They love me, they really love me

OK so I'm skipping some vacation posts to give my Wednesday night follow-up. I really missed my students. I mean really missed them and it turns out they really missed me. They told me that and even told me that they were glad to have me back because it is more fun with me there.

I have to say that is the kind of thing that will make my head get really big. I know that sometimes they can drive me freakin nuts (oh how I long for grape fruit) they also make me unbelievably proud.

Anyways, there were plenty of new faces and lots of excited greetings but also a lot of important details to hash out. I gave them details on the vacation including a picture slide show and avoided any of the nastier details, because they don't need to hear that. I also had to give some info on the trip we are taking tomorrow and on some other upcoming events.

Speaking of that, tomorrow I am going to a 3 day music festival at an amusement park with 20+ people and meeting up with 3 or 4 other groups from our area. It is going to be a blast but I'll be away from my wife and kids till Sunday. Also I probably won't be keeping up with my blog till Monday, but that doesn't excuse people from commenting.

I'm a little scattered, which is weird since we were out of lo carb monster, so it has been like 4 weeks since my last one but I don't need caffeine to distract me.

Tonight I talked about being a servant. I'll be following that up over the next couple of weeks. Anyways, that is the details on what happened at Youth.

Hey Billy Ray, I found your mullet

After the Giant Sequoias we drove to Eureka. I'll admit I didn't expect the SciFi (or should I say SyFy) show. I didn't expect what I found either. Eureka is a decent sized coastal town in Northern California. I expected it to be about the same as all the other decent sized coastal towns I had been to in CA. What I got was a town that was more hick than any I had been to in a long time.

We went to the mall, which was actually a pretty nice mall. That made the next part even more shocking. I walked into a mullet convention. Seriously I saw like 10 mullets. I haven't seen that many mullets in the past 2 or 3 years. It's like the government setup a refuge for mullets in the town of Eureka and then covered it up with a SyFy show depicting the most advanced town in America.

Anyways, this is where I spent my 10th anniversary with my wife. We watched a movie together while my in-laws played with our kids and then we got a table to ourselves at Applebees. We are trying to save money for a trip down to GA at the resort we stayed at for our honeymoon this fall. Here's hoping.

After dinner we drove to Orlean, CA which is located roughly in the 90s. More on that tomorrow.

Jumbo Shrimp and Little Giants

Katdish seems to think I'm full of time and so she keeps recommending books on her blog that sound really good. The latest is The Jumbo Shrimp Gospel. The book sounds great and it lines up with the kind of paradox that I was thinking about while walking among the giants.

Our third day in California we awoke on the edge of Humboldt state park, which is a giant sequoia forest. These are "costal redwoods" that are known to be the tallest of the redwoods. Others are wider but not as tall. I had seen many pictures in the past but there is no way to grasp just how tall these trees are until you are there. The problem is that they are so big you cannot put them in perspective on film. Other trees just aren't tall enough to show off the towering nature of these giants.

Yet, walking among the tallest living things on this planet I am struck that they are not the giants they pretend to be. Many times in the Old Testament it refers to the great northern cedars. I imagine they much be something like these behemoth trees.

Psalms 29:5
The voice of the LORD breaks the cedars;
       the LORD breaks in pieces the cedars of Lebanon

Imagine that. As I stood among the tallest trees and saw the damage they had weathered I wondered at the voice that can break those trees into pieces is the same voice that spoke life into me and called me good. The same voice that called out to me in the dark places and speaks softly to me every day. The same voice that I ignore all to often.

Imagine that.

Like I said, you can't get the magnitude of these trees that are well over 200' above me.

Yeah so please remember I'm over 6' tall. That is as good as I can get for perspective. Not an easy tree to fell.

So I'm thinking that the classic car in the tree is as close as I can get to demonstrating just how big these trees really are.

Why vampires don’t sparkle

Like I said the past couple of days there are a lot of really great things about this vacation. I had to pull the bad out so the good would look even better by comparison. Today I'm going to talk about the plan trip, the boardwalk, and the redwoods.

The flight out was interesting to say the least. Tuesday I got a call that the flight was cancelled but that they had rescheduled us for a later flight that arrived earlier. We flew into LAX instead of DFW. This resulted in a shorter layover but a much longer first flight. The second leg was about an hour. The trip was pretty straight forward but since it was a first for all of our kids it was great. We take up 5 seats with the baby in our laps. We had to keep passing him around and he really enjoyed looking outside. My youngest girl is a huge chicken and we were worried she would get scared and scream bloody murder so during takeoff I told her to pat her lap then clap her hands then wave her hands in the air, shake her whole body, and yell "blast off." Anyone get that one? Anyways she was a bit whiney till she looked outside. She ended up taking the window seat and really calming down. We have 2 portable dvd players and the other two watched those while the youngest girl stared out the window till she fell to sleep.

