It’s time to make some statements.  Are you with me?

1)  I AM GOING TO BLOGHER ‘10.  No, I don’t have tickets.  That hasn’t changed.  I’m still looking at after Christmas, because I would have a hard time justifying spending that money on tickets when it could be saved towards Christmas gifts.  But the point is: I am determined.  I am GOING. If they sell out, I’ll just have to find someone selling their tickets or win a contest or go anyhow and just gatecrash the cocktail parties.  WHATEVER.  I’m going.

Look, this is in New York City.  I have been wanting to go back there ever since our rather abbreviated visit back in 2002.  And while I know I’m liable to be busy with, you know, actual CONFERENCE stuff while I’m there, how can I pass up the opportunity?  Who many other times will I be able to say that I stayed at the New York Hilton (or is it The Hilton New York?) for a mere $200 a night?  (Hopefully less as I’m hoping to find roommates.)  Right in the heart of midtown?

There are two non-conference things I need to do while I’m there though.  One is going to Central Park.  When I was there, we walked just in front of it, but never explored more than that.  Maybe renting one of those horse-pulled carriages or something?  That’d be a hoot.  The other thing is I want to go down to Rockefeller Center at the butt-crack of dawn on Friday morning and see Matt and/or Meredith and/or Al and/or Ann.  I mean, COME ON.  I can’t possibly pass that up.

Anything else?  Is GRAVY.

But yes, I am going to BlogHer ‘10.  I’m determined.  It will happen.  I expect you, oh great and wise BlogLand to hold me to it, mmkay?  When I falter, you need to give me a push.

So… anyone wanna be my roommate?

2) I am DETERMINED that this Disney Extravaganza is going to be the best, most awesome vacation ever in the history of vacations.  I’ve spent a lot of time the last year either ignoring the reality that is this trip or stressing out about it.  And why?  I mean, who out there wouldn’t give their right arm for an opportunity like this?  Me, I guess.  That’s who.

Partly, I think, because we’ve gotten SO used to isolating ourselves here.  It’s easier, simpler and CHEAPER to just stay at home and do our thing here.  Once in a blue moon we might venture out to visit one of our families. It’s pretty pathetic, really.  We’ve gone and gotten ourselves tied to our home and our routine and our things.  Well BAH, I say!

We’ve had a couple rough experiences.  One was the trip to Elko last June that ended up lasting a week longer and involved Kile’s unexpected hernia surgery.  That was stressful!  Even though it was great to have Kile’s family there to help us out (oh boy did we ever need them!), it wasn’t home.  And I felt out of my element.  And, frankly, since Liam was full on in “ornery turd” mode then and Evie was all new and needy, I felt we were a drain on my poor in laws.  And trying NOT be a drain while I had no choice but to be a drain caused me stress.  It’s goofy, I know.

Then, a little more than a month later, we went to BlogHer ‘08 in San Francisco.  And… gah.  That was worse.  Much worse.  Harry stayed with my parents but we took the little ones with us and the business of trying to deal with the hotel and and living out of a hotel room and doing the conference and running around and having to miss out on things and tirednosleepkillmenow…. I was a wreck when we had to drive away.  Just a wreck.  I felt so disappointed and so frustrated and I still do when I look back.  And I think that I’ve transferred a lot of that to THIS trip too.  I mean, if that trip was such a disaster, and it was only OVERNIGHT, then what the heck will happen on THIS trip?  Which is 8 days long?? And involves long plane rides with people who might not want to hear children hollering across three states.  And long, sweaty, busy and overstimulating days?  Unfamiliar rooms, situations, people (to my kids, at least)…

I think you can kind of see why this trip has had me freaking out silently on the inside.

But really… it won’t be the same as San Francisco.  Liam is older and so is Evie.  There will be more for the kids to do there, more excitement in general…

This trip is an amazing opportunity.  I would be a fool to just let it go to waste by stressing out the whole time.  So I’m going to have fun.  Damnit.  We’re ALL going to have fun.  We’re going to spend too much money on stupid things like character breakfasts (*cough*) and cheap souvenirs and walk too far and get sunburned and eat ourselves sick on the cruise.  And we’re going to LIKE IT.

So there you have it.  My bold declarations.  You can take it to the bank!

You’ve heard me mention this big ol’ obnoxious trip I’m going on this summer, right?  Surely you have.  And it’s time I talked some more about this trip, seeing as a week from tomorrow (GULP) I leave on it.  And I pretty much will have ZERO internet access the entire week I’m gone. That’s right, folks, get your slackermama fix while you can!

