I am, as much as one can, prepping for Disneyland.

I love Disneyland and DisneyWorld, each for their own reasons. Disneyland was magic when I was growing up. I remember my first stay at the Disneyland Hotel and taking the monorail in to Tomorrowland – I was probably 4 or 5.

Outside – I can’t stand the mega conglomerate of the parent company Disney. Their mass marketing, their princessification of Amercia – it all makes me gaggy. Until I am actually there. Then I am a smitten kitten.

When you are there, and you are steeping in it, it is divine. Every detail is covered by the marvelous Imagineers. It is clean and wholesome and safe. There is no war, famine or pestilence. Bad guys get their comeuppance. Everything from the fish jumping at random intervals in the pond (robot fish) to the fireflies that light up a bush at night (robot bugs) is wonderful. Idealized and wonderful. Suddenly, you think “Hey! I could buy this adorable D&B purse with the Mickey print here on Main Street, USA and make it work on my Main Street in the real USA.”  Trust me. It doesn’t work. But the fact that they can make you think it might is just testimony to the floaty high that happens when you are there.

I call it Styrofoam vacationing. It is up there with cruise ships and all-inclusive couples and family resorts.

When I have done “real” travel in the past, I would make extensive lists and check things off and work my way systematically through all of the prep-work.

How is it that driving for six hours and staying at an essentially all-inclusive microsociety is taking up as much time? You must make reservations for anything and everything if you plan on eating (so much for “I feel like grabbing a taco … who is with me?”). It is not the E-ticket Disney of my youth. It is a monster system of ques and people management and crowd control. Especially on weekends. Even in these shoulder seasons, the park traffic levels jump from a 3 to a 10 on weekends.

I have decided that if you want a fun, relaxing family vacation you need to go someplace where laziness is the menu. Disney is not relaxing. It is exercising. I don’t know if I am in shape to do this!

If you follow the expert planner guides and use their methods to get the most out of the parks, you can pretty much guarantee you will see everything you want to see with minimal wait time while everyone else stares at maps and stands in line. But everyone in your party has to be on board and adhere to “the schedule.” Some folks naturally rebel against the schedule. Like children.

Of course it is way more fun to go with the flow and “see what happens” and “discover things for yourself.” I get that. But then you are battling all the people with that same game plan and they all start acting like caged panthers by the time 2pm rolls around. That is when dad’s start snapping at whiny kids and the Happiest Police on Earth have to come escort you to a secret side exit because you have said words that are very un-Mickey like. And the Happy Police are real and they are there. As in casino-style surveillance there. It is more fun to watch for than seeking out “hidden Mickeys” or swapping pins on lanyards.

In going with my natural aversion to authority figures, I will just avoid the Happy Police. I will try to keep my family on the OCD plan and allow for blips without having a meltdown of my own.

There is a tiki bar in the hotel.

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You need me to lecture you.

The human lifespan is a total rip-off. It is short. I have always thought I could not accept anything less than 110. But, let’s be honest – I eat popcorn with butter and parmigiana cheese and chase it with tumblers of red wine. I like to think the red wine cancels out the butter consumption. It probably doesn’t.

So it is short. Let’s just agree on that.

Here is my lecture: Be kind. Otherwise, you are an asshat.

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I am about to go watch Breaking Dawn Part I on our unforgivably giant flatscreen. With my husband. At his suggestion. Be jealous.

Disclaimer: And yes, I truly believe that Bella Swan is one of the most twittish of all shakey, uncertain, mentally unstable heroines to ever come out of young adult lit. I can’t stand Kristen Stewart mooning and twitching. But I read the books and I feel like I need to see it through to the very awkward end. Plus, I love Jasper. The only character who looks like he might actually eat someone and enjoy it thoroughly.

In YA news, I can’t wait for The Hunger Games. I loved that ridiculously easy to read series and think it will make a really fun film.

I just inadvertently joined the braindead bookclub by writing about this. Hey, I am also reading that freakin’ huge Eleanor Roosevelt 2 Volume Biography. Yeah. Take that. You can’t pigeonhole me!

