Glamping It Up With Toyota
Do you ever wake up in the morning and think “How did I get so lucky?” That happens to me pretty often, but a few weeks ago, it happened in an extra-super-special way.
I went on a great adventure, but I have to admit my brain was a little AWOL due to That Thing That Shall Not Be Mentioned happening just 5 days before, so I didn’t get around to writing about it until now.
Toyota invited me and my TWIN sisters to go camping in a glamorous style, or “Glamping” in El Capitan Canyon, up near my childhood home. Can I mention here that I hate the word “Glamping”?
While I may hate the ugliness of the word, I do not hate the activity. Glamping involves being ensconced with all the comforts of home in little cedar cabins out in the hills. No tents, no cooking over open fires (unless it is s’mores).
My cabin. Roughing it, Suebob-style.
Beats sleeping on the ground.
Every detail was planned for us. We had information packets. We had liaisons. We had drivers to take the cars out and wash them for the next day’s use. We had staff, people. I could get used to having staff.
Tent? Who NEEDS a tent?
Due to some logistical issues, I didn’t get to join the TWINsters until halfway through the adventure, and I got to El Capitan Canyon before they did.
I’ve rarely been part of a team, outside of work, so it surprised me a bit how excited I got to see my TWIN team pull up in their gleaming Toyotas. My GIRLS! And their CARS!
They’re here! They’re here!
It was the craziest trip ever. As soon as we got settled, they piled us on a big bus for a wine-tasting dinner at Sanford Winery, over in Buellton, where I had lived as a kid.
At Sanford Winery, in the vines
Team TWIN. Photo credit Kristi Bonney, Live and Love Out Loud
Then the next day, some people went to look at llamas and about 20 of us went ocean kayaking with Santa Barbara Adventure Company. I got partnered with Amy Bradley-Hole, who, I am contractually obligated to say, is the best kayak partner ever. (Though I’m not so bad, myself). She’s also pretty and hilarious, so all in all, a good pick.
That afternoon Glennia of The Silent “I” and I spent some quality time together driving a cute little Prius C up to Santa Barbara and going to the botanic gardens.
Glennia at the Santa Barbara Botanic Gardens
After driving the car up there and back – about 50 miles round trip – I’m thinking I might need one. It uses hardly any gas, it’s cute, it has great cargo space, and it has a cute little space-age console that looks like something out of the USS Enterprise.
Prius C. Not the one I drove, but pretty, no?
The gardens are beautiful, but it WAS 94 degrees, so after buying the vending machine out of Dasani water, we headed back to “camp” for a barbecue dinner and the aforementioned s’mores around a fire, while we listened to Amy tell her famous pregnancy story. If you ever meet her, ask her to tell it. It’s worth listening to.
Thanks to Toyota for making my life so crazy excellent. If you want to read some posts by other women who were there –
Amanda from Parenting by Dummies
Kristi from Living Out Loud
Fadra from All Things Fadra
Linz from Linz Loves You
and an amazing, touching post from Elena at CiaoMom
Disclosure: I was selected for participation in the TWIN community through a program with Clever Girls Collective. I did not receive any compensation for writing this post, or payment in exchange for participating. The opinions expressed herein are mine, and do not reflect the views of the Toyota.
The heart of need
How do we know what we need? Not what we want or desire, not what we have a notion we might like, but what we really, truly, very much need – need so deep that our bones ache and our mind slips if we don’t get that thing?
It’s so hard to say our needs. Even when we make vision boards or lists of affirmations, they usually avoid those scary words, “want” and “need.”
Confession: I haven’t been doing that well. Since Goldie died, I’ve been doing well in short bursts. Intermittent wellness. Brave-faced wellness when I have to rise to the occasion. But in the privacy of my own brain, in the shower, or as I walk into my house and close the door to the world behind me, the wellness falls and shatters.
