The Winds of Change

We all make promises. We even intend to keep those promises but change is just so impossible. Except it's not. It means doing something different, it means making a conscious effort to do that thing that has always eluded you and getting it done. After a wonderful vacation home in Mammoth, snowboarding, laying by the fire and just plain enjoying the snow (yes I said it midwest, ENJOYING the snow) it was time to head back to El Centro where I was blindsided by the winds of change. Quite literally.

For a week now there have been winds whipping through the region at about 35 to 50 miles per hour all the time. Where I come from they call that a tropical storm, here it is just "wind." The literal manifestation of what I had been thinking on the 8+ hour drive home spurred me into action. I was back, I had a writing schedule to keep, phone calls to make and things to get MOVING. If the wind could do it, so could I.

Day 1. The cold I had so valiantly avoided the entire time I was in Mammoth despite my husband getting sick firmly landed on my head and I slept for 23 hours. Literally 23 hours. I occasionally woke up to put some cold water on my parched throat or to try and ease the coughing fit that I was sure would end my life, but other than that, straight up sleep. Winds a tolerable 25 mph.

Day 2. I am sick of being sick and I am not letting THIS get the best of me. Die, microscopic virus, die! That meant going to get cold medicine. The trailer for the motorcycles is still attached to my truck so I go to the car. "Press," I push on the little button to unlock the car that had been sitting unused for 2 weeks. Not even a glimmer of light or the faintest whisper of a beep. Not good. Manually unlock the door to discover what I already suspected, dead battery. Chris works tonight so I let him sleep, round up the neighbor with a truck and jumper cables. Get all set up and then proceed to wake up the entire RV park as the alarm will not disengage with the car trying to start and every time you hook up the "negative" side of the battery an incredibly negative sound of echoing beeping blares out of the horn. Now the hubby is up as are the neighbors. We give up on the battery and just use one of the marine batteries we have in the RV so that I can go to town and return the non-working battery to Costco. That took way more energy than I expected AND I haven't even gotten on the road yet. Winds hitting 35 to 40 mph.

Day 3. In a drug induced, cold medicine filled haze I try to get some work done as I find out the neighbors are going to be requiring some massive help. Larry is now the color of a lemon and is in as much pain as he was when we left two weeks ago. Not good. After much convincing we get him in an ambulance at midnight on this day and I follow behind to care for his wife. When you have family who work in an ER the last thing they want is to see you there visiting. My bigger problem, I have been sick in bed for two days straight, I look hideous (at least I ran a brush through my hair and threw on lip gloss, thank you Carrie) and I am now face to face with all my husband's co-workers for the first time. Great. No one remembers me bringing in cake for his birthday because I slinked in so as not to disturb the "important" work of the ER. Next time I do something nice and I have make-up on, I swear, I am making a SCENE! Massive 45 to 50mph winds with gusts up to 65.

Day 4. Barely making it to and from the hospital. Helping Larry and Patricia get organized and deal with a heartbreaking diagnosis. I feel like I can barely think or move and then look at Larry who is really suffering and I keep telling my lungs to suck it up. When the Dilaudid is kicking in he is actually quite funny. Still cracking jokes, making light of his color and being transferred to San Diego. At one point he even calls to say it is happening and we won't possibly make it before he is on his way. I laugh at this knowing exactly how long a transfer takes and he is there for many more hours, enough time for his daughter and granddaughters to arrive via plane, via 1.5 hour drive. The girls and I start buttoning everything up, making plans and end with BIG, HUGE margaritas to wash away the day. Winds still at 50 mph.

While I have not exactly gotten on track with my "plan," I can say I am more motivated than ever before. I have watched two people have their plans laughed at by the universe. Their entire existence has shifted and Patricia likely only gets to enjoy her husband's company for three or four weeks. All the while the winds kept pushing, forcing their way in and reminding me in their very brutal way that today is all you have, so appreciate, have fun and do what you say you are going to do. The plan is underway. It has really only been about 24 hours since they left and since I was able to focus, but there are checklists and calendars and all sorts of intentions. Of course reality, like the battery, the cold and the illness are sure to rear their ugly heads again, but I think that is the real challenge of change. To do it anyway.
Winds, 25 mph, still peskily reminding me to be good.

The Trouble with Planning

My husband and I are likely to always have the same battle about planning. I am a planner, he is the anti-planner. Usually fine, we can likely find a happy medium but then there are those times when I insist on putting something on the books. Whether it be a trip to a far off place or a simple outing in town it requires a date and a calendar. I find myself currently resenting the universe when I finally get the man to put a date in stone and instead we miss something that might have been "epic."

