I found a book titled Move Your Stuff, Change Your Life, by Karen Rauch Carter, in a stack of books near the living room window. I don't have a clue where I got it. I suspect a visitor left it. It may have been deposited behind a couch cushion or slid under a door by a kind neighbor. Its arrival is of no importance, actually, as it may have lingered in that pile for years, unnoticed. The title got my attention two weeks ago, and I took it as a command: Move your stuff! Change your life!
Feng Shui is the study of spatial relationships of things. It's an ancient art that uses common sense and wisdom. "Thoughtful placement," the author calls it. I like how she placed those words together. Certain that I exude common sense and wisdom, I sat down on yet another pile of books and prepared to read.
I wisely got a clipboard before I started. I put sheets of clean, white paper onto it, and stole a sharpened pencil from my husband. I was ready to find out what to do to get ENERGY to move through my home, unhampered.
The key word here is "unhampered," meaning without anything being in its way. (uncontrolled laughter..............)
My hallway had been set up to trap thieves and thugs who break in at night. Three plastic bins filled with rice, bread flour, and a bag of sugar kept us safe all this time, and THEY WORKED! No one broke in to slit our throats. My husband had asked me to move them. No way!
But it is interesting that Karen Rauch Carter, whom I've never met, got me to move them in less than a week.
ENERGY! The book names it "Ch'i" and says to pronounce it "chee". (The tea is Chi and you pronounce that "chie." I became addicted to chi tea this winter. Between the CHEE and the CHIE, I seem to be speaking Chinese a lot. The Chi gives me Ch'i, I suppose. (OK, enough of that.)
Back to Feng Shui. This is also a pronunciation issue. Karen Rauch Carter says to call it "Fung Shway," but I've heard it called "Fung Shwah," and "Fung Shwee" and actually one person called it "f--- you," but that's another story. Let's call it FUNG SHWAY so we know what we're saying in our heads.
I couldn't read the whole book in a day. Oh, no............I have STUDIED this book, taken notes, and given myself ASSIGNMENTS. Why do it half way? (Would it then be called only "Fung?")
I drew a diagram of my house, divided it into nine areas, labeled them, colored them, wrote body part names on them, and put numbers into each area. My diagram was a masterpiece. I thought I might be done then. Wrong! The idea was to fix the house, not just to draw a pretty diagram.
Each of those nine areas represents an aspect of our life, and my assignments were to fix the spaces so that positive energy would encompass us, move into and around our home, and make everything that isn't perfect, better. OK....................
In the past two weeks, I have done things, in the name of good energy flow to improve the quality of our life, that seem incredible.
I rearranged the bedroom to stop energy from flowing over my hubby's hips, so he could sleep better and be cured of back pain. I moved a dresser to a corner so as not to throw "negative" energy back towards us as we unsuspectingly slept in a state of danger. Who knew?
I placed a large red piece of cardboard under the bed, which is to energize us both.........
My bedside table drawers are lined with purple wrapping paper, and a purple sweater rests in a drawer, bedside. Our bedroom happens to sit in the "prosperity" corner of the house, so not only will we be sleeping better, but we will prosper financially from these moves.
Outside the house, by our front door, I buried four large, plastic, green army men to guard us from intruders. To think that all these years I thought the rice, sugar and flour were doing that in the hallway!
The color of the front door will be changed, too. Red is the color to bring the best energy inside. Red would look terrible with our brick color, so we're going to use salmon. Red salmon.......get it? (We've bought the paint, so don't call with a better idea.)
A metal frame with all three of my children is in the kitchen, which is the "relationship and love" area. This is to bring them closer to me and more into my life. I received text messages from two of them right after I moved the photo. The third sent love. (One brought laundry yesterday.)
I tied red ribbons on the outgoing drains to keep good energy from going down them. I hope nobody sees them. Our plumber will think I dressed the pipes up for him. The ribbons look silly there, but if they work..................
In a hallway, the "helpful people and travel" area, I've placed a statue of David, shiny boxes and folders holding lists of helpful people and immediate dealings. Interestingly, two of the helpful people, whose names I tossed into the silver box, have already helped or completed an expectation I had for them. David is there to ensure that I get back to Italy some day.
My front hallway, the "career and life path" area, has a starfish and a beach photo. This represents water, the element of that area. Since I consider my career behind me, the life path part might be towards a beach. It doesn't hurt to think so.
Chimes are ringing on a porch, and a small bell is hanging in the guest bathroom. Energy is being called up.............and it is lingering in the bathroom, since it can't go down the drain...............red ribbons, remember.
I wrote two notes and hid them somewhere in the house. Don't ask me where. I really don't remember. They are to generate positive energy to bring about respect and a good reputation, just in case we could improve either.
