Category Archives: Short stories

Jul29

I Need a Vacation from My Vacation!

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Amsterdam Gate 121...

Amsterdam Gate 121…

This is where it all started!

How many of you get home from a vacation, and find yourselves totally worn out?  This was certainly the case with us.  After all, we went to a most unexpected place, and we wanted to get the most out of this adventure as possible.

Each and every day on our cruise we booked shore excursions.  The first day we were scheduled to take a Shore Excursion in Helsinki, Finland, the tour was cancelled for lack of interest.  Really…..lack of interest?  All the other excursions that were offered, had been fully booked.

Another setback!

Not actually.  After traveling an entire day to get to Stockholm, so we could board our ship, both of us were exhausted, so a cancellation although disappointing, was not the worst thing that could happen to us.

What was the worst thing?

The worst thing was after landing in Amsterdam, and waiting a little over an hour to board our flight to Stockholm……just as we were getting ready to step onto the ramp to the plane, we were flagged to the side and told we could not take our luggage onto the plane!   What?  Apparently one of the airport attendants decided our carry-on, together with  our backpack was too much.  As we tried to sort all that out, many people before, and after us were walking onto the plane with as much or more, and not  a word was said.   The airport staff  spoke perfect english, however there didn’t seem to be any way we could resolve our problem  with them.  After going through security,  and screening, this one person had made his decision, and that was that.  We were told to pick one – the roll-on or the backpack, but not both.  I don’t have to tell you the contents in both of those items are things you do not want lost, and are imperative to have them with you.  Since our backpacks had all our money, we said we’d take our backpacks with us.

As it turned out that was a choice I’d come to regret.  Of course they promised us these bags would be on the plane, and at the terminal when we arrived in Stockholm.  Of Course!  But, as it turned out they weren’t on the plane, nor at the terminal when we collected our luggage.  As it turned out, they didn’t know where our luggage was.  All I could think of was how do I even begin to replace these items while in a foreign country?  My husbands electric razor, all our medication,  all my makeup,  all the cords to my camera, iPad, and computer were in my carry-on.  I had shoes, art supplies for journaling, a few pieces of jewelry, and my new blow-dryer that I never should have taken in the first place – for just this reason.  It sounds silly, but I started grieving for  my my own personal creature comforts.    How can I replace my blow dryer that my daughter gave me for my birthday, or the handmade necklace that my friend Cathy made, and make-up, I couldn’t even imagine not having any makeup on a trip…any trip.

It was difficult, but finally I told my husband,  how difficult I knew this was for him, as well as it was for me, but since we couldn’t do anything about it, lets please not talk about it!  We both agreed to make the best of it, and not discuss it.

We arrived in Stockholm a day before boarding the ship, so immediately we had the Hotel start tracking our luggage, and they did a great job.  They sat on the phone with the airport for long lengths of time in an effort to track them down.   Nothing seemed to help.  The airport would say they had one, but not the other on time, the next conversation, both were missing.  It was difficult to know exactly who to believe.  Sunday evening when we boarded the ship, we received a message that if the airport couldn’t get our luggage to us before we reached St. Petersburg, we’d have to wait until Estonia.  Of course, I wouldn’t want my luggage delivered to Russia.

Just so  we didn’t waste our time in Finland, we decided to take a Hop On- Hop Off bus to town, and check

IMG_3289out Helsinki ourselves.  We really didn’t get to see much of this modern town, only what we could see by walking, but enough to realize that Finland is progressive in both their architecture, and merchandise.  We purchased a few necessities like toothbrushes, toothpaste, shower jel, and just to help us feel less lost, a couple of shower scrunchies.  Those few things were enough to help us start getting  back on track.

Really, they couldn’t have put more effort into returning our luggage to us?

Estonia was four-days out, and I’m guessing my makeup wouldn’t reach me before I took the land excursion for that day.  Once again, we had to let it go, or chance ruining our cruise.  Also, I haven’t mentioned that we were traveling with friends, and they certainly were sympathetic, but I’m sure didn’t want to continually hear about the major screw up – even one more time.  So again, we had to stop talking about it!

