How I Spent My Summer Vacation, Snarkfest-style

Hey Snarklings! The leaves are turning lovely shades of orange, yellow and red. The college marching band season is in full swing (college football season..... tomato/tomahto) and I'm looking back on an awesome summer in this post. 

 

Yes, I'm wearing a bathing suit

The first full week of June, I went somewhere I'd never been before! OBX BABY!!!! My Ride or Die bish, Susan and I went to Kill Devil Hills for the week and we could not have asked for more perfect weather. This summer our trip was way warmer than last summer when we went to OCMD and froze our asses off the whole week. This year, temps were in the 80's and the sun was out all week. It was AH-MAY-ZING. Our girl Jazzy Jen met us for the first 2 days, which we spent on the beach drinking Tito's and Tea and watching pelicans dive bombing fish for hours. After Jazzy Jen left us, we spent the rest of the week on the beach drinking Tito's and Tea and watching pelicans dive bombing fish for hours. I did run every morning while we were at the beach, just to break up the monotony of Tito's and Tea and dive bombing pelicans. 

I spent my birthday weekend (July 4th for those planning my party for next year) with friends and loved ones laughing and drinking and laughing some more. We had family come in from the beautiful Pacific Northwest during the month of July so naturally I had to show off our gorgeous vineyards (I'm looking at you, Big Cork!) 

I got to participate in helping put together a charity golf tournament in late July to learn how to do it because last week I had my own charity golf tournament to host to benefit our local Rotary Club. This summer, I took over as chairperson for our Rotary Satellite Club and so far I'm doing an okay job of "fake it til you make it."

We bought new beds for the girls' rooms and I had some of my very best friends come to visit in late July and August and they didn't have to sleep on twin beds that were over 20 years old! WINNING! 

 

Tybee Beach, bishes. It was awesome

At the end of August, Ride or Die bish Susan and I joined 12 of my closest (fully vaccinated) Duranie girlfriends on the beach in Georgia for a long weekend and it was pure bliss. I did not realize how much I had missed all of their faces until I got to hug and squeeze them all. The last time many of us had been together was in 2016 for a Duran Duran concert in Washington DC, so this reunion was long overdue. On our last night there, we went to the beach and watched the stars and saw the Milky Way. We all downloaded the SkyView Lite app and saw some incredible things. This is probably my favorite picture from the whole trip:

 

Stargazing on our last night

September was spent running around all over the 3 state region (WV, MD and VA) picking up raffle prizes for our Rotary Golf Tournament, which I'm happy to report went off without a hitch last Friday. We raised a lot of money, gave away a lot of really cool prizes and are already planning our 2022 Rotary Golf Tournament.

Friday night, after the tournament had finished, the hubs and I had Mexican food for dinner and a pitcher of margaritas, and I was sound asleep by 9:30. 

It was an eventful summer, my friends, and I loved every minute of it. And I'm looking ahead at a cool, crisp fall with lower temps and no humidity. 21 and I are running a half marathon in October (she'll be 22 by then, so I'll need to change my description on the old blog). It will be the second one we've run together! 

Tell me what you did this summer! Did you have fun, despite the global pandemic?

Picture Books, Duran Duran and Highway Robbery

It's no secret that I'm a huge Duran Duran fan. Everyone knows it, and those who don't know it live under a rock. I've seen them live over 20 times, I've traveled far and wide to see them, and to visit my girls for Duranie weekends. Or as we like to call them, BITCHES weekends. We have a tight-knit group of about 30 of us and we all try to get together at least once a year, just to hang out. For us, the band brought us together, but our friendships now go MUCH deeper than our love for the band.

And let me be clear on one thing: NONE of us are independently wealthy. NONE of us live in a mansion, NONE of us shop on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. Most of us have families, mortgages, car payments, the usual. And we have one more thing in common: we all think the band has GIGANTIC CUJONES for what they are charging for a new book out this month.

Photographer Denis O'Regan followed the band around on their Sing Blue Silver tour and took a bunch of pictures. Now he's put together a book of over 200 color and black & white photos, bound it in cloth and they have the AUDACITY to charge £250 for it (to save you the trouble, that's $403 to us here in the US. Shocked? How about the £500 (That's right, $806 US) for the 'Deluxe Edition' signed by all 5 original band members? If that doesn't get you, there's also a £2500 (you guessed it, over $4000!) edition which is described as: "containing contemporary fine art prints and 1984 vintage prints, together with handwritten lyrics of one of the band's classic hits by Simon LeBon." My guess is it's that over-done, over-played make-my-ears-bleed song Hungry Like The Wolf. YUCK.

