How Long is a Generation?

According to Ancestry.com...
In general we think of a generation being about 25 years - from the birth of a parent to the birth of a child. We also generally accept that the length of a generation in earlier periods of history was closer to 20 years when humans mated younger and life expectancies were shorter.

I remember the summer I realized I had crossed over to the next "generation" here at the shore.  I went from being one of the kids to being one of the adults.  This may not have exactly coincided with my actual crossover into adulthood and it did not go smoothly, just ask my husband.  It happened here at the shore when I had kids of my own and there were enough little kids to fill in that kid generation which pushed me into the next generation.  Once I accepted my new reality I was happy enough being one of the "young adults".  The young adults still look good in a bathing suit, have plenty of energy, have parts that don't sag, are able to stay up and party all night long if the occasion calls for it and spend their days on the beach watching the younger generation of kids work through the dynamics of shore life.  The young adults are some of the busiest people here at the shore!

Back when I was one of those young busy people.

Somewhere around the time our kids start high school and then graduate from college and eventually get married and have children of their own, we move into yet another level of shore adulthood.  We no longer have to be on the beach to watch our children but we are not grandparents yet either.  These are some of the best years of life up here at the shore, if you ask me!  We are still young enough to party till...after midnight...  and our kids are pretty self reliant.  Sometimes our kids actually party until after midnight themselves!  We don't look as good as we used to in that bathing suit, but we still look pretty good....enjoy it while it lasts.  Life is a little less hectic but still busy.  We are in the middle with childhood and young adulthood behind us and grandparent-hood and great-grandparent-hood ahead of us.  We have more perspective and the energy to enjoy the fruits of this life.

Somewhere between young parents and grandparents...
we had plenty of energy and time to party!

Grandparent-hood is the next frontier.  Back to spending time on the beach watching the kids work their way through shore dynamics, this time not because you have to but because you want to.  You realize that shore dynamics haven't changed since you and your own children worked through them!  There are little ones who still need to learn not to throw sand.  There are still times when one child or another gets left out.  There are still those days that the children are just so tired they don't know which way to turn but still won't hear of going up from the beach for a rest.  There are also those perfect days when everyone gets along, the sun shines, the sandbars are perfect for building a castle or a giant tub and everyone sits on the beach until the last possible moment.  Being a grandparent has it's benefits.  As the grandparent, you don't really stress out about the child who was left out or the tired cranky one who can't be consoled.  It is perfectly fine for you to sit back and observe it all from the comfort of your own beach chair while those young parents in their tiny bathing suits and the perky bodies take care of everything.  Unfortunately, the grandparent does not look quite as good in their bathing suit which is now much bigger and covers a lot more surface area (speaking for myself here) than before.  We can still party until after midnight (speaking for myself again) but may need a few more days off to recover afterwards.  Mealtime at the shore can reach epic proportions for grandparents if you feed your children, your grandchildren, your children's friends, your parents and your friends.  Grand parents here at the shore are also very busy people, especially at meal time.  I guess it is all those years of practice that makes us experts at feeding the masses.  There have been meals that take a week to recover from....(just me again?).

Multiple generations at the same table....even at Christmas!
This dinner was definitely epic!

Just a regular evening dinner again with multiple generations.

Some people even make it to the great grandparent level.  They are the lucky ones.  They have more perspective than any of the rest of us, I'm assuming.  They have earned the privilege of taking it easy, although there are a few who still refuse to take it easy.  They are a rarity, not everyone reaches great grandparent-hood.  It is a special thing for kids to know their great-grandparents and vice versa.  I knew one of my great grandparents.  My husband never knew his great grandparents.  Think about it, how many of us ever knew our great grandparents?  No one cares what you look like in a bathing suit and no one expects you to feed them when you are a great grandparent.  Everyone just wants to spend time with you because time is precious.

Enjoying their great grandparent-hood.