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Great news kids – remember that little rant about the new Lego “Friends” line? Today it was announced that Lego has agreed to meet with SPARK Movement folks after it hit home that American parents are sick of their girls being sold out and would prefer a company with as much influence as Lego to take a higher road and recognize that girls are not insipid twits.

Now, this could be a move right out of the Komen playbook in that they will attempt to placate and kill the bad press. Still, I think it is a step in the right direction.

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Mama’s Losin’ It always has fantastic writing prompts. That Kat knows what she is doing (we are on a first name / last name basis). She even commented on my blog once. Like sisters. This week, I am going to tackle the What Were You Like in High School? prompt. I do this because apparently 20 years has gone by and my class is having a reunion this summer. I keep telling them to check the math.

Me: I was fly. I was alone a lot because my beauty was really intimidating to others.  Inside I was deeply torn if people wanted to be my friend because I was so pretty or if they really liked me for ME. So few people relate.

I know self depreciating humor is a low-form of humor but it did make me giggle to write it.

Okay, in all honesty – I barely relate to the girl that went to high school. I mean, I see the pictures. I know it was me. It just feels like a shelved chapter book, someone else’s story.  It was not awful for me, but it was not the best years of my life either. It just was. I have reconnected with a number of people due to the magics of Facebook and the interwebs. So that is cool.

I went to a Catholic (big C) private college prep. It was a good school. I was not Catholic but I was thrilled to go and pretend that I was. Holy Mary Mother of God do whaaat? We had less than 100 kids in my graduating class. When you don’t know the “Our Father” you sorta stick out in that size crowd.

It was just like High School Musical II. Not the first one. The second one. Just like that.

My freshman persona was hyper and bubbly and probably more than a bit weird (FYI – I have held on to the weird part as it is the best part of me). I screamed when I saw girlfriends I had not seen for 5 minutes. To balance that, I had a temple to Thor in my locker. I worshiped Mr. Mojo Risin’ once I got my hands of all my parent’s Doors albums. I made friends with a girl who’s dad owned a Christmas tree farm and he traded trees for marijuana from Hawaii. That was an eye-opener. Catholic kids are so diverse and need public service announcements and after-school specials too! I had a terrible crush on a boy that also had braces. He was my first kiss in the back of a movie theater. To this day, I have never seen The Burbs. He gave me mono. Apparently he was a lot of girl’s first kisses (high hat crash). Story has it that he married Jean Claude Van Damme’s ex wife. I could make a really crass joke about JC-VD and running the risk of more than mono but I am not that mean. Much. I also got a wicked- bad perm that year.

My Sophomore year I dyed the underside of my hair black and I had my very own Dawson’s Creek miniseries. Only I was Dawson and he was Joey, and he would climb through my window at 1am. We were platonic friends and watched movies. Until he entered that beauty pageant and damn Pacey stole him from me… (okay, that part was not true). I started dating a SENIOR (ooooh) and was one of two Sophomore girls invited to prom that year (high-five). My boyfriend was a very sweet baseball jock who would pass me notes in the hall. His mom hated me. On that note, by this point in high school it became evident that ALL Catholic moms hated me. Apparently, I was in the “How to Recognize a Heathen” handbook. My mom fielded phone calls from “concerned parents” like she was swatting flies. The good news is that my mom knew I was a decent kid and she encouraged my “free spirit” and thought all the concerned phone calls were a riot. Thank you mumsie. I got a car and promptly got the soundtrack to The Rocky Horror Picture Show stuck in the cassette deck. Never could pry that thing out – it was wedged in. You wanted a ride with me? You were going to have to do the Time Warp. I made dear friends with a reform school girl that I just recently reconnected with (yay!). I went to Germany as an exchange student and a beautiful friendship with my German sister Sabine came out of that.

