Kakahead

Vacation can be very addictive.  I’m really grateful I have a job so I can actually have vacation; but I did something rather foolish last month.  I took a whole week off.  In conjunction with the Labor Day holiday, that meant a total of 10 days away from work.

We loved it. 

Didn’t do anything special, just our annual trek to Pennsylvania to see my Aunt and cousins.  This visit was to be quite different than previous years, however, as my poor Tante (Norwegian for Aunt) was in the hospital with a broken pelvis.  My cousin, God bless him, has stepped in to take care of her.  She really can’t be left alone anymore.  He definitely has some challenges in store for him.

Since he moved my Tante from her house to his, he offered to put us up at his home during our stay.  Very kind indeed.  Then some stormy lady named Irene blasted past his house, and the wind knocked down a bunch of trees.  The result:  no power at Cousin Pete’s house.  

No big deal right?  We stayed there anyway… hey we’re from the sticks and understand how to rough it for a few days.  We’ve lost power ourselves a few times in the past, and actually broke down and bought our first ever generator this year.   When you raise a big garden and freeze lots of veggies, it’s very disheartening to try to find a friend who has both electricity and enough freezer space to help us out.  So we took the plunge this year.

Thankfully Cousin Pete introduced us to his wonderful friends Steve and Lisa who opened their home to us so we could shower up.  Pete used their kitchen and cooked us all up some fabulous spaghetti and meatballs with a nice salad. 

We borrowed Pete’s GPS and went to see Tante in the hospital while he was cooking.  First experience with a newfangled thing like that.  I work in computer support but I shun away from such toys.  I have a small compass on my car’s dashboard and that’s my GPS… also known as a General Pointing System.  Call me stubborn but I prefer to read maps over listening to the voice of C3PO navigating aloud and then shrieking with delight, “congratulations!!  You’ve reached  your destination!!”   Well OK, I have to admit the silly thing was quite handy.  I actually managed to navigate backwards and get us back to the delicious dinner at Steve and Lisa’s house. 

My lovely girlfriend and I commiserated during the drive back that we felt powerless over my Tante’s predicament in the hospital.  We consider ourselves pretty young, but we’re approaching 60 and we know that our turn will come eventually.  Unfortunately I can’t seem to find my magic wand so I could wave it over my Aunt and fix her up so she could be self reliant again.   Life doesn’t work that way… all we can do is pray, try to accept, and be cheerful when we visit. 

We left Pennsylvania in a powerless state also… we saw trucks driving about that appeared to be working on electric things but still now power when we left.  Still had a nice visit though… very kind people made all the adversity pretty easily tolerated.

Off we went through Canada on the way home, just because.  Didn’t do anything special… stayed overnight in Brantford, Ontario and ate at Moose Winooski’s.  We both ordered what we now consider “naughty” food:  ribs.  Oh my they were good.  Got about 10 pounds of potatoes with the meal though… I got mashed and she got fries.  Gravy with both.  Delicious and deadly.  Then we stopped in Sarnia, Ontario and went to our favorite Salvation Army thrift store and spent our $15 in Canadian bills (started out with $20 I got from an ATM in Brantford) and found some “treasures.”  Doesn’t take much to please us…  Didn’t even get any Tim Hortons until we got back into Michigan!

Ah well, home again, home again, jiggety jig.  Home a couple days, then WHAM!!  It was our turn to get a big storm and lose power for a couple days.  Powerless again!!  Let’s hear it for the generator!!

So… vacation didn’t go exactly as we had planned.  Whenever I experience that kind of scenario, I’m reminded of what a good friend of mine once told me:  “hey, you wanna make God laugh??  Tell him you have plans!!”  Ten days off in a row gave us a good sense of what retirement might be like.  I’m thinking that could be a really nice thing to wake up to each morning. 

Only 8 ½ years to go!!  That is, of course, if everything goes according to plan…
 
We drove again, and these guys seem to be as thankful as we were to get home safely.