The Late Arrival

Our five-minute-won’t-be-late-for-school-just-yet window was fast closing while I scrambled around the kitchen trying to remember whatever it was that I’d be sure to forget once we were on the road. Soon, we were on the road. Or at least in the alley on our way to the road when I realized the road was being tarred. Tarred to the right. Road tarred to the left. I couldn’t take the turn I wanted in either direction, so we coasted down one alley and then the next and then the next looking for an open, untarred road. Finally we made it to the thoroughfare and it was all smooth sailing until… …the railroad crossing . More precisely, the railroad crossing being crossed by a train two intersections ahead. I panicked slightly and dimmed the dashboard lights so Georgia couldn’t obsess about the clock ticking down the minutes to her being tardy. Traffic had backed up from the railroad crossing intersection to ours, but I could see far enough ahead to tell that the train had passed thr...

It’s taken nearly a week, but I’ve figured it out: Staycations are overrated . And people who happily tell you that their family wanted to staycation are lying on two counts: They wanted  a staycation. No one wants a staycation, but sometimes you must Staycation. That the time off is staycation in the first place. It’s not staycation, it’s time off , and that’s all it is. If a name must be attached to it, it’d be whatever the snappy pun is for “Of course we’d like to leave this crappy weather and spend our time off school and work someplace tropical, but we just can’t aford it." So there it is. My family is on whatever that snappy little pun is, but we’ll call it Staycation because I haven’t come up with a snappy little pun yet. The truth is that we would’ve loved to escape to Jamaica or Disneyland or anyplace without snow, cold or the threat thereof, but it just wasn’t in the cards for us. Or more specifically: the bank. Or our wallets.     I put a good fac...

"I had to walk to school. In the snow. Uphill. Both ways." I've never clucked that at my daughter, but I make darn sure that she knows we're blessed. Our family does and has things that would have been unthinkable to my husband or me as children. We've taken a family trip to Disneyworld. Sure it was over three years ago, but we did it. We've never had to negotiate with WE Energies to avoid a gas or electricity shut-off, but I remember my mom wrangling those kinds of phone calls more than once.  So, despite the stats that say ours is the first generation that is not doing better than their parents, in many respects, I think we are.  In fact, Georgia reminded me of it just this morning. Out of the clear blue, she asked: "Was Grandma GeeGee poor? Grandma GeeGee is my late mother. Georgia never got to know her, but I tell plenty of stories about Grandma GeeGee, and stories that help Georgia understand how much easier her life is tha...