Family Vacation

Scenes from our camping vacation to the Redwoods, also the celebration of our ten-year wedding anniversary.
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(As we greet a blackberry bramble enveloped in fog and mislabeled by California State Parks as our campsite)
Me: Honey! It’s where I always dreamed we’d awake on our ten-year anniversary!
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Chicken Noodle: I am afraid all of these trees are going to fall on my head.
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Chicken Little: I don’t want to hike. Carry me.
Chicken Noodle: You start hiking down the trail this instant or I’ll put you in time out!
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Captain Daddy: Do you think this fog is a metaphor for our marriage?
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Chicken Noodle: I am afraid a bear is going to eat us up.
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(I come around from the backside of the truck to find Captain Daddy violently shaking a water jug over open flames burning in green grass five feet from the fire pit but two feet from the tent. His face is the color of chalk.)
Me: What did I miss?
Chicken Noodle: Daddy started us a fire.
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Me: So, what do you think of your vacation so far?
Captain Daddy: I think it’s a good thing I didn’t have any expectations.
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Chicken Noodle: I am afraid the ocean is going to drown us.
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Me: So, the way I see it, we could pack up, hug one more big tree, and blow this joint.
Captain Daddy: Oh, baby, you turn me on with your words.
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(At one more big tree)
Chicken Noodle: I am not getting out of this car until we get to a motel!
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(In the pool of a motel on the freeway in Grants Pass)
Chicken Little: This is my very favorite part of our whole trip!
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(Back at home)
Me: Next time I guess we’ll just skip the whole national park thing and go straight to a Best Western on I-5.

For a similar story, see My Hawaiian Vacation in Quotes

Shades of Blue

A piece I wrote about Summer Lake is on the Travel Oregon blog.

Click here to see more of my Travel Oregon posts...

If You Live Through It, Turn It Into a Story

Back by popular demand and repeated request…published in High Desert Journal last year…the story of our ill-fated rafting trip down Hell’s Canyon...my essay Passing Through the Green Room…alternately titled, The Time My Husband Tried to Kill Me.



(well, he didn’t mean to, and it did turn out to be a good story, after all)


Click here or see http://www.kimcooperfindling.com/, “Chef’s Special”

My Hawaiian Vacation, In Quotes

Captain Daddy, on the plane over as Chicken Little climbs him like King Kong on the Empire State Building, roaring and kicking: “Kill me now.”
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Captain Daddy, night one, 2 a.m.: “Are you going to take her to the ER or am I?”

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R (age 6) to Chicken Noodle (age 4), day two: “Don't talk to me. Ever again.”

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Captain Daddy, day two: "Where is Little's blankie?"

Me: "With Noodle's sweater. On the plane."

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My sister, day three: “I had a dream that a nice normal family wanted to adopt me.”

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Chicken Little, night four, 3 a.m.: “I kattack you big fat mommy!”

Me: “Middle-of-the-night time is for sleeping, baby. No kattacking.”

Chicken Little: “Kattack kattack!” (thump)

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Me, day five: “Family vacations are about tradeoffs. You get this (gesturing to vast stunning tropical landscape). But you have to give up sanity.”
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My mother, day six: “I used to think happiness was everyone I love in the same room. I’ve changed my mind.”
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Me, day seven: “Sometimes you’re the pickaxe, sometimes you’re the coconut.”
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Me, at the airport after our return: “I am not sure I am ever going to do this again.”
My sister: “Nope. See you on Facebook.”

Happy Blogoversary To Me

Today is the one-year anniversary of this blog! Bust out the champagne!

Oh. It's 6 am. Well. Coffee will do. Slip a little something in it, if you must.

Here’s a Blooming Year One redux.

First post: Popcorn

Blog Inspiration: Late Bloomers

Hero's Challenge, Act I: Consult

Foreshadowing: Free the French Fries

Plot Twist: Plot Twist

Hero's Challenge, Act II: A Bloodcurdling Halloween Horror Story

Audience favorites:

The Lost Weekend

We’re Going to Potty Like It’s 2009

The Farm Share Blues

Torn Between Two Lovers

The Perspective Express

Roots and Flowers

Post That Best Describes My Glamorous Life: Baby You’re a Star

Post I Should Reread When I Get Bat-Shit Crazy: Onward Intrepid Writer

Blog words written: 31, 400

Visitors: 2533

Personal Take-Home: It’s been one heck of a year

Hero's Challenges, Act III: to come

With that, I’m out for ten days. Santa delivered (Santa Brings The Heat)—I board a plane for Hawaii tomorrow.

