Travel Club and Summer Vacations

 

The pandemic came into our lives last year like a wrecking ball and look what it’s done to me…I’m spouting Miley Cyrus lyrics. The pandemic, however, is nothing like a love affair that wrecks your life and makes you do stupid stuff like ride a wrecking ball across a stage and write songs about your torrid love-life that's gone badly. Still, I couldn’t get the image of a wrecking ball out of my head last week when I went to a travel club presentation for the first time in over a year. Normally there would be one every other month and there were usually 35-40 people attending. And maybe there was this time, too, but I only saw 15 because they had to do two presentations in order to social distance those of us who wanted to come.

Listening to how hard it was to deal with all the reservations that had to be canceled for their 2020 group tours because of the pandemic is what made me think of that wrecking ball. The two sisters who own the travel company specialize in escorted senior citizen trips and I’ve always said if I was going to travel abroad I’d go with them. I’ve known one of the ladies nearly 15 years, she’s the director of our senior hall. The other gal is her sister and they both have backgrounds in the travel industry. Everyone I know who has traveled with them gives them high marks and one person has been on five of their group trips. I’d have a nervous breakdown spending that kind of money on travel over 2-3 years. She lives in an area that isn’t safe. But she promised her dying husband that she’d have fun after he was gone---she’d been his long time caregiver like I was to Don---and by God, she’s going to grant him his dying wish. To me, it would would have been more fun to move to a better neighborhood where break-ins, getting mugged and drive-by shootings aren't as common as full moons. Oh, well, we aren’t all cookie cutter made people and I guess that’s a good thing? Widows. We all have different ideas about what to do with life insurance money. I could write a book.

I’ve gone to these travelogue presentations faithful since the beginning of their enterprise just because I like learning about new places although I never seriously thought about going anywhere. But this time hearing about their Iceland trip---6 days, $4,099---it dawned on me that now with Levi gone I could take a trip without worrying about his well-being. Growing up we had a dog who refused to eat while we were on vacation and he died of a broken heart and I thought my mom would too when we got back. That dog was her constant companion and her protector when she had to drive to a sketchy part of town to take my dad back and forth to work. Don and I traveled with our dog/s, bought a RV that my husband called our rolling dog house just so the “kid” didn’t have to stay behind. As soon as the thought about Levi's death freeing me up for travel passed through my head I felt guilty for thinking it because I still miss him terribly. Fixing straw berries for shortcake today, for example, I missed seeing him sit patiently for the berry slices I'd give him and I wondered how my acquaintance from the travel club felt when she was touring the pyramids three months after her husband died, did she feel guilty for enjoying herself? Did she enjoy herself?

Circling back to the travel presentation and the idea of overseas travel this year. No way am I interested when the pandemic could close them down again. Their Christmas on the Danube River and the Markets of Prague trip, however, is almost full---8 days, $3,798 w/a roommate. So I guess others don't share my lack of confidence in the pandemic going away before Christmas. Not to mention that I don’t even like to Christmas shop here and with my luck I’d get a roommate like Kathy Bates in Misery. In addition to the every other month travelogues they have mixers for those who've signed up for a trip so you can get to know others the going and maybe find a good match for your roommate. With some trips you can upgrade to a single room but not with all of them and upgrades are not cheap.

This year they are also offering two trips within the U.S. which hasn’t been their norm for travel destinations but the pandemic is changing the way a lot of businesses do what they do. One trip is to San Antonio---4 days, $2,599. Been there done that. Wandering Texas was one of the top two best trips of my life, but I don’t want to chance ruining those memories by going back again. The other U.S. trip is to South Dakota---6 days, $2,948. Been there done that, don’t want to go in August. What’s in South Dakota besides Mount Rushmore, The Badlands and buffalo, you ask that would take up six days? That’s what I wanted to know. The answer: an off road jeep Safari, Devils Tower, Crazy Horse Memorial, Deadwood and of course, the famous Wall Drug Store. I still have my Wall Drug Store sign from when Don and I was there back in the ‘80s. These two in-country trips are what they're calling Spotlight Tours. You stay in one hotel the entire time and take day trips from that place. At my age, that kind of trip is appealing, staying in the same bed each night, only unpacking once but I'd rather do it near a large body of water.

