And They Didn't Even Card Me!!!

Yesterday, April 3, 2012 brought us the Primary Election for Wisconsin.  Not only did I have to adjust to a new “polling place” (this changed from a school to a church. I find it ironic that we are voting in a church considering the whole “separation of church and state.”), but I also had three 18 year old young men with me.  One of my sons was anxious to become a registered voter. My other son “declined” to get involved, yet decided to joke around with people in the parking lot asking them who they voted for, which I told him he COULDN’T do, no matter how charming he thought he was.  Then there was my nephew, who also really wanted to register to vote. As a side note right here I have to say I found turning 18 rather anti-climatic, yet these kids find simple joy in the fact that they can legally purchase lottery tickets, get a checking account, and vote. 

Back to my nephew though…. I told him he was welcome to ride along, but since he did not live in our neighborhood, and in fact not even the City of Green Bay, it was doubtful they would let him register to vote at our polling venue.  Still, I have to hand it to him, he tried. He almost pulled a fast one, as the nice elderly woman who was helping the boys was asking about his address.  Of course he handed her a check stub of his with his address on it (his main concern being she would know how much he made, rather than the fact that he wasn’t in the appropriate place to register).  And finally she noticed it, saying “Oh, you can’t register here!  You live in Suamico!”  He did that “Awww seriously! Darn it!” thing that teenagers do when she told him. Of course the worker called many different places to give him the information about where he SHOULD go.  As she was doing this, Zak, my nephew was taking cookies off of the “snack table.” (Wow, I am kind of liking this voting at a church, because you get a small meal while you are there!)  I walked up to him and said “I told you that you couldn’t vote here because you don’t live here.”  I asked him if he knew where to go in Suamico to vote. He said “Yea, but it doesn’t matter, I am not driving ALL THE WAY to Suamico just to vote.”  With a perplexed look on my face I said, “Um yea, but Zak, you LIVE in Suamico.  Eventually you have to go home.”  He said, “Well I just want to hang out with my cuz’s right now instead.” It’s a shame that the voter registration workers didn’t buy into the “home is where the heart is or where your cousins live” theory.

Myself, I did get to vote, and they didn’t even check my I.D. to verify I was who I said I was.  But you know what, if they had asked me for it, I wouldn’t have minded at all. After all, I have to show I.D. to check out a library book, buy a bottle of wine, and make changes to my mobile phone plan at the Verizon store, so I would gladly show my I.D. to vote.  After all, I wouldn’t want just any person walking in and pretending to be me and take away my freedom to have my say about who is elected!

You Know What It Is!

Green and Yellow! Green and Yellow!  That is what the bartender was shouting most of the evening our first night on vacation in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic. My brother-in-law was wearing a Packer hat, which helped us to not only be tagged as Green Bay Packer fans, but also became a magnet to our fellow Wisconsinites staying at the same resort as us on vacation. Seven days in paradise surrounded by white sand beaches, palm trees, and “pretty blue water” (as my husband calls it).

View of Now Larimar Resort taken from the beach

My husband, Jason and me on in front of the "pretty blue" Caribbean Sea on beach of our resort

Just a few tips for any travelers contemplating a vacation to the Dominican:

Dress for tropical weather even if you are flying out of Wisconsin.  The Punta Cana airport is an open-air concept (as are most of the buildings in the Dominican.)  You will be standing in line for a long time in the heat to go through the very inefficient process of obtaining a tourist card.  First you will wait in a long line to get to a booth where you pay $10 per person to obtain a “tourist card.”  That person will hand you a receipt. You will then go to another line and hand that receipt to another person, who will hand you another sort of ticket.  Then you will go up to a booth and show your passport and that ticket (and some paperwork the airline crew won’t quite be sure about how you should fill out – no worries, the person at the booth barely looks at it).  Then they will give you the ticket thing and your passport back.  You can probably toss that ticket in the garbage at that point, because despite it being so important that you had to go through all those steps to get it, no one will ever look at it again. 

Don’t expect the food to be what you are used to at home.  We always assume hot food will be hot and cold food will be cold.  Not really the case there.  Remember they are catering to people not only from the U.S., but also from France, Russia, Canada, Poland, Germany, etc. etc.  The buffet is scattered with foods that you won’t understand and you won’t really know what goes with what. The longer you are there, the better it will get, though it is probably just the fact that you are getting used to it. The Dominican people are SO nice, but they really want you to get service with class, which means they want you to have it the way THEY want you to have it, which is not necessarily the way YOU want it!  You aren’t at Burger King, so quit whining about it, and appreciate the fact that you are eating your lunch surrounded by palm trees in paradise.  Order the cocktail of the day and EVERYTHING will taste better!  Men, BRING closed toe shoes, because the dinner restaurants will not let you in without them.  Although our newfound friend from Appleton found a way around that by wearing slippers from the room… AND he got in, no problem.  The beer will be a local beer.  Our resort featured Presidente, which was not exactly “excellentay,”  but again you get used to it and the scenery doesn’t hurt.