This will be a long post.  And I’m sorry for that, but there’s a lot to say.

I grew up in California, but this doesn’t mean I went to Disneyland with my family a lot.  Or at all, really.  We lived in the Bay Area, which meant there were no casual weekend trips to Southern California.  We also had Great America right there.  And I did go there every year at least, and the summers where I had a season pass, I went almost every week.  But no Disney.

My first trip to Disneyland was in middle school when a friend and her family invited me to come along.  The next time I went, was my senior trip in high school, a mere month away from graduation.  In fact, I went to Disney World before I ever went to Disneyland.  Strange, isn’t it?  I went in February of 1986 with my parents while we were in Florida visiting my grandparents.  My grandmother lived in Sebring, south of Orlando, and we drove up to the park.  One day we went to the Magic Kingdom, the next we went to Epcot.  I have more memories of Epcot than I do of the Magic Kingdom.  Isn’t that strange?  I think there was just more to see and do there.  Things are probably different now, since a lot has changed at Disney World between 1986 and now.  God damn, that was 23 years ago!

My kids have never been.  In fact, we’ve never taken any vacation even remotely like this in all the years we’ve been married.  When Harry was 2 1/2, we flew out to the east coast to stay with my sister and her husband and visited NYC, Maine and Boston.  That was a long time ago.  2002.  And it was only three of us flying.  One child in a car seat.  Easy, comparatively.

This trip is… different.  There will be five of us.  Two in car seats.  Two strollers.  Two sippy cups.  Two in diapers.  Flying, across country.  Airports.  GAH.  This scares the pants off me.  We’re flying Southwest, leaving out of Reno around 9am on the 5th.  Our plane stops in Vegas, but we don’t get off.  Then we fly clear through to Orlando, getting in after 8pm local time.  That’s a lot of time in the air.

We’re renting a car when we get there.  This was the subject of much angst and woe around here for quite a while.  See, our vacation “officially” starts on the 6th, when we can go to the parks and check into our resort and all that groovy stuff.  But flying from the west coast, we would miss out on half the day if we had flown out of Reno on the 6th.  We considered doing a “red eye” flight that night before, getting in early on the 6th.  But then we would all be exhausted and spent and there aren’t many flights out of Reno that qualify for “red eye” status.  So the day before it was!  My parents are flying in several days early and have a time-share condo they’ll be staying at in the meantime very close to the park.  They offered us up some space to crash for the night and even offered to pick us up from the airport since we wouldn’t qualify for the Magical Express.  Bonus!  Saving money is always good, especially when we have to travel on a strict budget like we do!

Well, then there was a change up with my parents rental car.  They didn’t want to pay the extra to rent a minivan, instead choosing to rent a compact car instead.  So that made picking us up at the airport a wee bit more difficult.  There would have to be two trips made.  This was… a hassle.  For us and for my dad to have to come get us.  We looked into a cab.  Cabs are outrageously expensive.  It would have been over $80 to take us from the airport to the condo.  So, we looked into a rental car.  And I found some great deals online.  And it turns out that after taxes and fees, we’ll be able to rent a car for under $60.  This is doubly good because it’ll get us all to the condo (we got the “standard/full” size, which is basically a Dodge Charger) that night and then the next morning it’ll get us all to the resort at Disney World.  We wanted to go early to take advantage of Extra Magic Hours and I would have felt bad making my hoof us over there (two trips again!) so early.

Our plan is to go to the resort as early as we can the next morning.  We’re going to be at the Port Orleans: French Quarter resort.  We’ll leave our bags there because they won’t have our room ready for several more hours.  We’ll get our park-hopper tickets and then hit the Magic Kingdom.  Our philosophy is: “go early, return early, go again”.  We’ll come back around lunchtime, cool off, go in the pool, take naps, etc and so forth.  And when things settle down, we’ll go back out.  Maybe after dinner.  Friday, we’re looking to do Epcot.  Saturday, we’ll hit Hollywood Studios and Animal Kingdom.  Saturday, as it happens, is also our 11 year anniversary.  I don’t know if we’ll be able to do anything special, but I imagine being at Disney World will be special enough all by itself.