My Junior year was a little action packed. I developed a now lifelong love of red lipstick, strong coffee, black boots and fedoras. I made friends with a girl who was kicked out of the fancy Episcopal school. We are still friends. She is a doctor. Take that fancy Episcopal school. I started to view high school as a spectator sport. I smoked cloves (why?) and went to underage dance clubs (why?). I launched my Volvo off a cliff the night of the Winter Formal and used up a few of my 9 lives. I was not drunk, it actually was black ice. I turned down one of my best guy-friends at a party and he decided to make my life at school miserable for the latter half of my Jr. year. Scorned moody boys are mean. But I understood because, hello, my milkshake brought the boys to the yard. Just not his yard on that particular evening. The worst part was I had a HUGE crush on him. That was my only real boo-hoo memory of high school. I was in the Spring Musical of Pirates of Penzance and that was the most fun I think I ever had at school. I was a Bobby. With a mustache. In the chorus. I rocked that out. I was involved in photography and yearbook, which meant I had lots of get-out-of-class passes. And no. I actually never spent time in the legendary photography dark-room with the photography dark-room boy.

Scorned boy and I called a truce my Senior year. I was dating a (yawn) college boy all year and so I actually focused on my studies and pulled out some impressive grades. Those grades got me in to college where the now former college boyfriend turned out to be nuts, stalk me, set my apartment on fire, steal my underwear and threaten to kill everyone I know.  Moral? Kids. Don’t do drugs. 

So yeah. High School. I played dumb for two years and then became an egghead brainiac for two years. I constantly dated someone – anyone – so that I would always have a date for events, like a security blanket. I was friends or friendly with a lot of people but usually kept with a core group of about three extended families, that included our siblings. I have very fond memories of all of them.

So, the funny part is that I am foggy on some of the people I went to school with. I would be terrible at a reunion. I just assume people are foggy on me too. I am always shocked when someone remembers me. Maybe it is just my day-glo hair. As I have written before, this hair has power.

My best friend, who attended a different school, has become the keeper of my memories. She remembers things about me and my high school that give me a vacant, blank stare off in to space.

Will I go to the reunion? Not sure. I missed my ten year because who the hell actually goes to ten year reunions? Okay, it was because I was moving east and actually in Hannibal, Missouri at the last reunion… but still, at ten years isn’t everyone like: “Look at my degree! Look at my money! I have hair! I am thin and I travel frequently! I don’t consider myself religious! Stay in touch! BFF 4Ever!”

At 20 years it is like “Hey! Still here! Bald! Twelve Catholic kids! Alcoholic!”

Around the 30 year it is like  - “I am divorced and my kids hate me. Who can I still hook up with?”

and the 40 nobody comes too because it is so damn depressing.

and the 50 we all have oxygen tanks.

Not like that at all.

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I have about six saved drafts in my site dashboard. The last three days have been a wee surreal for my tastes and I am not even really sure what to write or if any of those drafts will get published. So I am writing this.

Someone I love very much is sick and there is a waiting game for answers on just “how” sick.

I have a wonky social disorder where I feel obligated to be funny ALL the time. I have a carefully cultivated sense of humor, appreciation of the bizarre, the dark, the slapstick – all of it. I love me a good laugh. It is totally inappropriate at times. My favorite people are the ones who make me laugh till I can’t breathe and I start crying because my brain is deprived of oxygen and there are no other alternatives left. Well, maybe short of peeing ones pants. But nobody likes that girl. Fine line, that. Try to avoid crossing it.

I like extremes. I like my food extra spicy. I like my coffee extra strong. I like my friends extra-opinionated. I like to feel things larger than life.  If I had any moderate level of athletic skill I would be into adrenaline sports (alas, I don’t have even a modicum of athletic skill and applaud myself for any given 24 hour period that does not end with a new bruise).  I like to go big.

I am not finding things very funny right now. I am suddenly relying on other people to make me laugh. Lame.

So I am going to tell you about a time I laughed. Really hard.

Back in 2003 we were living in Virginia. I was worried that everyone we met at my husband’s grad school was going to be holier-than-thou and pious and scary. It was a seminary after all. We went to a class party hosted by the dean of the school, in her home. She was a lovely, refined and serious woman. I think the word propriety comes to mind. It was there that I got a girl-crush on Marla, the fiancee of another seminarian.

