Iiiiiiiit's (Almost) Groundhog Day!

Right now in Punxsutawney, PA there are people are settling in for the night hoping to get a few hours of sleep before heading to the breaking dawn festivities surrounding the antics of Phil, the groundhog, and his human handlers in top hats. Going to Punxsutawney was something that I had hoped to build into the scheme, but this trip came up instead. 

Our Groundhog Day Eve celebration consisted of appreciating the dessert that the kiddos saw in a magazine and made for everybody. 

Today was our last full day here in Myrtle Beach. Tomorrow the grandparents fly home and we start our two-day trip back up to the city. Despite the chilly wind, we spent a couple of hours outside breaking in the new shovel and the sifter that the grandparents went out and bought for the kids.

The kids worked together to execute Judd the Red Chicken's enormous prison compound. He was crazy-focused and even complained after of his back killing him. The Girl's contributions were robust, but she also took time to kneel in the sand and make a Pembroke Corgi, complete with the fairy saddle.

There was also a swimming session that started in the outdoor pool (come on! it's the last day! please!), that fairly quickly had to move into the indoor pool. I finished rereading Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (and now need to go back to Savannah to look at things with different eyes). 

And then this evening it was time to start closing shop. The kids deflated all the balloons that went up for the double birthday party.

While they watched The Adventures of Tintin with Grandma, I started the packing up process. I went through the many random pieces of paper and reflected on how things that happened fairly recently already seem so distant. 

Days certainly slip by. Aside from being our last day at Myrtle Beach, and the day before Groundhog Day, today is also the first day of the last half of the scheme. Yesterday was the due date for the second quarterly report. 

I take stock: we've had school pictures, tests, lessons, goals, assessments and field trips. We even had an evacuation drill yesterday. I stand at the half-way point and feel that it has been a success, and I clearly see where we need to go in this second half. I stand on the beach with my kids and we find a clear heart. At first we think it's a bubble and can't believe how perfect it is and are careful to take a picture before it pops, but then realize that it is glass or thick plastic -- something that will hold up. And whether washed up, or dropped on the shore, it is now our beachcombing treasure. It will stand as a reminder of how much we've loved our time here. It will also remind us of substance -- that even though time is passing and we snap, snap, snap our pictures before we run out of time and the scheme pops -- the brilliant thing is that we will continue being together, learning lessons, going on field trips... some materials don't pop, they are strong enough to be picked up and held and pocketed. 

Phil will just have to wait until next year to meet us, and maybe we'll just have to take a day off school, and that will be okay. 

We will be sad to leave the grandparents tomorrow, but we here's hoping that it's a Happy Groundhog Day. Heading back North and into winter is going to be tough, but fingers (rodent claws) crossed, we can at least look forward to an early spring. 

Failed the Drill

AN EMERGENCY HAS BEEN DETECTED IN THE BUILDING. EXIT IMMEDIATELY. DO NOT TAKE THE ELEVATOR. 

Loud alarm dinging.

Flashing light (thus the cool split screen that happened in above picture). 

We had some excitement today. When the alarm first started going off I couldn't even identify where the sound was coming from. It was Orwellian -- shocking to suddenly have a voice start talking from the walls.  Once it sunk in we all started organizing ourselves to leave. It was bitter cold today, so since I didn't feel a great sense of urgency (wouldn't there be more? smoke? people screaming in the halls? isn't that what every knucklehead thinks?), I took the time to run into our bedroom and grab the kids' coats while we waited for The Sister (I was pounding on the bathroom door for her to come out, and the poor thing was trying to get dressed out of the shower). Not knowing how long we would be standing in the cold, I barked at the spawn to get their shoes on. Since I was grabbing coats I thought that I might as well grab my handbag. This was the wrong thing to do. It prompted The Boy to grab prized possessions. That prompted The Girl to grab her stuffed arctic fox. 

I will say that at the first moment we could leave (The Sister fully clothed), we did... and we proceeded to walk down all twelve flights only to arrive at the bottom and be told that a crew had been working on a panel and accidentally set something off. It was nothing to worry about; we could take the elevators back up. 

The alarm was still going off as we came back into the villa, but over it I could hear my mother-in-law: "Well, at least the rubber chicken was saved."

