Sentimental Journey

Al Gore should be proud. It appears I tried to recycle so much that I threw my camera cord in there by accident. Dammit Al! Now those small Chinese children need to make me another!

I guess I'll have to go into the vault for a couple photos...perhaps from our recent vacation?

Lakes? Relatives? Long lost school mates?

Nah. Here's one I took while waiting at a red light in Flint. It made me laugh.



















It wasn't until a few days later that I realized these kinds of ads were everywhere. Divorce and bad credit. One sign advertised a website called "poopycredit.com". No, I didn't link to it. I didn't even go to it.

I can just imagine hearing a spouse say "Well, our home mortgage tripled due to that bad loan so I think I'm going to visit poopycredit.com because that is definitely a reputable company in which to start our financial life over again."

And then the other person in the marriage visits dumpmyspouse.com.

Next up? What were the architects at the Detroit airport smoking when they created the weird tunnel between terminals? The walls change colors while freaky music plays in the background. It was like being birthed by Janis Joplin.




















I have to track down a photo from high school of my two friends that I met up with. We took a photo in the same place while we were there (twenty three years later) and I want to do a side by side comparison because I'm like that...you know, a masochist.

Back To Reality

Welcome to Willie Wonka Airlines.

In the event of a loss of cabin pressure, a bag of cotton candy will descend from the ceiling. Place it on your face and inhale.


























While doing nothing for the loss of cabin pressure, it will allow you to dream of unicorns, rainbows, and fairy princesses before kissing your sweet ass good bye.

If you feel that you are not receiving the proper customer service on our airlines, please dial 1-800-Fly-Delta to register your complaint.

























No, this isn't our phone number...do you really think we'd be dumb enough to give you that? You are free to use our in flight banana phones. They come equipped with multi-lines and plenty of potassium.

We are back in Duluth. The proverbial eagle has landed.

















These handsome gentleman met me at the airport, along with their dog watching goddess who is counting on that jumbo martini, jumbo margarita, and twenty seven six packs I promised her.

Remember this sweater?

Yeah, a certain thing happened while we were gone. The cats seemed to run out of food and water and apparently decided to take it out on my knitting. Ever see a half eaten sweater? Chewed up knitting needles? A destroyed skein of sock yarn? Well, I could have taken a photo of it all but that would have been evidence that I had to look at in the future. I decided to clean up the mess, feed the cats, and pretend that it never happened.

Then one of the cats took a poop in the hallway AFTER we got home.

ALRIGHT ALREADY! Four bowls of food and three bowls of water were not enough!

Why couldn't you be like your cousin Missy in Michigan? All sorta stuffed and acting like a doorstop...I saw no poopage going on with her!

















All I know is that I will pretend that it never happened. I will not be forced to call and ask to borrow my brother's cool toys.

















So long as it doesn't happen again that is.

Weird Things

It's amazing how much trees grow in fifteen or so years.

Driving down the road that I grew up on, I'm stupidly confounded by how tall the trees have grown.

And the house that I grew up in? Apparently it went into foreclosure earlier this year and it's now abandoned and in dire disrepair. Now that's a smack in the face.

No matter what happened when we were growing up, the house was always tidy and the lawn was always mowed. It was never spectacular but it was clean and cared for.

Now, it even makes my house in Duluth look classy. That's just sad.

Another weird thing? Reading the local paper and seeing a picture of all the teachers that recently retired. Not only do I know many of them, one of them was a student teacher when I was in high school.

The other ones look like escapees from a retirement home.

I also went into a local haunt for breakfast and I found myself carefully studying all the old faces to see if I recognized any one's parents. Then I started looking to see if any of the teenagers looked like people I might know. (I recently saw a photo of an old friend who apparently had his son cloned because he looked IDENTICAL to his father. Quite creepy.) All the folks my age were at work or at home or passed out drunk in a ditch.

There are now a ton of new businesses on the outskirts of town, all chains, all businesses that make this town just as generic as any other faceless place across the country.

Wal-Mart is booming and downtown is dying.

I feel like the only one who cares. Thankfully, I only need to care for a few more days...

I needed to come back here. For some strange reason, I needed to see where I came from before I started my new life. I guess I needed to make sure that I didn't want to come back here permanently.

