I Need Six Months Of Vacation Twice A Year

“I want to live in a world where searching for plane tickets burns calories.” ~Unknown

I have spent most of my day researching travel. We have a week picked out when we can skip town (or the country, as luck might have it) to celebrate Luke’s graduation from high school. We have a decent-sized budget for this trip and had originally considered going to Italy. We had two trips we were trying to decide between, one to the Amalfi Coast and one to the Cinque Terre and Tuscany. I spent a lot of time vacillating between those two before I found one in the French and Italian Alps that piqued our interest momentarily. We had a couple family FaceTime sessions, trying to get everyone’s input and buy in. For some reason, I still wasn’t able to pull the trigger. So I took a break for a few days. Then I tossed it all out the window and started looking at trips to Costa Rica or Belize. Then I thought maybe we could take the boys to Machu Picchu. After that, I landed on Iceland and was busy researching that before I came to my senses and decided I didn’t want to go anywhere I might need cold weather gear. And all the back and forth and hemming and hawing landed me squarely in analysis paralysis.

Then tonight, for giggles and also apparently because I was trying to avoid writing this post, I started searching Mediterranean cruises because I am certifiable. And there, on the Celebrity Cruises page, on the exact date on which we hoped to start our vacation, was a cruise leaving Rome and visiting Santorini, Rhodes, Mykonos, and Naples before landing back in Rome. Hold up. Hold up. Hold up. This was hitting all the boxes we’d previously discussed. Italy? Check. Pompeii. Check. Boat. Check. Swimming opportunities? Check. All-inclusive. Check. Within the budget? It appears to be. I floated the idea by Luke. He was thrilled. I asked Joe, and he said he was down. Steve too said it sounded like a good balance of relaxing and eventful. Is it possible that all four of us agreed on something? Might my relentless search finally be relenting? I crossed my fingers and took a deep breath.

There were all sorts of things I should have done today rather than sitting at the kitchen island obsessing over air fare and trip insurance. But not one of them would have been more interesting or a better escape from the news. And, in the end, if it gets us out of the country for the first time since 2019 and we get to go on an adventure, it won’t have been a wasted day at all.

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Shit Is About To Get Real — Can We Handle It?

This kid literally cannot

To protect my mental health these days, I keep most of my news consumption to online articles because when I watch television news and see the strength and resolve of the Ukrainian people as they undertake what may well be an in-vain attempt to salvage their nation, I often have to leave the room to cry. I just can’t. It’s too much. Coming off two years of a global health crisis that kept us indoors and away from the greater community that binds us, my coping strategies have reached their limit like an old, elastic band that has been sitting in a drawer for ages and now will break when stretched. Just when the light at the end of the tunnel came into view, an aging white autocrat in Russia decided to push his limits.

I saw a video today of a four year old who approached his waiting school bus, got within fifteen feet of its steps, bent over to put his mask on, and then fell backwards with dramatic flourish onto the concrete, as if the prospect of the school week was more than he was capable of handling at that moment. We are all that kid right now as we wonder how much more insanity, unrest, upheaval, heartbreak, hardship, and stress we can take both at home and around the world.

For almost 77 years, the world has known peace in Europe. That peace has existed my entire life and all but three years of my parents’ lives. While my parents had a solid concept of the horrors of war through their parents, I had only what I saw in films. Aside from the 1980s era nuclear holocaust fears I had courtesy of our Cold War with the Soviets and “The Day After” television movie that haunts me 38 years later, I have felt mostly safe in our geographically isolated American bubble. That ended the other day when Putin’s army invaded a sovereign Ukraine, and then shit got real when he dangled the threat of a nuclear attack.