Sunday morning, we pack back up and get on the bus to head to Port Canaveral.  There, we’ll get on board the Disney Wonder and go cruisin’!  Anyone who has known me for any length of time, knows that I have a thing about cruises.  I have ALWAYS wanted to go on one.  I used to read The Babysitter’s Club books when I was younger and I remember that first “super special” book when they took that amazing Disney World vacation?  They went to the park and then on the cruise (or was it the other way around?).  This was before the Disney Cruise Line but I remember thinking that was an AWESOME idea.  And now?  I get to go.  It’s going to be amazing.

I don’t know what to expect from the cruise.  I have the vaguest of vague ideas.  I expect a lot of sun.  A lot of fun.  A lot of food.  After four days on that, we’ll get dumped back off in Florida and then shuttled back to the airport.  Turns out, we’ll be spending a good chunk of time in the Orlando airport, waiting for our flight.  But that’s alright.  I’m sure we’ll all find something to do to keep us occupied.  I imagine we’ll be tired!  We fly back to Reno fairly late, local time, and will have a stopover in Denver when we have to change planes.  We’ll get into Reno very late.  We’re lucky enough that we know someone who has said they will be willing to take us to and pick us up from the airport so we’ll save on cab fare there too.

The next day, Kile and Harry both have to go back to work and school, respectively.  Ha!  I hope to sleep.  And then maybe sleep some more.  And after that, I might sleep.  And sit in front of the air conditioner.  And sleep.

This trip is huge.  There is no way we could have afforded this trip on our own.  My parents are generously footing the bill for all of us (19 people altogether) and my mom likes to talk about this is the last time we’ll all be together except for a funeral or something.  HAPPY THOUGHT, Mom.  But I know she’s probably right.  We’re all scattered to the four winds, busy with our families… This trip is a way to bring us all together, forge some happy memories.  As nervous as I am, as stressed as I have been… I am beyond excited about it.  I hope I can take about a bazillion pictures.  I hope I can remember every moment.

It just figures.  Not two minutes after I hit “publish” on that last post where I mentioned wanting being determined to go to BlogHer next year, I saw an ad in my sidebar from BlogHer ads saying, “Hey!  Sign up for next year, yo!”

NEXT year??  Already??

Surely this was a joke.  But no… I clicked through and saw next year’s venue had been selected, revealed, hotel announced and registration was open.  PEOPLE ALREADY HAD THEIR TICKETS.  I kid you not.

And in the span of two seconds I was both thrilled and excited that the city chosen for BlogHer ‘10 is New York and devastated because I do not have $200 to buy conference tickets right now.  And, considering our Disney Extravaganza here in a week and change, I probably won’t have it for at least another month either.

It’s one of those moments that I feel incredibly frustrated that our society is built on, for and by people who use credit cards.  Particularly when travel is involved, people just EXPECT you to use a credit card.  Don’t have the money in your account right now?  No big, just put it on credit and pay it off when you do.  Piece of cake!

And then there’s me.  I have to save the money.  I have to budget.  Make sacrifices.  Plan.  And I was planning to buy tickets after Christmas, when they normally go on sale and when we have no looming need to buy gifts any longer.  It works out well.

But ho no.  Not THIS year!  This year the tickets are on sale now!  And I’m scared half to death that they’ll be all sold out by the time I scrape together enough dough to go.

GAH.

So maybe I won’t be going to BlogHer ‘10.  Which is going to make me feel VERY cranky indeed.  Partially because it’s BlogHer and I love BlogHer.  And partially because it’s New York City and I’ve been dying to go back there.  Pretty much ever since two minutes after we left it back in 2002.   I had grand plans to find roommates (you can fit four in a room, right??), scour for cheap airfare, paint my toes, pack up my iPhone and knitting and just GO.

So I’m hoping.. praying that there will be tickets left to purchase here in a few months (again, probably after Christmas… dang those presents anyhow!) and that I will be able to go.

Now that it’s over, I find myself searching out the Tweets and Facebook statuses and posts about BlogHer.  I want to see what I missed, I guess.  I haven’t seen much, yet.   But what I have seen makes me both sad all over again that I missed it and happy that it went so well for so many women (and men).   Most of what I have seen is the usual BlogHer honeymoon style posts, speaking of amazing moments, wonderful friendships and powerful sessions.  I love to hear it.  I can almost remember how it felt when I was there too.  The heady combination of it all.  The urge to fill as many hours as possible with high-quality moments.  The parties, the hugs, the camaraderie…

I miss it.

And I could have definitely used it this year.  Oh yes.  I could have.

