Selling Out and Cashing In Big

 When we moved out here to the woods, we made one compromise that continued to nag on me long after the boxes were unpacked.  For the first time in our married life, we decided to install satellite television - Direct TV, to be exact.  Why the ugly satellite dish?  Let’s revisit the rule for effective backwoods technology: if you can’t bounce that signal from space, it won’t get to us. 

There’s no good way from theah to heah, remembah?  

Not having grown up with cable, it seemed a gratuitous addition to our home, but I justified the change mostly because of my husband’s great (read: long-suffering) love for the New York Football Giants, and well, so we could watch the news... er, Food Network.  Still though, the realization that we’d sold out cashed in for 200+ channels and pay-per-view movie rentals sat in my belly like a cow in a hammock. 

Heavy. 

That is, until I realized two things.

 1) Renting movies in pay per view, while still a frivolous luxury, is perhaps the best option for us to see anything that’s fresh off the presses.  We tend not to drive the two hours it takes to reach one of those newfangled “cin-e-mas”, and we rent them so infrequently that Netflix doesn’t even make financial sense.  Finally, to drive to town and snag a release from last April would cost us an hour.  Our new system isn't perfect, but it works.

2) Don’t snicker, but I’m kind of hooked on one of those hip, new reality TV shows.  I know, I know, after selling my soul to cable, I should have seen this coming a mile away.  I promise I won’t start wearing gold-sequin-covered heels and talking with a [dirty] Jersey strain on my vowels.  Not this girl.

Trust me, the show's good.  And there’s a decent chance that you already like it.

It isn’t the outlandish family behavior, or those sweet Louisiana drawls that keep me coming back to A&E's Duck Dynasty.  It’s not the strange (and often motorized) trouble that those duck-call-carving boys keep getting into or the way that Uncle Si holds that blue plastic tea cup [even while he’s racing lawn mowers or sitting in a kiddie-pool constructed in the bed of a pickup using a few lawn tarps].  

It’s that what happens on the show, while certainly comical, seems like it could happen here. 

Like, tomorrow... or later this afternoon.

You don’t believe me?  Well, I’ve compiled some similarities for your consideration:

• There is an overwhelming presence of camouflage in the community

Check.

•  The work day is interrupted by needing to perform one or all of the following:

1. rescue a stranded boat
2. shoot something
3. start up the power generator (I guess that's just us)
4. load/unload a truck bed
5. fish something out of a body of water

Check.  Check.  Checkity-check.

• Crock-pots are filled with any [or all] of the following: bear, moose, venison, squirrel, rabbit or something unidentifiable (but let’s face it - probably pretty good)

Check.

• Wicked awesome beards (as in, “No-Shave November” is, well, November) 

Check.

• Family meals – not requiring actual family membership            

Of course.

(Before we get any further, I ask just this once that you don’t go superimposing any screwy, mocking tones on this read.  Normally, I encourage that kind of behavior, but not today).

Yes, Duck Dynasty is funny and clever.  Yes, the daily events could be perceived as fairly unconventional and awful rednecky.   However, while I might gut laugh my way through an episode, I’ve come to realize that I’m not simply laughing at it.  I chortle along because I find myself identifying with the guys as they get stuck in a ditch or have trouble with an HVAC system, or set off in the woods to search for the perfect tree for a project. 

This is the way of things when you live off of the beaten path.  And really, folks, it’s pretty slick.  I think you’d like it. 

You’d like it when your fellow staff members are actually work buddies, with whom you can poke fun (and be poked at in return), play outside with, do dirty jobs with (often mud/water/plunger related), and share meals with.   Buddy stuff.

You’d like it where you can set off into the forest at will, and with no other motive than to see what lies there to be seen.  Here, where you can be struck over and over and over by how intoxicating the natural world is.  How easily you can become enchanted [by how bright the skin of a white birch is in the early twilight], absorbed [in the way that water slowly creeps down an icicle], or spellbound [by the shrill, ghostly call of a loon at dusk]. 