These two ladies know I’ll probably never travel with them but they invite everyone to come to these events for the word-of-mouth advertising they hope you’ll help spread and I do my part on that. They used an inheritance they got from their grandmother for the startup money for their company and I’d hate to see the pandemic wreck it for them. They’ve worked hard to get it going this past five years, gave a lot of people great travel memories and gave other people like me hours of entertainment. But I missed their Trader Joe cookies and coffee this time. Masks required, no food or beverages allowed. Damn pandemic! Still, it felt good doing something halfway 'normal' again. ©

 

NOTE: In the spirit of Truth and Accuracy Mily Cyrus claims Like a Wrecking Ball is not a breakup song. She says the song is about her brother and not the guy she'd recently broken up when she wrote it. The internet rumor mill, however, claims otherwise and right or wrong the song will always be known as Mily's break up song.

Donations, Sleepless Nights and the Travel Club

Last week I took five bags of winter coats, lined sweatshirts, leather vests and wool shirts to Goodwill. Not all six of my husband's Pendleton shirts I had in the front closet got donated but four of them did. I held back his two favorites. It's not like I'm moving tomorrow so I can pull the rest of that "Band-Aid" off later. I also sent a wool coat that was way too big and I wish I hadn’t. I’d forgotten that I actually used it last year during our power outage to wear over another coat, but at the time I was making the decision to donate stuff I was going by the rule: If it doesn’t fit, don’t keep it. Of the seventeen coats in that closet I downsized to eleven with plans to get rid of two more this time next year. They’re old work coats and I still have some outside work to do---painting trim and thinning plants---and by the time I’m through with that, I can throw those coats in the trash. I'll probably let go of even more coats at the same time but for now I'm keeping two for every season plus my go-to-funerals coat.

After I pulled everything out of the closet and put back what I was keeping, I spent the evening sewing up dog toys to donate to the humane society the next time I have another reason to be in their neighborhood. When Levi was younger I used to buy him a new stuffie practically every time I went to the store and he’d chew holes in them just as often. That was back when I was involved in hardcore caregiving my husband and money was more plentiful than time. Levi remembers the toys are in the closet, though, every time I open the door he’s looking for the clothe grocery bag I keep them in. He was full of anticipation as I sewed away then tossed them out one by one for him to inspect but I told him, “Sorry Levi, you only get to keep what will fit in your toy box. No more overflowing box for you!"

The next day I took another hundred books off my library shelves to donate to the public library. When I dropped them off I found out that in addition to selling the collectible books online, any others that don't sell at their local used books sales eventually get donated to World Mission who in turn ships them to 3rd world countries. The gift that keeps on giving. That was my third, hundred book donation to the library and each day of sorting gets harder and harder. Boxing up a hundred books at a time doesn’t sound like a lot of work, at least not enough work that should haven taken a whole day, but I googled a lot of the titles to see if they’re worth trying to sell instead of donating. So far, I've held back about a three dozen for that purpose. Another hundred (?) books will need to be purged before I’m down to what I hope to keep or sell and I'm worried no one will know I'm smarter than I look without my books to give them a clue.

That night I settled in bed around 11:15 ready to watch Saturday Night Live but I woke up to pee just as it was getting over. I never saw a single minute of it! I was restless the rest of the night and around five, I finally gave up on trying to sleep and I got up. My brain just wouldn’t turn off! It kept going over where I can put what pieces of furniture in the unit where I’ll be moving, trying to decide if I'll be keeping the right number of bookcases. I’ve got eight now and I’ll end up with three but one will be set up as a media center and another will be in the laundry room, repurposed for utility shelving. Oak shelving is too classy for a laundry room but why would I sell a good shelf for peanuts, just to take those peanuts to buy a lesser quality utility-style shelf? That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Ohmygod, I’m turning into such a boring person! All I can think about is downsizing and I see no end to that kind of dialogue going on inside my head for many months.

I did go to a Travel Club presentation this week. It was a photo slideshow of an African Safari they took last summer. One of my friends in the group went on the trip so I already knew they had a great time and saw lots of interesting things. Another friend in the club wanted to go but they didn’t allow her to sign up for that particular trip---too remote for easy access to doctors. She’s 90 and that woman is always on the go, travels all over the place with no fears or hesitation even though she ends up in ER more times a year than Levi goes in for haircuts. Sometimes I wish I could be as gutsy as she is but she’s got a family who’d come collector her if she had a major medical issue and got left behind in a foreign country by the travel club but poor Levi, my Mighty Schnauzer, couldn’t get a passport if I had to depend on him to do that for me. I’m just sayin’ sometimes two-legged kids are better than four-legged kids.  