I'm feeling more resolute about my decisions now. I don't know where I'm going but I know where I'm not going.

I guess that's a start...

The Pinkening

Waking up at the ass crack of dawn is inconvenient when you have to wait for the light to start your day.

We are safely ensconced in my old home town and faced with the dawning realization that there isn't a lot to do in my old home town. Hmmmmm. Some things never change.

That is why we need to get creative.

Hmmm.

Thinking....still thinking....

Of course I forgot to bring my camera cord so I will have to wait to download photos until I get back but we did go to the wool mill where I sent some fleece to have it processed a few years ago.

Yes, I am a wool mill groupie.

NERD!!!!

The selection was really poor but I did get some souvenir yarn.

NERD!!!!

What's even more mysterious is that I find myself drawn to pink yarn lately. There is pink in the sweater that I'm knitting (now placed on hold due to heat), I am knitting pink socks, and now I have purchased more pink yarn and pink Wenslydale locks for thrummed mittens.

I find it highly suspicious. It's like I'm acting like a girl or something.

It wasn't until I had a hysterectomy that I started liking the color orange. I have determined that orange is the color of hot flashes.

So what does this new found fascination with pink mean?

I think it means that my brain has finally malfunctioned and will be oozing like oatmeal out of my ears at any second.

Mmmmm. Oatmeal....time for breakfast!

A Note From The P.A

"The Family Harkness is currently on vacation. Please leave your name and number and we will get back with you on August 31. Have a nice day."

P.S She's paying me in cookies and milk. I have GOT to get a better gig than this!

My One And Only True Love

I'm getting a little excited to be going back to Michigan for vacation tomorrow morning.

Yes, there will be friends. Yes there will be family. There will also be Halo Burgers. (Dude, where in god's name did they get the music for their website??? Why does a website for a burger chain need music that has a slightly sleezy loop to it???)

If I learned nothing else from my childhood, I learned that green olives have a very prominent place on my hamburger.

So sayeth the Halo Burger.

I am not a consumer of fast food but I have stopped dead in my tracks over the last few days and people have actually commented on the visible thought bubble that appears over my head. It's got Halo Burger fries in it. And burgers with green olives.

I can taste the salt from the fries.

I dreamed last night a dream of being about ten years old and being at Halo Burgers and I never remember my dreams.

Some people want to go back to their hometown and visit their old school or their old make out place.

I want meat.

And fries.

and lots of green olives.

Oh, and there was that ice cream place just down the road...

Existentialism In Aisle 3

Ms. H's first day of school went well.

No loss of life or limb. No eyes were poked out by pointy sticks. And really, when you forget your lunch once, you have a tendency to remember it for awhile after that.

And frankly, no one will miss that scrawny freshman that was sacrificed to satiate your hunger. However, if you meet a chick named Buffy, I suggest you play it reeeeeeal cool. She wouldn't understand.

Next up? Leaving for our vacation on Saturday.

I am trying a little trick that my sister has started. Not sweating the small stuff. Actively working to be more "seat of the pants" instead of "I have 5000 lists and I am now on number 3.5."

Yeah, about that? I think I need to find a happy medium. Realizing two days before leaving last weekend that I didn't have a plan for the dogs wasn't a good thing. Realizing a couple days ago that there is no luggage in our house because everyone that no longer lives here has taken it, is not a good thing.

Having the boy carry a tiny floral suitcase from the 70's through the airport? Really not a good thing.

Thankfully, I have classy friends with luggage. (Not to piss off my friends just like me that would be tempted to check in two industrial sized contractor garbage bags full of clothes at the airport but lets face it, we have issues.) I know that she will be pleased that her luggage is going on vacation without her. Perhaps I will send a postcard, dictated from her luggage: "I have arrived in Flint, MI. Note to self, Michael Moore was right."

We're trying to get through these next few days without really buying a bunch of food before we leave which seems to necessitate me running to the store each day and getting the one spice or the one onion that I need that night because it would be STUPID to write a list and figure it out ahead of time!

This brings me around to standing in line at Mt Royal Fine Foods last night. I had a few things and it was not busy and there were other clerks that were just standing around waiting for customers.

