YES, THERE IS AN EASIER WAY TO GET THERE, BUT...

This morning we all scrunched into the Prius to drive to the airport to drop my daughter and son-in-law off to catch their flight to Hawaii for a week.

And I nonchalantly was taking notice of the route my son-in-law was driving to be able to follow it on the return trip.

I'm pretty good at getting somewhere after I've been there once before, and while I haven't driven here in quite a while, I'm pretty familiar with the area.





I only began to panic slightly when he turned onto the first freeway going what I was certain was the COMPLETELY the wrong direction - heading east instead of west.

And about the third highway change, I was truly getting a bit terrified - how could I possibly return this way, when it seemed out-of-sync with all the ways I had been before?

After bragging about my internal compass and great ability to mimic any route, I simply could not eat crow and admit I was completely turned around.

Thank God for MapQuest.

And once I got on the main freeway and realized I could get home simply that way (albeit a few miles out of the way), I relaxed and got the grandkids and me home safely.

HOTEL HOSPITALITY

I like some things about staying in a hotel room.

Number 1)  I'm not responsible for cleaning anything in it.

And Number 2)  I'm not responsible for cleaning anything in it.

It's another reason I am looking forward to this little vacation at my daughter's home.

When I am home, there are a million little details that compete for my attention.

If I'm on the computer, why am I not outside working with my horse?

If I'm  sweeping the floor, oh, rats, I've got laundry to do.

How do I deal with my guilt?

Easy - don't do anything.

But here in a hotel room... I don't feel guilty about it.

And I like that sensation,

DOGS BARKING IN THE MOONLIGHT

I know when my dog begins to bark, she is trying to tell me something.

Most of the time, it's that the FedEx truck is pulling into our yard.

Sometimes it is that a killer rabbit is lurking right outside our door.

And once in a while it's because somebody from Mexico is illegally crossing my back acreage.

Today, however, she as well as my neighbor's dogs seemed to go slightly berserk - they even got my horse whinnying with them.

I let my dog out to try to discover what she was all upset about, and she would RACE up and down the fence line, crying out in frustration,

I still don't know what she and everyone else was so upset about.

But I think I may put my pistol by my bed. Just for tonight,

MANNERS AT WALMART

I have never thought of Walmart as a center of socially acceptable mannerisms.

But I realized this morning that there are certain 'acceptable' ways of acting, even in a perhaps lower-level of civilization such as Walmart.

My husband and I went before our weekly breakfast-out for a few necessary items, and hit Walmart in its first-of-the-month-payday splendor - crowded, noisy, busy and unsupervised.

And my dear husband kept DOING things, things which are AGAINST the natural order of shopping.

He kept leaving his cart in the middle of the aisle, without enough room for people to move around, and would walk over to a completely different aisle.

Abandoning it, and effectively blocking the aisle.

He would walk across open spaces without looking around for other customers - much like merging without yielding to traffic already there,

He would stop to look at something, and not even register the line of people behind waiting not-so-patiently for him to move.

I was getting more and more irritated at him before it really registered what I was miffed about.

And it made me stop and think - are these 'traditions' anything worthy of blindly conforming to?

I know that because he abandoned his cart in an inappropriate stop, I found out that WalMart does carry body-pillows (on a low shelf not anywhere near the regular pillows).

I got to exchange a lot of "well isn't this exasperating" looks with complete strangers.

And I suddenly recollected living in the 60's, when we were trying to be the 'new' generation, trying to shake up the status-quo, rebel against the 'old' standards.

What happened to us old hippies, who can't even approach WalMart as a new experience?

Why can't we experience WalMart as a unique and out of the ordinary occurrence? What is wrong with breaking up the nor mal (stale) order of things to look for things (body pillows) in a new and different way (and actually discover something in the process)? 

Next time I go to WalMart, I'm going to wear psychedelic colors and flowers in my hair - I'm going to go UP and the DOWN aisles and DOWN all the UP aisles - I am going to walk through in the opposite direction that I normally do - I'm going to sing old Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan songs outloud.

It may be the only way to experience WalMart, anyway,