At that moment I realized that we had failed miserably. School has done so much over the years to teach them to grab nothing -- just go. And the grandparents were great examples of that -- they just went like they were supposed to. By seeing me grab coats, and then for good measure my handbag, my kids got into their minds to take their stuff. In a situation where seconds might count, stopping to get stuff -- even stopping long enough to consider getting stuff -- might make the difference. 

So I absolutely FAILED at teaching a valuable lesson today. The irony is that for half a second once in a past life I had been a flight attendant. I had been trained about the importance of every second, etc. and so forth. 

Today's drill was a vital -- it reminded me of the basics:

1. Leave immediately
2. Take nothing
3. Don't go back up/in unless you hear from somebody in charge EXACTLY what the situation is (don't just accept: "It's fine, go on back").

To note: The Grandpa did all of this right. He was a very good example.

For the four of us that failed, we did learn what matters to each of us (my kids' coats, being dressed, a stuffed animal, a rubber chicken...).

Aside from our drill, we briefly walked on the beach on our way to the hammocks, but because of a bitter wind mostly we just flitted between our villa, the activity room, and the indoor pool. 

Luck Be a Lady (Or Overweight Older Gentleman) Tonight

My in-laws are fun to talk to. They notice things and have opinions. The kids are getting an education just by sitting around and listening in on the conversations that we are having about neighbors and cousins and neighbors' cousins and cousins' neighbors. They are learning how people dissect the lives of others in an attempt to make sense of the world and their place in it. These lessons are especially valuable in that they are taught by their grandparents, so they are infused with generosity and fairness. As lives are held up for inspection it is with gentle hands and hopeful eyes; the benefit of the doubt is always within reach. 

The first thing that we did today was head down to the beach. The Boy wanted to make a castle with some deep trenches and bridges and The Girl was hoping to find a shark's tooth.

My phone promised nicer weather than what was delivered. It was windy, no shark's teeth surfaced, and Judd the Red Chicken's shovel snapped when the trenches were half done. I would have still stayed on the beach (wrapped as I was in a blanket), but the kids decided to be done. We stopped by the treehouse for a while and encouraged by The Sister, who knows how to play really well, they all ran about like so many industrious gerbils until some tiny kids came. No longer sole residents of the habitat, the kids lost their interest and we moved on.

Later in the pool (today we had to opt for the indoor pool), they met some other children closer to their age and they played Marco-Polo with them for a while. I commented to their grandma how much I love friendly interactions with people that you're never going to see again. There is something cool about making a memory with someone who will only have the smallest of roles in your life. The Girl decided that she wanted to learn how to do handstands like The Sister. It always makes me smile to see legs sticking up in the pool, as that was the speciality of Big Sister when we were kids. It took a while for The Girl to get the hang of it (dear reader, if you've never tried to do a handstand you might be unaware of how tricky it is to get the bum properly submerged), and she was getting frustrated. Many things come so easily for her that she gets disproportionally irritated when all things don't come to her in a snap. Today she was reminded that practice, practice, practice pays off. After a while she was able to consistently do underwater handstands. Hurray for another generation of pale legs breaking the surface of the pool water!

The social activity that we decided to join today was "Family Bingo -- $2/card." Apparently what "family bingo" really means is "all age" bingo, and all age bingo really means older folks who take bingo pretty seriously. I didn't notice any talismans placed about, but there was a palpable intensity. We came in late and then The Girl promptly won games two and three. Somebody actually grumbled, "We should have locked the doors when it was time to start." We discovered that one of the prizes was a certificate worth $12 for the wine tasting party -- so at $2/card there were some hopeful gamblers there... But not being from Reno, like we are, they must not have realized that it's a gambling culture cliche that every night in every casino, some cute young thing will come in, bat her eyelashes just so, and beat the odds. Calling, "BINGO" on two out of the five games, The Girl picked candles for her prizes and tonight we ate dinner by flickering light. 

