Basta

To paraphrase the old song, sometimes you just need to know when to fold 'em and walk away.  

Yesterday, I did.  Long story, not going into it here to protect the guilty.  I'll just say that it's been a long time in coming (should have been done months ago) and good riddance to bad rubbish.  If, as Coelho wrote, how people treat other people is a direct reflection of how they feel about themselves, this dude is one massively insecure son of a bitch and I should feel sorry for him.  Maybe I will when I get done being pissed off.  In the meantime, I'm just moving on.  

Enough. 

Analogies

Summer vacation IS TO a stay-at-home parent AS tax season IS TO an accountant.

Holiday during summer vacation involving having company IS TO a stay-at-home parent AS April 10-14 is to an accountant.

Nothing like having all my normal jobs to do plus getting ready to entertain visitors while surrounded by the other four members of my family, all of whom would be content to live in a disaster area.

I fricking hate summer. Is it September yet??

Zombies

At one point over the weekend, my phone started beeping relentlessly.  Himself looked at me and sighed.  "The aikido girls are at it again?"  There are six of us, and when a group text string gets going I have to turn down the volume on my phone after a while.  

One of the girls is somewhat 'girlier' than the rest of us and loves clothes, makeup, jewelry, etc.  She somehow got her hands on a bunch of tester supplies for facials and decided that we all needed to stay after class one night this week and try them out.  The ladies' locker room at this place is actually very nice, and includes a lounge area with carpet, comfy sofas and a big coffee table.  After class, the five of us who could make it assembled downstairs in front of the mirrors, prepared to follow orders relating to face and lip scrubs, hair conditioners, and face masks.  

This was the result.  Don't I look just gorgeous??  (Ha.) 

  

Greasy hair, mask in place, paper 'cucumber slices' on eyes.  Not pictured: hysterical laughter or the prodigious amount of food on the coffee table in front of me.  

Group selfie!  Especially funny since none of us could see a thing from under the eye covers.  I did not ask their permission to put their photos on my blog but I'm not worried about that either, since I don't think their mothers would recognize them in this picture!  I showed it to Petunia and she commented that we all look like aliens.  Or zombies.  

Two of the girls celebrated birthdays recently, so we brought a small cake with us.  And juices.  And fruit, chocolate and nuts.  All of which were a challenge to eat while wearing the masks, let me just say.  Quite a celebration and SO much fun.  We left when the gym closed at 11 and then all still had to go home and shower, so it was a late night, especially for the woman who had to get up at 4AM the next day to take her son to swim practice!!  (Oh, how happy I am to have soccer players rather than swimmers or hockey players.)

I love my friends.  Wouldn't trade them for diamonds or rubies.

  

   

Signs

The Antietam battlefield was very impressive.  For those possessed of any kind of imagination whatsoever, it's easy to visualize the desperate morning battles in the cornfield, the piled-up dead of Bloody Lane around midday, and the fight to the death for Burnside Bridge later in the afternoon.  Photographers followed the soldiers in this war, which resulted in some staggering images.

Bloody Lane then

Bloody Lane now

Wherever you go in the whole broad area of the battle, there are signs: some black and some yellow.  The yellow are the 30,000 foot level signs...the ones with maps with handy blue and red arrows denoting which side was located where and going in which direction.  Big-picture signs.  The black and white ones, on the other hand, probably ten or twenty times more numerous, get right down to the nitty-gritty.  If you had an ancestor in the 19th Kentucky, for instance (I am making that up as an example), you could follow that unit's movements across the battlefield almost hour by hour via the black signs.  For Civil War buffs like Himself, the black signs were the correct level of detail.  For those not quite so well versed in this particular period, like me, they were overkill to such a prodigious degree that eventually I gave up trying to keep all the states, units and commanders straight!  

A yellow sign

Another yellow sign

A black sign

Seriously, enlarge this third picture, read it, and imagine literally hundreds of them scattered everywhere you look!  Then imagine trying to actually remember all the information on them.  Yeesh.

Dotting the battlefield are also a huge number of concrete or stone monuments, many large and elaborate.  These were donated by individual states over the years since the war (some old, some recently) and memorialize places where particular state units fought.

130th Pennsylvania

20th New York

Texas

8th Connecticut

Literally hundreds of these dot the battlefield too, both large and small.  The battlefield is almost visually overwhelming. 

Then, there was this sign.

Stopped me in my tracks.  We had to make a detour to pay our respects.

Bloodiest single-day battle in American history.  Almost 23,000 dead, wounded or missing.  Truly fascinating place to spend a weekend, although very sad.

