I've summed up my feelings regarding this year's AROTR trip on my Beatleblog - do check it out for "the rest of the story" past what I posted here.
T-shirts bought: Six.
Books read cover to cover: One apiece.
Panhandlers helped: Two.
Bagels eaten by Madalyn: At least half-dozen.
New favorite perfomers: One.
Debit cards lost: Zero. (WOOT!)
Mixed feelings about our return: Many.
We've arrived home safely from Louisville. More later.
About fifteen minutes ago I told Madalyn it was time to go to sleep. She got ready and crawled into her bed. The music on the stage closest to the hotel is really loud and won't be over until 11:30 and the music on the further stage will be going until at least midnight. Mad was futzing around, arranging the covers and wriggling about and asking me questions. I said, "Madalyn, go to sleep!" to which she responded that she couldn't "because of all that out there" (indicating the music). Now, this is my child who could sleep through phones ringing, t.v. being watched, people conversing in the room, the attack on Pearl Harbor, etc.; the same child who took a nap during a Ringo Starr concert (in the second row, no less). I said, "No, you will go to sleep. You just have to lie still and close your eyes and stop messing around.." Sure enough, within no more than two minutes of lying still, she was out like a light. I may not be able to figure her out on a mental level sometimes but I sure as heck have the mechanics pegged after eight years.
Sweet dreams, kiddo.
Madalyn and I arrived, safe and sound, in Louisville around 5:15 this evening. The travel gods smiled upon us (remind me to sacrifice a Samsonite in thanks later) and both our flights went well. The second flight was funny. I like to think of myself as being a bit more knowledgeable about geography than the average American (many of whom couldn't find their own asses with both hands and a flashlight). However, I didn't realize just how close Cincinnati (our layover city) was to Louisville. Once we got airborne our actual flying time was sixteen minutes. That is, officially, the shortest flight I've ever taken. We might as well have just driven the plane down the highway (where we'd likely been stuck behind a four-foot tall blue-hair with no peripheral vision doing 50 in the fast lane in her Buick).
We buzzed over to our temporary home, the Galt House, with an only semi-crazed cab driver who, on the plus side, did refrain from swearing, at least in English. Check-in went smoothly (I am always slightly paranoid that my reservation will have been lost since I make it so far in advance). We got up to our room and I am nearly positive it's the same room I had last year. It is the same room location, that's for sure. I just can't remember 100% whether it's the same floor.
I had mandated a rest time when we arrived in the room; however, this consisted of Madalyn watching raucous Nickelodeon shows for about thirty minutes and then spending the next half-hour asking me approximately every sixty seconds when we were going to leave. So I gave in and we headed downstairs. The first thing we did was get some chow, which Madalyn wanted to sit and eat overlooking the river. Then we drifted over to the main stage and then the t-shirt/memorabilia vendors. Madalyn picked out two t-shirts for herself and I picked two for Eliza. Mad's own cash was burning a hole in her pocket so she bought a picture of the lads. Incidentally, the hotel was giving out $40 Visa gift cards to everyone staying three days or more. I used mine to pay for Eliza's shirts so, woohoo, free shirts!
Madalyn had been a bit complaining through all of this, wanting to move on after only a few minutes at each stop. She had spied the fountain and wanted to go play in it. There is a stage at the fountain so, in the interest of peace and preserving camaraderie, I took her over there. I sat at the fountain's edge and listened to music and she proceeded to get soaked while making friends with every kid who passed through.
Mad had a great time splashing around, singing and dancing to the music. The sun went down while all this was going on, so, of course, she started to get cold and begged to go up to the room to dry off. When she found out there were shows going on inside the hotel she was all for changing clothes and going down to check them out, so that's what we did (after a phone call home). Once we got there, though, the fact that she is eight years old, not fifteen, caught up with her and she only made it through four or five songs before she crashed and burned. She was cold and tired (by now it was going on 11 p.m.) So, though I'd have liked to hear the next band up, we turned in for the night. Madalyn's now snoring away (literally) in the bed next to mine.
I have warned her that she probably won't be allowed in the fountain every day, simply because, for one, I haven't brought enough extra clothing for her to go through two outfits a day and, secondly, there are other bands I want to hear besides just those at the Fountain Stage. I have told her to be ready to do a lot of things I want to do tomorrow. After all, that's the whole reason we brought the Nintendo AND books AND her MP3 player AND Webkinz -- so, if she gets bored with the concerts, she can do something other than hounding me about leaving. We'll see how it goes. She does like the music and she likes dancing. I think tonight she was just worn out. She was an hour late getting to bed last night, then we had to get up early, spend all day traveling and then she was frigid and tired after the fountain.