After dinner we went a couple of buildings over to where there are gas fire pits on the porch. Though the wind that has really kicked up made lighting difficult, we persevered and got all settled in to start making s'mores when a random man appeared out of nowhere and asked if he could join us, as he dragged a chair over and somehow found room for it in our circle. It was so clearly a family gathering that for the first few moments of shock we weren't super hospitable. In fact my mother-in-law, The Sister, and I all had to look down at our laps because we were getting the giggles. 

Apparently we have a collective family doppleganger and it manifests as an overweight man in his 60's with curly hair. If you were to sit down and list 25 key words that described your family's personal history -- names of cities, hobbies, random experiences, and then somebody materializes and in the amount of time it takes you to make two s'mores he manages to insert all 25 of those key words into the conversation would you find it odd? The Boy said that if he had mentioned one more thing that connected to our lives he would have had to contact Homeland Security. Our doppleganger's enigmatic existence prompted my father-in-law to ask how he was able to travel to so many great places so often, how it was that he was able to retire so young, and he provided an important message that I honestly do hope my kids always follow: "Live below your means." 

Towards the end of our time together the conversation turned to the weather and he said, "A storm is coming, but we will be fine." Should any storms loom up -- be they literal or symbolic -- I'll swear that he was some sort of Myrtle Beach mysterious messenger, and I will hold to the promise that we will be okay. 

Simultaneously

We did it. We all got up and out before the sun came up. We knew that we were missing low tide, which is when the best shelling can happen, but we didn't realize until we passed the sign by the boardwalk that we were actually hitting it right at high tide. Oh, well. What we did see was the moon being up simultaneously with the sun.

We also met a man with two Corgis -- something that thrilled The Girl, as that's one of her favorite breeds. We met the dogs first, and had time to discuss whether or not Corgis usually have tails or not before the owner caught up with his dogs. The man was friendly and offered us a lesson in husbandry: apparently the Cardigan Corgi has a tail, and the Pembroke Corgi does not. The theory is that Cardigans come from one side of the mountains in Wales and the Pembrokes from the other... so the two don't even share closely connected lineage. Fun: because of the saddle-like marking on some Pembroke's they are called "the horses of the fairies." 

Whether any of that is accurate or not, I have no idea (except the fairy part -- that's clearly legit), but I do so appreciate these friendly interactions with people. Continuing our walk after our amiable lesson, I whispered to my mother-in-law: "That guy is so making the blog." 

I didn't think to snap a picture of the dogs, but these are the paw tracks that The Girl happily followed down the beach. 

Aside from finishing up our first Life of Fred math book, we also did some art in the activities room. 

It was around 70 degrees today, so we spent a lot of time outside. We dug for shark teeth (didn't find any, but did meet a nice man with a metal detector who wished us luck -- and we returned the sentiments), and the kids were in the pool for forever. The Boy and The Sister have even choreographed a "mermaid circle" (Weeki Wachee Springs brought unknown talents to the surface). 

The Girl and I located the hammocks. 

Tonight we watched You Can't Take It With You. It's basically a non-Christmas, more comedic version of It's a Wonderful Life. The theme is enjoying life rather than working yourself to death, for enjoying life will usually bring you happiness and friends, while an obsession with money and control will usually leave you empty and alone. 

Obviously, the ideal is finding the sweet spot -- doing something that is fun and meaningful while being able to provide for your family. For kids it's learning what you need to while still being a happy kid. It's having the moon and the sun at the same time.

Treasures

A handful of senior citizens and our family attended the Seashell Identification class today at the activity room here at the villa. 

While the picture I snapped is not the most flattering, the "sheller" teaching the class folded and presented her words in such a way that I could have listened to her for a long time. She taught us much:

The natural holes in shells are usually from sea stars eating the insides; female blue crabs have an apron on their bellies and a red dominant claw; conches are different than welks; we saw the little welk babies that come out of the egg casing (and yes, we did feel awesome that we knew what those egg casings were!); bull sharks, great whites, tiger sharks, and sand sharks are all in the bay here -- note: those first three are the most common to munch on people; when sand dollars are alive they are fuzzy and darker and you will be fined if you take them; horseshoe crab blood is royal blue; best time to go shelling is the first low tide; you should always clean your shells because you can get E.coli and/or Salmonella; oysters alternate their gender, switching from male to female and often back again, etc.; you can find fossilized shark teeth if you dig around a sediment line; if you find a shiny snow white olive shell you can probably sell it for over $1,000; pluff mud -- a bit like quicksand -- is where one finds the best shells; Bull Island is a sheller's paradise (but crawling with alligators); and other things that I've already forgotten. 

