Alone in San Fransisco

Well, of course you're never alone in a city. It's one of the nice things about cities, I'm sitting in the Ferry Terminal building, drinking tea, watching the ferries come and go (no jokes about "ferries in San Fransisco please!) and sharing a table with other people. No one I know, just regular people.

The beautiful sunny days have given way to what I think is normal Northern California autumn weather; gloom.But it's just right for today. Everyone went home. One friend left for Florida last night on the redeye. And this morning the other two hopped in a zippy little Prius cab and headed for the

airport, going home to Minnesota.

This is why I feel so alone.

We had a spectacular trip. There was way too much shopping for me and not nearly enough for someone else. We ate a lot of great food, and also had dinner and breakfast in our room. We were gone from our hotel for 11 hours straight yesterday, and stayed in all of Sunday night.

Balance. And it was so good.

The best parts were:

The cable car to Fisherman's Wharf

The Japanese Tea Garden

The labyrinth at Grace Cathedral

And of course....just being together.

Stupid "have-to-go-back-to-real-life" craziness.

I know today more than I knew before that I am deeply blessed to have sisters that aren't related to me. Friends who are family; these amazing women in my life. Thanks girls. I really don't know who I would be without you.

And if you want to see the antics four forty-somethings can get up to when given a camera with video options? Check this out...

The best little life ever....

San Fransisco is beautiful. I know that no one else has EVER noticed this, but today, I did.

And I had to take a lot of pictures, and sometimes it was complicated. think--think--think

We had the best dinner ever at a fabulous Mexican restaurant.

And we spent some time at the water, by the Bay Bridge.

And here the flowers are STILL blooming. It's gorgeous. And a little warm and lovely.

This is the ferry terminal.....and I absolutely must go back here very, very hungry. Because the food here looked to be AMAZING! Yum.

It's a great trip, I'm so lucky. And I never want to go back to regular life!

Well......maybe after a couple of days.

Butterfly

California.....well, maybe not dreaming. Panic driven last minute packing? Oh yeah. That's it.

I leave tomorrow for a girls' trip to San Fransisco. I'm in that place right now of trying to figure out just why I thought this was a good idea.....I mean, really. Here I am frantically trying to tie up all the loose ends for work, and home and family and little doggy day care. Why don't I just stay home? It's so much easier.

Wait, what? Stop the Beach Boys music. What?

I'll give you three reasons why we don't stay home:

1. Girlfriends are the very most important thing for survival in the world. More important than food and water and sleep because without girlfriends why would life even be WORTH living anyway?

2. When you need to be horrible and awful and still loved, only your girlfriends can make that happen. And they do it with chocolate and flowers and wine.

3. Life is a fleeting butterfly that moves on silently before we even know it was really there, so we have to take time for the things that matter. Yes, family and home matters and little dogs and their daycare matter. But we wife/moms matter, too. And the best way to know this is to go away, and to become more of who we really are, and then to come back. It's so much easier to remember who we really mean to be after a girls' trip.

I'm feeling a little sorry for myself, because my girlfriends are already a few days into the trip. But I'll finish up my responsibilities tomorrow, and I'll head to the airport and catch the last few days of the trip. And whatever good there is, I will catch up on it and soak it in like the sun and the moon and the wind.

California um... almost ready to dream?

Oh yeah.

Can You Hear the Chant?

If you listen closely you can hear it......"girl's trip, girl's trip, girl's trip....."

I am just over a week away from a trip with my girls! And today this arrived in the mail:

The note says "Girl's Trip Survival Kit" and it's got ear plugs and blister treatment pads and the lovely and glamorous eye shade. There's a pack of gum and a pack of tums, kleenex, hand sanitizer, socks and a book about the Beat Generation. One of my bff girls is a crazy amazing organizer and I'd bet our whole little group got these in the mail today. It's making me even more excited to go!

I've had these women in my life forever, more than 20 years, and I will not ever let go of them, not ever. I'm so lucky. Some of us have given birth with the support of another, three times actually. And we've moved each other dozens of times. We've cried over loss and gain and gains that felt like losses and losses that felt like gains. Our oldest children turn 18 in the next weeks and our youngest just started first grade. If we could find a way to live closer we would, right now we're about as far apart as you can be and still reside in the continental U.S. But it doesn't matter. Friends live in your heart.

