The Road Home:
I am finally home. We left Montana a day early and made it to Forest Grove about 10:00pm Thursday.  Now that I have had 24 hours to recover I felt I needed to put this series to bed, so to speak.

I have had no time until now to do this final installment because my wife has a job interview on Monday and has been using our computer all day and that's one reason we cut it off a day early. I used to have a little LAN network that allowed us to use one of the laptops but when we got our new sectional sofa wifey dismantled the entire thing and I haven't found all the parts and cables even yet.

I feel I have done a fair amount of bitching the past two weeks but I have to say that I hate (I don't use the word hate lightly) vacations like this one. In fact I usually refer to it as a trip not a vacation.  Between my Dad's place where the ambient temperature was 84 degrees and my sister-in-law's place stuffed full of people it was about all I could take.

So instead of kveching endlessly about all those things I will try to insert some positivity by looking at what I've learned in the last two weeks. You've all heard that old saw about an optimist seeing the glass as half full, and the pressimist as seeing the glass as half empty, well, I see the glass as FULL! (half water and half air).  I am a realist and have always functioned best that way so instead of high points and low points here's what I've learned:

Growing old is not for whimps and is makes a lousey spectator sport too!

Camcorders are just things and should not be allowed to ruin your trip if they malfunction!

Staying with relatives is harder to do than staying at a motel or resort!

Vacations should have some componant of recreation in them or else you become exhausted and grumpy!

If you are exhausted and grumpy everyone will notice!

Your children deserve better than an exhausted, grumpy, out-of-shape, over-the-hill, son-of-a-bitch for a dad!

My Dad never complains about being exhausted.  God, how I wish I could be more like him!

Any trip no matter how short isn't worth taking if you don't learn something!

I have learned much about myself in these past two weeks. Some good (glass half full) and some not-so good (glass half empty) but now I know I need to make some changes and become a better person soon.  I need to lose weight and get in better shape, I need to adjust my attitude, I need to be more diligent about telling my loved ones just how much I love them becuase some of them are not going to be around much longer and if I don't take better care of myself-body, spirit, and mind-I won't be around much longer.

Take good care of yourselves Rangers and stay frosty!

John

THE THREE SISTERS:
On our way from Idaho Falls to Lakeside we got a call from The other sister that she and her husband were going to meet us in Montana. We are staying at Sharon's house, she's the eldest.  Pat and her husband are driving over from Billings and I am married to Tammy the youngest. "It's sort of like a mini family reunion" says Sharon. She has fond (and probbaly inacurate) memories of her and her cousins spending time at her grandmother's house in Minnesota and want's to impose this on the kids that are here now. It's not working out the way here time tattered memories play in her head.

Now we have a house full of people tripping all over each other literally and personality wise as well.  Pat's husband Clarence is a 'Nam vet and an arch conservative.  He's the kind of guy that would erect a sign st the edge of town stating that, "This town supports our troops!" implying that my town doesn't!  So I have to watch EVERYTHING I say around him so nothing even remotely political comes up in the conversation. Somehow every subject, the economy, my lesbean next-door-neighbors, God, fuel economy, gets twisted into some conservative talking points bullshit so...I just talk about the weather.

Sharon's husband T.C. is crazy... like a fox! He couldn't arrange time off so he's been working up until today and today is when Pat and Claence are headed home. When T.C. comes home from work everyone gets a glimpse of what not to do in a marriage relationship.  He makes what he says are, "Just me and my smart alec remarks!" but he gets pretty disrespectful most of the time.  She, on the other hand, goes completly too far in her responses to his comments.  She can't seem to give a one-word response to anything so when he says, "Huh?" she repeats what she said loudly and one syllable at a time, "I-SAID-I-WAS-GO-ING-TO-GET-THEA-PRO-PRI-ATE-TOOL-FOR-THE-CIR-CUM-STAN-CES..." 

The cousins get on OK but my ten-year-old is feeling left out. Tyler, Sharon's newest grandkid, is seven and Sara, my youngest, is five and they play pretty good.  I have to watch them carefully because things happen. For instance Tyler was clicking on different YouTube vids yesterday and suddenly out of the computer comes a stream of filth and every innapropriate four letter word in George Carlin's dictionary! "OK Tyler you're off the computer. Go outside!" I said. "But it said Spongebob!" he replied.  My parents never had to contend with this!  The sixteen-year-old Shantae bears some of the blame because she taught him how to click on stuff but didn't take into account the he's not old enough to avoid the dubbed stuff. I had to get after her agaain when she was showing my five-year-old a vampire movie on the 'net that featured two male vampires in a lusty embrace sucking each other's....blood...I think...and bleeding all over each other. I guess I gotta babysit her as well. My ten-year-old is less than impressed now with her older cousin and doesn't really want to spend much more time with her. In many ways my Amber is more mature (and smarter) than Shantae. I love my Amber!

WOODLAND WATER PARK:
We were at a concert last night in downtown Kalispell and someone asked me, "What sight-seeing have you done?" My response was, "We went to Woodland Water Park." they were waiting for more but that's all we've mustered so far. Fun park indeed. Two water slides, kiddie pool, and the lazy river. After two and-a-half hours of fun I am sunburned badly...ow...

THE CONCERT:
The city of Kalispell puts on outdoor concerts tuesday nights and last nights featured artists were "The Bad Larrys" (www.badlarrys.com) a folk/country/blues trio of acoustic bass, mandolin, and guitar.  We piled into our vehicles and got there in plenty of time but sis-in-law only brought two chairs! Clarence and Pat got the chairs and kids Tammy Sharon were expected to sit on a blanket. Me? I can't sit on a blanket for more than about 20 minutes because of my back (don't forget my sunburn, I can't!). Stand? I could for two hours, I've had to do that at work. The answer was, "Honey! Here's a seat for you!" My Beautiful, Interesting, Thoughtful, Charming,  Headstrong wife has found a space on a bench between two strangers across the park where I can sit and watch and talk about...the weather. At least I can see my family from there. They are having a wonderful time but the only time they came to see me was to get money for snacks, noodles, and snowcones. I had a miserable time but as we were leaving my Neice got sick and had to throw up in a trash can.  My wife tends to overreact in these situations so she said it was the flu and everyone has to start taking "Air Born" and every surface in the house needs to be sprayed with Lysol.  So I guess my night and maybe this leg of our trip can be summed up this way:

I had a miserable time but it could've been worse, I could've thrown up!

I can't wait to get home!

Next blog may be from home so stay tuned Rangers!

John