Random

We're at a B&B this weekend.  My husband is not one who particularly cares for casual conversation with strangers, so communal breakfast tables are not his preference, especially before his morning caffeine. I am convinced that one of the reasons why he married me is that I can converse with anyone at any time about anything and therefore save him from having to make small talk, but I digress.

Anyway, we came down for breakfast this morning and saw that we would be sharing our table with another couple.  I should add that we are in the ruralest of rural Maryland at the moment, so I was rather surprised to hear the other gentleman's unusual accent when he requested a cup of coffee from the innkeeper.  To make a long story short, they were from the Czech Republic: he is a diplomat snd former soldier stationed in the Czech embassy in Washington.  We ended up having a fascinating conversation for an hour covering topics ranging from NATO to German castles to restaurants in DC to the challenges of learning English as a second (or more) language because of all the exceptions to the grammatical rules to the differences between the Czech and American educational systems, with a detour into the recent BREXIT vote.  Not at all what I expected to be discussing over eggs and bacon this morning, but since my husband was raised in Germany by two civilians who worked for the US Army and spends a great deal of time working with European attorneys himself now, the irony is that he carried most of the conversation for us!  I contributed by translating the heavy West Virginia accent of the innkeeper for the Czechs when she stepped out of the room...talk about a multicultural experience.

Very, Very Quiet

Every summer, the kids spend some time at their paternal grandparents' house.  This year, my mother-in-law decided not only to take all three of them at once...she is taking my nephews at the same time as well.  For a week!!  Five children between the ages of 6 and 12, four of them boys.  Wow.  After Thing One's soccer tournament last weekend, we dropped him and his siblings off at 'Camp Grandmom' and came home to a *very* quiet house.

They are having the time of their lives, or so Thing One's texts and the photos my MIL is sending would suggest.  A history day in the city.  A beach day.  A day at an outdoor waterpark/amusement park.  A day at a state park with breakfast at a diner and a movie thrown in as well.  And today, they will be packing up and driving down to my SIL's house, which has a lovely pool.  They will be staying there for the weekend and we will pick them up on Sunday, on our way back from our own little vacation.

It's been a productive week for me, especially since Himself was out of town for work Mon-Wed.   No cooking and very little laundry, with the added bonus that in the absence of the kids, what I cleaned actually stayed clean for more than five minutes!  Bonus.  Got a lot of stuff done around the house (including planning for a bathroom remodel and some front landscaping changes), took several martial arts classes, did some geocaching, went for walks. A nice recharging break for me after the craziness that is the end of the school year.  Last night I took the dog to a new sitter's (speaking of quiet, right now there is not a single small dependent noisemaking creature in the house!) and later today we will pack up and head out.

Always good to have some time with only my husband...doesn't happen often in the craziness that is our lives.  We found a lovely B&B that overlooks a historical battlefield and plan to have a fun weekend!  I spent the entirety of last evening checking out all the geocaches in the area on the online map (of course) and Himself has already noted the locations of all the local microbreweries.  Last year this time we went to the Berkshires in western Massachusetts for our weekend away and he came back with a trunk full of craft beer!   We plan to spend most of Saturday checking out the battlefield, Himself is bringing his running gear so he can get out in a new area...should be good.  Of course, it would be helpful if I were packing right now and not blogging.  :)



 

Success

So, Thing One's new soccer team (those kids available for the summer, anyway) have a tournament this weekend.  First time they've ever played a real game together, two hours from home.

Thing One was seriously nervous this morning.  He was uncharacteristically quiet during the car ride down, and not just because we had to leave home at 6:15AM to get to the tourney in time to warm up for the first game.  He looked jittery during pregame, too.  Why the insecurity, I'm not sure, but he was clearly worried about how he was going to perform in a game at that level of play.

As he thought might happen, the coach started him at center back the first game.  Luckily, once the whistle blew, he settled down quickly into autopilot.  No matter *what* was going on in his head, the kid's body knows how to play soccer.  He was on the field for 57 of the 60 minutes of that game and 59 of the 60 for the second game, coming off only long enough to grab a quick drink. His first touches looked good, he tracked down and blocked pretty much everyone who came into his area, and by the end of the day his booming foot had earned him the new responsibility of taking all the free kicks for the team as well.  Most importantly, on the way home I asked him if there was any further doubt in his head as to whether he belongs on that team, and the answer was a resounding, "Hell, no."  A sentiment with which I heartily concurred, by the way.

The team lost the first game 2-1 and won the second 3-2.  Odds are that they won't make it to the championship game in their bracket tomorrow afternoon, but he's already a winner in my book.  So unbelievably proud of him.