Home Is Wherever I'm With Me

When it became clear that we were going to have nowhere to live for the month of July, the obvious choice was to take a vacation. Mr. V had been offered the use of his mother's camper to stay in, but what is left the daughters? Nothing but the darning, as usual.

When it became clear I was going to take a vacation, the natural thing to do was to name it Rainbow Tour. I planned to drive through Idaho all the way up to Portland to visit my sister-in-law, Mercy, who lives there in typical Portland fashion with her musician husband, both of them working at an organic bakery to make ends meet, maintain street cred, and eat croissants. The dream of the 90's, y'all. After a week there, I was going to travel south down the coast to visit Blood Sister A in Sacramento, where she works at the Capitol building for the Speaker of the Something and the Representative of the Other-what, dealing with a lot of you-know-what-shit while trying to improve people's lives. She watches C-Span all day and cares about it, it's hard to believe we're related. (What do you mean, "we're not"?)

Immediately I did what any self-respecting artist does to prepare for a tour--I started soliciting donations and letting my leg hair grow out. I began the process of choosing a tour t-shirt, and selected Rainbow Tour's official album. (It's magnificent). Excitement grew as I planned trips to the zoo, and Mt. Hood National Forest, and A's friend's houseboat in the Bay area (see how I talk just like a local, now?). Meanwhile Mr. V sent encouraging texts about how much he loves my spontaneous side, things like "This is awesome, I get to work all day and live in a trailer down by the river while you take off on a magical bus tour"*. It's a sacrifice, I know, but I'm willing to take vacations whenever necessary and it's what he admires most about me.

(Mr. V keeps saying we need to become less impulsive, and I agree, only it might be working very well but backwards because I just left to take my husband to pick up a trailer and returned with an antique victrola and a pair of antlers.)

In this frenzy of preparation, Blood Sister A wisely pointed out that the more excited I got about Rainbow Tour, the more likely we were to find a place to live.

And that's what happened.

Yay?

I'm just kidding. I knew this was a win-win situation all along. Either I take Rainbow Tour, or I get a home to live in, and we found a cute rental. It has hard wood floors, which is good, because I have sworn a blood oath against carpet and am honor bound to burn any the moment I lay eyes on it. I got to pick the bedroom paint colors, and it has a massive hulking lawn that I'm going to get to mow all by my lonesome, because guess what? The girls and I are moving out on July 12th, and Mr. V cannot join us until October. I told him I hoped he was feeling nice and sorry for me now, and that's when he said we could hire people to mow the  football field-sized lawn for me.

So you see, he's not heartless after all.

Right now Mr. V is out working in the hot sun--it's supposed to hit 102 degrees here today--moving things into storage, so I'd better get off my whimsical rainbow blog, which smells like tulips and rain and tastes like Bordeaux (or will, once technology catches up) and pack a couple boxes for the girls to add to their throne.

xoxo
-V


*actual text from Mr. V. You might have to be him or me to understand how jokingly he meant this and how hard we laughed over it. Or you might just have to be a sociopathic narcissist like I am.

Reality Is

Good morning sunshine.

Today is Ayla's birthday party and I am stressed to the nines. Hosting any kind of party is torture for me. Hell for this blogger would be a cultureless suburb in which I am forced to spend all my time planning and throwing parties.

So that's where we're at today and did I mention that I've got a spot of a cold?

We got back Tuesday from a trip to Santa Fe and Taos and I really didn't want to come back. As if wanting to move to New Mexico weren't enough, I also want things like "to wake up in a hotel room every day" and "to eat out for every meal".

I know. Who doesn't, right? Who doesn't want to live on vacation? Some people actually do up and move to their favorite vacation spots. They find that life and work are waiting for them all the same, in Palm Desert or Boca Raton or even in Bali, I suppose.

But would you really complain about going to work? If you were waking up in Bali?