The moppets were supposed to get a bit of math and science tackled today, but they were very busy. They went to the beach and built a major structure, they made me "vacation" birthday presents, and they prepared a birthday party. It is neither Grandpa's or my birthday today, but we are February babies, and as The Dad is leaving, tonight was deemed the night to celebrate our birthdays. My gifts will be coming on my actual birthday when we are home, but they didn't want to have a party without giving me something, so the The Boy constructed me a recycling plant/factory in the shower, and the girl combed and combed until she found little shells with natural holes in them to make jewelry for me. The kids hid our gifts and made us play hot/cold until we discovered them -- there was much squealing and some confusing directions: "HOT! You're about to get frostbite!" Eventually all gifts were discovered. 

I'm pretty sure that never in his almost-72 years has the grandpa had to work harder for more random gifts (his were made at home before we came -- some very detailed, hand-crafted I-spy posters, and  a tiny horse that we had to keep relocating off the table and/or the counter for a couple of days because the work on it went on for so long), but the love he showed to the kids by way of profuse words of love for the gifts was endearing. The kids love their grandparents -- they have so looked forward to this time with them -- and the grandparents clearly love the kids.

And now we are all going to bed early with the high hopes of getting up early. Low tide is in the wee hours of the morning, and we won't be there in the pluff mud with our flashlights getting hypothermia. However, we are going to get up before the sun and see what we can find (if our only shelling competition is our classmates today we should be in good shape). Our educator told us that the bottlenose dolphins that are common here are often seen at sunrise. It's kind of exciting to go to bed with the idea that in the morning we venture out in the hopes of finding treasure and adventure. If we find neither that will be okay, for the treasure and adventure came to us tonight.

On Buckets and Cages

Recently Friend A and I talked about whether or not we have bucket lists and I popped off with: "The only thing in mine is to see the Aurora Borealis." Now, my original thought for this blog entry was to say that until I went to Hogsmeade I had forgotten that that was certainly listed and bucketed... But, sitting here now, the proper addendum to make would be to say that I do have something in there -- to do something genuinely helpful. I think that we all want to find our passion and reach our potential and contribute, and then we have kids and that transfers to them. In essence, that was the spirit that was blown into and filled the shell of this scheme.  We go on these trips and we go to homes of the likes of Juliette Gordon Low (founder of the girl scouts) or Ernest Hemingway and I keep thinking how desperately I want my kids to realize that it is possible to make a difference, possible to do something great. And then on occasion I think: did my folks think the same about me? 

A friend commented on how important my grandparents must have been to me, since I reference them often, and the answer is yes, they were important. My grandmother never accepted anything cheap and my grandpa told me once that I would be a writer. It's believing in kids that makes them endeared to you. We are here now in Myrtle Beach and my children's grandparents are with us. The Dad will be flying away for this next week to do something lame (some people call it work) and he invited his parents to come here to be with the kids and me. It's easier to all spend time together at a Marriott Vacation Villa than our tiny and packed to the gills NYC apartment. And having extra time to spend with family was another purpose for the scheme. 

But I've started this entry all backwards now. Last I reported we were winding up our time in Orlando. We woke up the next morning and after taking advantage of a brilliant pool with water slides we got ready to take our leave of Florida. On our way out of the sunshine state we stopped at the Morse Museum to look at the largest collection of Tiffany glass. It was impressive to learn a bit about the technique -- the science and art that goes into making both the color and the texture of glass. I'm not sure that the kids totally understood the process (I didn't), but there was a cool ah-ha moment when they realized that their aunt who showed them how to solder metal around colored glass one time was in essence doing the same thing, and using the same tools as the Tiffany workshop. They got to touch some Tiffany glass, and we saw what was salvaged from Laurelton Hall and the chapel that had been created for the 1893 World's Exposition (which was another link for them because they know that the Museum of Science and Industry was also created for the Exposition). There are such pieces of beauty there... The daffodils on the columns that held up the porch at Laurelton Hall represent the type of art that inspire people to try to do something. 

