Labor(free) Day Holiday Weekend

Friday, September 1, 2006
You Can Go Home Again

It's just not always the way you remember it.

For Labor Day Weekend I decided to visit my father who still lives down in the Ozarks. It was past time, I have been most everywhere else in the Western Hemisphere this summer now it was time to return home for a while.

Something about returning to where I grew up makes me feel like a child. I decided I was going to take the tent and camp out in the side yard under the big pine tree. Late the first evening, alone in the tent (Dulcinea, having not grown-up in the country, had decided to sleep indoors in a bed) and lying on the air mattress I was enjoying the early cool night air. For some reason I began to remember how much of my summers as a kid were filled with itching and scratching. I turned on the small flashlight and shone it behind my knee where a little seed tick was busily burrowing into my skin. And then I vividly remembered why I was always itching and scratching as a kid: ticks, chiggers and poison ivy.


Saturday, September 02, 2006

I did sleep great until just before dawn when I awoke to a cold pain in my butt. During the night the air mattress had deflated. I always did want to get up early to take pictures in the fresh light of early morning. After a pot of Dad's great tasting coffee (I think the secret is he never washes the pot) Dulcinea and I headed out for a morning of fishing in the creek that winds it way along the border of my Dad's farm. We use the word farm loosely in our family. The farm is the original homestead of my father's family; roughly 130 acres of Ozark hill country that has remained largely untouched since the Great Depression, except for a few fertile bottom acres my Dad lets a neighbor use to raise hay and winter pasture his cattle on in return for keeping our fence up.

After several hours of non-productive fishing and non-productive dove hunting the sun was now high overhead and we were perspiring profusely from the unusual exercise. I'm not sure who had the idea first, but within minutes we were swimming in the COLD spring-fed creek. Just like kids again and it felt great. We were back at the house in time for lunch.

As I write this during the lazy afternoon sitting in a cool breeze on the side porch I am watching two ruby throated hummingbirds do aerial combat stunts as each tries to keep the other from feeding at the red globe of sugar water . They are both so busy defending territory they are oblivious to my presence.

Later...
Time to head back to the city. It has been a perfect weekend. I have no problem with always being a kid when I visit here, if only in my memory.

Cry Baby!

I can't believe at this time last week I was lamenting about being overly tired from too much vacation traveling. This is only my fourth day back at school and I am ready for another extended vacation, or how about a sabbatical year?

Don't get me wrong. I love my job. The problem is I love sleeping in late, taking afternoon naps, eating and drinking too much and staying up late even more.

It hasn't helped that each day on my commute from suburbia there has been a major traffic accident. It is tough enough to have to rise before the sun is up, but then to sit in traffic inhaling toxic vapors just because the whole city forgot how to drive this summer is not my idea of a good time.

A list of bad traffic behaviors that piss me off:
1. Tail-gating. If I can't see anything but your front windshield in my rear view mirror you are to close. Back-off. If you were following me that closely walking on a city sidewalk a jury would acquit me for acting in self-defense after I had blown you away with a 12 gauge shotgun.
2. Signaling after your turn is completed. That blinker is to be used to signal your intent to change lanes. I already know when you have so rudely cut me off; I don't need you to then turn on your signal just to remind me.
3. We are moving along well at 80 mph and one set of brake lights come on; who are the idiots that then have to dodge across four lanes of traffic so they won't be caught in a slow lane?

There was a comedian that once promoted the idea that every driver should have a powerful rubber dart gun with darts that said, "Stupid" on them. Whenever a fellow driver pulled an obnoxious boneheaded stunt you were allowed to shoot their car with a dart. At least that way when you saw a car coming, bristling with "Stupid" darts, you would know to get out of their way.

What I Did On My Summer Vacation

I haven't had a true summer vacation since elementary school. I'm talking about that total excitement of being out of school, a summer spreading before you without end and not a worry in the world. Those long, hot, lazy afternoons, sultry nights catching lightening bugs, searching the night sky for shooting stars. You get the idea. One of those idealized kid's summer vacations. A summer vacation that began with anticipation, swimming every afternoon in the the river, continued with poison ivy and chiggers and ended with the complete boredom that renewed us for a new school year.

I had five whole weeks this summer: no clinic, no teaching, no students, no administration. The perfect time to experience an an old fashioned dream vacation. But noooo... what did I do? I tried to cram everything I had been planning to do for the last ten summers into one summer vacation. Now I am totally exhausted. I need a vacation to recover from my vacation and I have two days before the fall semester begins.

I did make a summer promise (sort of like a New Year's resolution, made to be broken) that I would work more on my blog. That is enough for now, so be prepared to hear about more of my summer adventures, the best and worst of a summer odyssey nearly shot to hell.

I will get some pictures up on flickr soon, I promise.