A Room With A View

I am being taken away this weekend. Not far... only about an hour and a half away from this lovely, but sometimes hard to handle, place I call home. Last night, the hubby spontaneously decided that we need to get away and he had an idea. Though I helped a little in making the plan a reality, this would not have happened if he didn't say those magical words... "why don't we go away for the weekend?"

To me, that is the ultimate in romance. I don't need flowers (though, I must say, my hubby brings some home every week), mushy cards, jewelry and gifts. I want to do the simple things... walk hand-in-hand through Central Park. Spend a day skiing followed by sipping wine in front of a fire. Getting on a plane or in a car for a trip to someplace we've never been. Sitting in the neighborhood pub, eating sandwiches, playing pool and drinking a beer. It's the time together, wherever it is, that means the most to me.

But sometimes, the act of getting away from it all... the dishes in the sink, the dust bunnies, the bills, the computer and cell phones... is a necessity. I feel like the girl that gets flowers sent to her at work on her birthday... really special! I'm grinning stupidly from ear-to-ear, telling people that we are going to NEW PALTZ. My friends laugh. Big deal. Well, as silly as that may be, I've never been. We're staying in a mountainside B&B and we can go hiking, biking or on a wine tour. The mere thought of fresh fruit and granola for breakfast makes me even happier.

So, if you are a man and you are reading this and you don't know how to make your significant other feel special, or think that you do that already, a way to score some extra points is to do what my hubby has done. Make a simple plan to whisk her away someplace not too far but still different and new. Trust me... if your girl is anything like me, she will be so happy, the two of you might not even leave that little mountainside bedroom.

(P.S. For those of you who think I am a braggart, who thinks her husband is the best man in the world, keep in mind that it is not a coincidence that this posting follows the Men Are From Mars post... I guess sometimes he does listen or else I have successfully beat him down so badly about not picking up his socks, that he saw no other alternative than to placate me with a trip. Either way, I am not complaining.)

Men ARE from Mars

Some things my hubby will never understand:

• Why it is important to me that the dishes are washed and the bed is made

• How to put away his clothes

• How to put away his shoes

• That when I go grocery shopping, the food is supposed to last us at least two days

• Why I think I am a better driver than him

• Why smoking pot on the couch does not equate "quality time spent together"

• Why I don't want to watch Saw or Saw 2

• Why I can't talk to him when The Amazing Race is on

• Why I NEED chocolate, crying and sex BADLY when I am PMSing

• Why I feel the whole day is wasted when he sleeps until 1 in the afternoon (he hasn't done this in a while, for the record!)

• How I can spend hours on my computer doing, basically, nothing

• Why the flowers from the fancy florist shop are better than the flowers from the deli

• What a blog is

Congestion Ahead

If you are a driver who slows down for the following reasons, causing everyone behind you to slow down, thus creating congestion, I hate you:

• Orange cones/barrels along the side of the road. Just to let you know, most construction does not take place on Sundays. You do not need to slow down just b/c you see these markers.

• A car pulled over to the side of the road. Sometimes people just need to stretch. You do not need to watch.

• A car pulled over by a police officer. It is not you who is being issued a ticket. Count yourself lucky, and move on.

• A split in the roadway. There are signs warning you about a mile ahead of the split as to what is going to happen. Decide then which way you want to go, get in the appropriate lane and continue on your merry way.

I took a trip from Virginia to New York this weekend. The trip back which should have taken 5 hours, took 7. There were no accidents. No closed lanes. Nothing that should have warranted the traffic that we encountered. Except every time one of the aforementioned things occurred, traffic. It would go away as quickly as it appeared. Made no sense to me at all.

So please just keep on keepin' on because my road rage is getting less easy for me to control. Maybe I have just become more impatient with the inadequacies of the rest of mankind. I'm a quiet person by nature, but not when I'm behind the wheel. I will call you names, give you looks, throw my hands up in exasperation. But I will still continue to drive safely yet as fast as conditions allow. So if you're going to slow down every time you see something (ANYTHING!), just move aside and let the rest of us who know how to drive get by.

Eww, How Gross... But Fascinating!

So in my previous post, I mentioned that I contracted poison ivy over the weekend. I guess it's been a long time since I've had it because I don't remember it taking so long to heal. And I have a relatively minor case, mostly on my inner wrist and forearm. Well, it is slowly starting to get better... itches less and is drying out. If you've never had poison ivy or if you don't remember what it is like, let me tell you about it.

You get it if you touch a poison ivy plant/vine. The oil from the plant transfers to your skin (it doesn't matter how old the plant or what time of year... the oil is resilient) and you will notice the effects shortly thereafter. Though it is not contagious, you can spread it if you touch the contracted oil unknowingly to another part of your body. The oil will disappear once you wash/shower (though people say that if you take a hot shower, you can spread that oil much easier since your pores open up and the act of washing is actually akin to the act of spreading and ouila, you get it ALL OVER!) Also, it can be transported via smoke made from burning it, from the oil left on your clothing or the oil that found its way to your dog's fur. So however it happened, you came into contact with the oil and got PI.