The house looks tidier, I admit. I've sold items, donated books to a library sale, and Easter Seals took another pile of "stuff." I can move around easier, so I guess energy can, too. I wish I could see it.
I erased each "assignment" from my list as I completed it. If something in the book made sense, I wrote it on the assignment sheet, and carried it out the next day. Small details apparently make big differences in Feng Shui. ("Feng Shway")
There's still a lot to learn, and many things to relocate. I might move my husband to the other side of the sofa next.
I have laughed a lot in the past two weeks. I've done things that the hubby doesn't know about, and I won't tell. It feels as if I'm doing a magic trick and waiting to see if it works. Maybe this is some of the energy! I can walk without stubbing toes on things, too, I notice.
Absorbed in this topic, I took several more books about Feng Shui out of the library. I am not one to do things partially or without enthusiasm.
I'm drawing diagrams, adding numbers, breaking down sums, moving things here or there, and doing these bizarre things ...................but I've been laughing, and if good comes about, then MORE POWER TO IT!
It surely can't hurt anything. ........
Tomorrow I will bury a small mirror behind our house, facing the home of barking dogs across the way. This should deflect negativity coming towards our home, and reduce the annoyance we feel when four beasts bark in unison for long periods of time.
If that annoyance is reduced, believe me, I will have become a devotee............
Copyright: KP Gillenwater
Monday, May 20, 2013
Wednesday, April 3, 2013
Tried and True Tips for Road Trips,........or, "No Particular Place to Go"
My hubby and I have a framed United States map where we've kept a visual record of our auto travels around this marvelous country. It's funny how a few roads have been colored with magic marker many times, and one area of the country shows that we haven't been there, together, at all. The rest of the map is marked with routes lined in various colors, reminding us of our car trips on the road. Cruises are marked with dotted lines in the water. The few flights are dots on the places we landed.
I write a blog that tells about our trips for the past few years at http://ramblingsofroamers.blogspot.com and have books of hand-written journals from "BB," or "Before Blog."
In other words, we are seasoned travelers, and over our years together, we have acquired a certain amount of "savoir faire," which makes our trips easier and more fun.
Since we just returned from fifteen days on the road, it is all fresh in my mind, and because I am, by profession, a teacher, I am willing to share these with you! Pick and choose the ones you like.
1. Join AAA. Before we leave for anywhere, we get recent maps and guidebooks. It's all part of the membership, so it's not expensive. You can have AAA make you a Triptik to show you how to get somewhere, at no extra cost. We ride along with the current state's guidebook on the "navigator's" lap, and the non-driver can tell the driver what's coming up that might be of interest. We also take along "Thelma," our trusty GPS unit. She has only tried to kill us twice, and she can usually get us where we decide to go.
2. Make plans, but DON'T MAKE PLANS. If you suddenly realize that you are about to encounter an area you want to investigate, you don't want to say, "Oh, too bad..........we have reservations...." You may never pass this way again! Stop and see it...............trust me, there's a hotel waiting somewhere for you. We managed to be in South Dakota not once, but twice, during the Sturgis motorcycle rally. Instead of going elsewhere, we went with the flow, met some bikers, and had a wonderful time. We found hotels in spite of the crowds.
3. Pick up the hotel and motel booklets at the rest areas on interstates. There are coupons in there for great motels at discount rates! I have stood behind customers in motels who are paying twenty or thirty dollars more than I am, for the same kind of room, simply because they didn't know about those booklets. They are only available on interstate rest areas, so don't waste time looking elsewhere, and they are generally for motels near an interstate. Check the fine print to see if there are restrictions on days of the week or holidays, but they are a gem! We make reservations only if we know for a fact that we need them. Without coupons, we "shop around" for the best price and accommodations before we settle down for the night. We always ask to see the room, too. Just because a lobby is clean doesn't mean that the room itself isn't reeking of mold or too much air freshener. Don't be afraid to say, "No, thank you," and walk away! You can negotiate, sometimes, for a better price, too. And don't forget to say you're a AAA member or AARP, or a member of their chain! Use the tools you have!
4. Join hotel and motel chain clubs. Fill out the form and carry the card. Over the years we have had several totally FREE NIGHTS at Choice Hotels due to being a club member. We are card-carrying members of nearly every hotel chain in the country, and hope to use our points some night at other chains, too. If the points expire before we can accumulate many, we don't use that chain. We don't know where we're going to stay ahead of time, and expiring points don't help us. Read the fine print, as I said. Look for motels that offer a free breakfast, not just continental breakfast. It will save you money, and if you have had enough to eat before you set out for the day, you don't need to spend a lot of money on food.