Get to know the entertainment committee at your resort. These guys are non-stop FUN.  They work from sun-up until the wee hours of the morning and make you laugh the entire time. On our first morning at the resort, we were approached by Fabio Star (pretty sure that is not his real name) who asked us to go to a special lunch at the Japanese restaurant.  Of course, being suspicious Americans, we wondered what the catch was?  We were convinced he was trying to rope us into buying a condo.  Fortunately, we were wrong, it was simply a way to get a diverse group of guests together to have a lunch and also get to know the entertainment committee. By the end of our stay we were fast friends with the whole crew.  Our mornings spent watching Smiley run around the beach, teach Zumba, convince people to join a volleyball game, the whole time singing and yelling, “I love my job!”  Poor Smiley even roped the boys into a game of water polo, which resulted in one of my brother-in-law Larry’s “near death experiences”, possibly caused by using muscles he didn’t know he had, or maybe it was all of the Bailey’s on ice he drank earlier that day!

My brother-in-law Larry coerced into a St. Patty's day beer drinking contest by Fabio Star (we are still convinced the guy sitting next to him was Dale Earnhardt, Jr.)

Go on excursions!!! We took a 2-hour bus ride to get on a Catamaran to drink and dance for another 30 minutes until we landed on a beautiful island just south of the main island.  Saona Island is a National Park in the Dominican, where some scenes from the 80’s movie “Blue Lagoon” were filmed.  The only people who live on the island are those who work for the Park.  It is on a coral reef, so you have to be careful when you step off of the beach into the water; however, you can see beautiful tropical fish everywhere.  We were served a barbeque lunch and as I was eating, I started crying because I felt so blessed to be there. Raymond, our tour guide on the bus, was so entertaining that the bus ride did not even seem that long.  He pointed out many things along the way, including the fact that the car washes all have a bar attached to them, which we found interesting.  One of the things I wish I had gotten a photo of was a farm field full of cows, which looked like it could be in Wisconsin, except that there was a PALM TREE in the middle of the field.  We also took a snorkeling excursion to swim with nurse sharks and hold stingrays in a penned in area.  The crew on the boat was a blast, although at one point I was worried that Jason, my husband, who is an avid swimmer and lover of marine life, was never going to return to the boat!

Larry, my sister Kim, Jason and me on the Catamaran that took us to Saona Island.

The sun shining through the top of a palm tree - Saona Island

Jason and me getting ready to get on the boat for our snorkeling adventure.

Oh look! Here is a photo of my husband and me. You see me, now if you look right underneath my left armpit, you can see a glimpse of him still snorkeling.  I thought the boat would leave him behind!

Get up early and watch the sunrise over the beach.  It is a beautiful sight, and will set the tone of your mood for the day.  My dear sister, who was stressing about the sale of her home back home and where her family would live until their new house was built, asked my husband and I one morning at breakfast how we could always be in such and upbeat cheery mood every morning.  I just said, “Look at where you are.  Remember on that long bus ride when we were traveling through poorer parts of the country and Raymond told us that some of the poorest people lived there, but they were some of the happiest people you’d ever meet? Take a look around you and you will figure out why.”

Dear Old Navy

My dear friend Joey and I decided to move our Wednesday lunch to a Monday at the mall today.  (The Wednesday lunch has not been happening lately anyhow, something about her gig as The Nanny that is really putting a damper on pitching our Real Housewives of Green Bay do Wednesday Lunch to the networks!)  After receiving a text message (read “cry for help”) notifying me that Target is clearly incorrectly sizing their clothing and something that made her sound like she was starving like a Survivor contestant who does not know how to use that fishing spear thingy, I asked if she wanted to go to lunch.  Of course she did… I had to go to the mall, to Old Navy, to buy a dress for my trip.  I informed her that Old Navy was much kinder with their sizing.  In fact my typical size 9 or 11 shrinks down to a size 3 or 5 in the Old Navy world.  This makes me feel wonderful when I try on my “normal” size clothing and find that miraculously I have shed pounds without even trying and I even went down TWO DRESS SIZES… overnight! (Ok lest you think I am delusional, obviously I know this is not the case, but a girl can dream, can’t she?)

