The Decompression of a Boomer

During Labor Day weekend we stayed at a condo at the Snow King Resort in Jackson, Wyoming. It was very nice and had an attached garage where we could park our car. Only, they had this sign posted above our parking space:

Which, now why would they post such a sign? To cover their butts, perhaps, in case we were having an absolutely horrible time at their resort during our getaway weekend, and were devising ways to get ourselves out of our misery? So, in such circumstances, they could tell the authorities they cued us not to shut ourselves in their garage with the car running?

I need visual cues in my home environment to keep myself sane, focused, and prioritized. Our home is plastered with cues, in the form of signs and fridge magnets. Here’s what’s posted above the mirror in our kitchen:

So as to remind me and other members of our household, that, although it’s a great weekend fantasy to imagine that we have escaped to a Bed and Breakfast, I’m not going to be the staff of five that transforms our home environment into the experience.

As you enter our house from the garage you pass this sign:

Which reminds me every day to imagine the potential for happiness if I could just live relaxedly in a mess. Because the HyperPhysics law of entropy (the measure of disorder) applies to nothing in the universe if not to a clean house, that is, quite simply, by the law of entropy, a clean house spontaneously turns dirty. You can literally stand and watch the mess drop and grow before your eyes. And if you expect your house to be clean, then, uh, you (or someone!) have to clean it, continually. And if your housekeeper has quit (dammit!) then, ‘clean’ becomes the new ‘ugly’ with your nagging and gnashing of teeth at the ones you love, rising to new heights: “Off with your shoes, NOW!” – “Hey! Brush that off outside!” “Put your crap away!” “Who made that spill and just left it there?” “WHAT WERE YOU, BORN IN A BARN?” “OUT YOU GO!” You’re a witch now, trolling the house, conspiring to capture and euthanize the pets to be rid of their incessant messes, and every living creature around you is hiding from you because you “JUST CLEANED THE HOUSE AND AIM TO KEEP IT THAT WAY!”, which is, as I said, impossible. Contemplate the wonders of living in a hovel, I say. Messiness is bliss.

Uh … so, where was I? Oh! This little magnet is posted at eye level beside the fridge handle, cueing us

to back off! – making us feel like porkys as we cozy up to the fridge, poised to ransack its contents in the unfettered act of pigging out. Only, typically, each sideways glance at that fridge magnet elicits not one whit of restraint or shamefulness. Should probably toss that magnet out.

This next fridge magnet, the one with the bit about hard work, provides continual comfort and justification for me in my quest to avoid hurting myself:

Which … partly explains why there has been a huge mound of soil sitting atop the vegetable garden for six weeks, that I was supposed to work into the existing soil. Now it’s a huge mound of soil sprouting vibrant thistles and tall weeds.

But, Hey! Success at not hurting myself explains away the weedy mound. That, combined with, I suppose, some measure of … laziness?

My hubby posted a few signs of his own. Like this one by the ping pong table in the basement rec room:

Ha ha. Uhhhhh … Who more interesting? Me?? Awwwww. Okay, I give. I mean, I’m gonna give into the urge right now to lay down, until the feeling that I might could do something to improve my personality passes.

Girls Rule!

This is a pretty dumb blog. But at least at this juncture I can proudly state that, generally, I’m not at a point to where I’m devising ways to get myself out of my misery. In other words, I don’t need to post that sign above my car in our garage to cue me not to shut myself in the garage while sitting in the car with the engine idling.

So … so far, so good. So long as I don’t hurt my back, or shoulder, or pinky finger, or something.

Or let the freakin’ housework make me ugly.

It’s Sunday, May 16. We have been back from our trip to Phoenix for five days. Temperatures are warming, spring is springing, grass and weeds are growing like wildfire and calling to me from our back gardens.

Mum mum mum mah
Mum mum mum mah
Mum mum mum mah
Mum mum mum mah

I wanna roll with him a hard pair we will be
a little gambling is fun when you’re with me …

Huh? Gambling with the weeds? Okay. That’s not the weeds talking. That’s the music playing in my head – Lady Gaga’s song, ‘Poker Face’ – the song blasting through the car speakers as we were roaring down the highway toward Vegas. Where I left us in my last blog.

To continue the story:

The scenery is exquisite as we approach Hoover Dam:

Lake Mead looks a little low:

We’re driving over the dam now.

