ladykatza

We had an opportunity fall into our laps last week and jumped on it. A friend of ours has a family vacation home on Jekyll Island. He wanted to go down there this year with his girlfriend and needed a ride, so asked if we would like to go. Kids welcome, its a big house. Sure! So I did some last minute negotiations with coworkers to get the time I needed. I also decided to spend some money on a camera. Its not exactly what I wanted, but it will suffice. I was very glad to have it with me.

I was picked up from work on Monday and we headed straight down. Its a six hour drive and only an hour into it the kids started asking “When are we going to get there?”.

“When the sun goes down. Stop asking when we’ll be there.” Only a few minutes later Felicity pipes up and asks “When will the sun go down?”.

*facepalm* Obey the letter of the law, not the intent, I guess. We got there with no trouble and the house itself was like a time capsule out of the 70’s. Wooden paneled walls, yellow shag carpet, the same decorative copper form pans that I’ve seen on the kitchen wall of every woman I know over the age of 55. Even some of the medicine in the cabinets was 30 years old. It was… weird. Turns out this was their grandfather’s retirement house. Makes more sense. OH, the upstairs had a library and one whole wall was nothing but cookbooks. I kinda drooled.

But! We went to the beach the next day. The kids swam, and built sand castles and collected shells. They hammed it up for the camera, too.

We also went exploring off the island for some place selling seafood. We ended up in a place called Darian and we drove down to this off the path dock that was lined up with shrimp boats. I found out from one gentleman there that there was no seafood to be had because all the boats were in port because of gas prices. He did recommend a city market close by because some of the big money boats were still running and saving part of their catch for the locals. Got to love inside info! I had to take pictures of the boats though, because the rebel flag and the names just struck me as interesting.

Check out the name:

And here’s a gratuitous photo of me and the kids.

Note the bridges in the background. The short one was an old drawbridge that was retired for a taller one. The energy required for the drawbridge turned out to be too much.

I have lots more photos and stories. I will post more of those tonight.

At the edge of darkness
I step into light
And in that moment
I
am
blinded.

I wanted to write more about my trip, but I couldn’t. Then another idea, but it wasn’t there either. Now I am cursing my wakefulness and my brain’s non co-operative state. My thoughts are scattered and have been for a while. I have been keeping myself constantly busy since Christmas. If I don’t give myself time to be idle, then I won’t think so much and maybe the melancholy will stay at bay. I have neglected some very important parts of my life. Not to mention a million project ideas that are just laying and gathering dust. Literally and virtually.

Tired, so tired. So much needs doing, so much overwhelming, so much… so. much. Any moment I take for myself seem selfish, but I know this is silly and not right. Intellectually anyway.

Its dark right now, the downstairs is empty and quiet and I can listen to my music. I think, what I would like, is a day alone. Just a day with a clean house and nothing i have to do and no one to bother me. A day where I can read, or sleep, or work on a project.

I think, tomorrow, I will go back to tango lessons for the first time in months and months. Despite all my lamentations, I have gotten more rest these past few days off then I have in a while. And I miss dancing. I find it relaxing.

I think I can sleep now.

So I haven’t started writing about this previously because I was HOPING my camera would turn up and I had a whole story idea laid out in my head based on the pictures I took. But it looks like it was stolen and I had to mourn the loss and restructure the ideas in my head.

I also forgot my travel journal. The few times that I have traveled without my parents, or with daecon, I kept a journal. I have pages and pages from my honeymoon and I’ve been chewing on the thought of doing some blogging with those.

So. Toronto. It actually started with daecon picking me up from work and us going out to eat before I left so we would have a bit of time together. Getting to the airport and dealing with all the new security features (to me, anyway) was a bit nerve wracking. I hadn’t been on a plane since October of 2000 when I went on my honeymoon. I got through OK, though. The flight ended up being delayed for a bit and once I got on the plane someone had sat in my seat because he wanted to sit by friends. His was behind him next to the window so I decided not to make a stink about it, but was highly annoyed to find out the recline didn’t work. Fuck. Back was NOT HAPPY. Fortunately the plane trip was short.

Ava met me at LGA when I got off the plane and it was so awesome to see her. Her partner was there as well and meeting her was awesome. Ava made the comment that Atlanta must have the monopoly on geeks because any time there was a plane full of people with laptops coming through it was from Atlanta. Yeah, well. What can I say. We’re the silicon valley of the south.

So we get my bag and out to the car and it was agreed that LGA is not the NYC airport to fly into if it can be helped. Fine, OK. And then they said “your limo, lovely lady”. Apparently they had gotten a vehicle from her partner’s work which was this very nice Dodge with a big engine. It goes zooom zooom. At this point I had been awake for almost 22 hours and was chattering deliriously in the back seat. This got me chuckled at a lot. We get back to Ava’s place and its this adorable upstairs apartment in an old house made by Italian brick layers. I love it, actually.

So I needed at least 6 hours of sleep before making the 8 hour drive. I got most of it, though the lack of curtains over the window woke up me up. Ava and I got a later start than we wanted because sleep and food were important for a safe trip.

Well, the driving was um… interesting. First we get hit by a storm that was so heavy I couldn’t see a THING and we had to pull over. It took about 20 minutes and we got out onto the open road. On the way up we took one of the more scenic routes and New York state is beautiful country. Though, a couple hours out we had a problem. *BOOM* There goes a tire. Fuck. I pull over and its dead, I mean flat as a pancake. Ava and I look at each other and she says “Um, You know how to change a tire right?”

Why yes, yes I do. And we did. We took turns with the jack and she lifted the wheel off after I got the nuts loose. (TIRE LUG NUTS YOU PERVERTS!) I managed to not wrench my back out doing that, thankfully. The spare got us into the next town and we lost another 90 minutes. However, the car was much happier afterwards with two new tires. Ava accused me of being the one causing all the “interesting happenings”. I think this was also the fact that on the way we past a Nitro truck, and compressed hydrogen truck, gas trucks, and various other flammable chemical trucks. Not to mention some medical waste trucks. Weird.

Getting through the border wasn’t hard. Canadians are pretty laid back. I was a bit nervous since I don’t have a passport yet and had to use “alternative papers”. This was part of the reason for the drive, since you have to have a passport to fly in.

I do NOT like driving on Canadian roads. They confuse me a lot, and the sudden conversion to metric gave my brain a workout. Ava and I started getting snippy with each other because now we were trying to drive in a strange place and coordinate meeting up with Cobalt and Mythos and the guy we were renting the apartment from. It turned out to be cheaper to rent it than get a hotel, and it had the luxury of a kitchen and living room area. It was quite nice actually. Its a little basement apartment in downtown Toronto and I would recommend it to anyone. The only thing is, its a HOBBIT HOLE. Seriously, I practically had to duck to get through the door. AND they baked us a cake! It was so cool.

So later, I will talk about the rest of it.

Take care!

I expect people to afford me the same frankness. Politeness is always necessary and appreciated in this world, but there’s a difference between being polite and being a doormat. Don’t be a doormat. If you don’t like something and it effects you directly, say so. If someone asks you a nosy question that is none of their business, say so.

Remember, getting older means you can be cantankerous with justification.

If you have to ask, the answer is NO. Otherwise, do what you are going to do, say or ask what you want. If I don’t like it I’ll say so. If its none of your business, I’ll tell you to fuck off.

Simple as that.