I collapse into tears, into blank-faced zombieness, into long periods of looking at photos and videos of my dog. Not so very well indeed. I’m glad I work at home. Often for these past few weeks, I’ve cried until five minutes before a conference call, blown my nose hard, wiped my eyes, taken the call. After an hour on the phone, I hang up and start to cry again.
I had a ray of light peeking into that darkness: October 13 on my calendar. I had that day blocked out to go to San Miguel Island, the most remote place I know that you can get to and back in the day.
Three-and-a-half hours on a boat, 3 1/2 hours on the island, 3 1/2 hours home. Ten glorious hours of nothing to do but stare at the sea and sit on two miles of beach occupied by, at most, three other people. If I could make it through the week, all I had to do was go, breathe, be.
On Friday, my sister called. My mom had told her I was going to the island, and she wanted to go with me. She loves the Channel Islands, too, and I also think she wanted to hang out with me, give me some sisterly love, comfort me with her presence.
I said, Okay, sure, great, an adventure. Let’s do it! Then I hung up and the screaming in my head started. I felt shredded by my emotions. My rational brain said that this was an opportunity to spend time with my sister, that it would be fun, wouldn’t I rather go with someone than alone?
But the shrieking would not stop. I felt like I’d lose my mind if I didn’t keep those ten hours sacred for me alone, a container of silence for my grief, the space I had carved for myself to give my pain to the wind and the ocean and the waves.
I felt like an absolute jackass, (especially since my sister had just bought a non-refundable boat ticket), but I had to acknowledge the depth of my need. My real need to spend time by myself, on my own, rather than to do the normal thing and have company on this trip.
I called my sister sobbing. Not crying. Sobbing. I had to tell her the truth, which made me feel like a freak. Thankfully she didn’t treat me how I felt. She was so understanding and so kind and…it made me cry even harder, if harder was possible.
So here’s the weird thing that happened. I said what I needed, which seemed contrary to all reason. I said what I needed, despite my worries that everyone would think I was selfish or crazy or mean. I said what I needed…and it was ok. The world did not end. No one quit speaking to me.
I went to the island and on the way I stood on the bow of the boat and remembered my dog and cried and gave my sorrows to the sea.
It was a beautiful day on San Miguel Island, a rare day, a gem. It would have been a beautiful day to share with someone, but I didn’t do that. I sat in the glory of that quiet place and I let my heart get quiet, and my soul get quiet, and I fell asleep in the sand all by myself.
I don’t know why I needed what I needed, but I did. I told the truth about it for once, and everything was ok.
As women, as humans, we are taught to hide our needs, to suck it up, to go along and get along, even when our hearts and bones are breaking inside us. We might do well to stop and ask “What do I need? What do I really, really need?” Then make that thing happen. It’s not so bad. Trust me on this one.
Goldie, the Movie
You get me started, and I just can’t stop. 5 minutes of Goldie photos and videos. Totally random.
Creative Alliance 12
I’ve been meaning to write a Creative Alliance 12 post for over a week, but I’ve been incapable of doing so.
Every time someone asks me to explain what Creative Alliance is, I’m a bit flummoxed. The best I can come up with is: It’s a small, intimate non-conference where 45 women get together and simply tell the truth about who they are and what they want. This is a rare and powerful experience.
Rather than blather on much more, here’s a video I made from photos I took there. It doesn’t really explain, either, but nothing can.
About putting your pet down
I have to write this post. You don’t have to read it – it’s something I went back and forth about, but then decided that it might be a kind of public service announcement so you can prepare if you need to.
First of all, thank you for all of your kind wishes on Goldie’s passing. I know there are a lot of dog lovers and just kind souls out there. I thank you for every thought, word and prayer. It helps to have so many people who love my dog – those who knew her in person and those who just followed her adventures on my blog.
Ok, now to the hard part. I didn’t think about this and it has been the hardest thing and I hope I can help someone else get through this if they have to do it.
Goldie did not want to die. She struggled.
