Friday, February 23, 2018

Tripping

Larry and I actually managed to see a movie together Sunday. I know! It's almost as if we were mature adults with control over our own schedules, right? We saw The Post, a paean to old-fashioned newspaper reporting and publishing if I ever saw one. I swear, the lengthy close-ups of type-setting and printing presses bordered on journalism porn.

I loved it.

This is the current tableau on my dining room table.
I'm calling it "Christmas Meets Spring."

And then Monday was a day off, and darned if I have the faintest idea what I did that day. Ditto for Tuesday. But Wednesday, a friend and I decided we were still young and energetic enough to drive 3 hours with our girls to visit an historical site we'd been meaning to take them to for a year or so now. And then 3 hours back, because we decided it was a great idea for a day trip.

That's 6 hours of driving, people - I did the math. But hey, it's worth it to get the girls to learn about our nation's history, all while having fun, right?

Wait, I just asked Susie what she liked - was it seeing an actual cannonball embedded in the side of a house? The authentic archaeological diggings? The entertaining docents? She said, "The potato chips and the ice cream," so maybe it wasn't worth it, after all. I don't know. What I do know is that I'll have to file this experience under the I'm not as young as I used to be category. I've spent the last 2 days recuperating from what should have been a simple homeschooling field trip.

I mean, Larry and I are no slouches at this sort of thing - I can't even count the number of times we've been to historical reenactment villages and farms and ships and what not. Sturbridge Village, Williamsburg, Plimoth Plantation - you name it, we've done a day trip there. For years, no vacation was complete without driving to see people dressed in clothes from different time periods, operating colonial-era printing presses and spinning fiber. If we HAD ever gone to DisneyWorld, the kids probably would have been confused that Goofy wasn't showing them how to hammer out a horseshoe or that Minnie wasn't sitting at a loom, weaving tablecloths.

Normal vacation activity for our family, unfortunately

Yeah, we were that sort of homeschooling family. Yet the years apparently have taken a toll on me, which has me questioning my half-baked plan to drag at least a few of the kids to some national parks out west this summer. Do I have the stamina anymore? Can I manage the driving and the hiking and the visits to re-created gold-mining towns? Most importantly, will there be potato chips and ice cream?

All this remains to be seen. Odds are, none of it will happen, due to my not having made hotel reservations, oh, gazillion months ago. Who knew? And the girls have categorically refused to go camping this summer. Larry looked surprised at this news. "They don't want to?" he asked, with the same level of surprise one would display upon hearing that his children were not actually his own. "But it's so much fun!"

Which makes me think Larry has early-stage dementia, because he apparently doesn't remember back a mere 6 months ago when one teen (who shall go unnamed) did her very best to render our annual camping sojourn in Maine a living hell. Or he just likes to torture all of us - that's a possibility, too...


[Colonial dancers image: Old Sturbridge Village]


12 comments:

  1. This whole post had me laughing! Been there! We only went to Disneyland because we were in CA for 6 months and the company gave us free passes to go. Leave it to my children to actually prefer the more original, Knott's Berry Farm. And camping! Well, look at it this way, maybe without all the kids in the car on the way to Maine, you can actually stop in MA or NH! We could go to the White Mountains! Larry would probably love it.

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    1. Well, we won't be doing the camping thing - we'll take a year off. Your plan sounds excellent, but we don't think leaving all three teens home alone to be a smart idea. Hopefully, by next year, someone will want to go with us again. But once the kids are all grown and flown, I plan for Larry to take 2 months off and we'll do that thing where you can drive around the country and see all the national parks. Someone on Facebook worked out a route for that.

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  2. Oh my word - I needed this laugh today! I hear ya with the driving. Because I have apparently lost my mind, I just got back from a trip to Tennessee. That's 12 hours of driving (each way). Single mom + two boys + autism meltdowns + toothache all in one tiny car for 12 hours straight. And then back again. Friends, that was good times right there. Good times. Thank goodness for funny knitting books.

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  3. I realized I was old when my friend tried to talk me into a ballet class that was 20 minutes away, and I decided it was "too far". Yep officially old.

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  4. I wasn't home schooled, but almost every vacation we ever took had some kind of educational focus. My dad made us write out what we saw in our journals when we got back to the hotel. So relaxing. We did manage to squeeze in a few visits to the Magic Kingdom though.

    What parks are you considering? Yellowstone is our favorite. I have tentative plans to go this summer, but the only hotel reservations in the park I could get when I called in July '17 were for 'Rough Riders'. Bathrooms are a small walk from the room. My dad is supposed to go with me. Not sure I will survive the trip or he will survive the walk to the bathrooms in the dark of night.

    Finally, I am concerned that Larry has dementia, because our kids (the younger ones anyway) are still interested in camping. Coach and I hate it. Larry must be confused. When Coach walked out of the bathroom with Reggie by the wrist when we camped at the Grand Canyon and called to me, 'Guess who dropped his toothbrush under the urinal?' I was done.

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  5. We have camping reservations for Aug. 5-7 at Glacier National Park, you could meet us there! Of course, we'll likely not have any kids with us and dh has not yet reserved a trailer for our trip (because he doesn't yet want to purchase one), so there's that. For some reason he can't figure out why he'd need to reserve a trailer yet.
    Please tell me I've shared the picture of us dressed up in Mormon pioneer garb from a recent spring break trek to the southwest (if not, I owe you a picture).

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  6. PS: There's NOTHING wrong with your table tableau. I find it to be very seasonal, although I have no idea where one gets forsythia branches in bloom right now.

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    1. Forced blooms - you cut off a bunch of branches, bring them inside, and stick them in water. It took about 4 days to get the blooms.

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    2. I learn something new every day!

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  7. I want to go camping with no kids. maybe without my husband. Just my friends would be good haha

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  8. A day trip maybe you've already done: Sugarloaf Mountain in Maryland. Has the tiniest stone fort at the top and a Civil War cannon: it was the lookout post in case the South breeched the defenses at Gettysburg to march on Washington. Beautiful place for a hike and a picnic.

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  9. Do it. And I love your yellow blooms on the table. So cheerful!

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