A Dutch Wonderful Day: Now and Then

Yesterday we took Boobah to Dutch Wonderland in Lancaster, PA for her birthday. She requested a trip to Dutch Wonderland with Tippy Tornado instead of a party. Sounded like a fantastic idea to me, no cleaning my house to have 5 year olds destroy it in record time or renting a place and being mobbed by sticky hands and loud voices all afternoon. Parties stress me out, I love the idea of throwing a party but the execution generally leaves me bitchy.

We have a truly fabulous day with Boobah, Tippy Tornado, PDQ, Karate Boy, Gman and Esmerelda in the land of all things wonderful. Esmerelda and I kept up a running commentary of the things we were there without--her ex, strollers, diapers, diaper bags, etc. The kids were big enough to go on almost all of the rides, if not by themselves with an adult. The only bad part of Es and Bubba not being together was being short an adult to match up with the kids. We compensated though and had a much better time for it. More than once we reminisced about our last trip, we decided it was two years ago. Today I took a trip back through Gman's archives to discover it was August 2005--how much they have all changed! Enjoy!

THEN NOW

THEN NOW

Then, we didn't even manage to get a picture of all of them together. I had a newly broken ankle and spent the day in a scooter.

Now--Wonderful Amish Fun

Mall Hair and Parachute Pants

Tonight Esmerelda and I are going to see Bon Jovi. When last I really listened to Bon Jovi mall hair and parachute pants were the rage. Where I grew up mall hair and "spraying for height" in ones bangs is still WAY too common but that is a whole other post! I went to my twentieth high school reunion last summer and I am sure I will be thinking of those folks tonight when Es and I are rocking out!

These days my taste runs more to the country side of things so I hope I get to hear this song:


It was a swim morning at 5:15 so I also hope I don't embarrass myself by falling asleep and drooling on the Metro!

We can still party like its 1999

Actually, scratch that 1989. Well, mostly except for:

• Making food for the party instead of opening a bag of chips.


• Worrying about whether people will actually drink Budwiser instead of knowing that if you buy it, they will drink it, no matter what it is.


• No matter how hard you try to make it look like a frat house the cutesy flag and live plant on the front porch kill the atmosphere.


• Having to worry about a babysitter and leave the party at 10PM instead of that being when things just get started.

Our neighborhood ladies group had their annual progressive dinner on Saturday night. It was our first chance to experience the fun. All was well until the electricity went off 45 minutes before we were scheduled to start. There was much freaking out and screeching by grown women about their hair (yes, some things never change). The theme was back to college night, they gave out t-shirts and name badges just like orientation.

Gman, of course, memorialized the whole thing in pictures.

Rituals of the Past

I opened my e-mail account this morning to find the following e-mail from an old friend....

Greetings Recovering Housing Friends!

Waking up today was not stressful. As a matter of fact, it wasn’t until the news anchor noted the date that I realized it was even August 1st.

Everyone remembers the significance of August 1st RIGHT (or you wouldn’t be getting this email)…training started.

Yes, days and days of policy review, opening of school information, team building exercises, copying lots of stuff, finalizing late RA hires, eating lunch at the Schwebel Room, planning for the RAs to arrive and 1000 other things!

So, nine years after my last August 1st training day started, I can finally enjoy the day. Why? Because I’m NOT going to TRAINING!

Now, this doesn’t mean I didn’t like training, after all I was assigned nine of those years to coordinate some part of training (RA, RD, KIC and GA).

Yes, we still remember it, vividly all these years later. I worked as a Resident Director for 7 years. Seven years of safety and diversity and communication training for two weeks followed by another couple of weeks of passing it on to my own staff. Team building, did she mention the team building exercises? It had fun moments but in some ways it made you long for the craziness of the school year so you could wake up from the training haze. Every night after the numbing training sessions there were rooms to inspect and forms to fill out--ah, those were the days. The good news was 2 months off, or at least 2 months doing something slightly different and enjoying the summer slow down on the campus.

Sometimes I miss those days--mostly those school schedule induced breaks that don't happen in the corporate world. One day someone at work remarked about how calm I was in a crisis. I looked him in the eye and told him I didn't have to worry about keying into a room and finding a dead kid, no drunks threw up on me and the police never called at 4AM so as crisis went this was really nothing.