This summer it has become more apparent to me, and maybe all of us here at the shore, that things are changing.  The view from my eyes is different this year.  The inevitable is happening.  There are more and more of my generation's parents who are no longer with us or are unable to be here for one reason or another.  There are cottages that were full of life and now sit quietly waiting.  There have been several people who have gone back and forth from the shore to care for loved ones.  This has probably happened for generations but I just never paid much attention until it affected me directly.  I'm selfish like that.  It's just all part of life.  I have to hope that just like I struggled when I had to move on from being one of the kids and become one of the "adults",  I will be able to struggle through this next phase and eventually reach a new normal and even enjoy the next phase.  One thing I will say in closing, we all need to embrace where we are and make the best of every phase of life, especially here at the shore, because before you know it... things will change!

Moments to Memories

Are there specific moments in time that you remember as if they happened yesterday? Some of these memories are clearer than anything that actually happened yesterday.  Are there times you can recall so vividly they will never be forgotten?  Tonight I was reminded of one of those moments, or in this case maybe it was hours, that I will never forget.  All it took was a song and the memory flooded back. It made me think there are some moments, they may have lasted only minutes, maybe hours, but they are such a part of your memory that they will never be forgotten.  Lord willing.

I found this little quote after I wrote this entire post....
Dr. Seuss and I have a lot in common....I always did like him!

You never know "in the moment" that it will be forever remembered.  There was that starry night in Asheville, North Carolina when we celebrated our 20th anniversary with another special couple. We laid out on the driveway in the dark to look at the millions of stars, meanwhile  TJ  snuck up on us and scared us to death.  There was that trip to Crested Butte, Co with another friend and her daughter when our girls sang a song by the Dixie Chicks for the entire drive to the wrong airport.  The song Goodbye Earl will always have a special place in my heart because I will remember two young teenage girls giggling and singing in the back seat while we two moms navigated our way through most of Colorado without the help of smart phones or GPS devices.

The sky did not look like this!

I will never forget those 10 minutes I spent sitting in a car in front of a dormitory at the University of Notre Dame. I had just dropped off my oldest daughter for her overnight dormitory stay during our visit to the campus.  It was her senior year in high school and we were doing the college campus tour thing.  She had not been accepted anywhere yet, it was only November.   The weather was lousy... cold, drizzly and grey.  Not weather that says, "This is heaven on earth and you want to spend the next four years here."!  But I dropped her off, watched her go inside the dorm and uncontrollably broke down in tears because it was at that moment I knew she was gone.  This was "her place", the place she belonged.... and I cried like a baby.  This 10 minutes is as vivid as if it happened yesterday.

I have childhood memories in little snapshots.  Pictures in my mind.  They are all there as bright as day.  Who knows why those particular pictures have stayed in my memory.  Some of them are pivotal points in my life, others are just regular days that take you by surprise when they become memories.

Tell me about one of your moments that has become a vivid memory!

It's Just Like Having A Baby....In A Way

I dream about this place all year long.  I still find the initial adjustment to be an interesting process.  I arrive after spending days in a car driving across the eastern United States.  It is like giving birth!  Think about it, I  look forward to being here for 9 months, then comes the labor of the long drive, followed by the initial recovery from the pains of that labor, then the awkward first days getting used to this new life and finally the reward of new life.  I guess with all the babies being born in our family the analogy of birth seems very appropriate!

For nine months my memory idealizes this place.  The weather is always better  here, the food is fresher, the skies are clearer.  We have so many people around us to visit and who just drop in for a visit.  I live much healthier here.  Life goes by at a lovely, relaxing pace.  All these things float around in my mind while I am away.  As with anything, absence makes the heart grow fonder.  Like a pregnant woman, who dreams about how sweet that baby is going to be once it is born.  You idealize life with a new baby, even if you've had one before.  We always remember the good stuff and forget the bad stuff.

Sunny days and sandbars

In my case, labor comes in the form of 40 hours driving through 17 states and 1 province in 5 days.  This year I left Houston while tropical storm Bill was making his presence known.  Once I got about 2 hours away from Houston, Bill was not an issue for a few days.  We met up with him again in Pennsylvania.  It seemed we were chasing him all the way here.  We could see the storm in the distance, we would get very close and catch him only to take a lunch break, a bathroom break or stop for the night and Bill would march ahead of us.  Out of the 40 hours of driving I think we drove through 4 hours of rain total, not bad for following a tropical storm!  But it was definitely a labor...of love to get here.