5. Pack lightly! This last trip I wore every item in my suitcase. You really are never going to see the people that you meet on a road trip again. They're wearing jeans, so you might as well be, also. One sweatshirt, one pair of jeans, a few tee shirts, one sweater, a jacket and one coat if it's not summer. A pair of black slacks and a black sweater goes along in case we "go somewhere special," but let it be wrinkle-free-easy-pack, so you don't have hanging clothing all over your car. Walking shoes, sandals, shower shoes and a pair of black flats are ENOUGH for your feet. One swim suit and a cover-up will be fine in any hotel. Remember: You will never see those people again. They won't know you wore it at the last hotel. Take enough fresh underwear, as it's the only thing you won't wear twice. Take a hat, preferably a ball cap, to keep sun out of your eyes as you drive.
The only other hat you might need is a sun hat for a beach. If you even think you're headed towards a beach, throw in a beach umbrella and two beach chairs, but only if those chairs fold flat, so the don't consume space! Leave the boogie boards at home: For the space they take and the two minutes you'd use them, it's wasted space.
Your clothing won't get dirty sitting in a car, so many times I can just leave my suitcase in the car instead of dragging it into each motel. I carry in fresh undies, my robe, and that bag with the laptop and cosmetics, and travel truly lightly. This works best if your motel door is near the car, but it's most appreciated when it's not, and there's a flight of stairs to climb. Some motels don't have elevators.
6. You don't really need to take shampoo and conditioner. For a week or so you can get along with the hotel stuff and save room in the car. Take all your make up in one little bag. I pack my cosmetic equipment on the morning we leave, dropping each item into the bag after I've used it. If I didn't need it that morning, I won't need it any morning. Leave the fluff at home! DO take a night light from the Dollar Tree, a can of air freshener, and a flashlight.
7. I take a laptop, so we always look for free Wi-Fi, which is now almost a given. Do I need anything other than the laptop and my cell phone? No.
8. Do not take valuables along with you. I wear one set of jewelry, and I am wearing it! Almost every theft I've heard about took place in a motel room when the people were at breakfast or the room was being cleaned. The key is: Don't take valuables along to be stolen. Leave the jewelry in the safe deposit box, and carry your purse everywhere you go, so your credit cards are always on your person. If you haven't put the laptop into the car before you go to breakfast at the motel, stop, go back, and put it into the locked car before you eat. Lock the dead bolt before you go to bed, and use that metal thing that keeps the door from opening, too. If there's noise in the hall, call the desk, and don't open the door to see what it is. It's their job to keep the hotel safe and quiet, not yours. Also, when you park your car, don't park it behind the motel. Put it right out front under a big, tall flood light! Having light and possibly a video cam up there may deter break-ins.
9. Make lunch a picnic! Some of our fondest memories are the picnics. We stop at grocery stores for fried chicken or lunch meat. Then we stop at a rest area or city park. We carry a large plastic container holding a loaf of bread, a jar of almonds, peanut butter and crackers. A little candy is important, too. We take a large bag that holds salt and pepper, plastic silverware, paper plates, paper towels, napkins, and an old tablecloth in case a picnic table needs covering. I carry a smaller bag that holds single servings of mustard,mayonnaise and artificial sweetener, so I can make my famous "egg salad breakfast" at motels.
10. I include the famous "egg salad breakfast" directions for the sake of those who are sick of the motel waffle and refuse to eat that gunk they call gravy and the fattening biscuit. If you are at a motel that offers hard-cooked eggs, you are in luck. (If not, you can now buy small packs of 2 or 6 hard-boiled eggs at grocery stores and keep them in your cooler or motel frig until you need them.)
The egg salad breakfast: Cut up a hard-boiled egg in a bowl. Add one of those single-serving packs of mayonnaise and half a single-serving pack of mustard. I like my egg salad sweet, so I add two packs of fake sweetener, mix it up with a fork, and then I spread this over a toasted half bagel, an English muffin, or a piece of toast. It is filling, delicious, easy to make, and when I add a piece of fruit from the breakfast bar, I am totally satisfied for several hours.(It is also not fattening.)
11. Dinner is a special time, but not every night. On the nights we are too tired or cheap to eat at a special place, we order pizza to be delivered to our room, or do the fast food thing. Since I am pretty picky about what I eat, we might visit a local grocery store for deli specialties, a Lean Cuisine (if our room has a microwave), or make a sandwich using that loaf of bread in the car and fresh lunch meat. Since food is not the most important thing on our road trips, we are fairly easy to please, but as we enjoy trying local foods, if there is a special restaurant to visit, we splurge!