When I walked in, Joey had already scoured the sales rack, but still had not yet found the coveted item of the day…. White pants.  Some might call these “sailor pants.”  It was like looking for a ruby in a mountain of rocks, search as we may, high and low, there seemed not to be one pair of SAILOR pants in a store whose name includes the word Navy.  Now call me crazy, but if you name your store after a maritime division of the military, you would imagine you would stock your shelves with all sorts of clothing that Jackie O. might wear for a day on the yacht, or that Joey M. might wear strolling in the sand, pants rolled up, on the beaches of San Francisco.  I am picturing one of the photos from the Newport News catalog, a little outfit that used to send real printed catalogs and flyers to my home via U.S. Postal Service, showing an abundance of rail thin, modelesque women in these type of sailor pants. Joey would fit right in, as she is slim and probably close to 7 feet tall! Definitely Top Model Worthy…. with a personality.   It was either that or the thought of her in Popeye hat and one of those white and blue striped blouses with the “bib type” collar.  Of course, over lunch she debriefed me regarding the conversation earlier that day when she told her husband that she was looking for a pair of white pants – sailor pants – and he asked her why.  She indicated that since they were going to San Francisco, there would be beaches, leading her to believe there would be sailors or sailboats or the like.  I am not sure what he made of the fact that she envisioned herself hanging out on the beach with sailors, but being the kind of husband anyone would love to have, he went with it, of course after telling her she really had a way of justifying her need for these sailor pants. 

I originally thought of starting a petition to bring the sailor pants to Old Navy.  Or maybe we could start a new store called New Navy – our motto could be “FOR THE SAILOR IN ALL OF US!”  We could give discounts when customers brought in cans of spinach, just like Popeye.  Our mannequins could all be modeled after Olive Oyl.  But then I decided to leave Old Navy alone.  Despite the fact that they do not have sailor pants, they do have friendly salespeople, who humored us enough to remove a dress from a mannequin as I could not find the correct size on the rack, because the only one in that size was clothing a headless mannequin.  And the poor guy sure did struggle with this task, but kept a smile on his face the whole time! 

Judgment Day...

I have officially taken all of my mid-terms and completed all of the homework that needs to be done before my vacation. I am feeling pretty good – accomplished. This morning I found out that I received a 94% on one of my mid-term exams, which I am pleased about.  However, I may have mentioned this before, but being an overachiever and perfectionist, I am always disappointed when I don’t get 100%.  Kind of ridiculous because an A is an A, right? In the grand scheme of things the only people who know what percentage of an A I received would be the instructor and me. Maybe I want to impress the instructor?  Maybe I want to impress myself? Maybe I set such high expectations for myself that I let myself down in situations where most people would not be let down?  At one point in my life a few years ago, I decided it might be better to “aim low.”  I remember telling my sister she should try being an underachiever because a person sometimes gets much more satisfaction out of it. She was stressing about a party she was having and asking me if it was appropriate to serve the food on paper plates.  I told her maybe from now on she should always serve meals on paper plates, because then the one time she broke out the good China, or even plastic plates, people would be impressed and pleasantly surprised.  When people expect less out of you, they are enamored by you when you give them a little bit more.  The problem is when people expect perfection out of you, they are disappointed if you give them any less (even if it’s only 6 percentage points less).  I do that to myself all of the time. Set my goals so high that they are often impossible to reach, and then when I don’t completely meet them, as in the case of the 94% versus 100% on an exam, I am disillusioned with myself.  I am sure that others in my life don’t have such high expectations of me. They probably see me more objectively than I see myself, knowing my flaws, but accepting me for them anyhow… hopefully…

With all of this studying of law I have been doing the past few days, there is a word that keeps coming up.  Judgment.  In terms of the law, a judgment is usually passed by a judge or a jury of you peers. Judgment in the legal world means a conclusion that has been reached based upon evidence presented.  Some times a judgment can be monetary, sometimes compensatory, and sometimes punitive.  A debt to be paid. An act to be performed or ceased. A sentence to be served. However, in our personal lives judgment can be made by anyone we come in contact with.  It is not usually monetary or compensatory, though at times it can be punitive in nature due to how we end up feeling about it.  Much of the time we are judged upon past actions.  A long time ago I read a quote that said “the best way to predict the future is to look at past history.”  Judgment by others is not always bad; sometimes it is brought about by someone who feels it will help us and does not feel they are truly judging.  That is where advice comes in. It goes hand in hand with judgment. Sometimes advice is simply the opinion of another person.  Sometimes opinions and advice are laced with hypocrisy.  It’s easy to give advice to others because unless you are a completely morally corrupt human being, you know the difference between right and wrong.  It is easy to preach to others about what they should and should not do. However, if you are on the receiving end of this, it’s hard not to get upset when the person giving you that advice, should be the one taking it themselves, especially when that advice is unsolicited. Meaning we didn’t ask for it and that the subject being advised upon was brought up by the advisor assuming you wanted advice about something you weren’t even discussing.  The world would be a lovely place if we could all take a good look in the mirror before we open our mouths. There is no way to understand what another person has gone through, is going through, unless you have been through it yourself.  (I often have to bite my own tongue in these situations.) Maybe try to walk a mile in my purple snakeskin boots before you judge. And be careful, because they are 4 inch heels, so like me, you might just trip and fall occasionally – just pick yourself back up and keep walking!!!

