Keep Your Ideas To Yourself

Sometimes it's just better to keep your mouth shut.

With this new overseas move ahead of us, we're considering a trip back home for a bit of a holiday-funny, isn't it? We live a holiday here in Great Britain.  Anyhoo...

This means we are again faced with, "My parents or yours?" and "My sister will get mad if we stay with your sister." Etc, etc...

And locations?

I can go to Nowhereville, Nevada to see my parents-who are hoarders, so we'd have to stay in a hotel. That's AFTER paying to rent a car to get us there since no international flights fly in to any city less than 4 hours from them.

If we go to his parents, we have to offend one as Mom and Dad live in different states. Neither has the room to put us up (I'm not opposed to floor sleeping, but I do put my foot down with sharing my sleeping bag with numerous cats).
Again, each would have another lengthy drive from an airport after flying for 14 hours.

There's the son and daughter-in-law in Idaho. I would love to go see them, but it's not really a 2-3 week sort of place to go, and in all honesty, I do NOT want to be the in laws that overstay their welcome. A few days to possibly a week would be perfect- but then where do we go? More distance driving.

My brother lives in southern Arizona. I adore my brother, but I do NOT do well when my shoes are melting to the sidewalk. I can't even pretend to be civil when it gets that hot.

My sister lives in the northwestern part of the states. I have never been there. She and her husband both work, so basically, we'd be going to this location to sit and wait for them to get home every day-again, with considerable cost to us to reach their home and about 3 days worth of activity/sightseeing for the kids.

Our "home of record" for the Air Force no longer has any family members living there and is a tourist area (translation: OUCH to the wallet), although we could fly directly in and out...

We haven't even discussed the burden of feeding our clan...

When we have lived in the states, with the exception of a small few, our family didn't come-they didn't even call, it has always been up to us to keep communication open, but as a family of six with expenses of our own, we were expected to keep the family bonds strong.

So, we start thinking that Disney World really is the only answer. This is what we did last time we flew back to the USA. It cost less for all 6 of us to stay and eat there for 11 days (and have the oldest come out to see us), than it would have been to go see any of the above mentioned family for a week. How crazy is that?

We are still paying for that trip, but not in the way you'd expect. I'll probably NEVER hear the end of,  "They can go to Disney World but can't come see us?" despite that we had started planning in February of that year; sent links to all of the family members inviting them to join us in September; also worked out a greatly reduced rate to stay together in a military place and none of them could swing it.


But, like I've blogged before, I have a 2200 mile hole in my heart. I miss the place where I grew up more than I could ever express. I have a dream of taking my kids out on a houseboat for a week, or camping on the shoreline of "my" lake like I did as a child. I want them to see the Grand Canyon, I want them to hike Bryce Canyon in the moonlight and splash in the cool waters of Zion Canyon. Northern Arizona and Southern Utah are Heaven as far as I'm concerned. I'm turning 50 and I'd like to do it in a place that I long for.

So, after hours of online boat rental sites and gorgeous landscape images that my brain is salivating over, I mention to my mother, "Do we have any connections there anymore? We'd kind of like to consider going, but the cost is escalating quickly".
And she replies, "I know of a place in Nevada where you can go....".

I should have just planned our holiday and sent post cards after we got there.


How do YOU juggle family that's spread out all over the country?

On Again Off Again On

I'm in high school again, crying in the bathroom during 3rd period but bubbling with glee in the cafeteria by lunchtime... except the saga I'm recounting over stale peanut butter isn't of the gangly boyfriend who has declared his love or crushed my heart,

I'm flapping my gums about how our move to the Azores is still happening.

maybe.

probably.

possibly, if the orders don't get rescinded between now and July.

Our orders sat in limbo while the AF scrambled to get the first cycle of ill-fated assignments sorted.

Because a new list of stateside jobs was due out in January, I began considering the possible assignments that could be available.  Florida? Idaho with the oldest son and DIL?

I counted down to the date and it finally came!
And went.
When will I ever learn that I'm in a different time zone than the headquarters? The oldest texted us after we had gone to bed when the list finally did come out.

With four disappointing possibilities to choose from, I worked up some faux excitement over two duty stations.  First stop: Shop for a house...

I quickly discovered there was a slight need to rearrange my priorities since I'm obviously never going to find a home near a USAF base with English character, age, garden or style (wow have I become spoiled!). But I found a house that exceeded my expectations for the area, the home that I could be very happy in.
Next: Begin to hope the AF would see fit to send us to THAT duty station so that I could make an offer on that house.

And then came the phone call...the one that would tell us if we were going or not. The answer we had waited not so patiently for was a little anti-climatic, "We don't know what's happening with families like yourselves who already were assigned to go there."