The Sunday after next, as soon as I can leave church, I head to the airport, and catch up with them in San Fransisco. We've got just a few days, but it's better than nothing. And now that I've got my survival kit and since it's clear that I'm not going to lose 10 pounds before I go so my clothes all still fit, well....I'm pretty much all set to go! Pack my bags and wait by the door for the day to come, that's what I'll do!

What would we do without friends? I have no idea, and I have no intention of finding out. None.

The chant gets louder......GIRL'S TRIP! GIRL'S TRIP! GIRL'S TRIP!

A family that camps together doesn't get eaten by cougars....

We had a wonderful weekend. The weather was gorgeous.

The whole family was in town, and we got to spend a weekend with our good friends who were kind enough to have four daughters to match our three sons.

We burned a lot of things, some of it even food.

There were many boats, and many children in many boats. Many boats tipped, I am sure no one had any role in any of these swampings and that it was all just the wind. Oh yeah, the wind.

We hiked and climbed and had adventures in the water. Some of them began with "I'm sure we can get across the river over here...."

The Olympic Mountains are amazing.

The water, too.

The little dog got to go on her first camping trip.

And we think we brought enough stuff for two days, maybe. I guess we did.

And little dogs, supervise them closely too. And have them supervise the small children, too. Buddy system. And park rangers with big guns, that too.

I have no idea what this means, but we brought no stock, and no overstocks, either.

What a great weekend. I want to go back, right now. Who's with me? We can race. Ready, set......GO!

A One Man Tent

Crispy.

Fried.

Over medium with the yoke broken.

I am burned out. Fried, overdone, sizzling, done. D o n e.

I have a fabulous job at a marvelous church with a great paid and volunteer staff. The children make me smile and make my heart absolutely sing. I love my work. But last week I could hardly make myself go.

This puppy needs a vacation!

My husband is on week two of being gone. He was home for the weekend. Miss Noodles the princess dog has decided that he is the only man for her and she simply pines when he is gone.

I have taken to bringing her little doggy bed with me in the car, out to the patio, even tucking it under the kitchen table while I work. I almost brought the little love-head into the vet today because she was downright lethargic. But I dabbed a little butter on her super heathy food so she'd eat, and dropped drips of water on her nose so she'd drink. And then the boys came home and she perked up, playing and chasing and licking noses. Safe for now. Hopefully her man will come home soon. Don't tell her he's gone til Friday. Shhh.

Yesterday I was out at our local fine "Sheri's" eating emporioum. Read Denny's but not as nice. I was out with my writing buddy and she was telling me all about her kid's going on a camp out. It was stark, I got this image of some glaciated, decimated tundra and a little one man tent. It looked so good, so very, very good. I'm guessing that's not what the Girl Scouts camp out was like. But, ooooo. I salivated even more than I had over the S'more pie (which I brought home to my children, good clean eating here). I want that. I want alone. I want peace. I want it. Please.

This is the time in the Religious Education Year when we dance. We dance the "end of year" dance. We hope the kids learned a lot and had fantastic spiritual enrichment. We hope the volunteers feel appreciated. We hope the leadership sees the impact even though only 12 kids came to church on Sunday but we have 75 registered. We hope the paid teachers feel this is worth their time. We hope next year is good, not as bad, just as good, better, whatever fits the specifics of the year. We hope the parents like what we've done. We hope.

And sometimes we hope for a one man tent, on the tundra with a little pemican and some granola. Maybe a coke can with some fishing line wrapped around it with a hook. Some coffee. Some vodka. We hope!

So, maybe I'll get on that vacation planning,'eh?

Family on spring break

Watch Spring Break in Comedy | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

The trip to London! No, Amsterdam! No Hawaii.....

Top Ten True Things about Stand-by Travel

10. Spending two days in an airport at the beginning and end of a trip is "normal".

9. Burger King for breakfast, lunch and dinner is SO a balanced vacation diet.

8. Stand-by travelers who miss flight after flight together come to be a rumpled, tired kind of family, and shake hands and pound backs when one of them finally makes it on a plane.

7. Finding a place to sit with an outlet to re-charge your lap top, bingo!

6. After a couple of days of missing flights, flying into an airport 14 hours away from your home renting a car and driving home starts to sound like a really good idea.