12. Wear a pedometer! It's fun to know how far you've walked each day, especially if you are "foot-walking a city," for your sightseeing. We bragged about walking 13 miles the day we were in The Magic Kingdom, and had the proof of it on my waistband!
If you're missing your workout at home, consider the steps you took as your exercise, but if you're not satisfied, check to see if your motel has a work-out room. Once, we went to a Lowe's Home Improvement Center and did our walk inside the store. We weren't sure of the neighborhood, and Lowe's was safe. We just briskly walked up and down each aisle until we'd gotten half an hour of walking done.
13. Throw stuff out as you move along! If you're done with Georgia, toss out the maps and advertisements. It will keep your car clean and tidy. It's where you are living, in a way, for the trip time, so it's nice to have it neat. Put a small trash can in the front area of the auto, so little stuff gets tossed into it, instead of littering where you sit. When you hit a rest area, the navigator can empty the can.
14. Take turns driving. Nobody wants to spend the whole trip at the wheel of the car. The other person navigates and reads the guidebooks. Every hundred miles or so, switch!
15. Visit the library BEFORE you leave home! Tell the librarian you are going on a trip, and he will let you sign stuff out for as long as a month! We take three or four audio CDs with us, and have become totally engrossed in mysteries, laughed a lot at Garrison Keillor's Lake Wobegone stories, or been terrified by a Stephen King novel. We've also read whole books aloud to each other as we moved across the country, the navigator reading. It makes the traveling time go faster, trust me.
16. Souvenirs and gifts need to be small enough that they don't crowd the car. I once bought a lawn chair, and had to tote it all the way from South Carolina, only to find that I could buy the same thing at my local store. I like to take food gifts home, as they are consumable, and the receiver doesn't have to clean off a shelf or keep it for posterity. Nobody really wears the Stone Mountain tee shirt, so we gave up on clothing, but the pickled okra and Himalayan pink salt was a hit. Wine from wineries we visited has also been well-received.
17. Write a journal as you travel, so you know where you've been! My volumes have come in handy many times when trying to remember a town's name or the route we took. It's also fun to share your travels with people who are interested. Those who aren't, aren't. You will get over it. But DO take pictures, and include yourself and your traveling partner in the pictures. A mountain is a mountain is a mountain, but a mountain with Randy in front of it is a souvenir and proof that he was there! A moment in your life, and his, has been captured! Don't be afraid to ask others to take your picture together, and then offer to return the favor for them.
18. Have fun! Your trip is not an assignment! This is to see the world, after all, not to "get it done!" If something appeals to your curiosity, STOP THE CAR, get out, and SEE IT! We would never have seen Mark Twain's grave or the World's Largest Frying Pan if we had just driven by and said, "I wonder what that is ..................."
19. Coming home should be wonderful. Since you don't have a lot of STUFF that you didn't use but took along, the trash has been left behind as you travelled and the souvenirs are small, it's not a big deal to unload the car. Move it in, put it away, toss the laundry down the chute, sit down with a drink and talk about how much fun you had!
I am newly retired, and hope to be able to continue to take road trips for many years. We discussed taking a tour to another country soon, but instead we might go see that area of the country where our wall map doesn't have any colored lines running over it, and change that!
Copyright: KP Gillenwater 2013
I write a blog that tells about our trips for the past few years at http://ramblingsofroamers.blogspot.com and have books of hand-written journals from "BB," or "Before Blog."
In other words, we are seasoned travelers, and over our years together, we have acquired a certain amount of "savoir faire," which makes our trips easier and more fun.
Since we just returned from fifteen days on the road, it is all fresh in my mind, and because I am, by profession, a teacher, I am willing to share these with you! Pick and choose the ones you like.
1. Join AAA. Before we leave for anywhere, we get recent maps and guidebooks. It's all part of the membership, so it's not expensive. You can have AAA make you a Triptik to show you how to get somewhere, at no extra cost. We ride along with the current state's guidebook on the "navigator's" lap, and the non-driver can tell the driver what's coming up that might be of interest. We also take along "Thelma," our trusty GPS unit. She has only tried to kill us twice, and she can usually get us where we decide to go.
2. Make plans, but DON'T MAKE PLANS. If you suddenly realize that you are about to encounter an area you want to investigate, you don't want to say, "Oh, too bad..........we have reservations...." You may never pass this way again! Stop and see it...............trust me, there's a hotel waiting somewhere for you. We managed to be in South Dakota not once, but twice, during the Sturgis motorcycle rally. Instead of going elsewhere, we went with the flow, met some bikers, and had a wonderful time. We found hotels in spite of the crowds.
