Traveling With Ellen

Ellen and I have elected to go on a last-minute Eastern Europe romp with a tour group that originated in Australia. That’s really all I know about it. Ellen found “this great deal” on a Tuesday and we were signed-up by Friday. She’s very efficient that way. We leave in two weeks and I haven’t really paid attention to any of the accompanying details. Ellen however, has been researching things and places and spots in Budapest (she calls it 'Buda') and telling me about all of them at once while I’m busy doing something else. Ellen likes to call and chat when it’s convenient for her and doesn’t bother asking if you’re busy. Then you must either stop what you are doing or carry on with your task but be very careful to respond to Ellen with enthusiasm and/or sympathy (depending on the origins of the phone call) or else she will chastise you for not paying attention. 

Every time I go on a trip with Ellen I come home and take a vow to never travel with her again. On one of our first international trips we went to Paris and we each brought a friend. I brought Ari. Ellen brought a noisy, over-packer named Arlene and we had to take turns lugging her suitcase through the metro. On this trip Ellen and Arlene did their “high-school girl” thing while Ari and I pretended we we’re in our late twenties and saw the city as a world of potential. Here we are, not yet seasoned enough to know better than to dress like Americans.

Due to our distracting travel partners, I was not entirely aware of Ellen’s behavioral tendencies whilst in the globetrotting arena. And so Ellen and I ventured out again, and again, until I noticed the pattern.

In this photo, I was acutely aware of The Pattern and saw the dark clouds of Ellen’s mood brewing up just beyond the horizon.

Ellen loves to travel. If you ask me she merely “Pops – in” rather than travels but I won’t harp on this point. Ellen is a bucket-list tourist and she moves through foreign cities with the same brisk productivity that catapults her through a routine day in her hometown. She does not stop and point or notice charming details. She walks at a high speed and plans her next move before finishing the one she’s started. To Ellen this is normal and sensible and highly efficient. When she has snapped a photo of the Eiffel Tower she will immediately scamper off to take one of the Louvre. She will look in the Colosseum, taste the gelato, and dip a crunchy piece of bread in Italy’s best vigin’s oil. She will admire the sparkling Mediterranean Sea, purchase an Aegean blue keychain of a Greek windmill, and when she has checked everything off of her list, she turns on you. She will not walk another block. She will not express interest in any sites you may want to see. She might just hop in a taxi bound for her hotel room and leave you standing on the street corner with no real plans. If you force her into a restaurant or store she will drop down into a chair, purse her lips, and wait silently. Her eyes will burn with hatred or she will close them in a dramatic display to prove to you just how sleepy she is. She might pipe-up to remind you that you are the problem she is currently enduring.

This version of Traveler Ellen is present more often than the excitable one that planned the trip months ago and created a binder full of maps and available excursions. Grumpy Ellen shows up either around 2:00 local time or the third day of the trip. It depends on how interested she was in the particular location to begin with. Ellen’s mood can be lifted, however it is an agonizingly lengthy process and takes a trained expert with a least a decade of experience in the field.

(Pro Travel Tip * Ellen’s mood cannot be lifted by any expert anywhere if there is grey or rainy weather.)

So why did I agree to a nine-day tour through a new part of Europe with a grumpy, black cloud of disinterest? Well, since it’s a tour group, I’ll have twenty other friends around when Ellen goes down for her nap.

A Cop Out Post

I am one week away from finishing my Spring wedding season. One week and two weddings. I'm very excited. Upon the end of the gauntlet I will have all the time in the world to regale you with fantastical adventures and harrowing tales of life as a disinterested twenty-something. In my next worthwhile post I'll tell you what's next for Big Lu and her disinterested twenty-something sister. So hang tight and enjoy these photos of a few of this Spring's weddings.

Twisty

It seems like the people around me are making big moves. Life trajectory altering moves. You know how you imagine your life in a straight line but rationally the unrealistic picture in your head should be a zig-zag because some choices change things right away and some things are the beginning of a slow curve down another little trail that doesn’t follow the path you’re already on? You know?