5. Airports have memorial gardens, giant meeting rooms, chapels and lounges. Who knew?

4. If you know where to look in the airline computer system, you find out which stand by passengers will get on the flight before they do.

3. Large families who show up for a flight at the very last minute break the hearts of a whole crowd of stand-by passengers who are hoping they'll be stuck in security.

2. Flying for "free" isn't actually free if you count four days of food and extra hotel stays, but hey, not complaining.

1. The very best airport to be stuck in is the Honolulu airport. Live music, open hallways, gentle breezes and the nicest airport staff anywhere. Detroit? Yeah, um....no.

Hittin' the Road

My family loves to travel, any place, any where, any time. One or the other of the adults in the family have had jobs with an airline for the last 15 years, so we don't travel in any normal sort of way. Nope. We pack, we prepare but we never really know how things are going to turn out.

Take the time we went to Hawaii. I had just put in a two week notice with the airline, so we figured we'd better do one of the trips we'd always meant to. So on a Thursday we decided to go to Hawaii, and on Friday we left. We found a hotel when we got there, and a big box store to buy all the things we forgot plus some boogie boards and had a great time.

And the luggage. We have lots of luggage, and for ease of communication, all our pieces of luggage have come to have names. Yes, names. Recently we had to let go of "The Smuggler" the name of the company which was on the rollerbag which started everything. The poor thing had really just fallen apart. But we still have "Her Eminence", "Porsche", "Fred" and "George" which, funny thing, look exactly alike, "Pegleg" and of course "The Monstrosity" big enough for small children to fit in, and they have tried.

We're getting ready for a trip, I'm not going to jinx the flights by saying where we are trying to go, but it's going to be dicey getting there, so we decided everyone should just have a rollerbag of their own in case we have a last minute switch of flights, we can move fast with just carry-on luggage.

So we have new additions to the suitcase family. I want to name them "Rusty" and "Slice" but we'll just have to see which names stick. This naming craziness is also how we wound up with a cat named "the baby kitty".

Want a hint about where we're trying to go? Sorry, it'll jinx it!

Scenes from LREDA Fall Con 2008

This was really the best part of the whole conference. OK, the theology from Rev. Dr. Rebecca Parker was life changing, and the sessions were solid and full. Seeing my good friend Halcyon and getting to room together was the best part!
Did you know the leaves change in New Mexico, too? I didn't! This was down by the Rio Grande River.

The courtyard at the Hotel Albuquerque was lovely, and offered fast respite in moments of complete overload.


The light fixtures looked to me like big chalices!

The local mission church in Old Town Albuquerque.


Day of the Dead, or Dia des los Muertes decorations were everywhere.
You can see the buskers in the shadows. Eventually there were two local guitar players and one local tourist with a wicked harmonica. A treat!

The Rio Grande River----it's really shallow here, and very murky.

LREDA Fall Con: Better than the Obama OR McCain Rallies

I packed all my bags, slogged to the airport early early and early, and flew to Albuquerque. Here I am at the Liberal Religious Educators Association's Fall Conference. Fall Con! Cactus, colleagues, corn chips and creative chaos-the ultimate UU event. 

Even Barack Obama and John McCain came to town to get in on the action. 

I'm rooming with my dear friend from the east coast who I've already lived with once for a week at RE Leadership School, so we're cozy and comfortable together. The sun is warm when we get to snatch little moments of it, and the programming has so far only exploded about a dozen brains, so it's good but not taking too many people out. We have small groups to process the details of the days, we have wonderful music, we have the candidates for UUA President and mostly of course we have each other. What a divine blessing. 

I've gotten to see friends from across the country and meet people I've only known by name on the list serve. But best of all, I got to meet, face to face, UU bloggers! Like  Cindy from Happy Cindy Changes the World (and I guess I got to meet Cranky Cindy, too but she seemed happy to me!) and I got to meet Phil from Phil's Little Blog on the Prairie. A few folks even told me they read my blog. Wow, it is a small world.  I was really honored to think that people read this, really, lots. 

Of course there is too much to do, too much food, I'm drinking too much coffee and there is too much to think about.  

But it's hard to imagine that I'll get enough. 

Reality check....why are we here again??

Oh yeah, it's to keep our children safe, and let them know that they are wildly loved and adored! Can't forget that. Maybe I'd better write it down.

