Aaahhhh

Deep breath. I love parent getaways. Unfortunately, they are just too few and too far between. We're vegetating at the lovely Salishan Lodge. The weather is beautiful. I'm sitting out on the little balcony overlooking the lush green manicured golf course. There is no one around and here I am out in the fresh sea air, smokin' a stogie, and blogging on my laptop. Ah life is good. I could almost imagine that I have no parental obligations whatsoever, except for the nightmares I have of arriving back to my parents' house without Vaughn's special surprise of a dead crab. I kid you not. That is what he wants as his payoff for enduring my parents while we get a much needed break. And I am also not kidding about having a nightmare last night about arriving back empty handed.

Today's to-do list:
Get dead crab.

Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, etc.

We bought Vaughn his first big boy bed today, as in big boy into college bed--full twin. More importantly, we have moved him into his own room!!!!!!!!!! I would go on with the exclamation marks, but fear it would become annoying. Anyhoo. We met my goal, sort of. I said no later than 5 years he's out of our bedroom (Dave with his foolish optimism said 3. Ha!). We're several months past the 5-year mark, but hey, it's not 6 yet! That's beating some third world countries! Now maybe we'll have sex more often. Well, maybe...

Mini-Me Not

I read time and time again how parents supposedly want their children to be little mirror images of themselves. First off, I don't know how accurate this statement is. I think parents want children that are like themselves in that they can understand them. Or perhaps people want their children to be the best of themselves, if that makes any sense. Themselves idealized. I mean, really. Do you really want a little mini-you? I don't. Maybe a mini-new-and-improved me. Or a mini-the-best-parts-of-me-but-none-of-the-bad. Probably the aspects of Vaughn I dislike the most are the mirrored parts of me--the nail-biting, temperamental, easily frustrated, mercurial, moody, hyper-sensitive, oh God, I could go on. I see those parts of myself, and I find them most disturbing. I feel no pride in thinking, "That's MY boy." However, there are obviously those parts that I can't relate to. That I don't understand fully. I'm not sure which I find more frustrating. Probably the warped reflection, if it is warped. I like to think it's warped, but maybe that's the most disturbing thing of all. It's not as warped as I'd like it to be. Perhaps it's too crystal clear. I want my son to be wholly different from me or the best me, and unfortunately, he only has me and his father as his examples, and who do you think he's going to relate to the most? I am fighting my shadow.

Paradise Lost

I'm back to reality, with a flu/cold as a souvenir. I feel, if possible, less rested than I did when I left, more stressed out, and bitchier than ever. Wow. How's that for a break? Of course, it doesn't help that I have Aunt Flo's cramps on top of it all.

I did manage to get the iPod back in working order in time for the trip back home. I tried all the reboot advice I could find on the Internet to no avail. I didn't have the cord, but thankfully, I did have an adapter for the car, which did the trick. I still curse Apple and all those who birthed them, but at least I had something to listen to besides Vaughn's whine-curse fest on the way home. You name it, he was screaming about it. Wow, 5 weeks, 5 months, and now 5 years, and nothing has changed, he's just gotten louder and better at it. Speaking of cursing those who birthed them...

May Apple Fry in Hell Forever and Ever

So I'm trotting down my parents' mile long forested driveway, doin' a little jog, doin' a little dance, gettin' down with my little iPod, thinking, "I don't know what the heck these reviewers are talking about that the iPod couldn't take a little jostling. I should have gotten one sooner. They don't know what they're talking about." The song ends. I go to the menu to change the mood. Pick a new song and boom. Nothing. It displays the song but no sound. I can't turn it off. I can't change songs. It's just frozen. And of course, I didn't bring the cord with me, so now I'm stuck with a frozen iPod. Arugghhhhh!!!!

Musings

Wow. This has got to be some kind of record posting two days in a row. I guess I solved my dilemma with that last post regarding how public I was going to be with my private life.

I really have nothing witty or profound to report. I am taking a much needed break up at my mom's, killing several birds with one stone--celebrating a belated Mother's Day with my mom and celebrating my dad's BD today. A rather pathetic celebration, if it can be called that, involving picking up a cake and cards last minute at Albertson's on my way up here. At least the gift was good, and given that my brothers barely ever remember my dad's BD, I'm already ahead of the game. We gave my mom and dad a joint present of a digital photo frame. Those things are awesome and I so want one now. It would take care of the fact that I haven't updated the photos on display in our house for the last 2 years.

Crap. That reminds me. I knew I'd forget something, the external hard drive with all our photos. I could be spending this time catching up. Oh, well. Maybe I'll be caught up by June, which will be about a year's worth of photos. Such is my life.

Delimma

So I still struggle with the subject of my first post I ever put here, which is: Just how public do I want to be about my private life? Since I now have virtually all my family members on myspace and I've linked this to myspace, I'm not sure just how much I'm willing to reveal. The odds are pretty good no one related to me or who knows me will ever read this. However, I'm too aware of just how small a world we live in, especially with the Internet, and the horror stories of people losing their jobs because they posted in their blog all the gory details of their office politics. Of course, now that particular person makes a living blogging, so I guess things could be worse.

Being an introvert, I do still want to have a private life, which is extensive. However, this is the closest I've come since Vaughn was born to keeping a regular journal, and I'd like to have something for prosterity purposes.

Remove link from myspace? Reveal all? Hmmmm.