3. Pick up the hotel and motel booklets at the rest areas on interstates. There are coupons in there for great motels at discount rates! I have stood behind customers in motels who are paying twenty or thirty dollars more than I am, for the same kind of room, simply because they didn't know about those booklets. They are only available on interstate rest areas, so don't waste time looking elsewhere, and they are generally for motels near an interstate. Check the fine print to see if there are restrictions on days of the week or holidays, but they are a gem! We make reservations only if we know for a fact that we need them. Without coupons, we "shop around" for the best price and accommodations before we settle down for the night. We always ask to see the room, too. Just because a lobby is clean doesn't mean that the room itself isn't reeking of mold or too much air freshener. Don't be afraid to say, "No, thank you," and walk away! You can negotiate, sometimes, for a better price, too. And don't forget to say you're a AAA member or AARP, or a member of their chain! Use the tools you have!
4. Join hotel and motel chain clubs. Fill out the form and carry the card. Over the years we have had several totally FREE NIGHTS at Choice Hotels due to being a club member. We are card-carrying members of nearly every hotel chain in the country, and hope to use our points some night at other chains, too. If the points expire before we can accumulate many, we don't use that chain. We don't know where we're going to stay ahead of time, and expiring points don't help us. Read the fine print, as I said. Look for motels that offer a free breakfast, not just continental breakfast. It will save you money, and if you have had enough to eat before you set out for the day, you don't need to spend a lot of money on food.
5. Pack lightly! This last trip I wore every item in my suitcase. You really are never going to see the people that you meet on a road trip again. They're wearing jeans, so you might as well be, also. One sweatshirt, one pair of jeans, a few tee shirts, one sweater, a jacket and one coat if it's not summer. A pair of black slacks and a black sweater goes along in case we "go somewhere special," but let it be wrinkle-free-easy-pack, so you don't have hanging clothing all over your car. Walking shoes, sandals, shower shoes and a pair of black flats are ENOUGH for your feet. One swim suit and a cover-up will be fine in any hotel. Remember: You will never see those people again. They won't know you wore it at the last hotel. Take enough fresh underwear, as it's the only thing you won't wear twice. Take a hat, preferably a ball cap, to keep sun out of your eyes as you drive.
The only other hat you might need is a sun hat for a beach. If you even think you're headed towards a beach, throw in a beach umbrella and two beach chairs, but only if those chairs fold flat, so the don't consume space! Leave the boogie boards at home: For the space they take and the two minutes you'd use them, it's wasted space.
Your clothing won't get dirty sitting in a car, so many times I can just leave my suitcase in the car instead of dragging it into each motel. I carry in fresh undies, my robe, and that bag with the laptop and cosmetics, and travel truly lightly. This works best if your motel door is near the car, but it's most appreciated when it's not, and there's a flight of stairs to climb. Some motels don't have elevators.
6. You don't really need to take shampoo and conditioner. For a week or so you can get along with the hotel stuff and save room in the car. Take all your make up in one little bag. I pack my cosmetic equipment on the morning we leave, dropping each item into the bag after I've used it. If I didn't need it that morning, I won't need it any morning. Leave the fluff at home! DO take a night light from the Dollar Tree, a can of air freshener, and a flashlight.
7. I take a laptop, so we always look for free Wi-Fi, which is now almost a given. Do I need anything other than the laptop and my cell phone? No.
8. Do not take valuables along with you. I wear one set of jewelry, and I am wearing it! Almost every theft I've heard about took place in a motel room when the people were at breakfast or the room was being cleaned. The key is: Don't take valuables along to be stolen. Leave the jewelry in the safe deposit box, and carry your purse everywhere you go, so your credit cards are always on your person. If you haven't put the laptop into the car before you go to breakfast at the motel, stop, go back, and put it into the locked car before you eat. Lock the dead bolt before you go to bed, and use that metal thing that keeps the door from opening, too. If there's noise in the hall, call the desk, and don't open the door to see what it is. It's their job to keep the hotel safe and quiet, not yours. Also, when you park your car, don't park it behind the motel. Put it right out front under a big, tall flood light! Having light and possibly a video cam up there may deter break-ins.
9. Make lunch a picnic! Some of our fondest memories are the picnics. We stop at grocery stores for fried chicken or lunch meat. Then we stop at a rest area or city park. We carry a large plastic container holding a loaf of bread, a jar of almonds, peanut butter and crackers. A little candy is important, too. We take a large bag that holds salt and pepper, plastic silverware, paper plates, paper towels, napkins, and an old tablecloth in case a picnic table needs covering. I carry a smaller bag that holds single servings of mustard,mayonnaise and artificial sweetener, so I can make my famous "egg salad breakfast" at motels.
