anything particularly outrageous lately, so she spent the afternoon attempting outrageousity. (If that's even a word. If not, it should be, just for her.)

Then, while looking for a get well card for my aunt and a congratulations on your engagement card, I found the following gem. Picture the Big Top, with elephants walking tail to snout with each other. One elephant says to another, "I hate it when the feed us chili for lunch." Inside the card it says, "Nothing like an elephant fart joke to make your day. Keep your head up." Yikes!!!

Then, my cell phone rings. It is Alicia. Apparently it is time for our semi-annual, "Who- has- the- worst- brother contest". We start by discussing the fact that her brother has quit yet another job (that makes 13 in the last 10 years. Now before you say that that doesn't sound that bad, keep in mind there have been long stretches of unemployment in those 10 years.) Then, she starts telling me about her brother's new girl friend, Apostrophe. (I swear to God, I'm not making this up. You can't make up crap like this. She really is named after punctuation. I expect soon to be told she has twin brothers, Quotation and Mark. And a sister Comma. And a dog Asterisk.) Anyway, it seems Madam Apostrophe makes her living as an exotic dancer. One of her, dare I say, trademarks, is a uncommon set of tattoos she has on her body. She has flames tattooed, around (geez, how do I begin to say this delicately? Okay, I really can't and you don't come here for delicacy anyway) her female parts. Flames! Oh the mental images that I (and you) now have to live with. How does one explain to the tattoo artist that one wants to portray part of your anatomy as flammable. Is this desirable? Is it legal? Is it sanitary? And is this even vaguely attractive to men? I can't get a straight answer from John. He simply shakes his head and says in an incredulous voice, "Flames? Insert your favorite expletive here. Nope, ain't goin' there. Not gonna go there." But of course, I had to. Guess we have a winner in our game today. Congratulations and thank you for playing, Alicia, you have the weakest familial link. Pick up your $10 gift certificate to Walmart at the front desk. 'Course, my brother, last I knew, was dating a 20 year old 6 foot tall blonde from West Virginia. Not even in the same league as Punctuation, even with the fact that he is 32. (Okay, boys, you can stop drooling now . . .)

Thursday, July 19, 2001

No post today. Getting ready to go camping for the first time tomorrow. With my husband the Eagle Scout, camper extraordinaire. Then, there's me. My idea of roughing it is doing without my king size waterbed.

Friday, July 20, 2001

Gone camping. Pray for me.

Saturday, July 21, 2001

Still camping. Assuming that I have, thus far, survived the experience, you will hear from me tomorrow. Please continue to pray. Only nylon protects me and mine from Mother Nature. And she can be one moody bitch.

Sunday, July 22, 2001

Well, I'm back. And I have survived, for the most part, all body parts intact. I must admit, I rather enjoyed the experience. At least before bedtime. The sleeping part, not so much. You see, my parents did not camp. We did hotels. When on vacation, my father wanted, well, not luxury, as he was a fiscally conservative man, but, ease. We used to go to Long Boat Key near Sarasota, Florida for a week or so every winter when I was a kid. We stopped that when I was around 8, my parents deeming the experience too costly and time consuming. You see, we didn't fly, we drove. (Now that must have been an experience. Imagine, if you will, an 8 year old and a 6 year old, who don't particularly get along in a large 3 bedroom house, sharing the back seat of a Mercury Marquis, each battling for their space and dominance. Now that I have children of my own, I can, sadly, comprehend the horror that must have been there lot while navigating the hundreds of miles between Iowa and Florida.) After that, we did mini-vacations. Weekend (often of the three day variety) getaways to destinations like the Amana Colonies or other points of interest less than 3 hours away with good, family-friendly hotels. I can't picture my father, laying in a tent, balancing his frame on a narrow air mattress in hot and humid weather with dew points in the high 70s and low 80s.