I had some fantasy world idea of euthanizing my pet. I could have taken her to our regular excellent vet, but I had heard that the Ventura County Humane Society was a wonderful place full of compassionate people who love animals, and indeed it was.
I didn’t want to have Goldie’s last trip be a trip to the place she had been poked and prodded so often. She knew what the vet was and did not want to go there.
So up we went to Ojai. Here’s what I thought would happen – the person would gently inject my dog with something who would make her sleep. Goodnight dear dog.
Here’s what happened – deep breath. We put Goldie up on a tall, towel-covered table and I had to wrap my arms around her to keep her from biting the lady, especially when the Humane Society lady had to poke her again after one vein did not work. I had to hold her as she struggled hard to get out of my grasp. I didn’t get that one final peaceful moment with her.
As soon as the drugs hit, she gently slumped down and lay there until her heart stopped a couple minutes later.
The hard part only lasted a minute or two, but I have seen it 100 times in my brain. I just did not know, so I figured other people wouldn’t, either, since no one talks about it.
My dog was tough and scrappy, and even though she was in pain and skinny and decrepit and barely able to walk, she fought like hell. She wanted to survive.
I’ve had a couple nightmares where she’s hurt and bleeding and running loose and I can’t catch her. I figure that is related to that experience.
Please don’t worry about me – I have great moments, too. Happy memories, beautiful photos. We had a great life.
I don’t want to freak anyone out and make you not want to be with your pet at the end. I just want you to know, in case. Because no one told me.
10 Years, 2 Months, 25 Days
I knew this day was coming. Yesterday, Goldie fell at my mom’s house and could not get up on her own for about 5 minutes. She struggled, helpless, on the lawn with my mom unable to help her. I wasn’t there and mom is in a wheelchair. She called me, sobbing, saying she could not do it anymore.
I had been watching Goldie tiptoe around in pain, her legs collapsing underneath her, getting a little worse each day.
So today was the day I said goodbye. It took all day of going back and forth, changing my mind, thinking “Maybe one more month…” She would have some good moments and I’d think that I couldn’t, and then she got stuck coming up the 2 big steps into the house, and I knew I had to. Back and forth, all day, but I had made a 3 pm appointment at the Humane Society, and we ended up going for that one last ride.
I have on million words trapped inside me about my dog, all of them good. I’m sad, but I’m also glad she is free of pain, because she had been hurting for too long.
On the way home from the Humane Society, I realized how much of my heart has been caught up in her struggle. I have been feeling dead, lost, trapped – all at once.
And now, even though I have the great sadness of missing her, I’m also feeling as if I am crawling out from under a great weight.
When I got Goldie, the shelter told me she was middle-aged (they were wrong – she was much younger). I liked the idea that she could be my first dog, a kind of practice dog that I’d have for a few years and not get so terribly attached to.
I was so laughably wrong about all of that. 10 years, 2 months and 25 days later I don’t see how I could have been more terribly attached. We had a great, close, adventurous life together and I’ll always be thankful for every bit of it.
I think the most fitting epitaph is what I said to her every single day of her life: “What a GOOD girl.”
Goodbye, Space Shuttle. Hello, Space Shuttle!
For the past few days, I’ve been seeing so many tweets from people thrilled to see the Space Shuttle Endeavour fly by.
I’m sad to see the end of the shuttle program, but happy the Endeavour is coming to Southern California to live at the California Science Center in Los Angeles.
122 million miles traveled on 25 missions. Pretty amazing. Its last 12 miles will be driving through the streets of Los Angeles. And the last little bit into the Science Center? It will be towed by a Toyota Tundra. Yes, a truck just like you can get from your local dealer. CRAZY.
Here’s a video:
That’s cool, but even cooler is that Toyota is donating $50 to the Science Center (up to half a million bucks) for every time someone tweets:
Toyota Tundra tows Space Shuttle Endeavour on 10/13. Tweet to raise $50 for @CAScienceCenter. #TundraEndeavour
That’s the kind of thing that makes it worthwhile for me to work with Toyota!