As for me, I am just utterly thrilled to be back. Up until we actually arrived here at the hotel the promise of the weekend's fun was overshadowed by my usual pre-trip stressing out and rushing around trying to get everything done. This happens to me a lot. I lose sight of the preparations and travel as a means to an end and, instead, focus entirely on them and how much I dislike doing them to the point of wishing I didn't have to go at all. That, coupled with my bad attitude during last year's AROTR, made me wonder if I really cared much about coming any more. Turns out I do. When I walked into the hotel lobby that I now know so well it was like stepping into a haven of fun and relaxation. When I looked out our hotel window onto the festival grounds I became giddy with excitement. It just feels right to be here. Like I belong. I need to be here to feed my soul and get back in touch with things that I love that, all too often these days, are shoved aside and ignored while I deal with life. I need to be here to be reminded of why I love these four boys from Liverpool and to remember and honor them, because I wouldn't be the person I am today without them.
There are two full days until Madalyn and I leave on our trip. I am almost entirely packed, the only exception being the overnight (toiletry) bag. The lacking supplies for this have been purchased; I just need to organize the bag and fit everything in it.
Now, this is pretty amazing, in and of itself. But, in addition to this, most of my house is actually pretty darned clean AND I have nearly finished the laundry that I have not been caught up on since before we moved to this house in September. I will not have to spend the remaining two days at home running around in a near-panic. It is, to put it mildly, night unto a miracle. Someone may want to phone the Vatican and give them a heads up. While they're here they can check out this strange three-digit tattoo I found on Eliza's head.
Scene: John-Zachary has upended a Play-Doh container and molded the (hunka hunka) doh to the top in a bouffant style with what resembles sideburns coming down on either side.
Johnny (speaking on behalf of Play-Doh container): Like my new helmet?
Me: (chuckling) Looks like Elvis with those sideburns.
Johnny: Who's Elvert?
Me: Not Elvert. ELVIS. Presley.
Johnny: Oh, you mean The King.
I couldn't make this stuff up if I wanted to, people.
Earlier this evening I created a list of my five favorite scents. The first four are all found in nature: pine, honeysuckle. eucalyptus and lavender. The fifth, however, is the Good Home Company's Pure Grass.
I forget how I discovered Good Home's products. They have been featured on Oprah's favorite things but that's not where I found them. I knew about them long before that. I must have found them in some local store that no longer exists. I bought a bottle of their Pure Grass laundry scent, which is used in place of fabric softener. It's rather pricey so I only used it on the bedsheets. I loved it; may have bought it on more than one occasion. Then, somehow, I forgot about it. I think perhaps the store where I'd bought it closed and it faded from my consciousness. It was years before I thought of it again (in that case, it may have been Oprah who spurred the recollection, though I don't usually watch her show). However, the thought that I should search for it online passed fleetingly through my brain and I forgot about searching. This happened several more times before I finally remembered to actually do the search. I found Good Home's website and ordered more laundry scent and some sheet/clothing spray, both in Pure Grass, of course! Again I saved the laundry additive for sheets and blankets only to make it last longer.
It has been more than a year since that bottle was used up and somehow I keep neglecting to get more. I think of it every time I get an email from the Company but those emails rarely coordinate with my actually being able to drop $20 on a bottle of fabric softener and not feel guilty about it. But, tonight, when I sat down to make the list, Pure Grass popped into my head right away, and I have a strong memory of the scent. I can't describe what it smells like except that it's a clean smell. I don't even know why I like it. There's just something about it that makes me want to curl up underneath my scented sheets with my nose buried in my pillow case, flex my claws, and purr. It doesn't just smell nice; I find it strangely soothing. I keep thinking about how nice and relaxing it would be to climb into bed tonight if the bed smelled like Pure Grass. And ever since I made the list I've been craving that smell. I told Robert on the phone to be expecting me to place an order with Good Home very soon. I may even get wild and crazy and try one of their other scents, too, in a room freshener or counter spray or something. Just not on my bed.....that territory is reserved for Pure Grass and Pure Grass only.
(And, yes, I just wrote an entire entry about fabric softener. And you just sat here and read it. Sucker. :) )
When Robert left this evening to go back to work I had a brief moment of, "I can't do this by myself!" I haven't had that feeling since Eliza was very small and not sleeping. No, she hasn't regressed; she's not gone back to sleeping poorly. In fact, we are screaming up on the one-year anniversary of her beginning to sleep through the night.
I think the problem was more an accumulation than any one thing. When Robert walked out the door (to be gone an extra day this week) I was suddenly steamrolled by all the upcoming events and chores and things that I need to get done, which all crowded into my brain at the same time, clamoring for attention. You'd be surprised how often this happens to me, actually.