Anyways, we finally arrived and drove down to San Jose where we stayed the night. My little girl that enjoyed the plane so much started puking in the car and at the hotel but I lucked out and she wasn't in the car I rode in or in the room when she puked. The next day she was better and we went to the board walk in Santa Cruz. Has anyone seen The Lost Boys? It's an 80s vampire movie. I really enjoyed the movie as a kid because I'm kinda weird like that. Anyways, places like the boardwalk remind me of that movie so the whole time I was wondering where the vampires were hidden. I never found them but my kids had a blast riding a few rides and playing in the sand. They wanted to play in the ocean but the water was frigid.

I looked it up and the boardwalk in the movie is the same boardwalk I was at. That must be why I felt like I was in the movie the whole time. Freaky.

These are my kids enjoying rides at the boardwalk while their dad keeps a vigilant watch for strange teens lurking deep in the shadows, a sure sign of a vampire menace.

Here in the full sun I can relax and know my kids are safe, but who knows what lurks under the boardwalk in the background.

Even though we didn't get in the water it was a pretty fun day. Afterwards we drove around San Francisco to a campground at the edge of Humboldt CA State Park for Costal Redwoods. More about that Monday.

Vacation Defined

Yeah I had a 2 week trip but definitely not a vacation. I think the problem is a difference in how that word is defined. My MIL, who I talked about extensively yesterday, seems to think that doing things other than work is the same as a vacation. I tend to think of a vacation as something that should be both fun and relaxing. I'm not opposed to doing things, but I like to enjoy what I'm doing, not just mark off a list of things that I have done.

Let me give a couple of examples. I wanted to visit the redwood national forest. Turns out there are more than one and more than one kind of giant redwood. Did you know that? Yeah I learned that a couple weeks ago. We went to the costal redwood forest between San Francisco and Eureka on our 10 year anniversary. Honestly I'm ok with that. I would have enjoyed spending the day walking trails with my wife. At one point this kids needed to go to the bathroom so my in-laws took them while we walked ahead on the trail we did walk. I got to have a nice 20 minute walk before the kids caught up with us. I really enjoyed it. The problem is that this was just the morning stop on our way to Eureka and we made a couple more stops on the way before having lunch and watching a movie in Eureka and then eating dinner before driving several hours to where we stayed. It was a series of check lists of things we needed to do for the "vacation"

I could plan a two week vacation visiting the giant redwoods so an hour was just stressful.

The one thing I kept saying I wanted to do was take my kids to the beach for a day at the beach. I wanted to let them play in the sand and water and experience the tide coming in so this is a daylong event in my mind. The date for this trip kept getting shuffled around to accommodate other things and in the end it was relegated to the Saturday after 3 days of Disneyland before a birthday party for my wife's grandmother. It wasn't worth it to me to drive 2 hours to the beach to have just enough time to let the kids stick their feet in the water before driving 2 hours back for a party. So the one thing I did want to do didn't happen.

Tomorrow I'm going to start talking about what we did do and there was a lot of fun in what we did. I just need to get this off my chest. I know some people like this kind of vacation. They want to go to Hawaii and do a million things. In the end they have more memories but in my opinion they didn't experience Hawaii. When I went I tried to limit what we did to one thing a day. We were there for 2 weeks and did a lot. I made a point of being in the ocean every day the entire trip. We saw all the major must see attractions but also found a few obscure sights that we had to hike to. It was the best vacation I've ever had because we got to experience the island instead of marking off a dozen things on a check list each day.

I saw an ad for a tour bus. They went on about all the things you would see and how much time they spent at each location. At one point they said you get to spend 90 minutes in the national forest that the trip was named after. It seems my mother-in-law would love to go on tour buses. A lot of people would love to go on tour buses. That is why they have these tours and good for them, but I'm not like that. I want to explore and find things. I want to ask a local about the best place to eat on the cheap. I want to walk through a city not drive. I'm just weird I guess.

My very unvacation

Have a very merry un-vacation …

Ok or something like that. Actually there were a lot of good things about my vacation but it was more than a little stressful. I want to share a lot of the good things including pictures, but I don't want to really mix the good with the bad so I'm gonna pull all that out right here right now.

Let me just say that 2 weeks was neither long enough and way too long. It wasn't long enough because there are things I wanted to do that we didn't have time for and it was way too long because of all the stuff we did do. My mother-in-law (MIL) is the root of most of the problems. She isn't a terrible person, but she is pretty self-centered and thinks I'm a villain. Seriously.

When my wife and I were dating she told everyone to pray for us to break up because I was a witch or satanist. She thinks anyone "evil" is a witch or satanist. She thinks I'm abusive to my wife and children now. She has often told me and my wife this. Needless to say her outlook taints her view of me. For years I tried but I pretty well gave up. I don't go out of my way to make her mad but I'm not out to make her happy either. In the end she gets mad at me either way so I just don't waste my energy.

That is the background on the problem between my MIL and me. Of course that is the simple version. She just can't help herself. It isn't just me she is really mean to everyone but doesn't get it. She told my sister-in-law that she wasn't good enough for her son. My brother-in-law didn't believe her but now my SIL will not stay in the same room as my MIL by herself.