The march towards Savannah. I didn't know before we set out from home that we were going to Savannah, or I would have checked out Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil from the library to reread. That book was hot when I was studying creative nonfiction, and so I actually used it in a class that I taught one time. Definitely worth the read -- though gritty at times. Speaking to a woman from Savannah at the time when the book was all the rage, I asked her what people from the town thought of it. She laughed and said that the town was split in two groups, those who were benefitting from the book/came off looking decent referred to it as the book, while those who came off looking like cads/disagreed with some of Berendt's observation referred to it as that book. Remembering that conversation, I tried to explain this nuance to the kids -- a lesson in semantics. 

We rolled into Savannah in time to check into our hotel, grab a bite to eat and meet up with our horse carriage. We were going on the 7pm part history-part ghost tales tour. 

Savannah is a town rich in history. And rich in beauty. With those 20-plus squares set out geometrically and the gorgeous homes with gardens, and townhouses with unique detailing, surrounding them. It was a gift to all people with eyes to see that some dedicated folks made the huge restoration efforts that they did half a century ago. 

The ghost stories were all rather run of the mill -- children playing pranks, sad women weeping, men unable to let go of grudges. Our families favorite was about a horse named Socks. He was a white horse that the tours used and he loved to be scratched around the ears, and when he was scratched the right way he would go into a kind of trance of ecstasy and start leaning way over. One night in the middle of a tour he stopped for his water break that they have set up for the horses by one of the squares and when it was time to move on he wasn't interested. After a couple of minutes of the tour guide attempting to get him to get going he finally got out of the carriage to see if anything could be ascertained. What he saw was the horse leaning way over in a very content manner as though somebody was scratching his ears. As it turned out, it was the anniversary of one of the big battles that happened and people have surmised that the soldiers that had returned were scratching Socks's ears. 

After our tour (and before I knocked back a plastic jigger of Benadryl to help me relieve the symptoms of my horse allergy) we stopped for ice cream at Leopold's. The ice cream was really as good as the hype, and there's a jukebox that plays three songs for a quarter. We picked "Moon River" (kind of have to in Savannah to honor Mercer), "The Stripper" (because I often have the sense of humor of a 7th-grader), and "Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight" (Judd the Red Chicken's request). I had forgotten how starting up the jukebox kind of makes you feel conspicuous in a room full of people. I could see all of those art and design students looking me up and down and trying to determine if my selections would be tolerable. 

On our way home we passed by the old Telfair Women's Hospital and I was like: "Did anybody else see that person standing in that middle window?" I made The Dad drive around the entire square again to see if anybody else saw what I did. On our way back around the personage was indeed still there... I made the mistake of having The Dad pull over so I could fumble around and get my phone out.  As I did so, the personage backed away -- it was so chillingly exciting! -- and then returned with somebody else who looked not so ghost-like at all, and then it looked like they were trying to open the door to come out ... and then I couldn't look. It was one of those "drive on!" and don't look back moments. I'm sure they were coming out to yell at the tourists peeking in to their business. 

The next morning we looked around Forsyth Park to get a sense of walking through a square. 

We then headed to Bonaventure Cemetery. It is all that a southern gothic cemetery should be -- complete with that draping Spanish moss that is haunted by chiggers. Of course we stopped by Johnny Mercer's grave. We've been listening to his songs for the past couple of days. The soundtrack from the movie (Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil) is great -- it's a bunch of Mercer songs sung by various artists like k.d. lang, Diana Krall, and Tony Bennett. 

After the cemetery we went on a tour of the Owens-Thomas House. The tour starts in the slave quarters -- some of the best preserved in the country. The beams on the ceiling are painted blue and it's the largest quantity of "haint paint" preserved. Haint paint is what the slaves that came from different countries did to prevent haints (haunts/ghosts) from being able to get to them. There was a belief that water kept them away, so they would paint their surroundings in blue whenever possible. The tour guide made the wry comment that the haint paint must be doing its job, as the Owens-Thomas house seems to be the only house in Savannah these days that isn't haunted. 