Now let me be clear, I do not in any way begrudge the circumstances, I instead resent having to hear how, "this is why it is better not to make plans." While yes, it is a little frustrating to miss something, we cannot walk through our entire lives never making plans and expect to accomplish the things we wish to accomplish. I am all about spontaneity and fun but sometimes you need to at least plan the how to get to the place with the spontaneity and fun. In addition I find it wildly annoying that we can put a concert on the books months in advance but a play might make him die.

The Foo Fighters were doing an underground, super secret tour of Los Angeles. The only way you found out about the shows was through Twitter. Now the need to be a grown up and schedule meetings prevented me from attending any of the shows. Working prevented Chris from attending any of the shows as well. We finally make it up to Mammoth to ski and snowboard which is perfectly awesome and fun only to find out we were missing the very last of these underground shows. This made Chris quite smug in thinking if we hadn't made the plans to go to Mammoth we would have been free to go to the show. All of a sudden all the fun we were having snowboarding didn't matter as much as the fact we were missing the concert. I of course had to get in my little jab about the fact I could have gone one night without him and didn't to which he stuck out his tongue. All in all no one was really disappointed, we had a great time I just have to deal with the kid inside my husband who says we could have had a "once in a lifetime experience."

I found myself only slightly redeemed when we did miss one outing because we had another commitment. At first I was dealing with a very whiny, the other thing would be more fun, 5-year-old. But after we had a great time at our adult dinner I found out we had missed the most horrible night out, one of those ones that proves nothing good happens out after midnight. Aside from the fact the sober people ended up babysitters for the oh so inebriated "children" of the group, there was an hour long session at Jack in the Box which ended in a food fight and one person having a broken hand. Sounds like our calm dinner was the saner option. In Chris's defense, I have fully bitten him with the snow bug again and we have many more trips to Mammoth on the books. Maybe the planning/anti-planning is working itself out.

The Challenger, 25 years

Most people my age, the number that shall not be named, remember the day the space shuttle Challenger fell to pieces. I went to school in Florida a mere 30 miles from Cape Canaveral. We routinely filed outside to watch the launch of each shuttle. Something you don't know if you don't think about it or have never experienced it, the watching of a launch is the perfect way to teach the difference between the speed of light and the speed of sound. When you watch the orb go into the sky and disappear you still have yet to hear the rumble of the engines. As you walk back to your classroom, event over, suddenly you hear a rumble, a pop, and the ground shakes. Pretty hands on stuff for a fifth grader.

My Dad would tell you my "dream" of being an astronaut never made sense. I am a people person. I am not an introverted scientist who can shut out the rest of the world. Somehow I thought my desire to be a pilot might steer me around the "boring" stuff, but the reality of joining the military, the structure, commitment, yada, yada...you always hate to admit your parents are right. It didn't stop me from going to space camp, though. Now maybe I had a few pipe dreams of Kelly Preston and Lea Thompson accidentally launching themselves into space, thank you "Space Camp" (the movie) but even staying on the ground we had a blast.

Spending a week walking through and studying what everyone at NASA works on was amazing. Playing on lunar rovers, practicing weightlessness and learning about scientific experiments kept us entertained. That is not to say I didn't turn it into my typical social hour. I made fast friends with a group of girls some of whom I stayed in touch with after the fact. A much bigger to-do in 1988 (two years after Challenger) as you actually had to write letters. Of course, now I just spent 15 minutes on Facebook trying to figure out if I could find her, but I digress.

The most amazing part of our timing was the lead in to the first launch since Challenger. I could go on endlessly about how Challenger changed my life view: made me hate reporters, think less of my teachers, become scared for my parents' mortality...things like that. But instead of focusing on the negatives, Space Camp brought me face to face with a feeling of hope and rebirth like I had never felt before. We were there in the summer of 1988 and the first shuttle post-Challenger, Discovery, was set to launch in September of that year on mission STS-26. We got to see it loaded onto the giant rolling machine that makes the epic roll out to the launch pad. Back in the day I could have told you exactly how long that journey is but I know the machine travels at a snail's pace and it took multiple days, maybe even weeks to get it from the assembly building to the launch pad. Seeing a shuttle in person, ready to go, amongst a group of people so excited was touching. Here was a program that had lost something so large and the people were not scared, they were excited to work and rebuild. They believed in a program that was bigger than them, bigger than Earth. It was in that moment I truly witnessed what thinking beyond your boundaries was and how it changed the scope.

Many believe to this day the space program was and is a giant waste of money. I choose to believe the government contracts run more costly than they should but we as a race are well served by thinking beyond our limitations. I wish I could jump on a rocket and float around space. I wish there was a colony on the moon, then maybe Facebook would be necessary. We create these terrific fantasies via movies, computer games, and television...but isn't that just a giant waste of money? Some of it is art, but most of it is not. Why aren't we exploring? There is more to see. Yes, it's dangerous. Yes, it's hard. But doing the hard things is what evolves us. Maybe if we spent a bit more time dreaming we would spend a bit less time blowing each other up.