Bill escorted me out of Houston

Driving through Virginia made me feel very patriotic

Virginia rest stop.  Good thing Virginia is beautiful because it takes a long time to drive through it!

We caught up to Bill again in Pennsylvania right before we stopped for the night.....

He just loomed over us for most of the rest of the drive until
 he just had to let go and welcome us with rain just like he had done in Houston.

Once labor is over there is joy... and recovery.  We were very happy to finally be here and finally be out of the car!  The reality was a bit different than all those fantasies I have all year.  My beautiful farmhouse is a Venus fly trap over the winter, dead flies everywhere!  There is always so much cleaning to be done upon arrival and this year it was not done with the windows open on a sunny day.  It was done on a cloudy, cool day with a fire in the fireplace.  Not complaining!  I left behind some very hot, humid weather, this felt perfect for a day of work.  It takes but one day for me to remember that this ideal place is a lot of work.  Just like those pregnant dreams of quietly cuddling with your new baby and the reality of sleepless nights, aching body parts and an inconsolable baby.

I'll be honest here, for the first couple of days I question myself.  I live in Houston, surrounded by a huge shiny city, in a nice suburban neighborhood with anything and everything one could ever want or need in close proximity.  It is about as far from this rural setting as the east is from the west.  It takes me a couple of days to shift gears from city to country.  But for those couple of days I occasionally question my sanity.  I'm not in Kansas anymore....    This became quite apparent when we approached the border in Maine and stopped for lunch at this fine Irving station diner....

Diner food at it's best
a far cry from Houston's top 100
I just love the vacuum cleaner next to the pie fridge....no dessert for me!

This was the moment I realized I was still carrying my city snob with me.  The food was good and the waitress was very nice.  I needed to check my city girl at the border and embrace my farmhouse girl.  After about three days, my blood pressure goes down and my focus begins to change, I see beauty in simple things like the birds at my bird feeder and the flowers that pop up everywhere.   I spend time riding around the yard on a lawnmower instead of on the freeway in traffic.  This is the settling down in my new life just like a new mother has to finally settle down into her new life with her new baby.  It also has different priorities.

And just like that new mother who can sit and look at her new baby for hours on end, I can sit and look out of my windows for hours on end.  Sitting for hours on end looking at anything does not lend itself to productivity but it can lower your blood pressure and make you very happy.  So even though my baby "the farmhouse" is a lot of work... puts me in my place at times and requires much effort to reach every year, at the end of the day it is all worth it to spend 3 months in a different world.

Just Give Him A Number

 After 37 years of marriage I may have found the key to my husband's motivation.  All he needs is a goal.  I've always known he was competitive, sometimes to a fault.  What I have recently discovered is that if I want him to do something all I need to do is put a number in front him.  Like a sales goal.... sell 4 million widgets, reach your goal and get that bonus.  Yes, this explains why he is such a good salesman, he finds his dangling carrot and pursues it until he reaches his goal.  Every salesman has certain goals, concretely defined, to which he aspires every year.  Reach that goal and you are rewarded.  Simple formula... goal, work, reward.  Sometimes it isn't really work.  Like when it comes to drinking beer or eating at restaurants.

Drink 200 beers, get a plate on the wall...done.

His latest pursuit is to eat at all of the top 100 restaurants in Houston.  It is a worthy pursuit.  There is a finite number of choices and the reward is obvious, delicious food, presumably.  This is a goal I can support.  It is so much better than accompanying him while he drank 200 different beers at the same fine pub.  For a girl who doesn't really drink beer this goal left me longing for a proper wine bar!  But, food and restaurants.... you are talking my language!  The list covers all the bases.  There are high end fancy places, food trucks, new trendy places, pizza places, Vietnamese places, home cooking places, you name it...it's on there.  Even BBQ, much to my dismay.  I am OK with him trying some of the 100 without me!

One place I might have missed without "the list"
and missing this place would have been sad!  Great place!

