Imagine my surprise when my recent island escape turned enlightening!
Over the recent holiday we tripped to Dauphine Island, AL to meet our grandson
for the first time. Trust me when I say there is no better way to spend
Thanksgiving. We were gone ten days, and during that time I added a lot of
knowledge to my stack of life lessons.
- I learned…that changing dirty diapers is like riding a bike! (This grandma’s still got skills!) Same for getting on the ground to play. Getting up…well…that’s a different story.
- I learned...that a big dog can get its head into an opened box of Vanilla Wafers, but needs assistance getting it out. (I'm sure he would have gotten it out on his own, once all the cookies were gone.)
- I learned…that it is possible to sneak a 102-pound dog into a hotel with a 30-pound limit. (There may be a warrant out for our arrest in Augusta, GA, but they haven’t knocked on my door yet!)
- I learned…that a dog’s yowl while racing down a hotel hallway to get outside is amplified tenfold. Make that fifty-fold when it’s 12:15 a.m. (There were two German shepherds in a room along our avoid-the-front-desk escape route. Our dogs had exchanged under-the-door sniffs earlier in the day. Little Scout just wanted to play. If you’ve read my earlier posts, you know this mutt howls when here is another dog in the area…I mean like I’ve-Been-Run-Over-By-a-Car howls. So embarrassing! Especially in the middle of the night.
- I learned…Yes, there is a limit to the number of Christmas Carols I can listen to in one (ten-hour) sitting. (Seriously if I had to listen to one more round of Rudolph it would be a case of a Reindeer Got Run Over by a Grandma!)
- I learned…that listening to that much Christmas music puts me in the creative Christmas spirit! While travelling I noodled up not one, not two, not three, but FOUR plots for Hallmark Christmas Movies! (More to come on my new writing venture soon!)
- I learned…I can go two days without reading a single word—not even the back of a cereal box! Anyone who knows me knows I never travel (not even to run errands) without a book! Had to travel light so only took two this trip, fully expecting to spend every waking hour with our six-month old grandson. Well, turns out there was lots of late-night reading (couldn’t figure out how to work the television system) and found myself out of reading material by Wednesday. I stocked up on magazines at the grocery store the next day, but those were mostly pictures and I flipped through them in one afternoon. Live and learn…next time I’ll be prepared and pack my Kindle, just in case. (I just so prefer the tactile sensations of a printed book.)
- I learned…some people live without books! I know all my book-loving friends are as shocked as I am. We stayed in an Airbnb on a rather remote island, a wonderful experience offering peace and tranquility making it the perfect venue for curling up with a book! It was very comfortable and fully stocked in everything but entertainment! (See previous item about television system.) There were no games (Fear not--I had the foresight to bring a deck of cards) but more importantly only three books! In the whole entire house! Not even coffee table books with pretty pictures! Let alone an empty bookshelf to indicate they had taken their library with them when they moved. It boggles the mind! How can anyone survive without books surrounding them?
- I learned…that a grandmother’s heart grows ten sizes the moment she holds that giggly, drooly, snuggly bundle of joy. What a blessing grandchildren are!
Perhaps most importantly I learned that we all have so much to be thankful for, if we just look for it. Trust me, it's there. As we transition into the Hanukkah/Christmas/Kwanza/Winter Solstice/New Year season, I want to take a moment to say I am thankful for you, my faithful readers and supporters of my crazy hobby of killing people...in the purely literary sense, of course.
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