In an opinion piece on the CNN site this morning, six global voices weighed in on Putin’s invasion. Marci Shore, an associate professor of modern European intellectual history at Yale, had this to say about Putin: “This no longer felt like a man playing a high-stakes chess game, now it felt like a scene from Macbeth. My intuition was that an aging man facing his own death had decided to destroy the world. Ukraine is very possibly fighting for all of us.” This does indeed feel like the situation. While texting with my geopolitically savvy son last night, we discussed what can be done about the war as Putin begins to feel the squeeze of the joined hands of the free world around his neck. Joe told me, “The goal of the west should be to sanction as much as possible and create a counter propaganda machine to turn the oligarchs and Russian people against Putin.” And while I realize he is 100% correct, it means this war in Europe does not stay in Europe. We are a global economy. People around the planet will feel the sting of Putin’s actions in higher fuel costs, and those higher fuel costs will trickle into the costs of goods manufactured and sold around the world. The sanctions imposed on Russia will touch us all one way or another.

These financial hardships will be our contribution to squashing tyranny and, hopefully, restoring stability to Europe. Are we up to this task? I’m not sure. For the past two years, we’ve witnessed a steady cavalcade of tantrums over wearing a mask. If we weren’t all on board with covering our noses and mouths to suppress a transmissible, deadly virus, how willing will we be to suffer financial hardships for the sake of protecting democracy on a continent across the Atlantic? Are we smart enough to recognize that our peace and freedom are tied to the peace and freedom of citizens on the European continent? Will we be able to channel the ghosts of our American predecessors and adopt the WWII war-effort mindset of “Use it up – Wear it out – Make it do – or Do without”? Will we withstand financial hardship inside our own households and country, however long it takes, to protect the freedom and peace we have taken as a given for three quarters of a century? Man, I hope so. I would like to think we still have better days ahead.

We are a global people now. We need to act in the best interests of others to maintain our own best interests. As long as the majority of us in free nations are able to comprehend and live with that fact, we might be able to vanquish Putin, return Europe to peaceful homeostasis, and avoid nuclear fallout. The question remains, though, do we have it in us to continue living in an uncomfortable and perhaps increasingly painful holding pattern until better days arrive or are we just too soft now?

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Prisoners of Geography

We are all prisoners of geography — literally

I don’t normally offer book reviews or suggestions. I stopped being in book clubs years ago when I tired of other people ruining books I enjoyed. So I don’t feel like a free reading expert, and I don’t share often about literature. But today, given what is happening now in eastern Europe, I want to recommend Prisoners of Geography, written by Tim Marshall. I bought it years ago for our oldest son who is a geography whiz. When he was younger, he would zoom into a location on Google Earth and then ask me to guess where it was. He would then slowly zoom out, bit by bit, pausing after each change until he thought I should be able to get the answer about its location. He had to zoom out a lot. I rarely guessed correctly. He was often exasperated by my lack of knowledge about the globe. It was a game on his end, but it made me feel like a dolt. Ultimately, Joe took the book to college, and I forgot about it.

Then, a couple weeks ago we were with some neighbors when they mentioned they were reading that book together. I got intrigued. So I downloaded the book on Audible and started listening. It wasn’t long into the book that I realized I needed the maps the hard copy provided to help me visualize what was being discussed. So I picked it up and got back to work. It ended up being a timely reading choice because the day after I bought the hard copy and started learning about why we are prisoners of geography, Putin invaded Ukraine. For the first time, I began to understand Russia’s position in the world. I may not understand Putin (who does?), but at least I can somewhat comprehend now why Ukraine’s land is important to him and why he is so eager to reclaim it. Russia, both because of and despite its size, has geography issues.

The book also covers China, the United States, Western Europe, Africa, the Middle East, India and Pakistan, Korea and Japan, Latin America, and the Arctic. The author, a journalist and leader on foreign affairs, has reported from forty countries and covered conflicts in the former Yugoslav republics, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Israel. His vast geographical and political knowledge, combined with his journalism skills, make the book not only highly informative but also accessible and interesting. I now have a better understanding of China’s treatment of the Muslim Uighur population in Xinjiang province. I understand why the concept of manifest destiny was important to the creation of the United States as we know it today. I also have a far better handle on how and why wars have been fought in Europe and why some countries have fared better than others. (I’m looking at you, Poland.) I’ll have to finish the book to learn more about Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America.