And you are because it is.  And you see it because you can. 

So, my question is:  Can you?  Can you get there, where there is forest or desert or river or sea?  If it is just outside of your grasp, then I beg you to find a way.  Borrow a car.  Take a drive.  I’ll bet you a hundred dollars that you can get yourself somewhere fairly remote in three hours, probably even less.  So pack some snacks, grab a hat, and go there.

If I can drive two hours for a movie, you can go three for the woods.  Trust me.  Trust the beards.  They’re crazy, but they’re also on to something.  

And I think you’re going to like it.

Way, Way Too Much Of A Good Thing

Sun, sand, turquoise tropical waters, 24-hour pizza and ice cream… it sounds like a dream, doesn’t it?  It is.  Especially when you’re traveling with your older sister and your mom, two people who have the ability to singlehandedly make any ordinary occasion, to say the very least, extraordinary.

To celebrate my sister’s milestone birthday this year, we arranged to take her on a cruise to the Bahamas.  Renee has, until now, never had the joy of steaming along on a floating Las Vegas resort, so it was particularly exciting to watch her eyes absorb all of the neon lights, read the gluttonous menus and revel in the slothful lifestyle of our little adventure at sea.

You can probably recall from previous posts my extreme affection for soft-serve ice cream, but what you don’t know is that it runs in the family.  We are also a clan of chronic snackers, on which I’m blaming the extra 3 or so ”souvenier” pounds I’ve returned home with.  Everyone knows that you can nosh your way through a cruise, but hardly anyone really gives you the pathetic details of their sorry, over-indulgent foray into gastrointestinal chaos.  The following is a single day’s account of where my 3 pounds might have come from.  I promise you’ll find yourself speculating how far I am rounding down the wreckage.  I’ll never tell, but if you see me in person, you'll probably be able to without my help.

9AM - room-service breakfast, taken in stateroom: smoked salmon, fruit, bread products, coffee, yogurt, mimosas

10AM - breakfast #2: coffee, fruit, bacon

11AM – ice cream break, coffee

12:30PM – lunch: jerk chicken, curried vegetable salad, calamari fritters, beef in puff pastry, pizza, fruit, ice cream….

After reaching her max, my sister seems appalled at the fact that I, friends, am a bottomless pit.  It's a talent, really.

2PM – ice cream break #2

4PM – ice cream break #3

5PM – visit to the sushi bar (cultivating my very own maki roll, located just above my belt line)

7PM – dinner (2 starters, 1 entrée (or two, if you’re Renee), and as many as 7 desserts before Welly, our waiter, begins jogging in place as he prepares to log roll each of us out into the foyer.  Apparently, we’re not the only ones regretting that last scoop of bread pudding.

Get your own dessert table.

9PM – the last, is-it-even-possible ice cream break of the night.  Probably.

Add a couple of drinks in there, and you’ve got something like 8 million calories.  Or 4 pant sizes, which explains why I can’t even fit into my stretchy pants.

 

So there you have it, folks.  I have more stories to tell and other pictures to share, but right now it’s after 2PM, and I need to go find a soft serve machine somewhere.  What can I say?  Some habits die hard, if they die at all.  

WAIT!!!

I promise I'll post later today, so please don't give up on me!

I just got back from an incredible trip with my mom and sister to the Bahamas during which we ate like animals ("ate like kings" somehow seems lackluster), sunned ourselves with abandon, and laughed until we peed a little.  Okay, that last part was just me.

I'll share more this afternoon -  I swear on my cat, which means a lot more than you might think.

And Now I Pronounce You Husband And Cat-Lady

6 years ago yesterday, I walked barefoot down my childhood front lawn and skittered into place alongside the Adonis that I woke up next to this morning. Scratch that – he woke up at 6am, I woke up at 9:45, so I suppose that should read “that guy that I fell asleep next to last night.”

