Man oh man, what a long time it's been! Seems like every post I write here lately is an apology for the lack of posts. Might as well try to figure out just why that may be happening.
Mostly, I think, it's to do with having taken up the guitar more lately. If I have a half hour to spend these days, that's how I've been doing it. I had been taking lessons, down in Lenox, once a week; but what with the saving we've been trying to do - both for a possible year abroad, and against the possibility that some of my students going to Ecuador in February might need some financial assistance - $40 a week started seeming like a lot. And so I decided to try to do half an hour a day on my own, and improve that way. It's been working out pretty well, all told - though I didn't bring the guitar along to Wisconsin.
Which is where I was until pretty recently. On December 23rd, the four of us drove to Albany and jumped aboard the Amtrak train to Chicago. Huge, huge fun it was - I absolutely love sleeping in a train. And so do the kids. We had two double sleepers, right across the little hallway from one another, and a wee one took the top bunk in each. Dinner on board, breakfast on board, off the train in Chicago by 10:00 AM the 24th. If I can recommend anything to anybody, it's not to check bags. They took a dang coon's age for some reason to come off the train on the way west. Coming back east, they were off almost immediately - although we were not. More on that later. (Maybe.)
Christmas at the Johnsons - first time the entire tribe on that side of the Johnstadts has been together since Mom's funeral. And nobody took a picture! We weren't all there for too terribly long - Jim and Sarah brought Liam and Finley over on Christmas day, and so we had probably eight or ten hours of wholeness. Shoot, we didn't even line up all the cousins for some snappin'. I don't know what we were thinking...But it was nice. Jess and Stephanie left a day or so later, and then on the 27th, Janneke had to fly to Philadelphia for a conference. And that was mostly that for the big reunion.
I drove Janneke to the airport in Madison, and she tried like crazy to get me to dump her in the drop-off lane and bail, preferably while peeling out. But I insisted. What if something goes wrong, I said? What if a flight gets canceled and you have to stay overnight? At least I'll be here to drive you to the hotel. Finally, with much eye-rolling and gesticulating, she acquiesced, although the entire walk from the parking garage to the terminal, she stared holes through me and flipped me an erect, insistent bird, occasionally changing hands as fatigue would set in. I cowered inwardly and tried to resist the temptation to reach up and wipe away my hot tears. Didn't want to give her the satisfaction.
Turns out, I was right to have worried: Janneke's flight from Madison to Milwaukee was a go, but the flight from Milwaukee to Philadelphia was canceled. The only way for her to get to Philly that night was if somehow she could get to Chicago in the next five hours.
We drove to Chicago. Janneke said nothing the entire time. Unless you count a three-hour-long double bird as speech.
Portions of the above may have actually happened differently - I don't recall. But it was really a fun adventure, the two of us in the car for so long. We had dinner together in the airport, and then I turned on my heel and hit the road for the five-hour drive back to Gays Mills. The kids were with Auntie Jayne and Grandpa the whole time, and Auntie Jayne was brave enough even to bathe them. No mean feat - those kids get madder than polecats when they're wet. But she held up admirably.
Saw "Avatar" out there with Auntie Jayne and Q; Janneke saw "The Princess and the Frog" with T, Auntie Stephanie, and Jack. Guess which of us won the coin toss.
That actually might be kind of hard to do.
Back on the train - the way East is longer, and I have all but always done it without Janneke, so it gets a little old. The kids are a bit stir crazy by the time we roll in to Albany at 2:40 PM - especially after the last half hour of the trip, in which we were sitting on the rails at the station while they disconnected the Boston-bound portion of the train. Seems like they could have organized it to let us off first, but they didn't. Doubly frustrating for Janneke, who didn't know what to think, just stared at our train from on high and fumed. And flipped the bird.
Back to work, back to the usual grind. It's great to be home, it was great to be away...Just trying to catch up on some sleep, really. And get some more guitar in - there's another school talent show in February. I'll have to outdo last year's performance. Which won't really be a very high bar, believe me.
I have spent the last ten minutes creating a bit of a recent highlight reel for you - Y'know what else? I think I OD'd on the computer there over the summer and the early fall. I was working on so many home movies - I have one from last April's visit to Gays that's more than half an hour long. And I just got sick of it. That might also have contributed to keeping me away...Anyway, here's a quickly-slapped-together video for you T and Q addicts, with a little Skittles thrown in:
And here's Q with his basketball three-on-three team, the Baconators, winners of the tournament:
My heart soars like a hawk.
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