Do you know the definition of "itch"? I don't think you do until you get this. An itch so deep, that the mere act of scratching feels orgasmic. Everyone tells you not to itch it, but they have no idea. My hubby thinks I am enjoying having this rash, b/c I keep talking about how GOOD it feels to scratch. It's a bad good, though, like heroin or something. And then there are the blisters. Perhaps the worst part, aside from the deep itch, are the oozing, raised, red blisters. They don't hurt, but they are an eye-sore and the wetness gets uncomfortable, not to mention disgustingly gross.

Unless of course it is your OWN arm oozing and crusting. I cannot stop inspecting it. It looks like I have some horrific disease and I was embarrassed at first, but now I am too fascinated to care if people mistake me for a leper or a drug addict. So maybe a small part of me is enjoying this... it's incredibly how a plant can change perfectly white, soft skin into this craggly mess. What is this plant protecting itself from, and WHY? I understand why a rose has thorns... a pricked thumb is the price you pay for picking it and admiring its beauty. But poison ivy is an ugly plant. Nobody wants to admire it. We just want to get rid of it. But perhaps its goal is world dominance and the rash is the price you pay for stopping it from achieving that goal???

But you are not alone... once people hear what you've gotten, there will be the sharing of horror stories... from the guy who hid from a school bus in a patch of it, to the other guy whose dog rubbed against him and gave him a terrible case on his thighs. It's like a special, itchy, oozy club. You don't choose to be a member, it chooses you.

So the moral is, beware the poison ivy but still get out and smell the roses... just don't touch them!!!

Take Me Home Country Road

I grew up in the country. A small house on top of a hill, nestled between two lakes. You had to drive up a pothole-ridden dirt driveway to get to our house, or one of the other six that housed our neighbors. I lived in that house my entire life, until I left for college, and now it is my brother's home. I am a country girl, living in the city, starting to miss that country life.

In addition to typical indoor chores that many children have, I also had to help carry wood down for our wood-burning stove in the fall/winter seasons, rake leaves off the lawn, sweep the many stairs leading down to our back door (the door we used as if it were our front door), pick weeds, etc. We were told to "go play outside" all the time, which meant going to Big Rock or Pine Tree Fort. I guess we could have been more creative in our naming process, but what you see is what you get... Big Rock was indeed just that (imagine a mountain made out of a rock... it was a BIG rock!) and Pine Tree Fort was a clearing in the middle of a perfectly formed circle of pine trees. We treated that fort and that rock as our second homes... we loved those places.

We also would have great family parties down on the lake in the winter. Sleigh-riding, ice skating, igloo-building, bon fires, hot cocoa, roasted hot dogs and marshmallows. In the summer, we would go fishing with our dad at that same lake, either right off the shore or on my dad's canoe or aluminum row boat, catching sunnys with freshly dug up worms. Sometimes we would hike in the back woods and see the little bungalows that people still lived in, or search for arrowheads and pieces of clay pottery.

Some long weekends were spent at an even more desolate one-room cabin further upstate, up an even rockier road in the middle of trees so big, the forest was our cabin's backyard. There, we would hike or go and catch minnows down by the creek. We would color our skin with the rocks found in the river or go for a trip to see the waterfalls or the fish hatchery. There was a tire swing and always a fire at night. The guys would take turns practicing shooting their guns at cans (my family is one full of hunters, so guns were always around) and once in a while they would let the kids have a shot.

Though this blog entry is kind of disconnected and rambling and maybe boring to those of you who do read it, my point is, now I do consider myself a city girl. I've been living here for 10+ years and do love Manhattan very much. But I feel most at peace, most like myself when I get back to nature. I need that in my life. I was on the back of the hubby's motorcycle this beautiful weekend, out on country roads, surrounded by farmland, and felt so calm and happy. I just want to get back to my roots, to feel the ease of life, get out of the hustle and bustle, breathe in fresh air. And I got a piece of it this weekend, which was the best. Except for the poison ivy I got whilst helping my mother do yard work. If I'm going back to the country, I have to start remembering how to be the girl I once was (and listen to my mom when she tells me to put on some gloves before touching the weeds!)

Double the pleasure

It is not easy to keep up with friends, especially for someone like me who does not have one big circle of friends, but rather individual friends from different sectors of my life. To keep in touch requires much diligence. Thank goodness for email b/c I am not good a the phone call thing. But my friends are important to me and I do try to maintain as much contact as I can. Then comes the family obligations. My family lives upstate and out-of-state. To see them requires some travel time. I don't mind, but again, it's not easy to get there as often as I would like, try as I might.

Now, I am married and things have become even more difficult. Between the newly-extended family obligations (dinners, birthdays, holidays) to the "double-dates" with friends and the solo girls'/boys' nights out, not to mention the personal errands and exercise and work, the plans are just taking over our life, and, more importantly, our weekends.

I am part of the problem, I know. I have made plans for us for the first weekend in July already. And maybe I am just selfish. Maybe I just want to do what I want, with my friends and family, and be free to get annoyed when we have something to do with his friends and family. Because I'm actually excited about the July plan. It involves my sister, after all. I think that I should be given a "GET OUT OF PLANS FREE" card... make that 10 of those cards... to use as I'd like throughout the year. I'll give him 5. Because as much as I want to do what I want when I want and also want him to do what I want. Selfish. Isn't it natural, though, to feel this way? I mean, I have known my friends and family longer...