If you are looking for a greater understanding of the politics of countries, their prosperity or lack thereof, or the ways they are constrained, I can’t recommend this book enough. It’s a little outdated because it was published in 2015, but it is still useful. If you’re a big-time history or geography geek, this might be too basic for you; but for the rest of the hoi polloi, it is an education in geography, history, and our current political dilemmas in 277 pages. It isn’t going to make you feel any better about the humanitarian nightmare developing as Putin’s army rolls into and bombs the free and innocent people of Ukraine, but it will help you make a little more sense about why Russia is the way it is. Because of the Internet, we are more a global people now than we have ever been before. If you want a way into understanding that world, this is it.

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TOWANDA!

“I too am not a bit tamed. I too am untranslatable. I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.” ~Walt Whitman

I’ve been implying here for years (literally years, there are archives of proof) that I am going to get my shit together. Yes, indeed, I’ve proclaimed. My poop is nearly in a group. Nearly. Like it’s so close I can almost gather it in with a poop scoop. I’ve said these things time and time again. Truth is, though, I really am there now. For real. All those years with the training wheels on, getting closer to the growth I was craving and then pulling back in fear before finding a nugget of courage to continue forward again, they’ve created a muscle memory of being brave, of putting myself out there, of pushing the boundaries of my history, and of finding my voice. All those things are far easier for me now than they were seven years ago when I started this journey. I know my worth. I know what I am and what I am not. I’m willing to walk away from people and situations that are toxic to a healthy mindset. I am done playing games. I’m finished living my life to make others comfortable. I’m choosing me now.

I found this shop on Etsy that creates these cute little rocks. You choose your word and a color from their selection and they make it for you. I originally just wanted a couple that read “TOWANDA!” from the movie Fried Green Tomatoes, but then I decided this was an opportunity to set my intentions. Small tokens with actions words to remind me what I want to do, how I want to live intentionally, in whatever time I have left in this life. I didn’t choose love because that seemed too obvious. Instead, I chose words that asked me to go beyond my comfort zone. I chose words I’ve struggled to live in the first part of my life. I chose dare, believe, dream, relax, stretch, practice, create, and shine to be my words. These words represent growth. These are my new core values. This is the future I want and am prepared to enact. TOWANDA is my rallying cry, my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

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Ain’t No Shame In That

It has come to my attention that the post I wrote months ago about my husband’s sleeping habits made him feel a bit called out. Let me first state that was not my intention at all. People who are included in my blog posts often think the blog posts are about them. Ninety-five percent of the time, this is untrue. Oddly enough, my blogs are usually about me or my opinions. I may mention other people, but not because I am calling them out. They are part of my story. They are not THE story. Anyhoo, my sweet spouse felt a little seen about my post regarding the fact that he can sleep anywhere while I, in fact, cannot. So, I have resolved to make this better.

In case you think, after reading that post, that I was calling my husband out for his sleeping gift, I thought I would share this little tidbit from our house. My husband is not the only one who sleeps in odd positions on the floor. While I still struggle to sleep on many nights in my comfortable Sleep Number bed with my twin down comforter, this family member, like my husband, has zero problem sleeping:

To summarize, I did not write about my husband’s fall-apart-on-the-floor-due-to-exhaustion sleeping habits because I was calling him out. I wrote about them because, as I stated in my earlier post, I am jealous and wish I could sleep like him. Or our dog. Or both of them.

Daddy sploot
Baby sploot

If I could sleep anywhere, including on my stomach on the living room floor with my feet out in a corgi sploot, I would. Ain’t no shame in that.

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The Ukrainians Know More About Freedom And Patriotism Than We Do

Photo by Max Kukurudziak on Unsplash

I have spent some time over the past couple days sitting with and slowly digesting the news coming from eastern Europe. We’ve known for months that Putin was amassing three-quarters of his army at the borders of Ukraine, so the invasion was not a surprise. The exodus of citizens from Ukraine into its free, bordering, neighbor countries like Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania is likewise not a surprise. What has surprised me is the defiance of those Ukranian citizens who are taking on this David vs. Goliath fight. The soldiers on Snake Island who told the Russian warship about to bomb them to go f*** themselves. President Volodymyr Zelensky who, when offered evacuation by the US, told us he needed “ammunition, not a ride.” These acts of bravery are an attempt to prove to the world that, even without NATO membership and support, Ukraine is a sovereign nation worth defending. And this, while devastating, is also amazing.