Skip ahead four days…..

After touring around  Tallinn, Estonia for seven hours, and dragging ourselves back to the ship hot, sunburnt, & exhausted, I open the cabin door only to find our luggage sitting by the bed just waiting to greet us. What an unexpected surprise.  To be honest, I never thought we’d  see our luggage again.  This restores my faith in humanity for sure, and somewhat restores it in airports in general!

That evening I showered, put on just a little makeup, and went to join our friends, and traveling companions for a lovely dinner in the dinning room.  The topics of discussion was varied, but not before we exhausted all accounts of our missing luggage.  Thank heavens, we don’t have to beat that dead horse any longer!

 

Jul22

Why Didn’t I Ever Hear This Before?

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Long after our children are grown, little stories that would have made our toes curl, are told to us by our grown kids.  Every mother  hears these stories, and we all can’t believe we never heard them before.  This is one of those stories, and it was told to me one morning over a cup of coffee by my son Chris!

Many years ago Chris, and some of his friends were traveling up Highway 5 from San Diego, to Los Angeles. As he, and his friends were getting ready to go through the check point in San Onofre , they were flagged to pull over. Of course, they pulled  over to the right, and got out of their car. The Border Patrol Officers asked them to stand over to the side, and implied they could sit down. As the story goes, the others sat, but Chris had been sitting, and since it wasn’t a direct order, he remained standing.  This sounded a little defiant to me, but knowing that I would have done the same thing, I sat and continued listening.

As the drug sniffing dogs we brought out to go over the car, and check out the occupants of the car, one of the dogs walked up to Chris. He said the dog wasn’t aggressive, but as the dog looked at him, and he made eye contact, Chris without even realizing what he was doing gave the dog a command to sit….in German!
Go ahead and guess what happened next…
The dog sat on command! Now you may be wondering how Chris knew German commands, and I’m going to tell you.

My daughter Tracy had recently adopted a puppy, and that puppy was in response to the end of  a bad marriage, and a soon to be ex-husband that was well, lets’ just say not very nice. She really got her puppy for a companion for herself, and that little puppy filled her broken heart right from the beginning.  Now, not wanting to be like anyone else, my daughter trained her dog, and spent long hours perfecting every command!   The difference was that she trained her in German, and we were all learning the commands in German!

When Chris was confronted with a dog who didn’t seem to be ferocious in any way, his first thought was to give it a sitting command just as he would have done with his sisters dog.  This didn’t go over very well with the several Border Patrol Agents that were searching the car. They took a lot of flack for that one, and they politely asked Chris to sit while they were doing what they do.  Searching for a Big Drug Bust!

They soon found out what Chris, and his friends knew all along, and that was that there weren’t any drugs in the car, or  on any of them!    It wasn’t very long before they were sent on their way!

Of course when this story was told to me, I was stunned that I’d never heard of it before, a little upset that the Border Patrol would have thought the kids had drugs in the first place,  and happy my son, and his friends weren’t into anything illegal!

As a parent, I’ve always said that even though you think your kids wouldn’t do something, never say never.  It pleased me to realize that even though I didn’t think my children did drugs….they actually didn’t do drugs!

Jul18

So….Mom Wasn’t Perfect After All!

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In our house the words, Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle are common place.  Don’t get me wrong,  we both love to spend money, and buy new things, who doesn’t?  Actually,  I think I’m the best at spending.  My husband thinks he’s the best at it!  Ok,  both of us have to keep check on each other!

When I was small, mother and myself would go out junking, or antiquing, depending on the store.  If it was called an antique store, everything in it would be higher in price.  If it was called a junk store, prices would reflect that.  Today even junky Junk stores are pricy, and antique stores are out of the ballpark!  When it comes to reusing something, I’m the one in our household who loves taking something old, and repurposing it.