10. I include the famous "egg salad breakfast" directions for the sake of those who are sick of the motel waffle and refuse to eat that gunk they call gravy and the fattening biscuit. If you are at a motel that offers hard-cooked eggs, you are in luck. (If not, you can now buy small packs of 2 or 6 hard-boiled eggs at grocery stores and keep them in your cooler or motel frig until you need them.)
The egg salad breakfast: Cut up a hard-boiled egg in a bowl. Add one of those single-serving packs of mayonnaise and half a single-serving pack of mustard. I like my egg salad sweet, so I add two packs of fake sweetener, mix it up with a fork, and then I spread this over a toasted half bagel, an English muffin, or a piece of toast. It is filling, delicious, easy to make, and when I add a piece of fruit from the breakfast bar, I am totally satisfied for several hours.(It is also not fattening.)
11. Dinner is a special time, but not every night. On the nights we are too tired or cheap to eat at a special place, we order pizza to be delivered to our room, or do the fast food thing. Since I am pretty picky about what I eat, we might visit a local grocery store for deli specialties, a Lean Cuisine (if our room has a microwave), or make a sandwich using that loaf of bread in the car and fresh lunch meat. Since food is not the most important thing on our road trips, we are fairly easy to please, but as we enjoy trying local foods, if there is a special restaurant to visit, we splurge!
12. Wear a pedometer! It's fun to know how far you've walked each day, especially if you are "foot-walking a city," for your sightseeing. We bragged about walking 13 miles the day we were in The Magic Kingdom, and had the proof of it on my waistband!
If you're missing your workout at home, consider the steps you took as your exercise, but if you're not satisfied, check to see if your motel has a work-out room. Once, we went to a Lowe's Home Improvement Center and did our walk inside the store. We weren't sure of the neighborhood, and Lowe's was safe. We just briskly walked up and down each aisle until we'd gotten half an hour of walking done.
13. Throw stuff out as you move along! If you're done with Georgia, toss out the maps and advertisements. It will keep your car clean and tidy. It's where you are living, in a way, for the trip time, so it's nice to have it neat. Put a small trash can in the front area of the auto, so little stuff gets tossed into it, instead of littering where you sit. When you hit a rest area, the navigator can empty the can.
14. Take turns driving. Nobody wants to spend the whole trip at the wheel of the car. The other person navigates and reads the guidebooks. Every hundred miles or so, switch!
15. Visit the library BEFORE you leave home! Tell the librarian you are going on a trip, and he will let you sign stuff out for as long as a month! We take three or four audio CDs with us, and have become totally engrossed in mysteries, laughed a lot at Garrison Keillor's Lake Wobegone stories, or been terrified by a Stephen King novel. We've also read whole books aloud to each other as we moved across the country, the navigator reading. It makes the traveling time go faster, trust me.
16. Souvenirs and gifts need to be small enough that they don't crowd the car. I once bought a lawn chair, and had to tote it all the way from South Carolina, only to find that I could buy the same thing at my local store. I like to take food gifts home, as they are consumable, and the receiver doesn't have to clean off a shelf or keep it for posterity. Nobody really wears the Stone Mountain tee shirt, so we gave up on clothing, but the pickled okra and Himalayan pink salt was a hit. Wine from wineries we visited has also been well-received.
17. Write a journal as you travel, so you know where you've been! My volumes have come in handy many times when trying to remember a town's name or the route we took. It's also fun to share your travels with people who are interested. Those who aren't, aren't. You will get over it. But DO take pictures, and include yourself and your traveling partner in the pictures. A mountain is a mountain is a mountain, but a mountain with Randy in front of it is a souvenir and proof that he was there! A moment in your life, and his, has been captured! Don't be afraid to ask others to take your picture together, and then offer to return the favor for them.
18. Have fun! Your trip is not an assignment! This is to see the world, after all, not to "get it done!" If something appeals to your curiosity, STOP THE CAR, get out, and SEE IT! We would never have seen Mark Twain's grave or the World's Largest Frying Pan if we had just driven by and said, "I wonder what that is ..................."
19. Coming home should be wonderful. Since you don't have a lot of STUFF that you didn't use but took along, the trash has been left behind as you travelled and the souvenirs are small, it's not a big deal to unload the car. Move it in, put it away, toss the laundry down the chute, sit down with a drink and talk about how much fun you had!
I am newly retired, and hope to be able to continue to take road trips for many years. We discussed taking a tour to another country soon, but instead we might go see that area of the country where our wall map doesn't have any colored lines running over it, and change that!
Copyright: KP Gillenwater 2013
Saturday, January 12, 2013
The Complaint Department : Issue 2, or "Rave On..."