And then I thought, “Nothing’s bumped me off my path. Straight as an arrow. Smooth sailing, etc.” and I had this thought because I can’t imagine living any other life than the one I have. Had I accepted a cigarette in high school, would I have become a bossy butt-kicker with no regard for the law and if I was caught by the police spray painting a big middle finger on a dumpster would be found to have 'priors'? Or maybe I’d have tried the cigarette and gone, “Eww gross. That’s awful.” But either way, I have no interest in trying cigarettes so I must believe I would have never tried one and would have still moved on to a college where secondhand smoke blew from artsy mouths across my face day after day and I would still pass up my opportunity to smoke with them. And because of this, I’d graduate and wander off into the world with no sense of butt-kicking defiance and become nearly hysterical when pulled over for speeding. I don’t reckon I would have made any of the decisions I’ve made any differently from how I’ve made them therefore my ‘path’ would have always been my 'path'.

Ne’ertheless I still wonder things like, “Suppose I had really tried hard in college?”, “What would my life be like now if I had never had my heat stroke? Would I run a little flower farm or would I have moved somewhere tropical to give kayak tours? In that case I’d have a wonderful tan and probably lots of friend that drink light beer and live in tree houses. Would I have reached my full hippie potential?”

Things like that. I don't like that so many things hang on one measly decision. Makes for a twisty kind of life, full of questions that live down the street from Regret but not too close because according to my cigarette theory, you’d have never chosen to ignore your societal duties out of a fear of being a loser and therefore you would have never moved anywhere and gotten a really nice tan. So I thought about this and said, “Interesting decision making you’ve done, Lu.”

But actually my go-to tactic of never making decisions is precisely how I make decisions. If I don’t feel strongly enough about something, I just sit tight. Things change. Something will give and then I can react, not decide. Reacting is easier than deciding. As it turns out, I’m a real weenie. That’s my point. I’m a weenie and watching non-weenies make big moves makes weenies want to do something out of the ordinary of weenie behavior.

One might wonder why it's so hard for me to make decisions.  One might suggest a fear of regrets but I disagree. I spend more time wondering whether or not I have a regret than I do thinking about the one thing I might possibly be regretting. Indecision? Possibly. Haven’t decided. Indifference? Definitely.

So to recap we went from discussing non-weenie friends making big moves to musings about life paths to wondering about changing decisions to working out why we don’t like making decisions. Suppose, back there, when we were looking at life paths I had instead trailed off about a good guy from a good home that did one favor for a bad fella, got caught, went to jail, and then couldn’t get a decent job ever again. I’d have easily wound up writing a blog about this country’s destructive penal system and the lack of criminal rehabilitation compared to other nations. But you see, I got sidetracked thinking about me and my decision making. Makes for a twisty kind of blog post.

What do you think Buddy is regretting in this photo?

Four Frivolous Friends

Sometimes I complain that none of my friends live in Charleston. Really I should refine that complaint. What I really mean is 'girl friends'. None of my girl friends live in Charleston. And when I say 'none' I mean 'only one'. So my complaint should be "I only have one female friend in Charleston." I have a gaggle of female acquaintances and girls I used to work with that I get really excited to run into but that's not the same as having a girl you can call and whine at without having to endure any practical solutions to your problems. Women need that in their lives.

All that said, I tend to prefer the company of men-folk as they are much easier to amuse and they do foolish things readily and without abandon. I also don't have to worry that they are sizing up my fashion choices or interested in the origins of my decisions and any personal details about my life. This way, they see me as aloof and funny and never discover that I live out my days enduring a perpetual but mannerly panic-attack.

I'm getting off topic and that last sentence isn't true but I like to pretend. This post is about my trio of dude friends and how I insert myself into their lives. You see, the four of us are in a group text conversation on our phones. We look for fun things to do, submit it to our text group, and then wait for applause for the great idea or for snarling backlash for such a dumb suggestion. Sometimes three of us say 'yes' and the fourth one is busy and then the fourth one gets left out and we point and laugh at them and send photos of all the fun they are missing.

This post was inspired by scrolling through the photos we have exchanged with each other. I amused myself for fifteen minutes and thought that I should memorialize our nonsense in my blog space.

These photos make me smile. One day we all sent "Bored at Work" photos...

            

and another day we all found out we were driving around town at the same time...

          

It's the simple things you see. But best of all is how much these guys love The Union's. They'll come over for Sunday Dinner and they'll laze on the dock, jump in the harbor, wrestle the dogs, and harass "Old Man Union" all before supper time. Then they eat and drink and shuffle cards and roll dice and shout and laugh and make lots of noise. It's become one of my all-time favorite things.