So as I step down to the end of the belt and wait for my groceries to be bagged, the next customer in line walks down to where I'm standing and literally gets in the exact same space I am in. Not just invades my space mind you, she stands on my left foot and has her right side plastered to my left side.

I turned to look at her with my best WTF??? look and she is concentrating on her coupons and her groceries and I DO NOT EXIST.

It was the most surreal experience I've ever had in a grocery store (and there are many, we should talk sometime...). I think I reached my hand up to touch my face for a little confirmation that I was still a solid entity. Perhaps I had a major heart attack in the produce section and I was laying dead next to the watermelon bin only my spirit didn't realize it and proceeded to complete my shopping before heading off to that bright light in the sky.

But no, I still existed. She didn't even acknowledge when I pulled my foot out from beneath hers and the clerk gave her a WTF??? look.

I buy groceries, therefore I am.

I think...

My Soul Will Take A Big Mac And Fries

I've had three people in the last week ask me, after finding out what my kids are doing to wash all this crap outta their heads, what I am doing for myself.

We are going to Convergence this weekend, but I wouldn't really do that unless my kids wanted to. It will be a long tiring weekend and I'm sure I'll show up to work on Monday tired and exhausted and cranky so, not really sure it counts as something I'm doing for myself.

Since I'm already using my vacation time this summer for a trip back to Michigan, I'm looking forward to banking my vacation time for awhile and perhaps looking into getting a scholarship for an Outward Bound adventure next summer. I would love to move back to Maine someday and I spent enough time sailing off the coast of Maine to know that it's something that feeds my soul.

But for right now, especially after his lawyer cancelled the divorce hearing yesterday, I apparently have miles to go before I sleep.

Thomas Wolfe Was Right-Heavy Books Are Great Paper Weights

The Harkness Family will be taking a vacation this summer.

I got the time off yesterday and the last week of August will be us, piling in the car and driving back to my family in Michigan.

We haven't been back there for about twelve years.

And since I can't afford to board the dogs, we'll probably be taking them with us.

(They are currently running cyclonic circles around the living room until they are both so dizzy that they fall down).

Nothing like a grand entrance.

I sincerely don't want to take them because my sister has cats and I just don't want to be the cause of any consternation but unless someone has a better idea (all suggestions welcome but the ASPCA had better approve), I think we will have to suck it up.

I'll get to meet up with a couple of good friends from high school/college and I'll get to bore my progeny to tears with stories. (No, honest, the ONLY thing I ever did behind the ice cream store was to eat ice cream. That's why I was gone for three hours mom. And I don't know WHY my shirt is on backwards and inside out.)

But what I'm looking forward to the most is sitting up late with my sister and just shooting the breeze. Nothing fancy, nothing special.

I just feel so completely broken right now. Utterly shattered. I can put on a bullshit facade to get through the day but every time I move, I can hear the broken pieces rattling around inside of me. Lately, I've had to convince myself on a daily basis that it is worth starting over. That the modicum of energy I have at the end of the day should be spent looking toward the future.

But I've forgotten where all the pieces go. I've forgotten who I used to be and whether I want to save any of that for the future.

So, I'm going home. Just for a few days. Just to ask my family and friends the ultimate question.

Who am I?

I guess

Let's Start Thinking About That Harkness Family Vacation

Let's play a little escapist game.
Last summer, as I got into hiking, I thought it would be really neat to do a hiking weekend or week as a family vacation. I actually asked my son if he would be interested in doing this and he said he would. My daughter might be working at a summer camp this summer so she probably wouldn't be in on this. Just me and my son.

I can't imagine that he is going to be into building up a lot of stamina to do a huge hike but I'm thinking it would be fun to hike on the Superior Hiking Trail for ten miles or so, come to a lodge, sleep the night, and continue on another ten miles or so where we can pick up our car. I know that there are actual taxi services that will take people from their car to various spots on the trail so we would probably try to do that. There is even mention of it on the Superior Hiking Trail site.

Now, I have a couple books on the Lake Superior Hiking Trail but does anyone out there have any stories of their favorite hikes and where we might spend the night? I wouldn't mind camping but that might be a bit much for my son. I'd like to strike a nice balance between what I'd like and what he would like.

Thoughts?