Summer Time

...and the livin' is easy.

Check out our schmellow sticks

Camping
Flamage
Schmellows

Need I say more?

When I was a kid my family would spend a week or so at Kejimkujik National Park. Mom, dad, brother, cousins, aunt and uncle, and grandparents.

SO MUCH FUN!!!

I thought my cousins were so rich because we stayed in a tent BUT they had a trailer with a tent attached!!

My uncle would haul everybody around the park in the back of his trailer. Each of us perched high in our lawn chairs.

We'd ride our bikes along the path and go swimming in the lake. We'd race and rawk the suspended bridge. We'd stay up late (dusk) and sing songs about Alice the camel and her many humps. I would cuddle up to my blankie and oversized doll mesmerized by the campfire.

In my child memory, we did this all the time. But actually only once according to my parents.

It's been moons since I've tented and enjoyed a good flaming schmellow over a campfire. So when we packed our tent this past weekend and set out to visit with friends parked in the middle of nowhere, spontaneous dancing was had. I reverted to the age of 9 and packed my sparklers, glow in the dark sticks and lick-em-stick-em tattoos.

Best weekend ever. We do it all the time. Giggle.

Wheel Experience Abroad

I highly recommend renting a car when you travel abroad. Not only do you get to see the country-side from non-guided excursions, you have the adventure of following their roads and…their rules. Traversing down narrow lanes, navigating through a heard of mountain goats, gliding the open spaces, and bending along the sharp cliff-edged turns.

On my second visit to Greece, Jaclyn and I decided we would do just that: rent a car and tour the Peloponnese for a week before skipping off to the ever popular islands. I would wheel the cities relying on her navigation and she the country-side. Trusting a travel agent I had used before, our hotels and car were booked. Great prices and great itinerary; we really couldn’t complain. Anxious to get there and start our adventure, days moved at a snail’s pace.

The day we finally arrived in Athens I was astounded by my memory and walked us straight through the Plaka to the travel agent. The ancient city stayed true. Nothing changed. Why should it? 1000s of years or 7? What’s the difference there?

Sitting there, excited to get our vouchers and itinerary we were all a glow…until: “Did you say the car is a standard?” Blanched faces, fluttering tummies, eyes as big and white as the moon.  “We don’t know how to drive a standard!”

Images of trying to learn how to drive a standard in downtown Athens raced through our minds. “What do you mean we’ll be ok? Isn’t the Peloponnese mountainous?!”

We spent our first night pleading with God for an automatic.

Answered prayers the next day, the last automatic in the entire city became available at the last minute. Not car girls, that Matrix was a well hugged car!

Beaming we drove off. Praising our blessings. That car took us wherever we steered it. We learned fast is good and stop is just a suggestion.

Days later our dear Matrix had a flat. Stereotypical girls, we couldn’t figure out the jack. So Jaclyn ran back to the hotel where we suspected we would find help. I can imagine the scene even now: A 6’2”, slender woman with chocolate hair and eyes, and a brilliant smile running into the hotel lobby past the dining men on the patio. She’s wearing short shorts and a tank top and has tourist written all over her. Who could resist her cry for help?

Shortly after I see her running back with not one, not two, but five (YES FIVE) members of a local soccer team to change the tire of one wheel. Cheers to Jaclyn.

We like to tell ourselves it was their National team. Giggle.

Thanks boys!

This memory was inspired by Theme Thursday's: Wheel. Oh and they had trouble with the jack as well. ;)

Power Duo (Giggle)

This Friday Ann and I are claiming our place in the list of great power duos of blond and brunette.

Today we stand with Betty and Veronica, Laverne & Shirley, Starsky and Hutch, Thelma and Louise, Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse!

Today we launched the new look and feel of the blog for The Girls Bra Shop Inc., our very demanding but and most days rewarding child. We launched the new look and feel to celebrate our new slogan: Real women. Real bras. Real beauty.  Because like our customers, we are REAL WOMEN, who want REAL BRAS, and want to feel REAL BEAUTYful.

Check us out! Giggle.

Head Butt Eve

He looked at what He created
And it was good
It was good

Silvery snake tongue
Try the apple hun

She bought it, ate it up
Then shared her cup

When I get to Heaven
I'm gonna head butt Eve

Pieces from a "song" I wrote years ago when a friend commented that she wanted to head butt eve. It made me laugh. I was reminded of it today when I saw mom's magpie posting so I am piggy backing on her insightful post.

Check out Magpie Tales for other great inspirations!

I should also add that I am a Christian and love my God. No disrespect is meant. :)

Bicycle

I’m proud to say that I want to be like my mother when I grow up. Ha; when I grow up. My mother has always been the youngest person I know: so full of life and ready for the next adventure. She taught me that life is truly what you make it. It can be about the picket fences and the nine to five or it can be about doing what you really want to. Don’t get me wrong, I think picket fences are cute and I’ve done my time but I wanted and still want more.

My friend Anna had moved to Japan, after living in England and Lithuania for some time. Working in youth hostels and mission fields she’s a gypsy I admire. I traveled during my time off, while she lived the travel and has the mud stains to prove it.

She was teaching English to a small school in Osaka and invited me to visit for the nth time. “I don’t know. It’s so far, costs a fortune, and honestly Japan has never been on my list.”

Never been on my list? What was wrong with me? I decided I needed to go, to be reckless, to do something frivolous because quitting my job to go on a six week trip to the Philippines wasn’t reckless enough. I needed to get out of my not-so-comfortable cubical and mundane every day.

So, I bought a ticket and found myself on a 13 hour flight to Japan. Hour six is the hardest. It’s when you realize that you no longer want to be in that can and know there is nowhere to go. Burdened with many forms of entertainment, forced sleep is what got me through it.

Anna met me at the airport, chauffeured by Maki, a now dear to me friend and Geisha. Excited to see someone from home, Anna was anxious to show me her Osaka, which of course meant playing Russian roulette with Octopus.

We hopped on her wicker basket adorned bicycle and started to pedal up the street. Wind in my hair, ass falling asleep from the metal bag holder over the rear wheel. I was on top of the world and thought I was Rose in that iconic scene from Titanic. Swerving here and there, off balance, the air tasted like frivolity, recklessness, and pollution.

I was grinning from ear to ear in my bliss.

Anna turned to me after we veered into traffic a second time and said, “Um, can you put your feet in? I’m trying to pedal here.”

An excerpt from my novel in progress, in response to this week's Theme Thursday's prompt.