Well. There you have it. Thanks for that.

I've stopped house hunting (LIE, but I'm just looking at rentals on the island now). 
I will still continue to purge, after all,  I am going somewhere this summer. Must keep moving...



But hey ho, it's life and to be honest I wouldn't know how to do it any other way. How do you people live in one place longer than two years? How do you survive without the roller coaster of uncertainty? What persuades you to get rid of extra "stuff" if you don't move regularly?

The Giant's Causeway

Happy New Year everyone!

Anyone celebrating the Mayan's miscalculations? Feeling fortunate with a renewed appreciation for life and setting goals to match?
My only goals are to see and do more. I find that the less specific my goals are, the easier it is to complete them. I did have another goal, but decided that reading 365 books this year might be a bit much-unless I stick to children's books, but then my vocabulary already suffers from my lack of adult interaction as it is...

Anyhoo...

where were we on the Ireland trip?

I believe I last left you as I was winding my way along the Causeway Coastal Route in my little rental car...

When I arrived at the Giant's Causeway and saw how far the walk would be, I decided I'd better eat first. The cafe had a delicious looking tomato, basil, mozzarella sandwich that looked like it could hit the spot. I could NOT stifle my grin when the the lady asked if I'd like a "wee bit" of salad and then handed over my first Irish note.

Our family has a couple of membership cards that get us into places for free, or at least for very little. It sometimes even covers parking or other amenities like a discounted bus lift down to the actual causeway.

Buses are for wimps.

Belly satisfied and camera at the ready, I began my descent. There were people coming back up looking a little worse for wear wimps poor souls. I took no pity on them as I whistled past (of course I was going downhill and they were going up, but that's beside the point).

If I were to take you traveling with me in the future, one thing you have to know now- I have a wicked pace, but I stop for photos. I may walk faster than everyone else, but I will always show up last.

 See what all of those silly bus riders missed?

 And as usual, the water beckoned. 

Surely I was a mermaid in another life as I could have stayed in 

this one spot for the rest of my holiday.

Eventually, I made it down to the actual causeway. There had been this large model in the visitor center that I scanned before heading down the trail and I remembered it listing two areas... a big causeway and a little causeway.

Well the little one was now overrun with a school trip. Teenagers were everywhere and obviously needed to pose by every rock.

Bye bye little ant people!

So after several failed attempts to get my own self-portrait, I decided to walk on to the "other" causeway area with the intention of coming back to this smaller one when the people traffic thinned out a little.





The helpful color-coded signpost indicating different skill level walking paths, encouraged me to go with the pretty red route that would take me up over a ridge to what could only be the "other" causeway.

that doesn't look so bad...

the red flags were some artsy thing going on

But wait a minute, I was climbing back up, and I am never fond of going uphill.
Ever.
But I trudged on.



When I finally came to the conclusion that I was an idiot, there was another sign cheerfully alerting all who had made it this far that due to a rock slide, this path was now closed. They couldn't tell us that at the bottom?

Yay.







My options were to go back the way I came from or go this way.

Yes, I did.

At least the view was great

There were lots of lovely people holding onto stair rails while gasping for their last breath.

I felt pretty good about myself as I kept marching up those 162 stairs with the sweat trickling down the back of my neck.

I guarantee that if the husband had been with me I would have been in full whinge mode and begging to be carried.
Traveling alone is empowering!

This is the photo I took and iMessaged to my son-because he's deathly afraid of heights :)

My red path...

returned me to the car park!

Well, I had received my workout (in the future, RED means DEATH), and there's always post cards, right? I HAD actually been there...

In the visitor center I drank another bottle of water and actually looked at the massive display this time.

There was no "other causeway", I had been on the only one there was. Moron.

Sigh...I couldn't go home without seeing it, so back through the doors I went.

My sensible shoes were not feeling as practical as I had thought they'd be and I still had another good hike ahead of me at my next destination, so this wimp climbed aboard the bus...

...which allowed a very well-rested tourist to get a few shots of what she came to Ireland to see, complete with another self portrait.

I focused on an emergency phone box and nimbly jogged back and forth between it and my camera (propped on a rock) until I got it right. Thank you people for not stealing my camera.

I saw this great sign as I was leaving, warning us NOT to walk on the black bit as it gets very slippery. Oh. Oops.

Go away people, I'm trying to take a picture here.

Me and water. I have about 42 more pictures that look very similar to this one

And THAT was my day at the Giant's Causeway.
Still on my first day in Ireland with a couple of hours of sunlight left, I jumped back in my car (yes, after taking the wimp bus back up) and quickly headed towards the Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge.

Good thing I had my sensible shoes!