This quest began with an insert to our newspaper many months ago, "The Top 100 Restaurants in Houston".  The dangling carrot!  We enjoy eating out but find ourselves going to the same nearby places over and over.  To quote my friend Barbara, "We need to get out of the cul-de-sac!".  Every once in a while it's nice to explore your own city, especially if it is the 4th largest in the country.  We did this when we lived in Toronto and enjoyed being tourists in our own city.  Why not do it in Houston?  There are lots of places we haven't tried yet.  We have found some definite winners, others that for whatever reason were not as impressive as advertised but no real losers yet.  We have gotten out of the neighborhood and that's a good thing.  Of course, after we finish with the 100 restaurants we may need to have a new goal.  First person to lose the 10 extra pounds we gained eating at the top 100 restaurants.

Last weekend's excursion lead us here.  We both agree,
we will be back!

It was at this very table I came to a realization, 37 years in the making.  TJ needs a goal or he just isn't going to do "it",  whatever "it" may be.....eating out, riding a bike, drinking beer, selling locomotives or chemicals or services, planting a garden, playing golf, swimming... just to name a few.  Give him a number to reach and watch him go.  So from now on I'm taking a different approach around here.  First person to cook 50 meals, first person to do 20 loads of laundry, first person to walk the dog 30 times will be rewarded,   Think it will work?   Me neither!

Read A Book!

When was the last time you went into a bookstore?  Are you like me, do you own an e-reader and simply download your books these days?  I don't remember the last time I went to a Barnes and Noble to just browse around and be inspired before yesterday.  OK, I take that back, the last time was probably in February when I went to pick up a book about Croatia and didn't want to wait for Amazon to deliver.  I remember looking through the International travel section, drooling over all the places I haven't yet visited and dreaming about wanting/needing some of those other travel guides some day.

Dreams and adventures on a shelf

Every time I go to a bookstore, which is not as often as it used to be, I get excited and a bit sad.  I fear with the digital age, paper and print are going the way of vinyl.  Books will become retro, vintage and cool but only to a select market.  I always enjoy a good browsing session in the bookstore.  I notice books I would never see searching on Amazon.  I get to see the actual book, read it's jacket, flip through the pages, and let my senses guide me to places I'd never find on the Internet.  There are just so many books and so little time to read them all, especially if you read at the speed of a 5th grader like I do.  One advantage I find in reading books instead of e-books is I can skip around or just skip over things.  This works especially well with genres like how-to books, travel books or non-fiction, not so well with fiction unless you don't care about "who done it".

A Curious Mind....a book I would have never stumbled upon on the Internet.
I am curious!  This could be a nice pick up, put down or jump around book.

I should always have a jump around book going as well as the book I'm reading on my e-reader.  This will keep me in the book stores regularly and let me read a variety of books.  So, if you find yourself with a few spare minutes  hours, stop into a bookstore and just enjoy yourself!  Otherwise, they are going to become the next Blockbuster.

The library is another place a person can get lost.  I remember we used to take our children to the library every two weeks.  Our second daughter would always say she didn't want to go and sometimes pitch a fit about going....imagine that!  Inevitably we would select books for everyone and check out right about closing time and have to go from aisle to aisle looking for our reluctant daughter.  We always found her in some corner surrounded by a pile of books and fully engrossed in one of them.  The one who didn't want to go was the one we had to drag out at the end of the night.  Bookstores and libraries are just like that!

It's a Boy!

For those of you who are not Facebook friends of mine.....the 5 of you who just happen to read my blog because you have exceptionally good taste in reading material, our daughter and son-in-law had a beautiful baby boy!  Life is good!

Logan Archer was born on May 19, 2015 at 9:03 a.m. and weighed 7 lbs. 15 oz. and was 20 3/4 inches long.  Of course, he is beautiful!

Only days old here.....

12 days old and wide awake!

As far as babies go, he is a good one!  In my humble expert opinion.  It is such a treat to have a baby here in town.  I usually fly in for a week or more after a grand baby is born and help out a little and the next time I see the baby he (because so far they have all been a "he") is three months old, and they change a lot in those months!  I will be able to see Logan grow day by day, or at least week by week.

 With every baby born into our family I am reminded of my own experiences.  Things are the same as they were and yet so different.  That first baby is one of life's biggest adjustments, your life is never the same!  It is infinitely better and even though there may be times you think it is worse....it isn't!  Even junior high school and  high school.  I listen to moms now and think how nice it would have been to have the Internet when my kids were babies.  It would have been great to read what other mothers were experiencing.  It would have been nice to know I was not alone in the world with a crying baby and it would have been a great place to steal ideas.  Mothers today have such a vast wealth of information at their finger tips.  Man, I would have been such a great Mom with all of that information and just think of the audience I could have had for my blog where I shared all of my child raising expertise.  The world could have been a very different place.  Yea....right.

