I haven’t gotten to ride my bike, the lovely LollyB, as much as I like. Two reasons, the first we’ve had a lot of rains this summer and I hate riding in the rain. And the second, I’ve been fighting an infection for months now.  So sometimes the weather will be nice but I’ll be to tired to ride.

I run a low grade fever most of the time, nothing high just enough to drain my energy. And most days I have at least three or four episodes of extreme vertigo.  I had to look up the difference between dizziness and vertigo. I have vertigo. When your dizzy you feel weak or faint, when you have vertigo you feel like you’ve stopped and the world is still moving. Not a nice feeling at all.  That’s usually when you see me throw out my arms to keep my balance or to keep from falling down. Not because I’m faint but because I’ve lost my equilibrium.  The infection started in my inner ear because my sinuses aren’t draining properly. The doc gave me a dose of antibiotics and put me on claritin.  I felt fine for awhile and then the sloshy head came back and so did the vertigo. This time accompanied by sinus problems.  Now both my ears and sinuses are infected so the doc put me on the big daddy of antibiotics, changed me from claritin to allegra and threw in Flonase for my nose and a plain saline spray to try and get me to drain instead of just building up fluids. Or better yet quit making all this fluid.  Monday we get the pleasure of driving to Landstuhl for a CT scan to see how bad the infection really is, the doc already wants to do surgery to fix my deviated septum and he’d love to have someone do turbinate surgery. I’m holding out for results of the scan.  I like to take a more casual approach to cutting parts of my body. No need to rush into anything right?  

I finished 7 of my  approximate 12 to 14 scrapbook pages for our Paris trip. The only thing left to do is add the journaling.  I love to put together the pictures and the gorgeous paper and embellishments and I hate the writing.  I am so bad at putting into words what we saw or how I felt. To me it all sounds stilted or worse I end up sounding like a guidebook. Grr, the pages are pretty so I console myself with that.  Bear took me down to Patton barracks last Saturday and I spent $75. on scrap stuff, sheesh. he spoils me terribly.  When I start scrapping Strasbourg though it will be great to have the paper and stuff already on hand.  I wonder who will get all this junk when we die, which I plan on doing in about 50 years.  Maybe by then I’ll have all the pictures labeled and the journaling done and my great grandkids can talk about how cool it was that great grandma and grandpa lived in Spain and Germany for a few years.  My itchy feet could provide a source of wonder for a few minutes…rofl.

Speaking of itchy feet I know where all this wanderlust comes from.  During the depression my dad was a teenager, his parents had split up long before and he was bouncing between the two of them. While staying with his dad in Phoenix he got a wild hair and hopped on a freight train and rode it clear to Las Vegas before he turned around and came back. He was about 14, he told me he just wanted to, no reason, he just wanted to see something different.  He’s 86 now and can’t really get around to well, but on his good days he makes my sister take him for long drives to nowhere, just because.  That sounds like a really good reason to me and if I was home I would go with them.  It also kind of explains why all 4 of his kids were born in different states, lol.

I have 3 very dear friends who are trying to quit smoking right now. I would like to tell all of you that you can do this, you really can.  When I quit almost 2 years ago, I was a chainsmoker up to 2 packs a day. I know how hard it is to let go of an addiction and now I know how many excuses I made to myself and others about why I didn’t quit.  This wasn’t the first time I quit but I certainly hope that this will be the last time I quit. The freedom to go anywhere without the hassle is amazing.  It feels so good to be free.  You can do this, I’m praying for your sucess and if you need any encouragement at all, or you just want to vent, call me and I’ll call you right back so you don’t have a huge bill from calling Europe.  It is a price I will gladly pay to help you get off the nicotine.

And remember my motto: The urge to have a cigarette will go away whether you have one or not.

Love you all.

Dizzy Lizzy!

Regardless of the outrageous taxes and fees currently being foisted off on unsuspecting travellers I’m looking forward to going home.  I’m a bit nervous, why I have no idea, but I know we will have a terrific time.  Bear can go out on Greers Ferry Lake and fish all day and night if that’s what he wants.  I’ll get to meet my best friends grand-daughter that was born while we were here. We can start all kinds of home improvement projects while were there and now that we have a house manager we know they will be completed and done right.  Bear said I could see all three of my sisters and as many nephews as I want. ( I have 5 and they have a ton of kids )  It sounds as though he might be bribing me to go to the midwest and see all of them too, but the reality is this. We have decided that when we go up there we are going to go to his moms’ house and if they want to see us then they have to go there.  I hope we see my MIL and FIL, I love those two, I could not have gotten luckier in my mom in law and Wib is just a terrific guy no matter how you slice it, so noisy and energetic. Always raring to go, even at almost 89.  