Marriage is a delicate piece of art, I think: beautifully intricate with sharp edges and complex details, hard to balance, and ultimately… wicked easy to break.  I like to think that I’m still pretty young [at 28], but even now, I have peers at seemingly every stage of the marriage game. 

Some friends are experiencing that intoxicating punch-drunk love of a new relationship, hanging on the every chirp of their lover, and sweeping most contradictions or character flaws under the living room carpet, knowing for sure that “they won’t always be like that”.  While sweet, this makes me giggle and snort a little, because the substance of what C had to deal with years ago… well, let’s just say that they don’t make rugs that big.

Other friends have just tied the knot/sealed the deal/bit the bullet/jumped the broom/taken the plunge.  If you are, or have ever been married, you remember the mixed emotions that live here: you are elated to finally have crossed such a thick line intact, but are repeatedly faced with the reality that your spouse is in one day able to slide into a hot getup for a friend’s wedding in the afternoon, then impress you post-event by farting under the covers all night due to the amount of cocktail hour pot-stickers he/she consumed at the expense of Mrs. Newlywed’s parents.  I like to refer to this stage of marriage as the “shock and awe” segment of the game.  The jury is still out back deliberating punishment for crimes like this.

I have friends and mentors that are nearing (or have reached) the 30 and 40-year marks of their journey, and they have somehow (my parents included) managed not to kill each other, if only by a small margin of error.  Still, these are my heroes.  In that instance when I find every drawer open and the toilet unflushed (again), I wonder how these individuals restrained from putting a few drops of laxative in the next morning’s French roast.  Though when I realize that I’ve begged him to scratch my back/rub my feet/massage my scalp every night for the last 5+ years (and he has obliged, more than 1,800 times), I’m surprised that C hasn’t suffocated me in my sleep and rolled me out the back door, if only because his hands just can’t take it anymore. 

There are others in my life that are going through, or have already endured the indescribable pain and confusion of dissolving their marriages.  When I’ve watched this process or heard their stories, I think of how an amputee must feel after surgery.  Regardless of the disease, the gangrene, the pain of the limb in question, the loss is felt at almost an atomic level.  Something that was, is no longer.  I know that my tears don’t change or mend any part of the wound, but most of the time I can’t help but offer them anyway.  I can only be thankful for what I, at this moment, do have. 

So C, thanks a bunch.  You’ve made this 6-year road trip a good one.  Thanks for hitting all the rest stops (and some of the wooded areas) so that I can pee every half-hour, and for letting us get ice cream to break up the long stretches.  When you’ve felt like leaving me at the Auntie Anne’s Pretzel shop because I’ve asked you to slow down again, or I’ve brought the cat in the car with us, which is always a bad idea, thank you for instead parking us at a scenic overlook so we can each take a short walk in opposite directions and start the next leg of the trip fresh. 

Thank you, I love you.  You make my life a better journey. 

With more snacks.

Clear The Room, Stat!

If you find yourself in a half-empty apartment, disheveled by brown moving boxes and the Hefty garbage bags that are starting to haunt your dreams and fill your reality, promise me something.  When your late-night lust for snacking creeps up on you like a sneaky tiger, push it away with both hands.  This is especially important  when you've moved all of the food items out of your house, except the ones you'll eat for breakfast and those leftover baking ingredients that you wish you weren't going to throw out (but should've already, since you haven't had an oven in a month and a half).

Above all, avoid eating italian-seasoned bread crumbs by the spoonful.  I don't care how salty and garlicky it tastes, or how easily it becomes a very yummy, chewable ball in your mouth.  In ten minutes, you will have the breath of a monster fueled by breadsticks, fresh garlic, and hellfire.  If you aren't convinced, your spouse will be sure to inform you.

And when you wake up the next morning, you'll wish you could use chlorine bleach to rinse your mouth with, because coffee is not going to cover that up.  I have a feeling my co-workers will be quarantining me giving me plenty of space to "focus on my work" for the day.