Well let me tell YOU something, Denis O'Regan, Simon, John, Nick, Roger and Andy. There's NO way on God's green Earth that I or ANY of my Durannie girls will EVER part with that much green for a book of pictures, with or without your autographs.

You've gotten a lot of money from us over the years, but (to quote Simon LeBon) you've gone too far this time.

If you are a Duran fan and you have the extra cash to fork over for one of these coffee table books, good on ya. But if you are a normal person with a limited income, this is an exorbitant amount of money and for them to expect a fan to part with that kind of cash for this book is BEYOND the scope of fandom. It borders on extortion.

Do we love the band? Yes. Are we insane enough to part with our hard earned money for this? No. Flippin. Way.

Sorry, I just had to get that off my chest. And in the illustrious words of my girlfriend Joelle:

"For £2500 that book better be fucking hand delivered and Simon better be scrubbing my toilets, while Nick does the laundry, John runs the vacuum, and Roger does the dishes. I'll let Dom off the hook since he probably isn't included. Oh wait, Andy's included? Well then take out the trash."

Following the band, suffering the mom-guilt....

This past weekend was a whirlwind. I had tickets to see Duran Duran at the new Ovation Hall at Revel, Atlantic City's newest place to go to lose your shirt. We found out while we were eating dinner that the show was not going to happen because Nick Rhodes, the keyboard player, was hospitalized for exhaustion. Pardon my snark here for just a second, but really? Exhaustion? The man stands behind a Macbook and presses keys. If they told me he was hospitalized for carpal tunnel, or a hangnail, or hell, even arthritis, I'd totally get it. But exhaustion? The hardest he works at each show is coming up with new reasons why 'The Reflex' won't use it. And taking pictures of the audience when he's not pushing buttons on his Macbook.

We do know that the 'nana broche' he wears on his top button is pretty heavy, so that might explain it a bit:

Ok now that I'm sure I've pissed off a ton of Nick Rhodes fans, I want you all to know that I do love him, he's a wonderfully talented keyboard player, he is charming and smells wonderful in person and looks better in full makeup than I do. I do wish the best for him and a speedy and full recovery, truly I do. And I'll share this blog that was just shared with me to show you that I DO truly love Nick, and that I'm NOT a horrible fan who is pissed off at the band for the cancellation. I'm honestly not the least bit upset.

My POINT in all of this is that the show was cancelled. But while we WERE disappointed, we made the best of it. After all, the group that I had met up with hadn't been together since we all traveled to the Foxwoods LAST April to see....Duran Duran perform there. Seeing a trend? Yes, we're hopeless Duranies and we have formed a huge bond through the band. And even if the band doesn't show up, if we're together, we're going to make the best of it. I met a few new friends, and got to spend time with some great friends I've known for well over 7 years. AND we did managed to hang out with some of the band, because let's face it, they had no other plans once the show was cancelled. The backup singer, the lovely Anna Ross bought me a drink, the lead singer Simon LeBon proved, yet again, what a douchebag he is. We've begun referring to him as LeDouche, or even better, Zack Galifinackis. Twins, separated at birth? You decide:

All kidding aside, we all needed this time to get away and relax, away from our normal jobs, our normal life, our kids, our houses, our pets, our routine. We don't do it often enough. We all need to have our fun. Our children have fun daily. And if we aren't enjoying ourselves on occasion, we tend to get cranky and grumpy, easy to piss off. So we really shouldn't feel guilty for taking a weekend and living like a rock star. Hell, we shouldn't even feel guilty when we take an HOUR to spend alone. But we do, don't we? We as women tend to feel guilty for treating ourselves. Don't tell me you don't feel guilty if you go out and buy something nice for yourself, knowing full well that little Janie needs socks for soccer or little Jackie needs a new pocket protector for his nerd shirt. You do! Don't lie! We ALL feel guilty if we do something for ourselves. And we SHOULDN'T!

When my husband left his job to finish school, he was home with the kids more, which freed up more of MY time, and I used that time to my advantage. I started running. I ran like a maniac while he wasn't working. I lost 60 lbs. in about a year. I felt great, I looked great, I wasn't (as) dumpy anymore, and it was all because I took that time for me. I had the free time because he was there to help out. I didn't feel guilty, because he encouraged my running, my weight loss, and loved the results.