Anyway, I had a great deal of difficulty sleeping in the tent. It was a very nice tent, a 6 man dome tent. (In my opinion, the only way you were getting six men to sleep in there is if you just laid them down end to end like cord- wood.) Having never slept particularly close to nature, nor really had the desire to be that close, I was, well, unused to being only separated from the world by nylon. Those familiar night noises are very different when not muffled by walls and screens. Not to mention, the kids seemed to have inherited my bug phobia (which God knows I control when they are around to see it so they don't realize how much I really REALLY hate creepy crawly things) so the three of us are not enamored with sleeping with the little buggers. And let's face it, when you are in a tent, so are bugs. The kids slept in their own little pup tent, pitched next to ours, which for the most part worked out fine. But, Saturday night, Jack also had difficulty sleeping and started crying out. I went to him, pulled him out of his tent and sat in the middle of our campsite, cradling my frightened son. I asked him if he was ready to crawl back into his sleeping bag. He nodded, and proceeded to scamper away behind his tent. When I asked him where he was going, he came around the back of his tent, and, disoriented, tripped over a tie-down and landed on a tent stake, making what became later a rather nasty black bruise. That was that for him. He came, sobbing, into our tent.

There actually was plenty of room for him. But, I had been having difficulty in making myself comfortable in the humid weather and on the rather slender air mattresses that we purchased that were intended, not for sleeping in a tent, but for floating in a pool. You see, we thought we would make this a budget vacation, and since John was not sure that the kids and I would ever want to do this again, decided against the $30 air bed and opted for the $1.99 Kmart blue light special floating pool air mattresses. Please, so our suffering is not in vain, take this warning and DO NOT ATTEMPT TO SLEEP ON POOL AIR MATTRESSES. Even my four year old couldn't get comfortable on them. And I am a great deal larger than my son.

After I settled Jack in, I proceeded to worry that Rhiannon would awaken and find herself alone and think that Jack wandered off and go in search of him. So I spent many precious minutes trying to decide which was more disruptive to her, waking her and bringing her into our tent, or letting her awaken in the morning alone. (I know, I am incredibly neurotic about these things. And I am apparently passing on those tendencies. Rhiannon made a comment tonight about how the tents didn't lock and people could steal "things" {read "her"} from the tent. At which point I was assuring her that the Sheriff's office was patrolling, but she added a new worry, am I turning my daughter into the neurotic mess that is her mother?) Anyway, I had just made the decision to just leave her be when my bladder decided it needed to evict some tenants, as there were too many occupants. So, I got up, grabbed my trusty flashlight and headed the 100 yards or whatever it was to the bathrooms. No biggie in daylight. A little disconcerting at 3 am when you are in your jammies.

Then, to top it all off, Mother Nature, that fickle witch, decided to show her might by sending in a severe thunderstorm at 5:30 this morning. John, the protector, went out, adjusted the fly (over the tent, people!) so it was at the proper angle against the wind and made sure we had enough tie-downs to keep the tent from blowing away. (John was helped in this endeavor by our campmates, Todd and Maggie, who helped John with our tent and gave him a poncho to keep the worst of the wet out before they battened down the hatches on their trailer. I went and woke Rhiannon and brought her into the tent with us, where we sat and listened to the wind and the rain howl. Again, it sounds quite different when only nylon is keeping it out and the fiberglass tent polls sway somewhat with the wind.

Eventually the storm passed and a gentle rain fell for a couple of hours before the heat and humidity returned. At which point we returned our offspring to the water park and pool. Which was an absolute blast. We spend a great deal of Saturday and Sunday. Despite my pissing and moaning here, the kids and I really enjoyed ourselves. We had good company with experienced campers Maggie and Todd and their 2 kids (and a friend that their son Cody brought along) and we enjoyed being outside all day. We hope to purchase a 3 room tent before next summer, so we can camp next year with all of us in the same tent. With decent air mattresses. If the camera wasn't destroyed by the rain storm on Saturday, we will hopefully post some pictures in the next couple of days.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have an appointment with my bathtub to soak the kinks out of my body and wash the dirt from under my nails. But I really did have fun. Really. I did.

Disclaimer
Copyright © 2001 Ann Dominik. All rights reserved. Complaints about the technical details of this page can be directed to the abused geek who takes care of it for me, and is grossly underpaid for what he does, he thinks. No reproduction without written permission. The opinions and content of this site are my own, and not the responsibility of this site's host, my employer, my pets, my parents or anyone else you may care to blame. Please respect my opinions and I will do the same for you. I may on occasion publish e-mail to me; if you do not wish your mail to be published, please write CONFIDENTIAL or DO NOT PUBLISH at the top of the e-mail. If you would prefer to remain anonymous, please note that as well. If you're incapable of reasoned civilized discourse but feel compelled to correspond with me, I'll be happy to filter your mail out after a few choice comments regarding your ancestors, upbringing, and the likelihood of your family tree not