You can find more info and videos at the website.
Disclosure: I was selected for participation in the TWIN community through a program with Clever Girls Collective. I did not receive any compensation for writing this post, or payment in exchange for participating. The opinions expressed herein are mine, and do not reflect the views of the Toyota.
Always the same
Yesterday when I was driving along my myself, I suddenly felt the expression on my face. It was this exact expression from my first grade school picture:
That’s my expression when I’m getting through something I don’t really want to have to do because I’m unnerved or sad or a little scared. In the photo, it was because it was my first school photo ever. Today it was a dear friend’s mother’s funeral. The determined expression is because I’m trying to go through it with some kind of grace and calm and appropriateness because that is what one does.
The 51-year-old me met the six-year-old me in the loop of that one expression, pulling me back through the years, reminding me that I’m exactly the same person in so many ways.
We grow, we change, but we are also born A Person With Stuff In Us. Parents, especially those with more than one child, marvel at it. “They just come out with a personality,” they say.
With one child, it is easy to either blame or praise parenting skills for who the child is. As the sample size grows, the more obvious it becomes that newborns are already people, not just a blank slate.
The precipitating event for this post was a Facebook update by my niece, who had gone tent camping with her husband and five children. They had a great time, a fact I find semi-astounding.
I was always the kid who didn’t want to be camping in the tent. If we had a trailer and a tent, I wanted to be inside the trailer. What I really wanted, though, was to be in a hotel with a Swimming! Pool! and an ice machine and vending machines and beds to jump on.
Guess what? I still want to be in the hotel, not camping.
And while my family was always trying to economize (with five kids to feed), I flatly refused to eat burgers on the rare occasion we ate out. I wanted the most exotic food on the menu, which, at Fred & Myrtle’s Drive-In, was the shrimp basket, and God forbid if I didn’t get my shrimp. No cheeseburger for this kid.
Fast forward four decades.
“You always have to get the weirdest thing on the menu,” says the guy I’m dating. Like there’s something wrong with that.
I always wanted to read and write, never to do math or draw or do P.E. or make crafts. And here I am, with four blogs and a writing job. I still have the math, drawing and crafts skills of a moderately talented second-grader. And I’m just starting to like exercise. I’ve never been on a sports team and probably never will be.
What about you? What has followed you through your entire life?
We The People
Here’s what I asked over on Facebook:
Here’s the question I’m pondering: what should we expect for a person working full-time in our society? Should they be able to feed, clothe and house themselves on the money they make? Should they be able to support a child? Pay for medical care? Heat? Lights? Transportation?
Do we have that expectation, or is it a Grapes of Wrath situation where there’s no low too low? Talk to me.
I started thinking about it when I heard that most of the people who get food stamps are working people, whose benefit averages $133 per month.
One of the security guards at my old work was a proud new daddy. His big regret was that he didn’t get to see his son much – after 8 hours as a guard, he went to work for another 6 hours in the kitchen of a chain restaurant, and then on weekends worked two 8-hour days in a warehouse store.
He had zero days off and zero health benefits. He was a hard worker but not well-educated, or, it struck me, as someone capable of benefitting much from higher education (to put it bluntly – he just didn’t seem very bright).
So I wonder about this guy and about people like him. Is it ok that he worked 88 hours a week to make ends meet? What do we do with hard-working but not particularly intellectually capable people? Should a lack of abstract thinking skills keep him working 80+ hours a week his whole life?
His lack of health insurance is bothersome, too. Of course he and his family will need medical care. If his employers don’t offer it, who pays when he or his wife or child gets sick?
I’m really wondering what minimum wage means when it doesn’t cover the minimums of life – food, clothing, shelter. Some politicians want to abandon the minimum wage. Would we be ok with a society where there is no bottom, like China or other countries where people work for pennies an hour?
What do we want? What should we expect? I’m full of questions on this Labor Day. What do you think?
Wordless Wednesday: You Could Come Visit
Suebob's Red Stapler 