Ten Things I Hate about Summer

I feel like a crabby contrarian every summer. Why? Because I hate this season.

It is heretical to say such a thing. A sacrilege to lemonade and the Fourth of July, swimming pools and a blistering sun. But say it I will. Here are the reasons why summer is highly overrated:

1. It's hot, people! Heat does not feel good. It feels sweaty and sticky and bloaty and puffy.

2. It's like an extended holiday where you're supposed to be happy and freespirited. Way too much pressure.

3. Traffic is a mess. I live in Colorado, and people flock to our mountains, clogging up the freeways.

4. Swimming suits. Need I say more?

5. Anybody who has seen me has noticed that my skin is white-white. Not pale, not fair. Blindingly white. And you know what that means? (Or perhaps you don't, unless you're a ginger.)  See no. 6.

6. I wear sunscreen year-round, but I go through gallons of the stuff during the summer. It's guggy and sticky and thick. (Have you noticed I've taken to creating my own words? Another side effect of summer.)

7. My brain doesn't feel at its best in the summer. Brains get soggy in the summer.

8. Crime goes up in the summer. It's true! Give me a cozy home in January where it's too cold for criminals.

9. Airports are crowded. Summer travel = crammed planes, long lines, delayed flights, and packed parking lots. Can you tell I just returned from California, where I experienced all of the above.

10. Heat. I know I already mentioned it, but it bears repeating. It's too darned hot! 

The Travel Saga Continues

It’s a good thing I like travel, because I am being forced to go back to Europe sometime this year.

Yup, they’re forcing me. I have to go.

In my previous post, I didn’t mention the two miserable days we spent in airports during our return trip to the states. First, our plane was diverted because of mechanical problems. Day one hanging around the Rome airport. When we arrived in New York, we saw this sign. 

Day two hanging around the airport.

We just found out, though, that Air Italia is giving us a travel voucher to make up for our inconvenience. So, I’ll sacrifice and do what I have to do.

Gotta use that voucher. Darn.

Glorious Italy: Adventures andT Misadventures

I just got back from a wonderful trip to Italy. I could write about the beauty of Tuscany’s rolling hills, soldier-straight cypresses, and misty mornings. I could write about Italy’s fabulous food – the tang of real parmesan cheese, the perfect bite of pasta, and the joy of a country that serves Nutella-slathered pastries for breakfast. I could even venture into the literary territory of trying to describe the spectacular mosaics of San Marco in Venice, the exquisite frescoes of Giotto in the Scrovegni Chapel, or the architecture of jaw-dropping cathedrals.

Beautiful, rain-soaked San Marco Basilica, Venice

But I’m not going to write about any of those things. I want to write about the ugly side of travel. The mishaps and misadventures, the fatigue at the end of a day spent on one’s feet, the scary feeling of unfamiliarity. Travel is all about beauty and experiencing something new and seeing the world. But it’s also about feeling vulnerable and out of control. It’s about missing trains and being frustrated at not being able to express ourselves. It’s about making dumb mistakes . . . and paying for them.

You would think these misadventures would be enough to kill the travel bug. But that’s not the case. In fact, these experiences might feed it.

We had a lot of mishaps on this trip, perhaps more than usual. I don’t know why. I went on this trip with seasoned traveler friends, Richard and Melody Manwaring, and my two sisters, who have also donned their travel shoes quite a few times. You’d think we would know that you have to scoot down to get off the train when they call the stop so we wouldn’t end up in a tiny town that a tourist has never seen. You’d think we’d remember to validate train tickets, so we wouldn’t be fined. You’d think we wouldn’t get lost or forget to pay a hotel bill or lose sight of fellow travelers or end up paying more for something than we’d planned.

But all of those things happened. I asked myself, are we too old to travel? Have we lost the touch? Was our group too unwieldy?

Nope. None of those things. We were traveling.  Stuff happens when you travel. Period.

The ironic thing is that travel mishaps often end up being the best memories of the trip. For example, when we missed our train stop and ended up in the tiny, dark town? We discovered a restaurant that apparently was the hot spot for the entire community. We ate calzones as big as our heads, while we observed enormous tables of men gesturing wildly, talking animatedly, laughing and clearly enjoying each other’s company. It seemed a familiar ritual. We watched them as we tried bruschetta twelve ways – not only the traditional tomatoes and olive oil, but also topped with salt cod, offal, sugar-coated pancetta, briny olives, and other unidentifiable pastes and pates. We agreed this was the best food we’d eaten during the entire trip, and the people welcomed us, like we were one of the party.