Then, 13 months after he left his job, he found another, much better job. I love that he's back to work. I love that he's doing something that he loves to do. But gone are the days when I could go out and do a 10 mile run during basketball or volleyball season, because I'm the one that needs to be there at the kids' activities. His commute no longer allows him to be present for some of the things that he was on hand for for all that time. Don't get me wrong, I swear I'm not complaining. Really! I'm not! But my running has been cut back tremendously, and I've put back about 30 of those pounds that I had lost. It's no one's fault but my own. I'm taking the rap for this. It's all my doing. And when I have the choice of doing a 3 mile run with my daughter or a 10 mile run with my running buddies, my allegiance now lies with spending that time with my daughter. She's a sophomore now and time is going by so quickly that I'm afraid I'll blink and tomorrow she'll be graduating and going away to college. She still likes me, still wants to hang out and run with me, which is freaking awesome, because I know that's not always going to be the case. At some point, she's going to prefer hanging with her friends instead of with me. And I totally get that, but in the mean time, I want to hang on to that precious time, that special time that we spend together. So there in lies that fine line. That mommy-guilt line.

I never want to be 'that woman'. The one who resents her family, her life, because she never got to do the things she wanted because she devoted her life to her husband and children, ensuring that their lives were wonderful and all the while doing without, herself. I don't want to lose me. I'm so lucky that I have the opportunity to spend time watching my beautiful girls grow into amazing women, I'm beyond lucky to have a husband who, after almost 18 years of marriage, still loves me as much as he does, and the fact that he understand my need to retain my sense of self and get away from time to time to do things for myself makes me luckier than any lottery winner.

Rushers, Directioners, Duranies, OH MY!

Back in the day, we called ourselves Duranies. We followed the Fab Five in every piece of reading material we could get our hot little hands on. Remember Tiger Beat? Teen Beat? Bop? Rolling Stone? (yeah, that's still around). We Duranies had to WORK to find out the latest on our heartthrobs back then. Google? There was no Google! Cha Cha was a Latin dance. We were JUST getting into push button phones, for God's sake. We didn't have computers, internet, cell phones, texting, iPads, i-anythings!! We had to walk 10 miles in the snow, up hill, both ways, barefoot to buy magazines and darn-it, we liked it! Sure, every so often MTV would throw us a bone and have an interview with our boys and we'd all set our VCR's and watch them over and over. That was OUR Youtube. Pfffft. 'Friday Night Videos' was the shit and you watched it EVERY FRIDAY NIGHT just hoping they'd show your favorite band's video. And you checked MTV every chance you could get because back then the M actually stood for 'MUSIC' and not 'Manure' 'Malarky' or 'Merde'. 

Today, you can get information on your favorite band in less time than it took me to type this sentence. And these kids have NO idea how lucky they are. God, I know, I sound just like my mom did when she used to tell me how lucky we had it because we had a car with air conditioning and pleather seats! When SHE was a kid she rode in the rumble seat and she liked it!

Oh sorry, back on topic. My kids now can access any website at any time and see their favorite bands, Big Time Rush and One Direction. They are now considered "Rushers" and "Directioners". One Direction, for those of you who are living under a rock with my mom, is the NEW Fab Five. The next best thing. This is the nickname they have for themselves: Directioners. And they apparently take that nickname very seriously. Case in point: Last night 12 was on the computer and 14 was texting way later than her cutoff time of 10:00. And 12 kept calling 14 over to see what Louie's new haircut looked like or what someone was saying about Niall. Apparently, some absolutely INSANE chick on 1D's FB page (stay with me here mom: One Direction's Facebook Page) had the absolutely audacity to say she loved Harry and Zayn but didn't really care for Niall. "Well then she's not a Directioner!" I heard 12 say, and 14 agreed profusely! Apparently, there is a rule written somewhere (maybe it's tattooed on Harry's skull?) that in order to qualify as a Directioner, you MUST love ALL 5 MEMBERS of the group!!! Disliking one is the equivalent of disliking ALL 5 and you will have your Directioner club card taken away and you will be forced to listen to.....ugh, the Jonas Brothers.

Yes, apparently they're a little more strict today then they were back when I was a Duranie. Back in MY youth, you didn't HAVE to like all 5 members to be in the club. Hell, I never could STAND Andy Taylor. He was my least favorite of the Taylor brothers. I always wanted to take scissors to that nasty, greasy little ponytail of his and run off with Simon LeBon, spend hours laying on the beach drinking Pepsi and mocking Andy. (ok I was 16, and not yet the sleazy stalker I am today). That was the beauty of being a Duranie, you could like whomever you wanted and NOT like whomever you wanted and you weren't judged. There were 5 of them, PLENTY to go around.

Not today. Today, if you don't like one, you OBVIOUSLY don't like ANY of them. They apparently come as a package deal. It's the Directioners code.

I'm not sure if the same is true for Rushers, because my girls, while still very much in love with BTR, are more serious about the 1D rulebook. Is it POSSIBLE that you can LIKE the way James looks but hate the nasally, whiney sound that comes out of his mouth? I don't know. But if that is not the case, apparently I'm out of the Rushers club.