One Year Ends, Another Begins...

Happy New Year to all my loyal readers all over the world!

Let me just share with you how my life has been in the last few weeks. You may want to get one of those spray water bottles and keep it handy because my life is not fascinating, but it is eventful.

Christmas was very nice even though I missed my Marine. One thing made me unusually and uncharacteristically cheerful despite his being away. I may have mentioned that I belong to a Yahoo group of all the mothers/wives/significant others of the Marines in my son's batallion. We were all emailing each other histerically just before Christmas, bemoaning the fact that our sons/husbands/fiancees were in Iraq and how much we missed them, and how Christmas was not going to be the same, etc. and then one Mom wrote in. Her message was: You people stop your complaining, your sons will be back in a couple of months, mine will never come back, he was one of the casualties this month. Well, needless to say, I pretty much decided that I would not complain or cry or be a pain in the ass or any of that silly stuff, because she was right. She was the one that had the right to cry and feel miserable, not us. I emailed her and offered my condolences, my prayers and a shoulder to cry on. And then I went on to become a cheery, happy, optimistic Santa's helper, did all my shopping, smiled at everyone, let cars in front of me in traffic, and became a really nice person there.

Right after Christmas, I left with with my BF and his family for Gatlinburg,TN. The idea was that we would all caravan to the mountains and stay at a cabin outside of Gatlinburg for New Year's and then head back. I have to tell you that as much as I was afraid it would be a fiasco, I had a great time. Why did I feel it would be a fiasco? Because every time I have traveled anywhere with anyone it has been a fiasco in one sense or another. For example, the trip I took as a newlywed to New Hampshire (eons ago), where my husband's aunt never stopped talking for one second the entire time we were there, and if I looked away she would push my arm and ask me "What did I just say to you?" (Yes, she really did this) and I got huge headaches, bruises on my arms, couldn't sleep at night and couldn't poop. So I was not a happy camper. Or the trip I took with a bunch of friends (before I got married, also many moons ago) in a van to the keys to go snorkeling and we ended up in Ocala (in the completely opposite direction) and my weird-o friends ended up trying to scuba dive in a hot spring that was on private property and got thrown out of there by a big TALL redneck that was kicking scuba gear around and screaming at all of us. Big Scare. And then on the way back everyone got mad at everyone else and we argued endlessly about whether to stop at McDonalds or not, or whether we really wanted to pee or were just trying to annoy everyone else... Terrible. There are many other trips from hell that I've taken, but for the sake of brevity I will not go into all of these.

No, this time I had a great time. My boyfriend's family is a hoot, they are a bunch of happy, insane, party people and they were warm and sweet to me (the outsider) the whole time. All we did was eat, sightsee and eat some more. It was great and I'm so glad we went. The Smoky Mountains are beautiful. I had crossed them several times in my childhood moving from one state to another, but it was nice to see them again. On the way back, we stopped at St. Augustine, which I love, and did a little more eating and sightseeing there before heading back to Miami.

Weirdnesses: Strangely enough, Gatlinburg, TN in the smoky mountains is chock full of people and traffic at this time of the year. On the outskirts of Gatlinburg there are miles and miles of outlet stores, mini-golfs of every imaginable theme (Star Wars Mini-Golf, Jurassic Park Mini-Golf, Care Bears Mini-Golf, the list is unending), malls, souvenir shops and the obligatory Burger King/McDonalds/Wendy's every three blocks. Sigh. No, make that Big Sigh. Outside one of the souvenir shops they advertised that they had live black bears. Three black bears were in cages and so fareeking bored with seeing strange people looking at them that they were sleeping almost all the time. The store sold bananas that you could "feed" them (translates as "throwing bananas at these poor, caged animals"). They weren't even interested in the bananas and didn't even look at them. It was so sad and I can't get that image out of my mind. Why isn't stuff like that illegal? Makes my blood boil.

We also visited "Dollywood." Ok, please heed my advice: NEVER, EVER go to Dollywood. Why not, you ask? And my answer is: Because it sincerely sucks and it costs $42 per person. It did not help that the day we went to Dollywood it was in the low 40s and all of us being thin-blooded Miamians we were freezing our behinds off even though we were dressed like an expedition to Antarctica. When we got there, and you have to understand that Dollywood is a "theme park" much like Disney World, except that it majorly sucks, we were trying to find parking and I am NOT kidding you, there were two huge parking lots all reserved for handicapped parking, miles and miles of them and THEY WERE FULL. If one more handicapped person would have visited Dollywood that day they would have had to leave because there was not one available handicapped parking space! Is the USA becoming a country of handicapped people? That is another item that pisses me off. Why do I see people coming out of cars parked in handicap spaces and then see them jogging into the stores? Hello? Is it only me or is this just abuse?

Back to Dollywood... The only redeemable thing there was the Thunderhead Roller Coaster! If I would have been alone, I would have ridden it 5 more times, it was great! It started with a huge climb and after that it was an effort just not to be thrown into outer space by this roller coaster! It was a wonderful tooth-gritting ride and I loved it. But then everything went downhill. The rest of this park was just animatronics bear jamborees, and the "Dolly something-or-other parade" and pretty lights everywhere and souvenir shops and food and... ok I may be making you gag, I'm sorry. And did I mention it was freezing?

So now we're home in wonderfully balmy and mild Miami, but wait, there's more news and weirdness: My younger son, Big D, called me on what we like to call New Year's Eve Eve (the 30th) even though I had already called him that day.

Me: D? Why are you calling? Is everything ok?

D: Mom, please don't get nervous...

Me: What? What happened?!

D: Nothing, really... I don't want you to get nervous but a friend of mine was coming by to pick me up and he crashed into the wall (Ed. note: we have a short wall around our house, it's on a corner) and then he kinda rolled into your rear bumper.

Me: What? He did what???

So my driving-challenged son has driving-challenged friends. Sigh.

That's how my 2006 ended. I hope 2007 is a good year for you, my loyal readers and for myself too!