Many years ago, when I first got married, we didn’t have a lot of money, so Mom and I would look everywhere for furniture that we could both fix up for my new home.  Mom could sniff out the best bargains of anyone I have ever met, and she really knew how to negotiate the best price for those bargains  too!  I remember finding an oblong pine drop leaf table that was in great condition.  Just the table, not the chairs.  I really needed that table, so after bargaining with the shop owner,  the price was dropped to a doable amount, and home we went with our new purchase.

The thing is, I never really liked that table!

It was maple, and looked too Early American for me, but since I needed one, and the price was right, I bought it!  Mom loved Early American, and she secretly wanted me to love it also, but my style was more country.  I liked that worn look of history!

Several months later I found a different table at the same shop, and this time it was the table of my dreams!  This  table was an old, oak, oval, kitchen table with two drop leafs, and a square pedestal.    It had really been beaten up, and you could tell it had lived a colorful life just by sliding your hand over the top.  Character, and personality, oozed out  the grain of the wood, and  it had a charm that the other table would never have!  As I proceeded to negotiate with the shop owner, I could feel my stomach churning with excitement.  It wasn’t long before he agreed to take the other table in exchange for my beautiful new farm table.  Even in those days, these tables were rare, and to this day, I’ve never seen one exactly like it.  Even reproductions aren’t close!

That same afternoon, Mother, and myself loaded the maple table into the back of her wagon, and off we went to return it to the shop, and exchange it for my new farm table.  We worked quickly before the owner of the store changed his mind.  He most likely could get more money from the first table, it certainly was in better condition, but I only wanted to make sure the oak table didn’t find itself in another home by mistake!  As everyone knows, one man’s junk, is another man’s treasure!

The real fun began when Mom and I delivered  the oak table to my apartment, and spent the rest of the afternoon deciding how to clean it up without damaging it even more! I think we used Murphy’s Oil Soap on it, followed by a robust application of steel wool to smooth out the surface.  Today, I use  Murphy’s for cleaning my make up brushes, and my art brushes…it is the best, most gentle thing you could ever use on brushes!  When we were finished cleaning up the table it had a beautiful patina, and the grain of the wood was fabulous!    Let me tell you that table gave us many years of wonderful service, it always looked so beautiful when it was dressed up with fancy skirts, fine  china, and my best  silver.   I can still see it, and long for a table just like it, maybe a place to put it while I’m sitting here longing would be nice also!

A couple of years later I received a call from my Mother one afternoon, late in the day.  She told be she had found four bent wood chairs, and she asked if I would I like to have them?  Of course, “ I’d love to have them!”  I’d been dreaming of having bent wood chairs, and had never found anything close to a chair like that  on my  junking days, so yes!  Pretty soon, I was pulling the ugly chairs I’d been using out of my dinning room , and replacing them with four cleaned up, and polished bent wood chairs.  That really made my day!

I found out later that Mother had lifted (literally lifted),  the chairs from the back of a Thrift Store where someone had donated them.  I guess Mom wasn’t perfect after all!

Mom, and I went on like this for years until Dad decided to retire, and sell their home to live aboard a  boat in Long Beach Harbor.  That turned out to be fun too, but the antiquing days as we knew them, would now be only a memory, and  we never kicked around like that again.  Occasionally, while one of us would visit the other, we  would  do a little garage sailing, and thrift store shopping, but it never was the same.

Those days were so much fun, we were able to do so much as mother and daughter, and those memories are  something I will always cherish!

Jul13

Packing Up and Heading Out!

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After weeks of planning, my husband Les, and myself are finally packing our bags in preparation for our Scandinavian/Russian cruise. It’s an exciting time for us, since we never thought we’d take a cruise like this!

But here it is…

The camera is ready, my iPad is charged, we have sufficient underwear for the trip (Mom always said to havean extra pair of clean underwear with you when you travel), and we’re now running around in circles.  You know when you get to that point where you’re so excited, and don’t know what to do next?