I have decided I will not let his sisters stop us from seeing mom and Wib. It would be criminally isane of me and a real crappy thing to do to my honey.  I’m sure that his sisters are lovely people with lovely families but they don’t know us and just because we choose to live away from farming does not makes us aliens from space.  I know that Bear and the choices he’s made baffle them and I know that he hasn’t really given them a chance to get to know who he is because he left, but you would think that both of his sisters would know he is not the same guy that left Iowa 28 years ago and that they would quit judging him by the things he did that long ago and quit bringing it up.  The other thing that bugs the heck out of me is they both insist on giving a person by person update on everyone they went to high school with and yet don’t ask or want to hear about the here and now of our lives. They just want to talk about what so and so is doing.  It makes me want to say, do you have any interest at all in what we’ve been doing for the past three years?  I know the answer already and it’s not really, not in any depth.  I would also like his younger sister to quit trying to get us to farm with them, it’s a lovely offer really.  They have a house we could move into and Bear would be our brother-in-laws farm hand.  I wonder if she realizes he already has a career that he’s been doing since 1979. Oh wait, it’s not an approved career and it took him away from Iowa so it can’t possibly be as stable and secure.  After all he’s probably been trying to get back to Iowa all these years  and just hasn’t had the right offer.  

What they don’t want to hear and what he has told them before is this, he wanted to leave when he was about 15 or 16. It took a bit longer than that and he made a sheer mess out of things when he did leave but he’s never changed his mind and what they won’t hear is that he has no desire to ever move back.   Long before he ever met me, back when he was a teenager, he used to listen to a radio program out of Little Rock called Beaker Street with a DJ named Clyde Clifford. That’s when he first thought about moving South and when people ask him where he’s from he says “I’m Northern by birth and Southern by choice.”  I figure even if he hadn’t met and married me he would have ended up somewhere in the South, it’s just where he was meant to be.  It’s where his heart is, as well as our home.  We raised our children there, our friends are there and when we go home in Oct for a visit and when we go home permanetly, that is where we’re going.   We love to travel, as all of you know, but when it comes down to it home is where the heart is and ours is in Arkansas. 

So we will go see his mom and Wib and we will have a lovely time while we are in Minnesota, we always do, but this time we aren’t going to go to Iowa. We are going nowhere near where either one of his sisters live and if they want to see us they can get in the car and drive the hour or so and come and visit for the day. I’m not going to either one of their houses anymore.  I’m putting my foot down. Until they both make the trip south and see where we’ve lived for the past 17 years or so I won’t be going to their houses. Naturally I don’t expect them to come while we are there for such a short time in October but when we get home permanetly I don’t think it will be to much to ask. 

P.S. Even Barry’s ex wife and husband AND her sister and her kids have been to our house. One year they all came down on our anniversary and we all went camping for three days.  How’s that for welcoming.  rofl.  It just baffles me how his sisters could never have wanted to come to our house. Actually what I think I find baffling is the lack of closeness they feel and the apparant lack of real interest they have in his well being and his life.

This doesn’t even include the almost 90 dollar fuel surcharge. Almost 200 dollars in taxes, fees and surcharges seems a bit on the steep side.  I’m curious why does every person flying have to pay the animal and plant inspection fee? I have NEVER flown with an animal or a plant. Also I have never immigrated, I am a U.S. citizen so why do I have to pay an immigration fee every time I fly home? I understand the security fees and even the facility charge but why am I paying to have a non-existant plant inspected?

We thought we would try and come home in the middle of October for a ten day visit so I did some checking on sidestep, expedia, orbitz etc.  I checked prices at the beginning of the week and just checked the same dates again and the tickets had gone up 20. dollars.  I told my husband if he doesn’t commit to taking the time off within the next day or so and unless we actually purchase tickets now we may not be able to afford to go home.   Well we could afford it but we sure won’t be going anywhere or doing anything when we get there or when we get back here for that matter.  Our entire vacation will be sitting at the kitchen table playing dominos and the highlight will be going to Huddle House because that will be all we can afford to do with ticket prices going up every three days. 

I’m conflicted, on one hand I want to go home for a few days and on the other I don’t. 

I want to see my house with my own eyes and at the same time I don’t want to deal with the hassles I know we’re going to have because of the damage that vandals and time have done to it. 

I want to see my next door neighbor of 17 years and hug her and hold her and cry with her and I want to avoid the fact of seeing her dying from lung cancer.

I want to see my dad and I don’t want to see him three years older, at 86 now and know that I’m missing what are probably his last years.

I want to walk down any street and hear nothing but American English being spoken around me but I dread having to repeat the same information that my acquaintances and not so close friends will want.   ie: When will we be coming home for good? How do we like living in Germany?   Not necessarily because they’re nosy but because they are interested, but that doesn’t mean I want to repeat myself ad nauseam for ten days.  But I certainly don’t want to seem rude, I have to live in this community and these are people I like.

And then there’s the always fun being “pulled in three directions”.  The guilt that I feel for NOT wanting to go up to the midwest to see my in-laws.  If I could see just my MIL and FIL that would be perfect but it’s unrealistic to think I can get away with that….. so that means more than likely seeing them all……ack I can feel the stress already. And the whole time we are there I won’t be seeing my own sisters who if I’m going to have to travel to see someone I would MUCH rather it be them than my sisters in law. My sisters in law who don’t know me and don’t really even care too. The one sister in law that even though I have been married to her brother for over 25 years has never stepped foot in our home regardless of where we’ve lived and the other sister has once. One time in over 25 years. Yeah, I want to spend my vacation driving 12 hours to see them.  I “know” xangans I’d rather go meet.   Now, I’ve told the truth and you are free to tell me what a horrible person I am. Oh, and whiny too.

Shit, can someone tell me WHY we are planning on a trip home???