But in all seriousness, the seniors I know in the Travel Club---and they're all seniors---who are signing up for two-three trips a year are spending thousands-upon-thousands of dollars on travel and if I did that I'd be worried to death that I'd end up living out of a shopping cart under a bridge. One woman in the club lives in a sketchy neighborhood but she spent all of the insurance money her husband left her on travel and now she can't afford to move to a safer neighborhood and she had to get a job at 77 years old. Everything in life is a trade-off. She was fulfilling her husband's death-bed wish for her. I would have made the same death-bed promise but I would have been lying through my teeth and both my husband and I would have known it. ©

Barf, Art, Friendship and Minutia

Fifteen minutes after taking an Ambien sleeping pill plus two chewable Melatonin I heard the unmistakable sound of the dog tossing his cookies alongside of the bed, right in the pathway to the bathroom. I get up several times in the night to pee and even if I had wanted to, there was no way I could let the barf sit until morning. I turned on the light and couldn’t believe how high that pile of undigested food was that Levi had the bad manners to deposit on the carpet. With sleep quickly taking over my body I managed to drop the pile of vomit I had picked up with a paper towel, spreading it across the three foot between where Levi had parked his barf and the wastebasket. While I was undoing the damage I did, I heard Levi out in the living room retching up more vomit. In two different places. The poor little guy was sick and I was not safe to be walking around. I was afraid I’d fall asleep right in between his second and third piles so I picked up what I could and left the deeper cleaning for morning when I was sure the Resolve Pet Expert, High Traffic Carpet Cleaner could do the rest. And it did, but it wasn’t going to dry before the township inspector was due at the house to check out the installation of the new hot water heater I got last month. Rather than let him think the dog had peed on the floor I plopped two of Levi’s least favorite toys on top of the wet spots. I am nothing if not creative. 

This week I’ve been busy with not much opportunity to be bored or melancholy but both are still lurking below the surface none the less. Monday I had lunch at the sculpture garden with my Gathering Girls pals where there was a new exhibit of contemporary sculpture by Masyuki Koorida from Shanghai, China. His medium is mostly marble and the one thing we each wanted to do is touch the polished surfaces of his work, but of course that’s not allowed. The security guard either had a thing for older women in comfortable shoes or he didn't trust us not to resist touching the stones because he followed us around from room to room. Every time I go to one of these exhibits of art that each costs more than my house, I wonder why not me? Why do some of us give up playing with paints or clay before we’ve become so damned dedicated that others think our work must be good just because we’ve devoted our every breath to creating it? The artist, the docent said, sits in a room with a slab of marble for hours letting the stone speak to him before he starts. (Ya, sure. My husband and I once did that before tackling our first wallpapering job, knowing it would be costly if we screwed up.) Mr. Koorida says he’s letting the “heart of the stone out.”

The next day I let the heart of friendship out when I met one of my husband’s high school classmates for lunch. He lives a couple of small towns away and a couple of times a year we meet in the middle for lunch. He’s thinking of moving out of state. That made me sad, then ashamed of myself for feeling that way. I should be happy that he wants to find a climate better suited to his disability but if he leaves all my connections to the good times we all had in our old group of friends will be gone. Sure, we can still talk on the phone like we do every couple of weeks when we each give the Republicans hell---get it all out of our systems until the next big news story breaks. But it won't be the same. He’s been such a great friend, even moved in for a couple of weeks to be my husband’s caregiver when I had my knee replacement surgery. How many friends can you name who’d wipe your butt like Gary did with my disabled husband? 

Yesterday I went to a travel club presentation to hear about the 2019 trips they’ve got planned. Three of the five are taking place in The States which makes them more doable and intriguing to me. One trip abroad is a ten day Kenya Camera Safari for $4,195 plus airfare. The other overseas trip is a cruise called the Mediterranean Legends. Thirteen days for $3,995 taking in Rome, Sicily, Greece, Montenegro, Croatia and Malta. The trips here in The States are: 1) The Tournament of Roses for five days, $2,650; 2) New Orleans for seven days, $1,999; and 3) seven days to the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta, $2,895. I go to these travelogues because they’re a free afternoon with interesting things to learn and see and usually they inspire me to hop back on the diet train. Travel would be so much easier if I could drop a few pounds. But this time with boredom and melancholy so close to the surface, I got to the "rail station" too late to catch that train. I have no reason to be unhappy but every so often---like now---I feel like I’m hiding behind a cardboard cutout of myself, showing the world what they expect to see when inside I’m questioning why the minutia of daily life is sucking the sparkle out of me. ©

Meijer Sculpture and Garden Park, more work by Mr. Koorida.