"We need a more permanent solution to our PROBlemmmmmm…."

We drove over the mountains, and about the time we reached the summit of Cascade Pass, Mitch began to speculate on why nobody had managed to put a tunnel straight through. Why not, he wanted to know–why couldn’t you just burrow right under the mountains and, abandoning the scenic route, forge a straight line from West to East, thereby cutting your travel time in half and causing your car a fraction of the stress it suffers by driving inconveniently over the perilous, windy, but no doubt gorgeous, mountain pass?

This is the kind of guy he is.

What, I answer, and drive to Eastern Washington in the pitch dark? Besides, the mountains are a bit heavy to keep from collapsing a wee two-lane tunnel.

Still, I am enamoured with the thought of some burrowing bit of machinery working its way forlornly through the base of the mountain range, digging on as the mountain methodically collapses the tunnel behind it, foot by foot. Nature, laughing mischeivously at the retreating back of progress.

This is the kind of girl I am.

We arrive in Chelan around noon on Saturday, with full bladders, wind-knotted hair (because we tend to drive any sunny distance with 3 out 4 windows rolled all the way down), and two different Carina Round songs stuck in our respective heads. We arrive victorious, and three hours early for check in.

This is an annual trip: every year, we meet Mitch’s family at the same resort in Chelan. Every year we grill salmon on Saturday night, meet each morning for continental breakfast, where I eat Fruit Loops and Mitch eats yogurt and we both drink lots of watery coffee. Every year we go to the same waterslides, and every year we squeeze into somebody’s room for dinner, balancing paper plates of salmon and pasta salad in our laps; every year I get sunburned, but still, every year I spend lots of time poolside with a stack of half-finished books and my fickle tube of SPF 45. We talk a lot, and play games.

This is tradition. And this is the kind of family we are.

Pretty much, that is a fair summary of this year as well. Talking, games, books, salmon–I did okay in the sunburn department, though, because I’m learning the value of Brimmed Hat + T-shirt + SPF 45 (frequently applied)= happy, if still paper-white, skin. I also switched to yogurt instead of Fruit Loops, for a change.

Every year, we walk down to the lake from our hotel (cross the street, walk down a steep, grassy hill, across a volleyball court, then twenty feet through a park and there, you’re at the lake) and stand out on a floating dock in the wind. It is scenic. Very pretty. But this year, at the top of the steep, grassy hill, I look at Mitch and say, This would be a good hill for rolling.

He laughs. I say, No, seriously.

He says, You first.

So I drop into the grass and roll. I gain speed and am soon travelling much faster than I’d have guessed possible from the top of the hill–but then, it is steep–and every other turn I see Mitch, tumbling down after me, both of us laughing like mad. Finally, I stop and he stops and we both lie helpless and giggling at the bottom of the hill, dizzy and stuck all over with lawn clippings. When we finally stand up, we start laughing again every time we catch each others’ eye.

On Monday morning, we pack up and drive home, tired like we are every year from too much sun, too much laughing, too many games. For a good part of the way home, we sing along badly and at top volume, like we do every year, to the soundtrack of Jesus Christ Superstar (not the Broadway production, but the movie, my favorite part of which is Caiaphas’ astonishingly low “we need a more permanent solution to our PROBlemmmmmmm…”).

And now we are home, back to kitties and homework and dirty laundry and the looming presence of classes and jobs, but I feel rested, all full of naps and finished books and sunshine. Ahhhhhh (and that is “ahhhhh” as in a peaceful sigh, not a scream). There. Ahhhhhh…

I can’t wait. I’m gonna wear a pink shirt.

Ladies and gentlefolk! I give you fair warning:

Thursday, May 18
Shawnee Kilgore & Thea Rosenburg*
Fantasia Espresso & Tea
8pm

*(me)

I’ve been practising juggling between songs, and throwing knives with deadly accuracy. I will also accompany myself on the tambourine. If you don’t come for the finger-pickin’ bluesy tunes, come for the side show. Or the coffee.