Any road, the ball has now begun rolling toward our busy, busy summer. Last week was lovely and quiet - the calm before the storm. This week things pick up and it only gets busier from here on out. There are trips to be planned for, the soccer season that just won't die (I thought their last game was yesterday, only to be informed there's tournament play all this week and next weekend), another ten days of morning and nightly school routines to get through (the school system seems to have specifically selected this month's menu based on things my children will not eat, so lots of lunches still to be packed on top of the normal tasks) and Madalyn and I leave for Louisville in a week-and-a-half. Another key factor in my brief panic is that my house is an unholy pigsty. I have, no exaggeration, a minimum of fifteen loads of clean laundry waiting to be folded and probably another seven or eight loads to wash. The rest of the place is a wreck, too. Oh, and don't forget that we are probably moving sometime this summer so the entire house will need to be packed up again. And yet I can't seem to get motivated to actually do anything. I have my theories about that but, right now, theories won't fold my clothes.
As you may guess, the sudden realization of everything I have to do (or feel I should be doing) is a bit overwhelming. Also figuring into the equation is that the way I get through Robert being gone so much is by having a "one day at a time" mentality. I wake up in the mornings and I deal with only what needs to be dealt with that day. If I look too far ahead at all the things coming up in the near future I start to lose my already-tenuous grip on having it together. The problem at this point is that a lot of our summer busyness has to be planned for in advance, which means I'm feeling like I should be working on, say, packing for Louisville right now AND cleaning the house in advance of our California trip AND planning all our outfits for the week of VBS AND keeping the house clean once I've gotten it tidied up.
A lot of the agony is self-inflicted. Take packing for the trip, for example. It doesn't need to be as complicated as I make it. But, no, here I am with a slip of paper listing all Madalyn's new shirts and bottoms and all my new/presentable clothing, and I'm going to sit at my computer and type up a list detailing which shirts will be worn with which shorts so there will be no confusion during packing (or dressing, on the trip). I probably really don't need to have the house spic-and-span for when we are gone to California - but I feel like it should be, so even if I don't get around to doing it I will still stress about it right up until the day we walk out the door, whenever that glorious day may be. The laundry - well, there's no getting around that one. That does need to be folded. But there's the whole motivation issue again. I have the best of intentions but somehow I simply can't make myself do it. Then I feel guilty, which gets me down, which, in turn, probably makes me less likely to find the get-up-and-go to get it done.
Bottom line, I guess, is that I'm taking too wide a view of things this evening and allowing all the upcoming activity to crowd in on me. I need to take myself in hand and narrow my focus on today and, if needed, tomorrow. The brief feeling of panic disappeared quickly but I am still feeling a bit uneasy about it all, which I think would end up being counterproductive if I gave myself over to it entirely. Okay....bucking up, squaring shoulders, finding resolve, shaking off the Crazy.....
This morning a call came in at our house from a client of Robert's, who then left a message (if anyone reads this who doesn't know, Robert is an attorney who does primarily court-appointed criminal defense, i.e. he gets pretty much the bottom of the barrel, humanity-wise).
This, in and of itself, was a problem. Our phone number is unlisted and Robert is not loco enough to give it out. Any potential mystery was laid to rest when the second sentence out of the guy's mouth was, "I talked to your dad...." Yes, my oh-so-helpful father-in-law had given this dude, whom he doesn't know from a hole in the ground, our phone number when the guy had called him out of the phone book. (I would like to say this is the first time this has happened. It isn't.) Rather than get into a whole rant about how someone who's been an attorney for umpteen decades should know better than to give felons people's home phone numbers, I will just say: Bad Frank. Not cool. I have since spoken to him about it.
Anyway, on the message Client says he thinks he is supposed to be in court at 1:00 today but he can't make it and so wants to know if it's possible to delay the hearing. He also mentions that he has been told by FIL that Robert is in the panhandle. (Remember this later.) This message was left around 8:45, when I was out taking the kids to school. I do as much as I possibly can from this distance, which consists of calling both Robert's cell phone and his office and, instead of hanging up on the voice mail, leaving an actual message detailing the call.
Around 9:55 I am sitting here and the phone rings. It's a local number with a name I don't recognize so I don't pick up, but I suspect it's Client again. Having no wisdom or information to impart to him, I do not answer the phone. He leaves no message. Then, at 11:02, he calls back. I don't pick up again. This time he leaves a message which I go down and listen to. Now Client is mad. The message is something along the lines of, "Robert, you let me down. YOU'RE FIRED!!!" and then the slamming down of the phone.