Our RE Council retreat had the divine pleasure of including a little one. The Sunday morning worship at the edge of Lake Wenatchee was made holy by not only the mountains, trees and the water, but by the quiet commentary of our beloved little J.

On the way out the door Sunday we each got a big J. hug. She knows where she stands with us; we LOVE her!

Visioning.....

I had a fantastic weekend visioning retreat!

We had to start out just a little off track by listening to the debate on a scratcy mountain radio station and arriving a few at a time in a slow stream in the darkness. I only lasted about a half an hour of sitting and listening before I had to get up and DO something. I readied our space for the worship and workshop. Soon my friends were preparing dinner, too. We were moving in silence so we could still hear through the static of the old cabin radio.

But what a great group! Appetizer dinner! Shared cleaning (LOVE that!). Singing through the hymnal as we waited for the folks who had later responsiblities back home. And then a great opening worship where we left our worries in a stone and stashed them all in a basket away from us. Then we did a good check in, then off to bed. One of us has continually expressed trepidation that we're not "having a Kum Bah Ya" moment. So, we did upbeat and fun three-part songs. I love a group that can hear "breeeaaaathe-in" and they're right there with you for "breeeaaaathe-out" peeling off into the other parts without a bit of help.

Morning was more worship, more three part songs. The theme of the three workshops on Saturday were "Where Do We Come From" (tell your story of what RE was like when you got to this church) "What Are We?" (How do things feel, look move--right now?) and "Where Are We Going?" (BIG dreams!) so we sang that, and after our first workshop we hiked to a little waterfall. It wasn't far but our stalwart nearly two-year-old hiked almost the whole thing herself! So it was a full and restful break, just what we needed.


I feel blessed to work with this group of women. They are whip smart, deep feeling, with hearts the size of oceans and commitment stronger that a million spider threads braided by threes.

And the Saturday night worship planned by two of the council members? Oh yeah, turn to hymn number 401. Guess what it is. There was much laughing as we sang out "Someone's laughing lord......"

Not Back to School

Happy Not Back To School Day!

It feels like our first unschooling in years! I am full of warm happy memories of the year we first stepped back from public school and just took a year away. That year instead of going back to school we took a family trip. A lovely trip around the Olympic Peninsula to the Strait of Juan de Fuca, to the Hoh Rainforest and to Ocean Shores, the kitchiest of little coast towns.

This weekend we went back to Ocean Shores to fly kites and drive mopeds on the beach (I know, but the men in the family were just so happy!).



And today we drove past little gatherings of girls in ponytails and pink capris, boys in spiked hair and wheeley shoes all waiting with moms and dads and grandmas for the bus. And we drove on by with our day. Drop the car off for work, stop by our "homeschool" school to move tables and set up chairs for orientation, home for left over tacos for lunch, a run to the community college to buy the oldest a parking permit, pick up the car, come home. Work, read, cook.

The days will come soon when classes will start, and homework is in full swing. But the oldest is back out of regular high school with its six hours of classes a day and into community college for the end of high school, and the youngest is old enough to be in middle school classes at the HOME school, which means we have Monday and Friday off from class. We can go to museums and the beach and the science center and we can be together. Maybe they won't want to be with me now that they're so old. Or maybe it will be like today when the oldest drove during errands, and I did equivalent fractions with the youngest in the back seat, and it was so good.

It's almost like just raw homeschooling again.

And it makes me feel so full.

Happy Trails!

Homeland security has reinforcements at the Hibbing-Chisolm Airport. Yes, they have the regular TSA agents, although here they’re all friendly and wildly helpful; so much so that they’ll re arrange your bin for you before it runs through the x-ray machine. And there are still gate agents, although they come out to the waiting room to find you if they need to change your seat assignment, you know, to balance the plane!

They’ll even take your picture in front of the back-up security personnel if you ask them to, and your friends can wait with you before you head over to go thru security.

When the plane comes within range they call out “Come on folks, they’re within range, time to go through security, make sure you take any bathroom stops before you head in the secure room—no bathrooms in there!”.

Wouldn’t the world be a better place if every airport experience was like this? We’d all be happy travelers!

I’m off to fly home to Seattle, tomorrow is the big show day for KIDS Camp, my kids’ Korean Culture Camp presentation day. And man, do I feel cozy and warm knowing that fuzzy here is keeping me safe!