The tour was fascinating because of the cistern that was put in the house, but I will say that we have worn thin our patience. The Boy's technique is to wiggle, The Girl's is to not be able to support her own body, and mine is feeling like I'm about to pop. In fairness, the tour really was interesting -- there were a lot of faux finishes and fake doors (to create symmetry), but we were spent. 

We did make two more stops: 

The Telfair Academy -- which is beautiful and surely has amazing art in it, but to be honest we just took a cursory look around, almost broke The Boy's nose (he ran into a glass door), used the restrooms and then succumbed to our touristy/voyeuristic baser selves and looked at the Bird Girl statue. In fairness, it's a multilayered reason why I like the Bird Girl statue so much... The first time that I went to Paris I went to a store that sold the enormous movie posters that they used to hang by the bus stops and in the metro stations. The movie poster, like the book cover, was beautiful -- it was of the statue and then had the title in french. For a nominal price I bought it and hung it on the stairway landing in the first home that The Dad and I owned. Eventually, when we moved, it was given away in a moment of zealous downsizing. I've always regretted that. So when I see that statue I think of me as a young grad student teaching the book, and I think of me as young home owner with a 4-foot by 6-foot poster in my house... Everybody has their stories and reasons and desire to connect to something poignant. 

The statue is in the museum because too many people were visiting it at the cemetery and creating too much traffic. The family of the plot decided to relocate it to the museum. The Boy asked why they didn't just put a gate around her like some of the other too-visited monuments. Perhaps it didn't feel right to cage her. She really is beautiful. There was a copy of the book (or that book) at the museum and I had to buy it and reread it now that I had been to the squares and seen some of the houses. The woman at the register sighed when we put it on the counter. 

We learned that the fish gutters on so many of the houses hearken back to a belief that ugly fish would keep ghosts away from your home.

We stopped at the bookstore at the Julette Gordon Low house. The Girl is not a girl scout, but I've always liked what it's all about. I bought a replica of the original handbook and on every page I'm impressed and shocked at the political incorrectness. I will record more from it as we read it -- it's good stuff.

We had one last Junior Ranger to knock out on this trip, and so we left Georgia and its ghosts behind us and eventually found ourselves in Congaree National Park. Aside from worksheets and picking up trash and learning about some things in the visitor's center we needed to take the boardwalk trail. It was beautiful, but it seemed long. The Boy did make it interesting by holding up his packet of papers to do a required tree rubbing and accidentally losing quite a few sheets. Fortunately, it was over a dryer part, so I was able to lower him over the edge and down below the boardwalk to retrieve them. I felt like a felon. I even got a bit hysterical on him when he hesitated because of a spiderweb. I growled at him to get the stinkin' papers and get back over to be hoisted up. He didn't encounter any snakes or electric fences... he lived to get another Junior Ranger patch.

That evening -- last evening -- we arrived for our week in Myrtle Beach. Up until now we have stayed in a different hotel every night. I've been asked about our lodging. Once upon a time The Dad had a job that required significant travel and he banked a zillion Marriott points. That is what enables us to travel. So my experience with lodging is always within the realm of Marriott. I can recommend the Marriott Villas in Orlando -- the pools are awesome and it's nice to be able to do laundry so that you don't have to pack quite so much. Here's what part of the property looked like:

Our favorite non-villa hotel was the one we stayed in in Savannah. It's a boutique hotel that Marriott recently acquired called The Mansion on Forsyth Park. It was very lovely with cool pictures of the Forsyth fountain on the ceiling of the elevators, and the location is excellent. The only complaint there was that the pool is very small and really more for adults.

And now we get to settle in for a week with the grandparents here:

Settled in, Downton Abby'ed (I can't even talk about how distraught I am about Lady Sibyl -- totally my favorite), caught up with our happenings, and still wondering how to articulate that thing for my bucket list. Do something that will be helpful -- that might just be having had my two kids, for I'm confident that they will contribute to the world. Perhaps, now that Hogsmeade has been visited the Aurora Borealis really is it... and even then, I have to admit that some of Tiffany's glass just about captures that same play of color and light... 

There is a lot to see in this world, and we've seen a lot of it in one week. Hurray for the scheme.