Of course, not every travel adventure has a happy ending. The last time I went to Italy, I went home with a broken arm. That wasn’t fun. But it’s all part of the journey . . . and it makes a good story.

If I wanted to avoid risk, I’d stay home and never leave my house . . . and never see the world.

Nah, I don’t think so. I’ll take my chances.  

The Ponte Vecchio in Florence - No mishaps here, just the best gelato we had in Italy      

Melody Manwaring, Bonnie Kennan, Leanna Crockett, Lisa Turner

Singing Puccini arias outside the Puccini museum in Lucca. The head of the Puccini Foundation heard us singing and came out and told us all about Puccini and his importance to Italians. A bit of travel serendipity!

Merry Christmas.

Except it doesn’t feel so merry yet. Last week I had dental surgery, to the tune of $6,000. Robert has come home from work today . . . with Shingles. Grandma wants to die and talks about it incessantly. A plumber is upstairs right this minute completing a $700 repair. Last week we had to buy a new dishwasher.  

Sigh. Life happens, even three days before Christmas.

Still, there is balance, even when the scales tilt. After a stressful preparatory season, the choir program at church was beautiful. They sang well and the listeners seemed moved. The singers watched me and responded to what my hands were trying to communicate. We made music together. That alone is a minor miracle.

Other events might not be called miraculous, but they are joyful. While eating dinner last night with friends, a group of carolers stopped by. What could be better than smells of spiced yams wafting through the kitchen while listening to “Silent Night” and “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.” And did I mention we join together as friends and family every week for Sunday dinner? Laughing, discussing, solving the world’s problems.

Then yesterday I had lunch with some of my favorite women in the world. We call it therapy lunch, because we have a tacit agreement to talk about anything and share each others' lives in a unique way.

And I can’t forget the gift delivered by my neighbor. After having the tooth procedure last week, my post-surgical instructions said I shouldn’t have carbonated sodas. I called the dentist’s office, and the receptionist told me I should refrain for two weeks. Really? Two weeks? That seemed like a long time.

On Sunday morning, I asked a dentist in the choir about this (who also happens to be an excellent tenor). He said that didn’t sound right and mentioned that his instructions said nothing about carbonated beverages. Later that day, he came to my door with a brown paper bag wrapped in a red ribbon. Inside . . . a can of diet Coke. It may be my favorite present of the year.

So . . . even though life is messy, bills never end, and health can be fragile, the little joys of life and minor miracles are enough. Merry? Maybe not. But Christmas always brings the promise of better things ahead.

Merry Christmas.  

Work, Life, and Goofing Off

I like work. I like earning paychecks and having someplace to go and meeting the challenges that come with a job.  I’ve never wanted not to work.

And yet … now I have retired friends. And they’re happy.

I’ve been contemplating work for the past few weeks and asking myself questions about it. Would I be happy if I didn’t work? Would I like endless flexibility to have lunch with friends? Would my house be cleaner if I didn’t work? (The answer to that one is easy: NO.) If I didn’t work, would I finally finish the scarf I’ve been knitting since July? Would I make it to the mountains more often to snowshoe? Would I hang out in the Denver Art Museum on weekday afternoons?

Or would I start wearing pink Snuggies while bonding with the couch and bags of almond M&Ms? Would I rattle around my quiet house, jumping when the phone rang? Would I become intimately acquainted with NetFlix?

The answer to these questions is not clear … except that one about the clean house. I don’t know the answers because I have always worked in some way.  

I came by it honestly. I remember the lectures my dad used to give me about the nobility of work. Frustrated by my lack of desire to clean my bedroom, he’d pontificate about how good it feels to work hard and earn one’s keep. How work brings rewards. How success is the result of hard work.

I thought he was crazy. I was 10 … and 12, 13, etc. Work was tedious; chasing boys and goofing off was fun. But now I’ve turned into my dad.