The news of the invasion made me livid. Maybe it’s my Eastern European ancestry that pushes me to this anger. It’s in my blood. You can’t be of Polish and Baltic descent and not be triggered by Russia and its habit of rolling over entire peoples for the sake of territory. I find solace in knowing the people of Poland are leaving clothing, toys, and food at the border where Ukrainians are crossing. The Poles, who know a bit about being dominated and upended by Russian invasions, are acting from a place of empathy and concern. This morning when I read the Polish national soccer team is refusing to play Russia in their World Cup qualification playoff match, I reflected that it’s these small acts of pushback against Russia’s aggressions that matter. Putin is an authoritarian leader, poisoning and imprisoning his opposition, while masquerading as a duly-elected leader of a “free” nation. Putin will do with the Russian people what he wants. He will use them to invade countries with territory he believes he has some claim to because of history. But the rest of us don’t have to act as if this is normal. We can support the oppressed and push back on the oppressor.

The people who have disappointed me the most during the first few days of this war Russia has instigated with Ukraine are the Republicans who have found a way to defend Putin’s actions. It’s been clear for years that the Republican party we once knew has jumped the shark. When did the party of Reagan become pro-Russia? Would Reagan have been as fond of Putin as Trump is? When Republican political leaders and media provocateurs posit that Putin’s actions are justifiable because Putin was feeling penned in by NATO, I call bullshit. The little man has nukes. The only reason no one has gone against Russia is because of its nuclear arsenal. No one has tried to invade Russia, change its borders, or turn it into a true democracy. Putin didn’t invade Ukraine because he is fearful for his country’s security or because Biden is president and not Trump. Putin invaded Ukraine because his goal is to put the old gang back together. He wanted to test NATO and its resolve. And he wants whatever else his sordid brain can scheme up. He probably does want to continue to divide our democracy, and the Republican rhetoric plays right into that. The Republicans can continue to stand and point fingers at liberals as the cause of this attack, but that is not the reality. The reality is Putin will do what fits his end goals because that is who he is. He cares only about his power. Perhaps that is why Trump lionizes him so?

During this past week, I have vacillated between furious and tearful. Angry at Putin. Angry at the people in our free nation who believe Putin’s aggression is acceptable. Tearful because of the thousands and thousands of families torn apart by an unconscionable war. Tearful because of the outpouring of support from the free world for those families and the nation of Ukraine. I have no idea where this will go, but I do know you are not a patriot if you think Putin’s invasion is justified or if you wish for the region to devolve into a quagmire because you think you can then claim this was all Biden’s fault and “own the Libs.” This war is not a talking point for American politics. It’s life or death, freedom or tyranny for the Ukrainians. The Ukrainians would rather die than be under Putin’s rule. That is what freedom means. Get your head straight or this nation truly is lost.

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On Simon, Anna, and Trust Falls

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

A few nights ago, my husband and I watched “The Tinder Swindler” on Netflix. I followed that up (while I was ironing, of course) with “Inventing Anna,” another Netflix show. I mean, who doesn’t love a good, juicy story about a conman/conwoman? When someone has the audacity (or mental illness) to buck society’s norms and use their friends, lovers, and coworkers as pawns in their own personal chess game, without any regard for what will happen to these people, we get curious. Curious about what makes them tick. Curious about how they planned and executed their cons. Curious about how their victims didn’t see it all as plain as the brown on a paper bag. Humans love a sensational story. If we didn’t, TMZ wouldn’t exist.

