Yay-cation’s top five

Our annual family vacation took us more than 1,400 miles away to Utah: Our brand of vacation typically involves lots of driving, camping, and at least one National Park. This year, we visited Capitol Reef National Park and camped beneath a breathtaking view of a huge red cliff that took on ever-changing light and shadows from sunrise to sunset.

Even after being home for a couple days, I’m still feeling mellow and happy in my post-vacation glow. Here are my top five takeaways from vacation.

Sock-timism

I consider it a good day when I remove an even number of socks from the dryer. I always put in an even number, that I know. With military-like precision, I unroll each and every sock from the hamper and verify its mate before throwing it in the wash. But somehow, by the end of the drying cycle, something’s gone awry. There’s usually one, lonely sock.

I keep the single socks. What else can an optimist do? Admittedly, I have looked up articles like, “37+ Unusual Uses for Lonely Socks,” but I just wasn’t really in need of a sock puppet or golf club covers or windshield wiper cozies. I once made a cardboard box to go above my wash machine and labeled it “Sock Orphanage.” Soon, it was overflowing with socks, yet when I dumped them all out to sort them, none of them seemed to match.

This is only temporary

Every so often, I’ll have a week where it seems as if my coworkers hate me. Later that same week, my husband will start eyeing me in that way that convinces me he’s desperate to divorce me. My friends won’t call — a sure sign that they absolutely cannot stand me. And it isn’t just people turning against me — it’s dinner, scorched in the oven; the latch on the window that snaps off in my hand as I hurry to let the smoke from the oven escape. It’s the spot on my favorite pants, rendering them unwearable.

Little is cute, and oh so likable

Never have I been so reluctant to return a book to the library than Yossy Arefi’s Snacking Cakes: Simple Treats for Anytime Cravings. Most of the recipes are mixed in a single bowl, and use simple ingredients. I baked my way through that book, making the cute little cakes. I started with chocolate, then graduated onto oatmeal chocolate chip, lime-coconut, and finally plum-cardamom. Each cake reminded me of my time as an exchange student in Germany when I was in high school.

At, least, it felt like five minutes: the time it took for the elevator to arrive to take us up to our seats in the nosebleed section, where our seats were located at Ohio State University’s Schottenstein Center in Columbus, Ohio. We were there to see Elton John perform live for his Farewell Tour.

We were relieved, my friends and I, to see there was an elevator operator, who had an air of authority perched on a stool in front of the panel of elevator buttons.

“Thank goodness you’re here,” said a woman to the elevator operator. “Up, please.”

A pencil-thin line between stranger and friend

In the summer of 1992, I was packing up for my first semester of college. I was 17, about to move to another state, to live in a dorm where I knew no one.

That’s when my Dad gave me a gift, wrapped in the comics from the Sunday paper. The Sunday funnies were always the first choice for wrapping paper in my house, and Dad would take extra care to wrap it so that his favorite comic strip — featuring Charlie Brown and Snoopy — were prominently displayed on top. You would never fold the flap over Snoopy, or place tape over Charlie Brown. No, the Peanuts gang always got top billing as gift wrap.

There’s no entrance exam for parenthood

Before we had children, my husband and I decided to adopt a cat.

We were in our early 20s, starting our jobs that we hoped would turn into careers, living in a sunny one-bedroom apartment. We had to download forms off the internet, fill them out, and take them to an office where a woman looked at us sternly from across her desk. She asked us if we had a vet.

A vet? No, we don’t have a vet. We don’t even have a pet. Yet.

There’s always room for one more

Last week, a group of dear college friends came to my house for fondue. Every few months, for the past 20-some years, we track each other down and have dinner together. Each time we gather, a new chapter is added to our ongoing stories: We’ve shrieked over engagement rings, attended each other’s weddings, compared swollen ankles during pregnancies. We’ve rocked each other’s babies and handed down clothing. We’ve helped each other move out of apartments and into houses. We’ve held each other at funerals and during divorces.

Pandemnesia

It could be argued that, between the fact that my husband is a band director at a large high school and that all four of our children have either gone through or are going through the music department at the same high school, I have attended dozens —-maybe hundreds? —- of concerts.

I enjoy the concerts, but you could say that over the course of a couple decades, the novelty of attending these live performances has worn a bit thin.

Confessions of a library lover

My childhood library stood directly across the street from the church where my father was a minister. When I wasn’t helping Dad in the church folding bulletins, or sharpening the pencils in the pews, I was across the street, exploring our local library. I spent hours there. Each time I entered the front doors and heard the soft trickle of water coming from the fountain in the lobby, I felt as though I’d walked into a space just as sacred as the sanctuary across the street.

When cleaning is all the rage

It never fails: I’ll walk into a room to see my husband hunched over, vigorously cleaning something: scrubbing grease splatters on the stove, attacking some muddy footprints on the entryway rug, or coaxing out the ginormous dust bunnies that collect in that little space between the oven and the refrigerator, peppered with stray popcorn seeds, or, if you’re lucky, some pocket change. He becomes so completely absorbed in the task at hand, that I’ll slowly, carefully approach him from the side. Align myself squarely in his peripheral vision. Avoid making sudden moves.

“Are you … mad?” I’ll ask him.

Missing my forest retreat

When we bought a little teardrop camper in 2019, we had no idea how much we’d love it. And, much to our surprise, our winter camping outings became even more cherished than in the summer: something about the near-vacant campsites, the icy glare of the moonlight reflected in the snow. With fewer humans around, we became more intensely aware of the hooting of an owl, or the skitter of deer as they ran to a stand of trees.

My word of the year

As much as I love the idea of New Year’s Resolutions, I rarely make them.

Many folks choose a word of the year, and I’m one of those people. I choose a word rather than making a goal that I know, at a cellular level, that I can’t reach. Behind me, I leave a trail of unrealized New Year’s resolutions.

Imposter syndrome

Ever feel like a phony?

I have been feeling like an imposter for the last few days. I pride myself in being a minimalist, talk about simplifying life, and blog about wanting less…yet, if you were to come to my house today, you’d see that a corner of my bedroom has overflowing stash-and-dash boxes filled with who-knows-what miscellany, and I have laundry in various stages of dirty, clean, sorted, unsorted, folded, and yet-to-be folded throughout my house. There’s a suspicious-looking potato lurking in the very back of my fridge. I’m overdue to go through my closet and drawers to get rid of clothes I don’t want/need anymore.