Now, keep in mind that Einstein here has been informed that Robert is not in here, but in the panhandle, which, for those playing along at home, is six hours away. Client also knew he was calling Robert's residence here in town. Not in the panhandle. Where Robert actually is. Client, if he had the sense God gave a goat, should also realize that Robert has shit to do all day, like be in court defending the dregs of society (as mandated by the United States Constitution™), as opposed to sitting by his phone checking his home answering machine remotely every half hour to make sure he hasn't missed anything. (Just as FIL should've realized there was no earthly reason to give this ass clown our home phone number being that ROBERT ISN'T HERE, HE IS IN THE PANHANDLE AND I AM NOT AN ATTORNEY.) All this is not to mention that Client was calling to try to delay the hearing, so why get his boxers in a wad over Robert not being here? It's not as though Robert has stood him up at the courthouse. Also, to truly avoid looking like a total douchebag, one should allow the full amount of allowable time for a task to be completed to pass before screaming at someone on their answering machine. Technically, Robert still had two hours from the time of the last call to get the message and call the court on Bozo the Redneck's behalf before the alleged 1:00 hearing.
And when I say "alleged" it is because, hey! Guess what? The hearing wasn't even today! Following that last call I decided to call the Texas County Court Clerk and ask her to slip Robert a note about the situation - not because I give a crap if Client misses his hearing but because I was afraid Robert had forgotten he had to be here and didn't want him to get in trouble for being a no-show. Robert informed me that Client is a child support enforcement case, and they do not schedule child support enforcement dockets at 1:00 on Thursdays (also, apparently, the court system is REALLY anal retentive). The call ended with Robert promising to call the Court Clerk here just to double-check, and then, presumably, sit back and wait for the Bar complaint to roll in. (Not an uncommon occurrence; many of the indigent clientele seem to be unfamiliar with the adage "Beggars can't be choosers.")
So, end of story. All is well. Right? Perhaps. Or perhaps not, when you have a tendency toward paranoia such as I have. Situations like this make me very uneasy. It seems like these domestic/child support people are always the ones who snap and go all Smith & Wesson to exact revenge. And this isn't exactly a model citizen we are talking about, here. The guy missed his last hearing because he was in jail. He's paid $30 in child support in the past ten years. Robert got him a deal on payments previously and the guy never paid any of it, even then. Just the sort of person who'd decide to shoot his kids and his ex to get out of the payments, and take out the attorney who'd pissed him off just for good measure. And, now that he has our home phone number, fifteen minutes and a small fee on the internet could yield our address. So I'm sitting here with our land line phone and my cell phone next to me (you've got to have backup in case one fails) and I plan on answering any knocks at the door from the second-story window above. I'm hoping that Robert actually talks to this guy, and that the hearing wasn't even today, and that Client's tiny brain is evolved at least enough to grasp the realization that he has no reason to be angry with Robert. I do also hope that, on the off chance I'm actually right about this guy, stupidity coupled with lack of means combined will prevent him from forming any sort of solid plan. I'm fairly certain he's got the stupidity part locked up, at least.
Man, I LOVE being married to a public defender. Never a dull moment!
I cannot seem to just sit and watch t.v. anymore these days.
I have always been a multi-tasker. I rarely have ever simply sat and watched television without having some other activity or task going on alongside it. Used to be, though, that I'd wait for commercials to work on whatever was the side project. I mean, how long are t.v. segments? 15 minutes, max? Surely anyone with an intelligence level above that of a seagull should be able to focus on one thing, and one thing only, for that amount of time.
And yet I find my mind wandering after only a few minutes of any given t.v. show. It's not a reflection on the quality of the shows, or my interest in them. It's not just random crap I turned on because there was nothing else on. This is stuff I went out of my way to DVR; stuff I list amongst my favorite t.v. shows.
Now, if I could, as mentioned previously, keep the extracurricular activity to commercial breaks it wouldn't be a problem. But I'm now continuing to do them during the show. And since it's difficult to devote 100% of your attention to two things at the same time, I'm missing parts of the show. A lot of times I end up backing them up to hear something I missed, only to get distracted and miss exactly the same part again. Other times I'll pause the show and end up leaving it paused for an hour while I do something online.
I do wonder how much of it is inability to focus and how much of it is computer addiction. Because, most of the time, the thing I forsake my show for is going online -- hence how I manage to fade out and miss what they're saying on t.v. (It's difficult to get so into folding clothes, for example, that you don't hear what's going on around you.) I have been spending a bit too much time online lately. I guess it's better than my go-to boredom activity of last year (eating) but, still. It's really inexcusable that I am continuing to hang around my online haunts even after I'm caught up, waiting for posts to pop up, when I should be closing the computer and finding something else to do.
I think I should probably make an effort to spend a specific amount of time every night in offline pursuits, be it t.v. or working around the house or reading. Not that t.v. watching is so important I should be making an effort to do it, you understand; it's that my inability to focus on it is a symptom of my being too hung up on something else. I find myself missing it, thinking, "I should just get off the computer and lie down on the couch and really watch some shows" and then I sit here like one of that room full of monkeys that will eventually write the works of Shakespeare.
Yep....it's time for an intervention.