so I've been gone for ten days.  I needed a vacation; it had been three whole weeks since I'd been skiing in Vail. What am I, a work horse?
So I've been in Florida. In a great little house on Sanibel Is.
It's great to have well placed friends.  (Thanks, Jeff and Linda!)

Florida can be absolutely lovely, but I could never live there.  I'm too Irish.  By that I mean the sun hates me and wants to eat me alive.  We usually go in May, when the sun is starting to get really vicious but isn't at full strength yet.  I could survive better under the tropical sun in the winter months, but WinterFlorida has something even worse than SummerFlorida: crowds.  I can only imagine how packed with people a gorgeous little place like Sanibel is during the high season.  Crowds like that drive me nuts.  I can't even stand going to the grocery store on weekends.  I'd rather go in the middle of the night, or early in the morning to avoid all that.  I can't help it, at heart I'm a hermit.

We brought Josie with us this year. 

I thought that would go a long way towards getting her to forgive me for the fiasco on the ski lift.

Also, it was a lot easier than finding someone to babysit her while we were gone, seeing as Katie has to work so much.  We used to take the kids places with us but then there got to be too many of them.  Once they out number you, it gets hard to travel with them.  Anyway, we explained to Zack and Kate that Josie is our favorite so we brought her with.

Jay kept in touch with all of Zack's teachers via email and everynight we called home to nag him about his homework.  He finally bellowed "You guys are supposed to be on vacation! Get off the computer!" But he was happy to report a %100 on a quiz last week.  YAY, Zack!

The trip was great, the only glitch coming the first night when we discovered that somewhere between the luggage carousel and the rental car place, we lost Josie's blankie.

We lost Josie's blankie.

Anyone who doesn't have kids can't possibly appreciate the magnitude of this disaster.
Anyone who does have kids, take a moment to catch your breath.

Ten year old girl, panicking and crying, unable to believe that the wool afghan she's fallen asleep with every night of her life is gone (GONE); Dad,  unable to fix what's wrong, being fallible for the first time, even called the airport,  twice, to ask about the lost and found; Mom, trying like crazy to think of something to say to make little girl feel better.  Little girl finally cries herself to sleep and parents both sleep fitfully, plagued by awful dreams of failure.

On the other hand, the ski lift wasn't looking like the worst thing that had ever happened to her anymore.

The next morning things were much better.  Josie seemed to accept the fact that blankie was gone and knew she'd have to move on.  Jay went golfing and Josie and I biked to the beach a half mile away and had a blast in the sun, sand and surf.  As we lay on our towels, I told her about the times all the other kids lost their blankies.  Tyler left his in Dickenson, ND, when he was two and we moved from Jamestown to Havre.  Katie left hers behind when she was four and we went to Mpls for the summer.  I remember losing mine at the age of 3 and crying myself to sleep.  I didn't actually lose mine; I sort of ate it.

"You Ate it?"

"Yeah, see, I used to twist the edges into these spikey knots and I chewed on them.  I can still remember how it tasted.  It just kept getting smaller and smaller until one night, there was nothing left.  I freaked."

"So what did you do?"

"Well, Margy was a new baby, so the house was filled with baby blankets and Gramma said I could pick any one that I liked and it could be my new blankie.  I took one that was satiny and covered with pink and blue kittens.  I had that blankie til I was thirty. By then it was grey and all you could see of the kittens were the eyes.  It was kinda scary looking.  Your Dad thought I was nuts when we got married and I brought my blanket, but it was a deal breaker, so he relented."

It's funny, I lost that first blankie 43 years ago and I'm sure I haven't thought about it in 42 years, but I really can remember how it tasted.  I can remember my panick when it vanished.  So I told Josie all sorts of things to try and make her feel better about losing hers.  I told her maybe a homeless person had found it and now had a nice warm afghan to wrap up in at night.  Josie's heart bleeds for all the homeless people we see downtown and I hoped she wouldn't seize on the fact that in Florida, no one really wants a wool blanket to wrap up in.  So I painted her a Dickensian picture of her blankie brightening up some unfortunate soul's life.

She listened and then said sadly "Dad says it's probably in the trash and I should suck it up."

Now see; that's why kids need Mom's and Dad's; different parenting perspectives.

I tried so hard not to laugh I almost exploded.  Josie laughed too.  When Jay came home from golfing, he brought her a new blanket.  A feather soft, thick, new blanket with Winnie the Pooh on it.  She named it "Honey".  It can't be 'blankie' she told us.  There can only ever be one 'blankie'.  But the vacation was saved and we proceeded to have a spectacularly good time after that.

But that was a week ago and tonight Chris got voted off of American Idol.

Chris!!

What is wrong with this world??

 

What did you think of this article?

Liked
Disliked
No Opinion