In other news....you may have heard.... it rained in Houston and most of Texas this month....and forgot to stop.  Usually you can assume that all of my complaining about the weather is just a personal issue, not this time.  This time it was real.  We set a record for the rainiest month EVER in Texas.  Over 16 inches of rain fell in Sugar Land this month.  I'm not making this stuff up.  My weather obsession has gone from frustration to amazement.  We can tell little Logan that he was born in the rainiest month EVER in Texas.  That is something you put in the baby book.

A few years ago I noted the drought we were experiencing with some pictures of a "lake" I occasionally walk past.  I decided to check it out today to see the difference.  The pictures speak for themselves.  Yes, it has rained a lot and the drought is officially over.

The "lake" today, things are definitely lush, wet and green.

The same lake in May 2011

The same "lake" in September 2011

The sidewalk to......nowhere.  Underneath all that water is a tunnel to the other side....

Interesting month to say the least!  Hope you are dry wherever you are.

Waiting for Sunshine

Do you suffer from spring fever?  I've been trying to put my finger on what's been up with me for the last few weeks.  I've just been in a funk.  I thought it might be all the rain and humidity or the fact that I am in between big events and therefore in limbo twiddling my thumbs.  I'm not good in limbo or at the limbo for that matter.  I like spring or at least I thought I liked spring until we apparently moved to the tropical rain forest formerly known as Houston.  Everything is usually so pretty and green.  The flowers are all blooming.  The days are longer which gives us more outside time.  There is often a chance to sit outside on the patio and enjoy dinner or drinks or just read a book in the spring before it gets too hot.  Ideally, spring is all sunshine, warm breezes, flowers and fun.  So far...not so much.  Except for the flower part.  Ok, and lots of warm breezes.  Unfortunately, those breezes include 90-100% humidity, and are anything but refreshing!  At least my complexion is being moisturized.  So maybe I have one less wrinkle to go with my frizzy hair!

The lovely flowers all over Houston, covered with raindrops....
as Houston has been much of the spring.

Having lovely flowers all around not to mention the moisturized skin should be enough to keep my mood bright, right?  Wrong!   My English class  is out for the summer which is good and bad.  Good, because it was the end of the year and all of us were losing steam and ready for a break but bad because I now find myself with too much free time.  I know....you would love to have too much free time.  Be careful what you wish for.  You may just find yourself stuck inside your now clean house with all of your laundry done, looking out at the rain and trying not to eat everything in sight.

Spring fever or spring funk is real.  I looked it up on the Internet.  Something about the long dark winter months using up our body's reserves of serotonin, the happiness hormone or nature's Prozac.  Plus serotonin requires sunlight to reproduce, that explains the lack of happiness lately... no sunlight!  The longer days of spring require a rise in hormone levels and this apparently puts a strain on our body and makes us tired.  I'm sure that is the problem, right?  Or is it just the rain, humidity, clouds and all that free time with no chance of playing golf?  Whatever it is, it has put me in a funk.  There are only so many hours I can spend in my house.

I was afraid I was just exaggerating the rain totals so I put on my weather nerd hat and checked the statistics.  Total rainfall in April was 9.7 inches in Sugar Land, normal is 3.3 inches. This made me even more depressed than I already was!  So far in May we have had over 5 inches.  That's it.....I'm moving to California!  Soon we will all have webbed feet to go with our wrinkle free skin.

What's an outdoor girl to do?  I've caught up on all the shows on my DVR, read, gone to more than my usual number of classes at the gym and done my share of economic stimulation at the mall. I've also sewn a crib skirt and valence for the nursery for "the reason all of us will be over the moon next week"!  We probably won't even notice the weather.  That's right!  By this time next week we will have a new grand baby!  If that doesn't change my funky mood nothing will!  I'll keep you posted on the ray of sunshine arriving next week!

Ready and waiting for our ray of sunshine!

I feel better already.  Think I'll go for a run....in the rain.