Although I am generally a positive person, I do have some gripes. My list of things that were bugging me last year needs updating, which I shall now briefly, but not too briefly, do:
1. Congress. Need I say more?
2. Packaging. I just cut my hand trying to open a new CD, packed well enough for placement into a time capsule. Opening it involved two tools and blood. My blood. Wait! I see I complained about this last year. Apparently "they" didn't fix this yet?
3. Vaccum cleaner cords. No sooner have I worked up a sweat with my vaccum, or am two inches from finishing a room, than the cord unplugs itself from the wall. Mine automatically zips itself back into its internal storage, so I have to RE-pull the cord out and then RE-plug it. If my room were only 6 feet wide, the cord would be adequate, but I have rooms larger than a closet, so FIFTY FEET or more might be enough. The cord, when it does its zapping thing, always hits me in the leg or foot, too. Lawsuit material. (However, if it were fifty feet long, zipped itself back and wrapped me up like a mummy in electric cording, I might want to reconsider this one.)
4. The word VACCUM. or Vaccuum. or Vacuum. Even Spellcheck doesn't know how to spell it. Depending on where you are writing whatever, it always says I am misspelling it. Look it up. Use several dictionaries. Then vote. Or find a synonym. Please don't email me with your "correct" spelling. Keep looking. You will find more "choices," too.
5. People who can't ignore a cell phone ring while eating dinner. You're saying, "ME?" Cell phones IN GENERAL, are really being used as RUDE-MACHINES. Not only have they interrupted lovely dinner parties where we ALL had to listen to a conversation, but smaller affairs, also. When a friend and I are conversing about something important, and that damned thing rings...............LET IT RING. Even if it's not important..............
We witnessed a couple having dinner out. The man was fondling his wife's arms and hands, trying to get her attention. She sat there with her cell phone on her lap, looking down at it the entire time he was all but dancing a jig for her attention!
I see mothers pushing their quickly-growing-and-soon-to-be-out-of-the-house-forever beautiful children through grocery stores, talking to or texting a friend while the little child tries to get Mom's attention (any way possible.) Instead of saying, "Look, Tommy, this is called an eggplant," they're saying, "Hush. I am talking to my fourth cousin twice removed about her mom's toenail surgery." BE PRESENT WITH THE ONES YOU ARE PRESENTLY WITH! (You note three paragraphs on this topic. It is really bugging me!)
6. TV "Laugh Tracks": TV producers and directors............If it's funny, I will laugh at it all by myself! You don't need to have a bunch of hyena tapes in the background letting me know this is the "joke." Mostly there's nothing that funny, so STOP trying to cue me to giggle. If it isn't funny, it isn't funny, and no guffawing of strange voice is going to make me laugh. (No, I am NOT an old fogey.)
7. Facebook images saying, "Remember This?" Of course I remember the Corning Ware pans and the electric skillet..........I AM STILL USING THEM!!! These posts of "old" things keep showing up on my Facebook friends' posts, making me feel older than I AM! I realize that today's young people don't keep their hair dryers for forty years, but I don't need to be reminded I AM OLD by seeing my General Electric Deluxe Hair Dryer, complete with its plastic large-sized bonnet and nail dryer, dragged onto Facebook and portrayed as a dinosaur! It still works, I love it, right along with my Corning Ware.
8. Price Stickers: I previously mentioned the packaging, but I forgot to mention the price stickers that are glued permanently onto the gift I'd like to give soon. I've rubbed it with olive oil, warmly blown it with the aforementioned hair dryer, dug at it with a thin knife blade, rubbed it with my now nonexistent fingerprint, and banged the damned gift on a tabletop in frustration, thereby ending the problem. If manufacturers and stores have to post the price ON the item, at least make it REMOVABLE!
9. Greeting cards with only a signature inside: Hallmark wrote a nice little ditty inside the card, and you sign your name under the ditty?? Hello? PLEASE, SAY SOMETHING.............even if it's, "Hi, Old Fart, Yes, I am still breathing." I still send "The Christmas Letter," and picture you reading it with great interest, if not holiday glee. I want to know about your boring year, too!
10. Toilet paper holders installed stupidly. The men who install these things in women's restrooms need to SIT on the commode while they are doing it, and then try to pull the paper out. They should do this with bare asses and a real need for the paper, also. That should be a requirement of the job. Having my face rubbed across a filthy bathroom floor while I unravel torn tissue, or try to figure how to pull the paper out of a maze is not my idea of a good time. This action is performed while trying to keep a thick winter coat from touching the floor, by the way. Bending my right arm into a pretzel isn't fun, either. Hang the paper at eye level! That's where our eyes are.
Enough griping for this year. I am certain that The Powers That Be will fix these little things immediately.
Of course, I am still seeing those stupid coupons for Macy's, so "The Powers" may not be reading this.
