I have to be honest and say this question stumped me. While I know most children cycle through dreams of being a fireman or an astronaut or an actress or a professional sports star… I can’t remember ever wanting to be anything.
I loved dinosaurs when I was a kid… ( still do) but I never dreamt of being a paleontologist.
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I loved taking pictures as a kid… (still do) but never dreamt of being a photographer.
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I loved to read as a kid… (still do) but never dreamt of being an editor.
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I guess I never set myself for up disappointment by dreaming of a career. I’ve had multiple jobs in my life, but I married young and thankfully never had to work.
Because it’s better than whatever else you’re doing right now.
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That’s easy.
I’m a constant straightener.
You get up from the couch? I’m straightening the pillows.
You get up from the table? I’m straightening the placemats.
You leave work on the desk? I’m straightening the papers.
You turn off a lamp? I’m straightening the shade.
I straighten books on the shelves, paintings on the wall, knick knacks on the table, towels in the bathroom. If it’s there, I’m straightening it… which I can imagine, would quickly become annoying.
I must have been 3 1/2 because I was born in December and started nursery school early.
I remember all the children had to bring in something to sleep on for nap time. And while the other kids were given a pillow or blanket from home…my mother, being the uber mom she was…. went to FAO Schwartz and purchased a fantastically plush Humpty Dumpty egg shaped rug. It was perfect and I loved it.
I have vague memories of the other children being jealous and trying to take it from me on repeated occasions. Being a shy child, they often succeeded which resulted in my tear stained face and the teacher asking my mother to give me something less grand and envy provoking.
Which now that I think about it was a pretty lousy lesson. How about teaching my thieving little classmates to respect other people’s property instead.
I could take a world view and hope for an end to the war in Ukraine and peace in the Middle East.
Or I could take a national view and hope for sanity to return to politics and an end to the partisan and cultural divide in this country.
But I’m going to take a smaller, closer to home view and hope for the continued health of my (still thinks he’s 20) husband. Many of my blog friends are experiencing the grief of loss or catastrophic illness of a spouse or loved one and it makes me realize how truly blessed I still am. I may moan and groan about his crap collecting and his inability to enjoy retirement, but I have him.
And he has me.
That’s everything.
But maybe… just maybe?
I’ll hope for better luck with our home improvement projects as well.
The year was 2015 and it was my first Christmas without my mother. I’m an only child, my father died when I was 15. Losing my mother hit me hard and I was feeling unhinged. Alone. And not at all in the holiday spirit. Decorating the house and hosting my husband’s ungrateful family was more than I could bear…. so I went to a travel agency, told them how much I wanted to spend and asked them to find me something interesting within driving distance.
Which is how we ended up spending Christmas week in the Pocono mountains of Pennsylvania.
We generally like our accommodations out of the way and quiet… and brother, that’s just what we got.
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Welcome to the Pocono Manor Resort. A massive, secluded, surrounded by mountains and rolling hills, giant stone edifice I won’t ever forget.
It was dark and overcast when we arrived. Mountain fog surrounded the grounds and the silence was eerie. No cars in the parking lot, one dim light by the front entrance.
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And while the interior was fully lit and beautifully decorated…
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It was as silent as a tomb.
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A very large tomb.
Built on 3,000 acres in 1902 as a summer vacation residence for wealthy New Yorkers, families lived here for months with no reason to leave. Boasting an 18 hole golf course, tennis courts, a full spa, riding stables, fly fishing pond, indoor and outdoor pools, multiple restaurants, game rooms, library, theater, and it’s very own post office with private zip code… it was a world unto itself.
And when we visited December of 2015?
We literally had the entire building to ourselves.
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No, I’m not kidding. For the first 5 days of our week long stay it was just us … and every time I walked down this hall to our room? I expected to see the twins on tricycles because we were staying at the Poconos version of the Overlook Hotel.
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Yes, there was staff.
Ghostly staff, because you hardly ever saw them.
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We wandered room after room and never encountered a soul.
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Every morning we had breakfast alone, in a room that probably seated 600.
Creepy?
You could say that.
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We sat alone in the theater…
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And watched It’s A Wonderful Life.
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Hoping the lights would come back on when we were through.
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Long, endless, empty hallways with only the sounds of our footsteps for company.
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Ho! Ho! Holy Hell it was bizarre.
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It was a place frozen in time, although it had just undergone a 5 million dollar renovation.
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I never did manage to get a photo of the entire place…
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You couldn’t really, it was too big.
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But it was definitely a magical and quirky way to spend the holiday.
Sadly this amazing place caught fire and sustained substantial damage in 2019.
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(not my pictures)
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It’s been closed since then with various plans to rebuild.
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Horror of all horrors? The latest developer to be interested is the Margaritaville Corporation who want to build a village of tacky housing.
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They say they will “honor the memory” of the Manor but I don’t think plastic palm trees are going to cut it.
😰
Now it’s your turn.
Share a happy, funny or strange Christmas memory with me.
It’s another Christmas question, so try to get your jolly on.
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When I was a teenager my mother had a close friend she insisted I call aunt though we weren’t related . She was a career woman when women didn’t have careers and rose to a senior position with Time/Life. A wealthy widow with two grown sons, she was extremely intelligent and quite eccentric.
To be honest, she was loaded. Both financially and physically… the old gal liked her scotch.
Having New England roots she was also tight as a tick when it came to spending money. The electric bill could sour her mood for days and she wore clothes that were so threadbare the moths didn’t even bother nibbling. She constantly added milk to chowder to stretch it’s longevity and only went out to dinner if someone else was paying. She cut her own hair, never bought a new car and had drawers full of used tin foil. When she retired she had money enough to travel the world but chose to sit home and clip coupons, waiting for hamburger to go on sale.
But when it came to Christmas? That’s when she really outdid herself. Presents were wrapped in newspaper with leftover butcher’s twine for ribbon. She thought it was fun to give dozens of gifts and watch you squeal with delight when you opened them. Problem was … there was never anything worth squealing about. Quantity not quality made her happy.
Over the years I received toilet paper, toothpaste, tiny bars of soap and shampoo as well as plastic ice buckets. All of which she lifted from various hotel rooms. She traveled a lot for work and the woman never passed up a freebie. I had to say thank you for swizzle sticks, matchbooks and little paper umbrellas. Have you ever pretended to be over joyed with ketchup packets and those little square jelly containers? Trust me, it’s not easy.
So in answer to the question … the weirdest Xmas gift I’ve ever received?
A matching set of barf bags from TWA.
Festively wrapped in the New York Times and the envy of all my friends.
He bores easily with vehicles and is always looking for something different. No matter how much he likes what he’s driving, he’s the guy who stops on the side of the road whenever he sees something better for sale. Since he’s always on the move and puts high miles on his cars, we buy him used every few years.
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I, on the other hand… heavily research, shop around and buy new every decade or so. My current ride is a much beloved 2014 Subaru Forester. Her name is Ethel and she only has 75,000 gentle miles. Every year my husband sputters about trading her for something newer, but the supply of new vehicles on the lots is still a problem here and I’m not buying anything I can’t personally test drive.
Ethel will be 10 next year so I suppose I’d better start researching.
River's world..... 