PS We’re dropping Chester off on the way. I'll take pictures.

PPS It might be time to change my bio blurb to the left. Book burning? What book burning?






Aloha!

Seasonal Interference

We interrupt our regularly scheduled musings on motherhood, writing and rejection for a taste of summer living. We regret to inform you that this might be a common occurance until mid-September. Please bear with us and enjoy our dabblings into a new artistic format--the photo essay.

Summertime Writer's Fatigue

A picture is worth a 1000 words (left unwritten).

Big Plans For Nothing

Nothing like vacation to remind what matters, give perspective, recharge batteries just enough to make you think you should start getting up at 3 a.m. to a) write a book b) play the guitar c) meditate.

Not really. I’ve always been a firm believer that 3 a.m. is for sleeping. Chicken Little woke up at 4:45 this morning and that’s plenty early for me, thank you very much.

But I would like to do all of those things this summer, and each would have to be crammed in during some 3 a.m. equivalent: stolen from some other thing I am already doing—if not sleep, then work, kids, house, marriage, yoga.

But I don’t really want to cram in more. More is not the answer (see Judith Warner’s brilliant recent column). Especially not during the summer, the one time of the year when the single activity that should not be neglected is lying under a tree in a sleepy heap.

What I would like to do is fewer of the things that don’t serve me and more of the things that do. The problem is that when it comes down to my fleeting free moments, my mind decides that I should be doing something more productive than meditating or playing the guitar.

I need to remember that those activities make me happy, calm, whole and ready to do all of the other, more “productive” things. And are therefore worthwhile.

So that’s my summer goal--more of whatever the hell I want, less of that other stuff that manages to make itself so important when it really isn't. Anyone else want to play along?

Long Weekend Deep Thoughts

One of the nicest thing about having kids in your life is that, as a grownup, there just aren't that many people who say to you, "Oooo, I like your panties."

Thanks, Fred

The good news: I did not make a total arse of myself during my first-ever surfing lesson.

The bad news: It was nonetheless clear that I will not be mastering that sport in this lifetime.

Aside from forcing my ridiculously nervous self down to Waikiki and forking out $40 to fling myself into the ocean with only a really huge board tied to my ankle to save me, I managed to read the entirety of Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outliers” on vacation. He has many fascinating things to say about success, mostly converging on the themes of luck and hard work.

The good news and the bad news: Luck I can’t do much about. Hard work is entirely up to me.

Gladwell describes the 10,000 hour rule, which declares that mastery of anything can be achieved with the investment of 10,000 hours of good old-fashioned hard work. This implies that, were I to move nearer the ocean and continue to wade into it daily for the next decade or two, I could potentially still become a pretty decent surfer.

However, as I hauled the board up onto the sand three days ago, arms shaking from the effort of one hour’s worth of learning something altogether new, it occurred to me that I am already well on my way to those 10,000 spent writing, and perhaps it is just common sense to apply myself where I have a solid head start.

The very best part? I had expected some local surfer dude as my instructor: young, muscled, long-haired and full of himself. Instead I got Fred: local, all right—as well as scrawny, balding and 68 years old. I LOVED Fred. Fred was patient. Fred called me sweetheart. Fred had me riding waves within 25 minutes.

Fred has been surfing for 60 years. He is the embodiment of the 10,000 hour rule. As a surfer, he is beyond competent, delighted to be out there, and happy to share his knowledge.

My new goal: when I am 68, to be the Fred of writing.

Mama Goes Hawaiian

Brief status update from Hawaii, where our protagonist has traveled to her mother's house with her eldest child for a bit of R&R.

Interest in creating pithy, fabulously interesting blog post: very low

Interest in staring stupidly into the tropical middle distance: very high

Favorite part of this vacation so far: phoning home and finding that the chickens are most interested in talking only to each other. They report on their experiences, whilst apart.

"Hi Boo Boo!" trills Chicken Noodle. "I love you! I had shave ice. Grandma bought me a fairy. Mommy fell off the surfboard. I miss you Boo Boo!"

"Hi. Sis." says Chicken Little in her adorable halting 23-month-old way. "Hot. Tub. Ducky. Slide. Home."

Tomorrow: The chills! The spills! The humiliation! My first ever surfing lesson.