Happy Trails!

Open the Door!

Here I went, stepping right inside. And it sure is coming to the place where love and hope will and do abide.

This cabin week feels like home and family, even though this year none of the folks here are related to me by blood; they’re almost closer, I chose them and they just welcomed me in and said “It’s so good to be together again!”

But there’s been this other little thing, too. I had no idea that a few days of vacation would come with some professional coaching. The lady of the resort here has been in ministry for thirty years, and well, she gave me a great professional coaching session right down at the internet café (you know, the picnic tables by the office where you can get wireless access!).

Rev. Diana sat me down and talked over our ministry to and with families. She’s had this long and winding path of ministry that took her from Michigan to this little town in Minnesota and now even to her own little congregation. The first thing she said is “Oh, with half time work the first thing you’ve got to figure out is where your ‘no’ is.” What are your boundaries? What can’t you do? That’s where you start. And yes, that creative spark takes you and you have to run with that. That’s your yes, you go on the creative run when it comes.

And she also had this great analogy of the trinity, and yes of course our roots go waaay back in Unitarian and Universalist history away from the trinity, but we’re pretty good at translation we UUs! The father is the content, the holy spirit is the relationships and the son is fun. I love that. You have to have all three to have a balanced and vibrant Religious Education ministry.

For example, say you have an RE teacher who is all about the content—lessons-lessons-lessons. Well, then class is going to be boring and attendance will drop off. And if you have someone leading who is all about the fun and the social parts of class, then it starts to feel less important and families will not value the time spent enough to make the effort to show up every Sunday. And if you have a leader who ignores the importance of the individual and group relationship, then your chance for connection is lost and again, it’s left feeling a little hollow.

Bless her heart she even referred to the “Jesus Freaks” (her words, not mine!) and how that’s out of balance!

And you know, she’s right, this is a great way to think about it, without the trinity maybe for me, or with the amended triad of spirit or you know, something like the theological house. And while of course I’ve probably heard a lot of this before, here by the lake and relaxed without all the detritus from regular life, man, it is really sinking in.

In so many way’s its so good to be together again.

Vacation!

Vacation; all I ever wanted. Vacation; had to get away!

Come on, sing “Go Go’s” Karaoke with me!

Flying standby is always an interesting game, and that’s just what this is. Here I am, headed out on vacation and I’m just taking it all as it comes. My flight this morning had lots of folks just in from Hawaii who were booked on a later flight, that were standing by for what has looked for a week like a wide open flight. Hey, didn’t they know that I had a connection to make into Hibbing, Minnesota?!

No of course, it’s just a roll of the dice. And my roll came up OK—I was the very last person on the flight, we ran down the jet way, and the other non-rev wife I was with sat waaaay back in row 45, leaving me about row 17 because I had a tight connection to make. But of course, there was no space left in the overheads, even though NWA isn’t charging for bags yet, everyone carries on their luggage, right?

So, bump bump I went way back to stash my suitcase in the very last overhead bin. The sardine people all just looked at me with those blank looks we all have on a 7am flight, especially if we’re just off an all night flight from Hawaii.

My seat mate was a retired 747 Captain so we talked planes and the new 787 my husband is working. I tried to go fetch my bag during the flight and sneak it up closer, but honestly I couldn’t even remember where I’d stuffed it in the mad moments.

The captain announced as we approached Minneapolis that we’d had a gate change, F-14 which I recognize as the laaaast gate on that concourse. Sure enough, my pilot friend and I pull out the map of the airport in the back of the magazine, and yep. My gates are almost the farthest you can get apart in one airport. OK, I’m waiting on my holy spirit snatch—things turn out the way they turn out. And there was a little Meg Barnhouse “All Will Be Well” going on, too.

After two tries to get the jetway attached to our plane, much kindness from my fellow sardines and a nice skycap with a speedy cart and a timely tram, I was at my gate with a few minutes to spare. The speed-skycap driver tells me it was 2 ½ miles between my gates. Who knew that could even happen other than from Midway to O’Hare!!?

Well, I’m channeling the “Go Go’s”, flying on a little itty bitty plane over rural Northern Minnesota and soaring right along. Can’t wait to see the snails in the lake and some of my favorite people on the planet!

Vacation, here I come!