Deepbluesix’s Weblog

Chicago is a beautiful city.

Vacation is a beautiful institution, because it means I get presents…

This trip I’m about to leave on in 3 hours is pure ridiculousness. So, we’re going to Wisconsin, then Chicago. A lot of my mom’s family is in Wisconsin, and her sister who lives in Maine is coming up this weekend too apparently, on a whim. So I get to see a lot of people I normally don’t get to, cool. But we’re driving…16 hours, roughly, to Milwaukee. Here’s where the ridic begins. My parents went to see the Eagles tonight…and got back 20 minutes ago. Mom’s planning on leaving around 4. This means one of my parents is going to be driving on 3-ish hours of sleep. Cool. I, however, am taking this opportunity just to stay up, because I would be pissed if I went to sleep and had to wake up at 3:30. In the meantime, I’m playing mommy; making sandwiches for everyone’s lunch tomorrow, packing, cleaning, gonna cook breakfast for us to take on the road…yeah.

So, we’re driving 16 hours to Wisconsin to stay at my aunt’s house…while all of its inhabitants are going to be at their cabin up north. Oops, timing, got this one wrong. We’re spending the night there (just outside Milwaukee), going to my great aunt’s house Friday evening (Sheboygan, hour and a half north), where we will later be joined by my aunt Julie (from Maine), probably Saturday morning. We’ll hang out in Sheboygan some more on Saturday, then driving back south to Chicago to check in to our shfancy hotel and going to see Wicked Saturday night. Then, we’ll fart around Chicago (my favorite city, though I admit I haven’t been to many) for awhile on Sunday, drive down to somewhere in Indiana to spend the night, then pick up Monday early morning to drive the rest of the way home.

I realize I just gave you a painstaking itinerary, but I’m just saying…this is madness. We’re going to have two full, non-traveling days up there…doing a ridiculous amount of things. The drive, though, is the killer. Luckily, I can’t imagine I’ll have any trouble sleeping 16 hours straight through. I won’t be missing much; almost half of that time is spent muddling through Indiana, which is corn, and not much else.

The preparation for this trip does remind me of one major way I differ from my mother. She is so not a go-with-the-flow kind of person. She tells me I’m an insufferably “don’t worry about it” kind of person. Eh, maybe, but I sleep better at night.

So when I get back late Monday night…I’ll have like 5 days before I’m at camp. For two weeks straight, for staff training. Staff training is basically treating the counselors like campers, doing all the cool stuff (ropes courses, canoing the james, hiking the AT, and I think we’re going legit rock climbing this year), and doing hard, obnoxious labor. I think I’m ready to start my two months of complete exhaustion. If not…….well, that’s gonna suck.

Flipping through the channels just now, I happened to stop on Austin City Limits, featuring Explosions in the Sky tonight. I’m definitely a fan, and it’ll make a good soundtrack to fall asleep to if I ever work up the energy to go to bed. Explosions in the Sky is an instrumental quartet with just drums and three guitars. The guitar is layered so complexly and…I don’t know…wonderfully, which is why no one I’ve coerced into trying to learn to play one of their songs fully achieves something that sounds as good. My favorite song, “Your Hand in Mine,” sounds like falling in love. I don’t know how else to describe it, and I love that that whole story can be told with guitar on top of guitar and a really strong drum phrase. Seriously, check it out. I think I’ll go read in bed with this as my lullaby.

So there was this piece on ABC 13 (Lynchburg) about this very young, fat, black child in the area who assaulted his grandmother in the grocery store…because she wouldn’t buy him chicken wings.

I’m not commenting, just passing on the news…

So for dessert tonight, I got a hankering for a raspberry creamsicle, and I got them and ate one, and it was dericious. I knew the rest would melt on the 1.5-ish hour ride back home from Richmond, but I figured after a few more hours in the freezer they’d just be misshapen but still amazing. I’m kinda starting to worry I was…hideously wrong. I just have a box of raspberry mess. Delicious raspberry mess, but raspberry mess all the same.

So besides my literal cool taste in creamsicles (cool ’cause it’s frozen and taste ’cause you eat it. get it?), I need to share my good (stolen) taste in (canceled) television. I watch Arrested Development, and so should you. A friend got me hooked on it last summer (I could watch the better part of 3 episodes during my hour long break, if I didn’t do the other normal break-y things) and I’ve since watched all 3 seasons multiple times. The fact that it was canceled is probably predictable at worst; it was on Fox, and Arrested Development doesn’t quite meet the normal criteria for a successful Fox show. Smart, subtle humor make each episode just as good on the fifth viewing as the first. It’s so jam-packed with jokes and obscure allusions, everything seems funny again (and for the first time too, of course) ’cause you just don’t remember all that happened. Not to mention, my paper on Arrested Development got me an A-.

Which leads me say…only briefly, just once, and with absolutely no humility…3.88. Take that, semester. 3.70. Take that, first year. I just owned you.

So ignoring the fact that I JUST wrote that last post…

For the first time ever, thinking about spending my summer at CHC is kind of bittersweet. That’s never been a problem before; I’ve always been more than ready to go to my favorite place with some of my favorite people. And, of course, I’m excited to go this summer. There are just reasons I’d be happy to be less in the CHC bubble and more connected to the world. However…I can’t wait to be there for the kids. They wear me out, every single day, but I absolutely love them. Came across a collection of quotes from my kids last year and it got me a little more excited about my job, and a little less anxious about leaving other things behind. These kids is craycray. Check it.