Much has been said about the naiveté of the victims of these hustlers. In the case of the Tinder Swindler, people have called his female marks slurs like gold diggers, idiots, and sluts. When we were watching the documentary, I admit I sat there agog that these women would send a man they had only known a matter of weeks photos of their passports. What on earth could they have been thinking? I remarked to my husband that in a million years I never would have done something like that when I was dating. I grew up feeling anxious and unsafe in my home environment, and there I learned I could trust no one but myself. As a young woman in the dating world, I was cautious and independent, so the idea of meeting a guy for coffee and then agreeing to hop aboard his private jet bound for another country seems insane to me. While these young women were thinking, “Oh…this is like a fairy tale movie,” I would have been thinking, “This is like a serial killer movie. He’s going to lure me to another country with his private jet and then murder me and dump my corpse there.” I mean, really. Fairy tale? Come on. And call me crazy, but a young, handsome heir to a diamond fortune doesn’t need to find women on Tinder.

Once I got over the preposterousness of it, though, I felt for his victims. They wanted to believe the best. They wanted to trust that this man was what he said he was, what he was actively working to present himself as. They were being flown all over Europe in private jets, wine and dined, presented with lavish gifts and attention. All of these things seemed legit. In the absence of skepticism and a stunted, cynical heart like mine, you are primed as a human for this trickery. So these women lost tens of thousands of dollars to him, and they are still paying off their losses.

Trust is necessary for people to coexist. For societies to work, we have to trust each other. We have to assume when we drive that other drivers will also pilot their vehicles according to the rules of the road and act to keep themselves, as well as others, safe. When we go to the hospital, we trust that the doctors and nurses will do everything in their power to help us. We trust our teachers to be kind and helpful. We trust our neighbors will be decent and responsible. When you don’t trust others, you limit your ability to participate in the world around you. Ask Vladimir Putin.

So as you watch The Tinder Swindler or Inventing Anna and find yourself being deeply critical of those who fell for the ruse, just remember the victims of these cons are not pathetic, gullible losers, but human beings doing what human beings do: trusting others and believing that good still exists in the world. Conmen have for millennia taken advantage of the human need to trust others. We use the term “snake oil salesman” as a cautionary tale for a reason. But we need to believe in the inherent good of others. Trust in others is part of what makes our survival as a species possible. It’s a shame there are those bad apples out there who insist on reminding us there is evil and unmitigated gall for our species to survive too. And it only makes for entertaining television when you aren’t the one who got dropped in their trust fall.

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The World Needs Fewer Men In Power

Photo by Kevin Schmid on Unsplash

I am feeling a mixture of strong emotions today. Anger. Frustration. Sadness. Bitterness. Empathy. What I have to offer in light of this miasma is a haiku. This is the least acerbic one I penned.

Vladimir Putin

Fearful, bullying asshole

Holds Ukraine hostage

With Russia’s aggression in the sovereign nation of Ukraine, we are headed towards another humanitarian crisis. Here is a link to ways you can help the people of Ukraine.

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The Genie In The Bottle Is Me

“Finding yourself is not really how it works. You aren’t a ten-dollar bill in last winter’s coat pocket. You are also not lost. Your true self is right there, buried under cultural conditioning, other people’s opinions, and inaccurate conclusions you drew as a kid that became your beliefs about who you are. Finding yourself is actually returning to yourself. An unlearning, an excavation, a remembering who you were before the world got its hands on you.” ~Anonymous

I bet she is a whole lot of awesome

I love this quote. It succinctly captures the problem with being human. We start out as infants, individuals (although we don’t know it yet) with likes, needs, and wants. We aren’t blank slates because we are unique and full of our own potential. As we grow, however, the second sentence above takes over our lives. We learn, through society, our parents, and others with whom we come into contact, to contort ourselves to fit in, please, and survive. With each subsequent outside belief we adopt and internalize as part of our reality, a piece of our individuality shrinks and folds further back inside our deepest depths. If we’re lucky we’re able, through the nurturing attention and love of important people, to remain somewhat true to who we are. If we’re told, however, that we are wrong or unworthy, those pieces we hid deep inside ourselves as a means of surviving stay hidden for a long time. Perhaps our entire lives. That is the real shame. Think of all the human potential that is tucked into our deepest recesses because we fear it is odd, off-putting, or unacceptable.