And soon that magnificent new bridge above us

will be completed. And traffic will flow over it, high above the dam.

Only thirty miles to Vegas from here!

We follow the electrical grid for several miles.

Through more beautful scenery.

It’s now 7PM and we’re in Vegas – caught in traffic, trying to get to the Mirage Hotel/Casino on Las Vegas Boulevard. Gees, should have taken a different exit! What does that sign ahead say? Oh – turn here! Get in the other lane! Quick! Oh oh, we should have gone further up and turned. Well, not to worry – we’ll just have to get to the Mirage and then we can relax and settle in! This place is a zoo! Swarms of people and cars buzzing every which way.

And it’s windy as hell!.

We pull up at the entrance to the Mirage and are greeted by the valet. The winds are gusting to 60 mph. David’s out with the valet guy unloading the trunk – I’m collecting stuff from the front seat to carry in. Just as David’s about to tip the valet, and send our car off to be parked somewhere, I can’t find my iphone. It’s not in either zipper front pocket on my purse where I normally keep it.

“I CAN’T FIND MY IPHONE!” I say to David, through my hair, which is blowing sideways. I look frantically for it in the car – with my feet in the air and arms flailing, as I search under the seat, between the seat and console, between the seat and door. I dump my purse out on the seat and search through the contents – twice. No iphone! It isn’t in either zipper front pocket nor is it anywhere inside my purse or in the car. It has disappeared.

‘”I CAN’T FIND IT!” I yell back at David, Megan, and the valet, all standing stiff as pillars on the sidewalk, completely wind whipped.

“IT’S IN YOUR PURSE!” David yells back, as he dials my cell number from his iphone.

“Bling-bling-bling-bling-bling” rings my iphone from inside my purse. Oh! It’s In the third exterior zipper pocket on the side of my purse! Stupid purse. Wily, annoying iphone.

Gees, great arrival here. Just loving Vegas now, aren’t we?

We are checked in now. With a view of the strip from our room.

We are beginning to relax.

Over dinner at ‘BLT Burgers.’ With drinks. Yum!

We head to the 9:30 P.M. show at the Mirage – only a short walk from our restaurant through the casino. Past The Beatles Revolution Bar

and into a huge line – to see Cirque du Soleil’s production of ‘Love’ – A show created around a compilation of original Beatles songs with acrobats, singers, and dancers, dropping down from the ceiling, rising up from the fog or fire in the floor, flying across the set, all in surround sound. It’s pretty cool.

After the show Megan and I head straight to our room, and bed. David checks out the poker tables …

It’s morning now, the mob has cleared, and I snap a photo of David and Megan at the entrance to the show.

We are outside now, in front of the Mirage

And the wind is still blowing 40 mph.

That’s the Venetian you see across the street. Whoopie! We’re outta here. The wind makes me crazy.

Making the 600-mile drive home now.

I capture a photo of Caesar’s Palace on the way out of town.

In completion of our virtual visit to other parts of the strip in fast forward.

We jump on I-15 North, which will take us all the way to Idaho Falls.

The scenery is magnificient.

Especially through southern Utah.

What’s that thing we’re passing – does it say, Cube on the back?

Who the heck makes a Cube anyway? Peugeot or something. Does that car look French to you?

In that 600 miles …

The beauty could overwhelm you.

So could the rain

Which soon turns to snow.

We encounter road construction,

low-hanging clouds,

gloomy cows,

And finally – we enter the great state of Idaho!

Which greets us with a mixture of everything.

Zooming up I-15 and we are just a few miles south of Pocatello now.

The sun is dropping in the west.

And in the car, Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young are belting out one of their greatest 70’s hits in perfect harmony:

Carry on.
Love is coming.
Love is coming to us all.

Just a few miles to go now.

Another classic hit from that same CD is playing now:

Our house
Is a very, very, very, fine house.
With two cats in the yard.
Life used to be so hard.
But everything is easy
‘Cuz of you.

And I look over at David as the sun sets behind him and shines on him through his window.

To continue where I left off about our last (hopefully) trip to Boise for Megan’s surgeries, uh, where were we? Oh yeah, still in Boise, and headed homeward to Idaho Falls, with David as pilot and Rudy as co-pilot, Megan as sleepy passenger, still sedated from her surgery that morning, and me as front seat passenger fiddling with my iphone.