Anyways, when we got there I was trying to play nice. I complimented my MIL right off the bat and she rejected the compliment. I was kind and courteous until she started complaining that my wife wanted to ride with me. It was the day before our 10 year anniversary. I had to put all our anniversary plans on hold because of this vacation which was scheduled to be convenient for my MIL. It is horribly inconvenient for me as any YP could tell you. My wife had been riding everywhere with my MIL and she wanted to come with me. My MIL pitched a huge fit and I just walked away. I wasn't rude or hateful I just left.

Later I got into a fight with my wife and my MIL felt the need to get in the middle. This time when I walked away my MIL followed and kept getting in my face over it. I told her blatantly that I didn't want to talk but she didn't get the hint. I let her keep talking but didn't even look at her much less talk. She went on and on and on then got mad because I wasn't responding. She said, "what have I done to you to be treated this way?" Yes, I understand she was trying to be helpful but she can't help when she won't listen. She is busy trying to help the wrong thing because she refuses to listen.

That is really the heart of it all. She hears what she wants. She thinks I'm a villain so everything she hears is translated into villain speak. Tuesday we had to drive back to San Francisco and she wanted to take her sister into LA and go all over downtown LA. She wanted my wife and daughter to come and my wife told her yes, but that she wanted to leave before 1pm. The is reasonable because much later and it would take a couple hours to leave LA. My MIL wanted to stay there till 4pm because it was only a 6 hour trip. She wouldn't listen and got into a fight with my wife. She kept asking my wife "what do you want to do?" My wife kept telling her she wanted to go but to leave by 1pm. My MIL would respond with, "what if I don't want to leave that early" to which my wife got upset because my MIL would then ask what she wanted to do as if the question was never asked and answered before. Eventually my wife broke down and yelled "I'm sorry I'm a horrible daughter. I should just go kill myself." Then she threw the phone she was holding and ran outside.

She eventually calmed down and my MIL talked with her but didn't hear anything she said. I know because the end result was that she got her way but whatever.

On Sunday before this we were talking about something much the same and my wife kept telling her what she wanted but my MIL wouldn't listen and kept saying what she wanted. My wife was getting frustrated so I tried getting her some space and told my MIL she needed time to think but my MIL accused me of trying to manipulate my wife. This whole time she was giving my very rude and hateful looks. She does this quite often because she wears her thoughts on her face and she is rarely happy. Her eyes were narrowed, her forehead scrunched, and her lips pursed. I know I shouldn't have but after nearly 2 weeks of getting the look and getting griped out I had to burn off some steam. I started mimicking her face. She got really mad. I've made her more mad but I think this was the most angry I made her on this trip. Later she walked up to me and said, "I'm sorry." So I told her, "I forgive you." I knew she wasn't sorry. She didn't sound recalcitrant but I forgave her anyways. Then she said, "Now you're supposed to say you are sorry." Yep, there it is. She wouldn't even say what she was sorry for because the point was to get me to apologize. I gave her the same apology she gave me and she fished for more. "You should say you are sorry for making faces at me." Then she went on to explain that she can't help it and so it is wrong and I'm not honoring her and I wouldn't treat me own mother this way …. Of course it doesn't occur to her that my mother would never treat me like that either. My mother wouldn't treat anyone like that and she would reprimand me for treating my MIL like I did even if she did laugh after I left the room.

So the day we were leaving my MIL was trying to talk to me again saying we needed to work all this out. I've had this talk with her pretty much every trip. They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting different results. I guess I'm not as crazy as most people say because after running headlong into a brick wall enough times I give up and go around. I said pretty much that in nicer terms and kindly told her I didn't really want to talk this through with her as we got ready to leave. She kept insisting so I told her a bit more bluntly that I have no need to try and work things out with her when she thinks I'm evil. She kept going and eventually said, "Well maybe I unconsciously make hateful faces but maybe you unconsciously try to stop me from being a grandmother."

I think that gives a pretty clear picture of the problem. She thinks I'm evil and that shades her view of me and explains away her rudeness to me, but no matter what I do she has always thought I was evil. I know it isn't just me. In fact, the fact that she treats most people like this assures me that I'm not the evil person she thinks. When everyone in the world is the problem maybe they aren't the problem.

Vacation Update: Living in the 90s

Just a really quick note here. I'm in the middle of nowhere Northern CA. I have no cell phone signal and would have to travel at least half an hour to get one. My only access to the digital world is through a dialup connection. OK sure it may not be third world but compared to my normal near cybernetic existence it is as if I have lsot one of my senses.

Not one of the important ones like sight, hearing, or touch. No one of the elsser senses like taste and smell. Sure it is handy to be able to taste and smell but people that ahve lost those can carry on as if they have no handicap whatsoever just as long as they remember to bathe regularly.

I speak from personal experience having known someone without a sense of smell. She made a ahbit of bathing regularly except for during the summer. She was a teacher and so tended to shower before church all summer long. Let me say that I would have gladly given up a sense of smell when I was around her during long hot summer days when she chaperoned a youth retreat I went on as a young man. I feel for the poor girls that had to share a room with her.

Anyways, I imagine my lack of digital sense is much like that. In a couple days we are driving down south to the real world again. Until then I am living in the 90s. How weird.