Reflect for a moment on the people you know. How many of them do you feel are living their unbridled individuality without hesitation or restraint? Certainly, some of us are doing a better job of it than others. I know several people who are 100% disconnected from who they are. They’ve robed themselves in the defenses of their politics, religion, biases, assumptions, and fears. I lived this way for a long time too. I had no choice. I was so influenced by the narratives I was sold. And, honestly, when you are bullied as a child to believe you are only worthy of love and attention if you behave a specific way and color within the lines, that becomes your standard method of operation. Stay within the prescribed track if you want to be acceptable.

So then, the trick to living an authentic life is found in the last sentence of the quote above. We have to stop long enough to question our beliefs. We have to sift through the stories, look at them objectively, and determine how they became ours. Was it part of our original makeup or was it something we put on because someone told us to? I have been doing some of these investigations in my own life, making lists of beliefs I hold about myself and dissecting them to find their origin. Once I can trace them back to someone (or something) else, I can then ask if that belief is serving me or if it is restraining me. This is the deconstruction before the reconstruction.

I spent most of my life working to be smaller than I am, to fit into the too-tight molds others constructed for me. Lately, though, I’ve been feeling rather cramped. My inner potential, the person I was before the world got its hands on me and dimmed my shine, is begging to stretch.

I have taken to thinking of my current situation as a bit of a genie-in-a-lamp narrative. There is something inside the lamp. I know it, although I haven’t seen the totality of its contents. I am using a soft polishing cloth to return the lamp to its former shine. The more I rub the surface, the more I realize how brilliant what lies beneath must be. Eventually, with my repeated effort, I will unleash the contents obscured within. Then and only then can I be my true self…at least most of the time.

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Cookies Are My Love Language

Photo by Christina Branco on Unsplash

As I was once again making homemade chocolate chip cookies for my family today, I started thinking about love languages. Acts of service is at the top of my love language list. If I take time away from doing something I would like to do so I can do something for you, that is my expression of love. Making cookies is a perfect example of this. I am gluten free for health reasons and rarely eat baked goods or make gluten free baked goods for myself. Baking a batch Toll House cookies consumes about an hour and a half of my time in a day. So if I make you some cookies from scratch, you matter to me. End of story.

Out of curiosity, I went online and took the love languages quiz to see how the five love languages land in terms of importance to me. They went in this order: acts of service, words of affirmation, quality time, receiving gifts, physical touch. I sent this list to my husband and asked him to take the quiz as well. These were his results: words of affirmation, physical touch, quality time, acts of service, receiving gifts. Hmmm…it appears hubby and I might have to do a little adjusting so we can ensure we are meeting each other’s needs in the best possible way. It would appear I need to be more affectionate with him, and he will need to help me out a bit more.

People innately understand the love language of physical touch, even if it isn’t their thing. But, acts of service can be a bit confusing. It may sound crazy to say, “I know my husband loves me when he takes my car for its oil change or when he washes out his coffee mug so I don’t have to,” but those small acts make me feel worth the effort. It can be difficult to get people to understand how doing something small can make a big difference making someone feel appreciated, acknowledged, seen.

My sons will not be thrilled about this, but I have decided they also need to take the love language test so we can compare notes and make sure we are showing up for each other in the best ways possible. I might ask my sisters to take the test as well. I grew up knowing love mostly via an intellectual understanding of what love is supposed to be. I did not grow up in an affectionate household. Words of affirmation were few. I thought if my parents worried about me and made sure I had dinner to eat and clothing to wear that must mean they love me. Although I am certain my sons have experienced love from us (they have told us as much), I want to make sure that we are all doing our best to communicate our feelings in ways they can best be received and internalized.

The older I get, the more I have realized love is all there is in this life. Making sure the people who are important to me hear and can absorb my love for them is everything. What if my message isn’t getting through because I’m delivering it via a sub-optimal method? I think it warrants a conversation.

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