I have decided on almost all the clothes I’m going to take, with only a few last-minute decisions to make.  We both have packed, all except for the last-minute bag, and Daisy, and Kramer will be on vacation too….from us!

I made us bags of trail mix for our backpacks, and have turkey jerky in an emergency! The emergency would be… horribly, bad airplane food! I won’t let us starve on this fourteen hour journey, not me!

The thought of  going to Europe again is exciting in itself, but going to a place I never thought I’d be able to go, is beyond exciting.  I’m told that Russian food is really bad!  I guess I’ll find out, because when I travel, I like to try new foods, talk to people, and see the kind of places  they live in.  I  love different cultures, and the colors that are used in any culture.   Although, I’m not too sure Russia is very colorful, who knows, I might be pleasantly surprised!    I can’t wait to see those cathedrals, and the beautiful domes, and maybe sketch a few!  We are taking a tour which I think is a really good idea, because there are so many restrictions going into this country, I wouldn’t want to do it any other way!  I wouldn’t want to get detained, and have to spend the rest of my life there!

We have other stops of course, but two days in St. Petersburg is what I’m excited about!

Oh yes, I’m taking a visual journal too:  pens, and pencils, and Inktense blocks too!   I even have a couple of tortilliones!

Usually when I travel, I journal.  This makes for interesting memories, even if the sketches aren’t perfect.  As you know, being a recovering perfectionist…..I don’t do perfect!

I can’t wait to tell you more.  Stay tuned for the Travels of Les and Karen!

Jul11

Strange Midnight Movies

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The Mystic Masseur

The Mystic Masseur

When I was a teenager, every once in a while Mom, and I would find ourselves not able to sleep.  I would walk out of my bedroom at maybe 12:00 am to find Mom sitting in front of the TV watching some strange, off the wall movie. Usually they would be foreign films, the ones  that we could barely understand!   I’d sit down with her, and before you knew it we’d both be deep into this strange movie.  These were movies no one had ever heard of, and it was easy to tell why.  They were so quirky, and odd that we were transfixed, and couldn’t shut  off the TV until it was over.  This was sometimes 2:30 or 3:00 in the morning.  Most likely this was either a weekend event, or happened during the summer, because I don’t ever remember having to go to school the next day.

A couple of weeks ago, the weather being  hot, stuffy, quite humid, and not particularly a day that I was able to get motivated to do much work.  I turned on Netflix to see what I could find to occupy a couple of hours, maybe getting through the humidity the easy way.  What I found was another of the same kind of movies Mom and I use to watch together many years ago!  Admittedly, the picture caught my attention, and that’s exactly why I persevered.

I had a deja vu moment!

This movie was so different in a kind of fun way, and I couldn’t stop watching it. The audio was poor, and  the accents made it difficult  also.  But I had to keep watching anyway!  All I could think of was how much fun Mom, and I had watching these midnight movies, that were much like this one!

The story was simple…..how the characters lived, and enter acted was simple, and it was the perfect solution to a hot, and humid day that wasn’t good for much else but an interesting movie!  Maybe the simple lifestyle pulled me in, or the cute way the characters talked to each other, but I was fascinated.

Good memories are the most fun, and maybe when we get older, the memories are what sustain us.  I didn’t think I was old enough to sit and rely on my memories, but maybe I’m wrong.  Maybe it doesn’t matter what age a person is, if it bring them joy to remember the good….bring those memories on!

What do you think?  Does it make you feel good to remember good memories, or do you think there isn’t time for it now?

Jul8

Excited Dusty!

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This last weekend Dusty found himself with a new four-legged friend that looks just like himself! He is so excited, he can hardly contain himself.  His new little friend is a girl bunny, and they named her Bubbles!

While Bubbles is being litter box trained, and getting use to her new home, Dusty is keeping watch on her enclosure.  Between you and me, I don’t think Dusty is going to get much sleep.  He doesn’t want to miss a single thing, so each and everything Bubbles does, Dusty is going to be right there helping her learn the ropes!

Dusty keeping guard!

Dusty keeping guard!