Vacation Story 2.
Good friends are the ones who help you survive your other relationships.
I have gone on some vacations with male Significant Others and have had some great times. I’ve also gone on such a vacation and have had not such a great time. I once went on a vacation with a former male Significant Other with whom I had remained “just friends.” We had a non-sexual blast and traveled together more comfortably than we did when we were more intimately involved. We even stayed in the same hotel room, used the same bathroom etc. (He’s coming into town in a few weeks, and he’s going to stop by with a bottle of wine and stories to tell me about his new life in Portland, OR.)
Good friends are the ones who help you survive your other relationships.
I always have almost perfect vacations with my women friends. We don?t actually divide up the chores of sharing space in a rented cottage, but it all always flows with ease and good humor. It’s not that we are all similar in temperament and talents; rather we are all adamant about being respected for who and how we are. And, of course, we actually like each other, and we like to both nurture and be nurtured.
The three of us in Maine this time have all been divorced (one of us three times); two of us have kids; one of us was raped in her teens; we all like men and are all tired of the struggle it always seems to be to keep our integrity, identity, and voice in a relationship with a man. We are tired of their not taking responsibility for everything from household chores to extended family dynamics. We are tired of accommodating. For the other two, it’s probably a temporary thing; one is five years younger than I and the other 9 years younger. For me it’s probably a permanent fatigue.
So, it?s not surprising that we spent several Maine evenings last week sitting around doing a “group therapy” thing. We?ve all been through it; we know how to listen and how to respond with compassion and encouragement; we all know how to constructively construct any criticism we might have, how to wrap our suggestions in heartstrings. We don’t always agree, but we give each other lots to think about, and we accept our disagreements as part of who we are.
And, when we play Boggle, we get very competitive, shrieking and whooping, bitching, and guffawing. We forgot a dictionary this time, so we had a few arguments about the validity of a few word spellings. Heh. They tend to defer to me because I taught English. I frequently bluff when I’m not sure; I’m also frequently right!
I?m sure that we gave the quiet people in the neighboring cottages something to wonder about — what with all the Boggling noise, the frequent group hugs, the strange sage/cedar smudging smells, the echoing tones of my Tibetan bell, and the fire burning in my mini-cauldron on the deck on our last night there, where we symbolically exorcised the bad stuff we?d been carrying around. (More on that later.)
Good friends are the ones who help you survive your other relationships.

Vacation Story 1.
One night during vacation, I woke out of a sound sleep to see the world outside my high windows suffused with an eerie intense green light. I blink and the light slowly fades. My friend P also says that she remembers seeing some kind of green light through her closed eyelids. But she assumed that she was dreaming and just went back to sleep.
All week long we discuss what it could have been. We speculate (laughing nervously): Aliens? Some meteorological phenomenon? Swamp gas? A sign that our healing rituals are working? (Green is the color of healing.) Wouldn

Still waiting to hear from my mom’s doctor. Meanwhile, I’m taking her over to P’s house (she’s the blonde in the photos below) to extend the vacation one more day and let her feed us a light supper. M, the other vacation friend, will come over too, so I’m bringing them both printouts of the collage — which is numbered by the days. Still no time to tell the vacation story. Of course, you know what they say about pictures….

When shall we three meet again?
In thunder, lightning, or in rain?
When the hurlyburly’s done,
When the battle’s lost and won.
That will be ere the set of sun.

I’m back from Maine. That’s me on the right, looking relaxed and rather pudgey. And that’s our Solstice sand ritual image above.
I’m doing laundry, waiting to hear from my mom’s doctor ’cause I have to get her in to find out why she’s gettng such severe leg cramps — so I’ll post more about our great vacation later.
Suffice it for now to know that we spent the week beaching, eating, reading, walking, and Boggling. And laughing. A lot.

October 25, 1913 – December 26, 1984
You can’t find my Dad on Google, even though, in his time, he was active and well-known behind the scenes in my hometown politics — especially among the Polish population.
Today, I think of how proud my Dad would be and how much he would love his grandson, b!X, to whom I managed to give birth on my father’s birthday. (That’s them, together, celebrating one of them.) And his great-grandson? (His amazing granddaughter’s offspring — that’s him in the bottom corner.) Well, my Dad would be beside himself with delight.
Today, Dad, I’m remembering the standards for integrity, compassion, and generosity that your example set for the whole family. I wish that my grandson would have had a chance to know you.

I’ve finally caught up with all of the comments that Klondike Kate left me. I sure hope that Frank Paynter gets around to interviewing her. She’s another gem. One of the older/wiser ones.
My mother is prepared with six days of food and a goodly list of emergency phone numbers.
My car is packed with all the essentials: hair gel; prescription meds; shorts, t-shirts, and jeans; digital camera; Newman