1. Congress. Need I say more?
2. Packaging. I just cut my hand trying to open a new CD, packed well enough for placement into a time capsule. Opening it involved two tools and blood. My blood. Wait! I see I complained about this last year. Apparently "they" didn't fix this yet?
3. Vaccum cleaner cords. No sooner have I worked up a sweat with my vaccum, or am two inches from finishing a room, than the cord unplugs itself from the wall. Mine automatically zips itself back into its internal storage, so I have to RE-pull the cord out and then RE-plug it. If my room were only 6 feet wide, the cord would be adequate, but I have rooms larger than a closet, so FIFTY FEET or more might be enough. The cord, when it does its zapping thing, always hits me in the leg or foot, too. Lawsuit material. (However, if it were fifty feet long, zipped itself back and wrapped me up like a mummy in electric cording, I might want to reconsider this one.)
4. The word VACCUM. or Vaccuum. or Vacuum. Even Spellcheck doesn't know how to spell it. Depending on where you are writing whatever, it always says I am misspelling it. Look it up. Use several dictionaries. Then vote. Or find a synonym. Please don't email me with your "correct" spelling. Keep looking. You will find more "choices," too.
5. People who can't ignore a cell phone ring while eating dinner. You're saying, "ME?" Cell phones IN GENERAL, are really being used as RUDE-MACHINES. Not only have they interrupted lovely dinner parties where we ALL had to listen to a conversation, but smaller affairs, also. When a friend and I are conversing about something important, and that damned thing rings...............LET IT RING. Even if it's not important..............
We witnessed a couple having dinner out. The man was fondling his wife's arms and hands, trying to get her attention. She sat there with her cell phone on her lap, looking down at it the entire time he was all but dancing a jig for her attention!
I see mothers pushing their quickly-growing-and-soon-to-be-out-of-the-house-forever beautiful children through grocery stores, talking to or texting a friend while the little child tries to get Mom's attention (any way possible.) Instead of saying, "Look, Tommy, this is called an eggplant," they're saying, "Hush. I am talking to my fourth cousin twice removed about her mom's toenail surgery." BE PRESENT WITH THE ONES YOU ARE PRESENTLY WITH! (You note three paragraphs on this topic. It is really bugging me!)
6. TV "Laugh Tracks": TV producers and directors............If it's funny, I will laugh at it all by myself! You don't need to have a bunch of hyena tapes in the background letting me know this is the "joke." Mostly there's nothing that funny, so STOP trying to cue me to giggle. If it isn't funny, it isn't funny, and no guffawing of strange voice is going to make me laugh. (No, I am NOT an old fogey.)
7. Facebook images saying, "Remember This?" Of course I remember the Corning Ware pans and the electric skillet..........I AM STILL USING THEM!!! These posts of "old" things keep showing up on my Facebook friends' posts, making me feel older than I AM! I realize that today's young people don't keep their hair dryers for forty years, but I don't need to be reminded I AM OLD by seeing my General Electric Deluxe Hair Dryer, complete with its plastic large-sized bonnet and nail dryer, dragged onto Facebook and portrayed as a dinosaur! It still works, I love it, right along with my Corning Ware.
8. Price Stickers: I previously mentioned the packaging, but I forgot to mention the price stickers that are glued permanently onto the gift I'd like to give soon. I've rubbed it with olive oil, warmly blown it with the aforementioned hair dryer, dug at it with a thin knife blade, rubbed it with my now nonexistent fingerprint, and banged the damned gift on a tabletop in frustration, thereby ending the problem. If manufacturers and stores have to post the price ON the item, at least make it REMOVABLE!
9. Greeting cards with only a signature inside: Hallmark wrote a nice little ditty inside the card, and you sign your name under the ditty?? Hello? PLEASE, SAY SOMETHING.............even if it's, "Hi, Old Fart, Yes, I am still breathing." I still send "The Christmas Letter," and picture you reading it with great interest, if not holiday glee. I want to know about your boring year, too!
10. Toilet paper holders installed stupidly. The men who install these things in women's restrooms need to SIT on the commode while they are doing it, and then try to pull the paper out. They should do this with bare asses and a real need for the paper, also. That should be a requirement of the job. Having my face rubbed across a filthy bathroom floor while I unravel torn tissue, or try to figure how to pull the paper out of a maze is not my idea of a good time. This action is performed while trying to keep a thick winter coat from touching the floor, by the way. Bending my right arm into a pretzel isn't fun, either. Hang the paper at eye level! That's where our eyes are.
Enough griping for this year. I am certain that The Powers That Be will fix these little things immediately.
Of course, I am still seeing those stupid coupons for Macy's, so "The Powers" may not be reading this.
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