The party started off rough. I was new to Virginia summers and though nothing of throwing on a powder blue shantung silk top … until I got to the door of the dean’s home and realized I had two giant dish-like sweat stains under my arms and, more importantly, two giant half moon sweat stains under my breasts. It was like a billboard announcement in neon lights. You can forgive the pit-tastic stains but those breastacular ones? No way. Mortification set in. Rather than being forever branded as the sweaty chick, I turned heel, ran home, got changed into something cotton and layered and forgiving and came back.

At some point in the evening I confided in Marla, We laughed.

Marla and I were chit-chatting and soon found ourselves playing out completely absurd scenarios involving ways that we could completely horrify the dean. Like, go up to her bedroom and take a shower, come down in towel and ask if it was okay to use a certain conditioner. Or go pass out on her bed. Or try on the clothes in her closet. Play in her makeup. Rearrange her furniture. You get the idea. I was snorting and crying. It was just too funny.

It was then that I knew I was going to be okay in Virginia. Just finding a kindred spirit in that moment took me from omg-sweaty-gross-me-and-the-bible-thumpers to ahhhhhhhh.

And just telling you that story has put me in a better mood. Happy face.

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Sometimes you need to do the crazy thing, the wrong thing or the irresponsible thing. Even when all the voices tell you otherwise. Sometimes you have to be selfish in order to be generous in the long-term.

This has been a tough week. I have tried every tactic I know to distract me from making this decision. I even cleaned my kitchen. I know, shocking!

For the last 15 years, I have focused my goals on supporting my husband’s schooling, grad-school, his career and our children. I did that willingly and without regrets.Those were decisions made together, not put-upon me, in building the life we wanted to have.

I have been incredibly fortunate in my own career path – great mentors, great opportunities. When we had our first child, I took almost a year to be at home with her and then found myself back in the thick of things. I did not take maternity leave with my second child. I have worked half-time, full-time, in the middle of the night and took contract work. I started a few entrepreneurial side-projects while working for others. My work ethic has work ethics.

I have tried on a SAHM hat for the last year and it has been great, but while I take immense pride in the children I created and am raising I also always have a whisper in my ear that says I need to keep moving, keep creating.

I love being productive.

Today, I shut the door to an opportunity that landed in my lap. I chose not to entertain a lucrative position that would have provided incredible financial security but would have also bumped our tax bracket, cost me about $2,800+ in childcare each month, had me hand off all of my autism work to the spouse and put one of my bucket-list dreams on hold.

Once upon a time, I walked away from over a buck-fifty a year so I could go walkabout in Europe for a few months. I did it without batting an eye. I don’t regret that decision one bit. Even so, I do not think I could do it twice.  I could get awfully used to that  income again and would relinquish it only begrudgingly. Which means that my opportunity for self-employment would just not come to fruition until maybe retirement.

So I am going to do something incredibly selfish and brave and awesome. I am going to build my own business while I am happy, living within my means and not overwhelmed with other responsibilities. It is not about my husband or my kids. It is about me. Me. Me. Me. I am committing to it. Full-steam-ahead.

The good news is, I have the full support of my spouse.

I spent our savings to purchase a giant iron letterpress. I owe it to myself (and to the press) to restore her, operate her and see if she can become a work-horse. If she sits in the garage, gathering dust, it will only be a reminder of the path not taken. And selling her would break my heart.

If it shows my daughters that success can be measured in money but also via personal satisfaction and level of happiness? Bonus. If it shows them that women can operate heavy machinery and create with their hands and run a business? Bonus. If it shows them that a life on hold is no life at all … bonus.

I remember being told that becoming an adult meant giving up stupid dreams and facing reality. I was sixteen and it pissed me off. I think it still pisses me off. So, again in my ongoing effort to prove all baby-boomers wrong … I stick out my tongue, sneer and I am going to do things my way.

Sing it Sid.