I captured this picture right off the bat.

One of my abstracts. That iphone is wily. Maybe it just captures a Matisse when it sees it.

We weren’t too enthusiastic about the four-hour drive ahead, having already made this trek three times. I wasn’t in the mood, either, to photograph 40 more trucks and no scenery. So about twenty minutes into our drive, at ‘Mountain Home’ (not ours) David exited off I-84 onto I-20 east to take the ‘scenic route,’ which runs along the southern edge of the Sawtooth National Forest.

We started to climb in elevation.

There was still a lot of snow. But a lot of water, too.

Nice, beautiful water! The spring melt down!

Megan was immediately asleep.

All comfy in the back seat. Well, maybe.

David and I were both exhausted from the crappy night’s sleep we were operating on. I was keeping an eye on him. Hey, is he … sleeping?

He’s fading, for sure. Where are the toothpicks?

Oh, I see now…

Rudy is driving.

Good thing we have him along as co-pilot. I am sleepy too. And busy managing my iphone, which seems hellbent on capturing its own photos. Like this one –

an abstract that defies gravity.

With the shape we’re in maybe we should just pull over and find some lodging for the night. After all, we still have two hundred miles to go. Oh look! Lodging ahead!

Airport Inn? Where’s the airport? Where’s the Inn? Where the hell are we?

Oh here! What does that sign say?

Light Industrial Space Available? Huh? In my head, maybe.

Look there! On the left! Zooming toward us! – you suppose that’s a bed-and- breakfast?

Should we pull over and knock?

No?

Keep driving? We’re driving, we’re driving …

Semi’s approaching us head-on at combined speeds of 150 mph should keep us awake.

Ah! Look!

The Arco Motel! It’s such a rigorous little town, which, where did it go? Oh, it’s behind us now…

Keep driving. We can make it home!

We had to find ways to entertain ourselves. I started fiddling with this:

It was a giant …

barf bag, compliments of St. Luke’s Hospital for the road, in case Megan falls ill from the car motion, combined with sedation. The beauty of this bag is that you can vomit in it and then use the lines on the side of the bag to measure how much you vomited and then write it down. You know, if you’re into that kind of thing.

Rudy is fading now, too.

We’ve lost our co-pilot. He has resorted to lifting his head every so often and gazing at me with his pleading eyes …

as if to say, “Can we please be home now? I’ll even try to get along with that despicable cat, Tee-Box.”

Hey, look there! A cabin! Honey! Pull over!

Looks a little lonesome. You have to take whatever lodging you can get out here in rugged ‘ol Idaho, but why don’t we pass on this one? Like, where are we gonna go for dinner?

Our last chance to pull over and bunk is up ahead, flying toward us … another cabin, a little more rustic

and weather-beaten. It’s available, for sure.

All right so we can make it home. But not until my iphone shoots another abstract of the inside of the car:

What artist is it this time?

We are home now. And Megan is up on her feet.

Yay!

It’s great to be sleeping in our own beds.

I took a picture of the flowering crab in our back yard on April 20, the day after we got back, with our lilacs in the background:

Yes, that’s a flowering crab tree. It’s still ‘sprinter’ here in southeast Idaho.

This is your first post. Edit or delete it and start blogging!

This wasn’t my first blog post. I didn’t know when I signed up that I had a post all ready to go entitled “Hello World!” Maybe I should keep this one on hold for when I crawl back out of a deep depression or perhaps just out of a deep Idaho winter drift. I am writing this little blurb on April 2 and it snowed though most of today. I am still waiting for the last of the snow, the first snow that fell last October, to disappear in our front yard. The subsequent feet-deep layers that fell and drifted on top of it have been gradually melting away, except for when they re-accumulate, like during the snowfall of today.

Hello Idaho April world! I am hopeful that the Christmas lights on our front trees will be down soon now that the snow has melted enough not to preclude access to them. I’ll add “take down Christmas Lights” to my spring ‘to-do’ list. Well, for when spring gets here. Although I guess it is spring, since it’s April. Yeah. Well in southeast Idaho, so far this year, spring is just like winter. Fa, la la la la … and a Howdy ho-ho! Where are all the baby bunnies?