These are the questions I've pondered all week. These and whether or not Kate Middleton is actually pregnant with twins. Did she actually have a brawl with the Queen? Were they both on roller blades when it happened? Were obscenities shouted at Camilla over a dinner of caviar and bone marrow? As usual when it comes to Kate, I am confused as to what is real.

But Kate is real, right? Kate and Dean Winchester?

:::

Like an alcoholic, I have a confession to make. Well, I suppose it's more of a boast to make other addicts feel weak and hopeless and drive them back to the substance that got them here:

I went to a book fair yesterday and walked away without yelling at anybody. If I had a sponsor, she'd be all wise, benevolent, and proud.

Those of you who know me best (we're talking my sister and my husband here) know that I am not, in general, an angry person and I am definitely not the sort of person who makes public scenes.

Unless some kind of book fair is involved.

I am baffled by my proclivities as much as you are. (I think). I started out small--a library book sale in which I was told that I could not bring my stroller into the tent and left in a massive huff. In one of my classier moments, I went home to call librarians "a bunch of red beret wearing fascists" on facebook and was only kind of joking.

Then I lost a library dvd, was charged $40 dollars for an item that costs under ten on amazon, and wrote such an emotionally appealing letter to the director of the library that I never have to pay fines at that library again. Ever.

FOR LIFE.

Next came the episode which I will not repeat but let me just say it may or may not have involved roller derby, the f-bomb, and caviar.

Also Kate and the paparazzi may have been there but I am a lady and am not going to say.

(They were totally there).

But yesterday, I walked into the AAUW book fair and found the aisles so crowded with people crawling on the floor to get at the understock, towing boxes and bags and bins behind them, that they were completely unmaneuverable. But somehow I managed to select an old paperback edition of "To The Lighthouse", a retrograde fantasy by an author I've never heard of that had praising blurbs by Tolkein and Lewis on the back, a PowerPuff girls 8 x 8 for my girls to fight over, and made it out of there without cussing at anyone.

I didn't even huff.

Ok maybe I huffed in my spirit but it was completely inaudible.

By inaudible I mean that I disguised my huff as a sneeze.

But you will notice that not once have I referred to anyone as a fascist or a communist or a wearer of red berets, so you see?

Progress.

Insufferably yours,
V

Help Me Help Me

So I'm reading this new book by Martha Beck.

It's a self help book really, and I just want to say to all the people in my life: I'm sorry.

I read self-help or spiritual books from time to time, and whenever I do I get all super annoying. Seriously I'm unbearable. I mean, I feel really good inside so I just keep doing it, devouring Martha Beck and Sue Monk Kidd and Pema Chodron and once I even read The Secret. But then I start saying things to Noah like, "Do whatever makes you feel most liberated!". Or I tell my family, you know, the fact that you have that giant oozing growth on your foot isn't really the problem. The problem is that you THINK it's a problem.

You see?

The book isn't about housekeeping really, at all. I mean not even I am lame enough to read books about combining your true self with your lemon Pledge. But towards the end Martha Beck says that you should mentally walk through your living space and note any area of it that you don't like, that makes you uncomfortable.

So I'm like, ha! That's my ENTIRE HOUSE. Gotcha. What now, Martha Beck?

Eat that.

But she was prepared (damn you Martha Beck, you sly lynx). She knew I would say that so she told me to think about the place that makes me feel the most icky. And I thought: the bedroom.

If you are hearing flashing red sirens now, well, so was I.

If there is one thing you need your bedroom to feel after 8 years of marriage, I don't know what that is but I'm sure it isn't 'icky'.

So then Martha Beck told me to visualize getting a million dollar check in the mail that I could use to redecorate--

Just kidding mom.

She said to put one thing I love in my bedroom and take out one thing I hate. So I'm working on that.

Now all I need to do is figure out 1)How to get Nathan Fillion into my bedroom and 2) does anyone know how to wash brain matter out of sateen sheets? What is a spin cycle? I don't get it.

Just kidding.

No seriously though. Do you?

I am Vesuvius and one day I will have the better of that insufferable Martha Beck.

Just kidding, Martha Beck.

(no, seriously.)