“Are you related to a president? Cuz I am.” – Jack

“Do bears like pistachios?”
“If you see a bear, crouch down and fart.”
“This tastes like butter.” (“what, the water?”) “No…butter.”
“We need toilet paper………in case we need to go poopy.”
-All Jake

“What kind of sunscreen do reptiles wear? SPF 0…because they’re scaly.” – Scott

“When people say ‘Did you get a haircut?’ I say no, I got SOME cut.” – Scott

“My daddy’s belly is SO big, sometimes I think there might be a baby inside!” – Marina

“You don’t like Chinese food?! How are you American?” – some camper

“Grace, open up your legs and watch this!” – LaShay

“Let’s play hide and go stay.” – Grace

“This chicken creeps me out.” – Steven

“I would like to be a duck.” – Lauren

“I’ve conquered my fear of Canadian geese, but I’m still terrified of farm geese.” – Grace

“Is that a wilderness?” – George

“Do carrots bite?” – Allison

“I was raised by werewolves and they taught me how to hunt my prey.” – Calvin

“It’s staying up all night and doing stuff like this that makes you want to go to the bathroom real bad.” – Kyle

“Man you know why I love Ukrops? For those White House rolls, they are so good. They must have some secret ingredient. It’s probably deer piss but I don’t care, they’re AWESOME!” – Chris (a close interpretation, anyway)

“Boys rule, girls drool, and you poopie in your panties!” – Wyatt (to Rachel)

“Big news big news! The eggs are hatching!!” – Wyatt

“My alligator will eat your girlfriend!” – Wyatt

Steven: “You would need a drill to get through the screen.”
Shea: “Yeah, or a pack of rhinos.”

Kids crack me up. I’ve never been more exhausted than I was (all of) last summer. But those kids have so much energy, it’s contagious; there’s no way you can wake up and do a shitty, lazy job. Yeah, I do look forward to making my kids think I’m crazy again…

Since being home, I’ve developed a newfound sense of absolute impatience with technology in the boonies. Dial-up is slow and unreliable, cell phone service is spotty at best, and even Dish crapped out during the storm (though that probably has more to do with the….storm….than our remoteness). Despite my frustration, being home at least makes me appreciate life at school that much more. There are also some gems in Buckingham that make it a little more worthwhile.

First, might I direct you to our wiki page, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckingham_County%2C_Virginia. Though in the throes of a wiki war with my friend Jay (Charlotte County native), the assertion that Buckingham is inhospitable for zebras and that I am (along with Rudolph Roethel) a notable resident was eventually erased, please note that Jay’s addition that “64.02% of married couples had spouses who appeared elsewhere in their family tree, with 16.44% of these being first-cousins, 12.39% being aunt/uncle-niece/nephew relationships, and as much as 11.78% being sibling marriages; the remaining percentage of these were more obscure family ties” has remained without notice for at least 9 months. Not that I find it shocking that Buckingham County, Virginia is not one of wiki’s most frequented pages, but still. Not to mention the fact that it says Peter Francisco had superhuman strength…not my doing.

Anyway, I was roped into going to Buckingham County Day (yep) this past Saturday; Mom wanted to buy some flowers to put on my grandma’s grave for mother’s day, and Dad wanted to see the parade. Fair enough, even though I usually decidedly avoid the festivities. There, along with realizing that I recognize (and can effectively avoid contact with) many residents of Buckingham, I also found the rattail to still be a very real fashion statement. Or, even better, the mullet that is all business until the nape of the neck, with a sheet of locks flowing down the back. Luckily (or not, depending on who you’re thinking about), both of these were mostly seen on Buckingham’s youth, though there’s always some good Billy Ray Cyrus hair to be found among all ages. Seriously, didn’t this die a long time ago? Even though I’m pretty sure it was never particularly attractive, it’s not even cool to have a rattail anymore. I’m sure, though, as my friend John predicted, Buckingham’s youth is just giving us one giant display of irony, since they’re too advanced to be doing otherwise.

Also, hope there weren’t any fires in Buckingham on Saturday; every single fire truck (from every single VFD….) was in the parade. Most of them weren’t even throwing candy.

So being a prime place for people watching (alliteration whaaaat) is always a plus. As long as I don’t want to call someone and tell them about all the fine residents, we’re good.

Plus, we have a McDonald’s now. Sure, they’re everywhere, but now Buckingham is officially part of “everywhere.” Shame that title doesn’t help explain where I live…

The post’s getting lame, but it’s also 2:20. Frustrated as I am by trying to get (and stay) in touch with people, adjusting again to living in my shoebox house and 10×12 room, putting away all the crap I’ve acquired over the course of a year…this was a baller place to grow up. House and…county. And, I mean, even though my parents are destroying my childhood (cut down my favorite tree, I came home on Friday and the shed is leveled…what)…yeah, being a kid in the woods was amazing. A+ for trees, home.

Trees and broadband though….that’d be excellent.