He was right about the rewards. Last week I got an e-mail from a student. She told me that she’d been in the university for several years and had never had an instructor “who was completely prepared, ready to teach, and quite as caring as [I] have been.” She went on to say that she left my classes excited and fulfilled. All teachers get these kinds of notes – my point is not to self-aggrandize, but to make the point that this note was a better payday than the check I received for teaching that course. It’s the kind of enrichment that is hard to find outside of doing a job that I love, and working hard to do it well.

So I’ll keep working. Honestly, I don’t have a choice unless I want to drastically alter my lifestyle (and I don’t). I still want to pay the light bill, buy groceries, and have money to travel. But I also need to feel like I’m offering something to the world. And to myself. I want the energy and stimulation of doing my best and meeting new challenges. I guess that pink Snuggie is going to have to wait … 

Congratulations!

Graduation ceremonies are an exercise in endurance. They last for hours. The rhetoric is overblown, the regalia stuffy, the speakers pompous.  

I go to a graduation ceremony every year. And I love it.

As a faculty member at the niversity of Phoenix, part of my job is attending the annual graduation ceremony.  

By now, the routines are familiar. This year was no different. Before the ceremony, the faculty lined up on both sides of the convention center hallway. We chatted about everyday things – the classes we were teaching, where we’d eat lunch after the ceremony, and how to fasten those mortarboards on our heads. We complained about the hot robes and admired a fellow instructor’s floral-spicy perfume. We tried unsuccessfully to straighten the velvet hoods that hung down our backs in a rainbow of colors. Some of us wished we’d worn more comfortable shoes.

While we waited to march in, the students paraded down the middle of the hallway, getting in place for their procession.  They looked fantastic, in inky black robes with scarlet satin stoles, tassels swishing back and forth from their caps. Some wore gold honor cords. Some tottered on six-inch stilettos while others sported bejeweled mortarboards.

As faculty members, we turned into cheerleaders. We high-fived students. We screamed out, “Congratulations! You did it!”  We hollered and whooped as if we were at a hockey game.

The cheers were sincere. It is thrilling to see a student wearing that cap and gown, when you’ve seen that student struggle with APA guidelines or thesis statements. It’s exciting to see a student who’s attended class every week, even during a tough pregnancy or while taking care of a terminally ill parent. It’s exciting to see a student in that line who’s spent time in rehab or been wounded in Afghanistan. It’s exciting to see a student graduate when you know he is a single father to a handicapped child.

Teaching adult students is a unique privilege, because we teach students who have real-life problems and challenges. We get to see them overcome those problems and succeed. So we clapped for them. And cheered. And fist-bumped and high-fived and hugged.

The students lined up at the door into the theater. Now it was our turn to march, down the long aisle, to the strains of Elgar’s “Pomp and Circumstance.” As we walked past the students, they returned the favor of cheering and clapping. They shouted out, “Thank you!” They waved and smiled.

“Pomp and Circumstance” played on, as students, faculty, and staff filed into the theater, its tune familiar and stately. I knew the pompous speeches were coming, along with corny jokes and clichés. I knew the list of graduates would be long. I also knew why I love to teach. I straightened my mortarboard and headed down the long stairway to the front of the room.

Love and Marriage

It’s a girl! Well, actually, a beautiful young woman, but “it’s a woman!” doesn’t quite have the same ring. The point is, there is a new girl … er, woman … in the Turner family.

Ethan and Andrea married on May 10, 2014. They dated for four years, so this wasn’t exactly unexpected. But definitely welcome.

The wedding was joyful. The groom was handsome; the bride was beautiful. The weather was sunny and warm - the snow waited until the next day. (Yep, snow in May.) Lots of family members attended, and we had a fantastic time talking, laughing, eating, and sharing memories. The food was great (did I mention both Ethan and Andrea are foodies?) and the flowers elegant (did I mention Andrea has a way with decorating).

Weddings are filled with family, flowers, food, along with a few tears, mishaps, and surprises.  Even butterflies in this case. Of course, it helps when the reception is held at the Butterfly Pavilion. Happy couple, happy family. What more can you ask?

Andrea is a welcome addition to our family. She is lovely and soft-spoken (not the norm in our family). She’s an awesome cook. She is smart and talented. And she loves my son.

Congratulations, Ethan and Andrea!