(I’m absolutely joking about the knives. I am absolutely not joking about the tambourine.)

I’m not boring, really. Just quiet.

Well, it’s almost that time of year. You know, the time where all the kids from all the state colleges pack up coolers of Corona and squeeze one-too-many into their parents’ cars; the time of year where the coeds gets their toenails done and pack up a towel, a top, a bottom, a brand new string bikini, a forty-pound make-up bag, three sizes of curling irons, tanning oil, and nothing else, and all head over to a lakeside resort to drink themselves into a festive oblivion.

Am I stereotyping? Possibly. Because on Memorial Day weekend, they will all head over to Chelan, which is where I will be with Mitch’s family, dodging beer cans in the swimming pool and thinking bad thoughts at 3 a.m. about the students chanting intelligent, thought-provoking, wholly higher-education phrases like “Chug! Chug! Chug!” in the room above me.

But no. I must back up. Because last year wasn’t quite that bad. The year before, however, was. That was the year of the students packed ten to a hotel room; the year that hotel security received more complaints in three nights than in the entire rest of the year. The year that a kid in a trucker hat offered my father-in-law a Jell-O shot in exchange for a bit of grilled salmon; the year that sitting by the pool involved nestling uncomfortably between rows of well-oiled, freakishly tanned girls–all with their tops untied and their beer within easy reach–and that swimming in the pool involved a lot of dodging, as guys tried to both flirt with any girls brave enough to get in the pool at all (I didn’t) and hold their beer aloft and more or less level.

The next year was much better. The hotel instituted a green plastic bracelet policy, which meant that all paying guests must wear a green plastic bracelet at all times–and if a guest were ever seen without the almighty bracelet…well. Out they go. I felt a bit branded, but I’d say the opportunity to actually go swimming, or to actually get some sleep, made it worth it.

And this year, I’m guessing, will be even better. There are several members of the Rosenburg clan that I’m looking forward to spending time with, and several books I’m looking forward to cramming into such a short time (Collected Stories of Flannery O’Connor, here I come!), and lots of thoughtful dabbling of my toes in the water to be done. Without the constant hazard of beer cans falling from forth story balconies, I think I’ll do a whole lot of mellowing out–though probably I’ll end up playing “cars” and catch with my 5-year-old nephew. But that sounds pretty wonderful, too.

Walter Rinder would be proud

As you may or may not know, my dad and I collect bad poetry (for an entry on our love of crappy literature, click here). With that in mind, and the fact that Walter Rinder is the quintessential Bad Poet, I present you with an email my dad just sent me:

At the hospital [where he works] we celebrate a strange, committee ritual in which
someone reads a “Reflection” as the first agenda item. It’s usually a
bit of Chicken Soup for the Soul tripe and at consummation, most
listeners add yet another arrow to their quivers of enlightenment,
while a sorry few sit in stunned silence. Here’s the Rinderesque poem
read by a long-haired woman at yesterday’s reflection:

Wage Peace
by Judyth Hill, September 11, 2001 Wage Peace with your breath.

Breathe in firemen and rubble.
Breathe out whole buildings and flocks of red-wing blackbirds.

Breathe in terrorists
Breathe out sleeping children and fresh mown fields.

Breathe in confusion and breathe out maple trees.

Breathe in the fallen and breathe out life long relationships intact.

Wage peace with our listening: hearing sirens, pray loud.

Remember your tools: flower seeds, clothing pins, clean rivers.

Make soup.

Play music; learn the word “thank you” in 3 languages.

Learn to knit: make a hat.

Think of chaos as dancing raspberries.

Imagine grief
as the outbreak of beauty or gesture of fish.

Swim for the other side.

Wage peace.

Never has the word seemed so fresh and precious.

Have a cup of tea and rejoice.

Act as if armistice has already arrived.
Celebrate today.

Some applauded. I needed to blow my nose.

See? I come by it honestly.