***

I’ve spoken before about how lonely it can be, staying at home.  Generations ago, most women stayed home with the kids.  It was common to know the women in the neighborhood and out of a need for survival, they would come together for coffee, let the kids play, chat about their families, prop each other up.  Help each other out.  Be a shoulder to lean on, those long, difficult days.  These women were, in each other, someone besides their husbands that cared about them.  If they didn’t live in the same town with their families, that bond was imperative.

These days… the neighborhoods are empty during the days. Everything is quiet.  No moms.  No kids.  Nothing.

There are avenues for making friends, but it’s hard.  A lot of people make friends at work.  When you don’t work, you make friends at your child’s school, church and church functions, the store.  And when you’re shy, it makes it that much more difficult.  And when you’ve been burnt, it makes it even harder than that.

I have a lot of friendly acquaintances, on and offline.  I have friends, I’m sure I do, but often circumstance and distance keep us from really being able to rely on one another.

I could use more friends.  I need more friends.  We have no family anywhere close.  We have no one, generally, to hang out with on summer evenings, or winter evenings or spring evenings… you get the idea.  No game nights, no barbecues, no pool parties, no meeting for lunches out, no shopping dates, no movie nights.

It’s got to be as hard on my husband as it is on me.  Though surely he’s busier with work and isn’t as aware of the gaping absence of friends.  Still, I know there are times he’d like to have some people who are close to get together with and celebrate, even if it’s just to celebrate the weekend.

I don’t know how to change this.  I don’t think I can.  Well, not here at least.  It’s a cop out, but I’ve convinced myself that living in Reno is part of the problem.  And not just Reno, but WHERE in Reno we live.  We’re fairly isolated out here.  No one wants to drive clear out here.  I don’t blame them!  I probably wouldn’t want to either.  Maybe if we lived somewhere else, another state even, it would be better.  Easier.  At least a clean slate would help, right?

Online friends are great but there lacks that closeness.  And a lot of times they are still just acquaintances.  Someone who is nice to chat with, but not someone you can trust or count on.  Not a friend.

***

Aaaaaaand, on that happy note, I’m going to bed.  Be good to each other, y’all.

I FINALLY saw “Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince” last night.  Since we just asked for our money back at the drive in (I won’t be going back THERE, thankyouverymuch), Kile suggested I take Harry while he stayed home with the little ones.  We went to the theaters down at the Summit Sierra mall.  I’d almost forgotten what it was like to watch a movie in a REAL theater.  It’s been a while.

Anyhow, I’m not going to go into big details here just in case there is someone out there who is as unlucky as me and hasn’t seen it yet.  But… yeah.  I liked it, for the most part.  I loved the way it was directed, the cinematography, the whole ATMOSPHERE of the movie seemed right on to me.  But there were some changes.  Things left out, things added in…. A lot of it made me want to tear my hair out, to be perfectly honest.  If anyone out there has seen it, feels the same, and wants to discuss it, just email me and we can discuss at great length what we liked and what we hated.  Sound good?

***

On the other hand, it was really nice going to see a movie with Harry like that.  We grabbed McDonald’s at the drive through on the way down to the theater and ate in the car.  Harry made a fine companion and it was nice to get to spend time with just him for a change.  He and I used to spend all sorts of time together.  I took him everywhere with me when he was little.  He was my sidekick.  We never get to do that anymore.

I would like to make this movie thing a semi-regular thing.  Maybe one a month or every two months?  Just he and I, out to the movies.  That would be so much fun!

***

I woke up this morning to overcast skies.  I cannot express to you how happy this makes me.  No sun = some relief from blistering heat.  I’m sure it’ll still be unpleasantly warm, but at least the sun isn’t out, making it worse.

Sadly, I doubt it will last.  The sun will come out and force it’s rays upon us.  But for now, I’m enjoying the dim.

Shoot, in the movie last night, I found myself gazing fondly at the screen during the snowy-winter scenes.  Oh, snow.  How I miss you!  How I love the sight of snow-covered mountains and snow falling and the crunch under your feet….

Damnit.  I want winter back.

***

I’m ignoring about 90% of my Facebook friends today.  Sorry, y’all.  But if you’re going to insist on posting about traveling to BlogHer, seeing people at BlogHer, being excited about BlogHer, etc and so forth?  I’m going to have to stick my fingers in my ears and go, “LA LA LA LA!!”

Nothing personal.

***

I hear my little girl waking up upstairs so I best go fetch her.  I haven’t seen her since about 5:30 last night so I’m actually looking forward to getting some cuddles in, as I’m sure she is too.

She really is quite snuggle-icious.

Enjoy your Thursday, all!