Judgment Day

I have officially taken all of my mid-terms and completed all of the homework that needs to be done before my vacation. I am feeling pretty good – accomplished. This morning I found out that I received a 94% on one of my mid-term exams, which I am pleased about.  However, I may have mentioned this before, but being an overachiever and perfectionist, I am always disappointed when I don’t get 100%.  Kind of ridiculous because an A is an A, right? In the grand scheme of things the only people who know what percentage of an A I received would be the instructor and me. Maybe I want to impress the instructor?  Maybe I want to impress myself? Maybe I set such high expectations for myself that I let myself down in situations where most people would not be let down?  At one point in my life a few years ago, I decided it might be better to “aim low.”  I remember telling my sister she should try being an underachiever because a person sometimes gets much more satisfaction out of it. She was stressing about a party she was having and asking me if it was appropriate to serve the food on paper plates.  I told her maybe from now on she should always serve meals on paper plates, because then the one time she broke out the good China, or even plastic plates, people would be impressed and pleasantly surprised.  When people expect less out of you, they are enamored by you when you give them a little bit more.  The problem is when people expect perfection out of you, they are disappointed if you give them any less (even if it’s only 6 percentage points less).  I do that to myself all of the time. Set my goals so high that they are often impossible to reach, and then when I don’t completely meet them, as in the case of the 94% versus 100% on an exam, I am disillusioned with myself.  I am sure that others in my life don’t have such high expectations of me. They probably see me more objectively than I see myself, knowing my flaws, but accepting me for them anyhow… hopefully…

With all of this studying of law I have been doing the past few days, there is a word that keeps coming up.  Judgment.  In terms of the law, a judgment is usually passed by a judge or a jury of you peers. Judgment in the legal world means a conclusion that has been reached based upon evidence presented.  Some times a judgment can be monetary, sometimes compensatory, and sometimes punitive.  A debt to be paid. An act to be performed or ceased. A sentence to be served. However, in our personal lives judgment can be made by anyone we come in contact with.  It is not usually monetary or compensatory, though at times it can be punitive in nature due to how we end up feeling about it.  Much of the time we are judged upon past actions.  A long time ago I read a quote that said “the best way to predict the future is to look at past history.”  Judgment by others is not always bad; sometimes it is brought about by someone who feels it will help us and does not feel they are truly judging.  That is where advice comes in. It goes hand in hand with judgment. Sometimes advice is simply the opinion of another person.  Sometimes opinions and advice are laced with hypocrisy.  It’s easy to give advice to others because unless you are a completely morally corrupt human being, you know the difference between right and wrong.  It is easy to preach to others about what they should and should not do. However, if you are on the receiving end of this, it’s hard not to get upset when the person giving you that advice, should be the one taking it themselves, especially when that advice is unsolicited. Meaning we didn’t ask for it and that the subject being advised upon was brought up by the advisor assuming you wanted advice about something you weren’t even discussing.  The world would be a lovely place if we could all take a good look in the mirror before we open our mouths. There is no way to understand what another person has gone through, is going through, unless you have been through it yourself.  (I often have to bite my own tongue in these situations.) Maybe try to walk a mile in my purple snakeskin boots before you judge. And be careful, because they are 4 inch heels, so like me, you might just trip and fall occasionally – just pick yourself back up and keep walking!!!

Is Everyone Always a Winner?

It is officially “mid-term review” week, meaning not only do I have an arsenal of homework to do before the end of next week, but I also need to study the finer parts of employment law and civil litigation.  Being a complete overachiever, I will be unhappy with anything less than an A on these exams. Of course, any old A is not good enough for me much of the time.  You might say an A is an A, but in my mind, I want to get 100% on everything, which we all know is just not possible! No one is perfect, everyone has room for improvement. Yet when I get 98 ½ points out of 100 on an exam, I am the most likely person to go talk to the instructor to try and at least get a ½ point more on it – especially if it is an essay question. My handwriting is horrendous, so the fact that we have to write essay answers out with a pen rather than type them, often does not serve me well.  Last semester part of one of my essay answers should have read “interpretation of the Constitution BY the Supreme Court”, but instead I wrote something that looked like “interpretation of the Constitution OF the Supreme Court.”  The teacher put a nice question mark and asked me to explain what the Constitution of the Supreme Court is?  Right – it DOESN’T exist. The instructor in my scenario above could have easily “given” me the points by assuming I meant to write something different.  But what if I didn’t? What if I really didn’t know what I was talking about? What is the moral of the story here? (Ok, I am not sure there IS one – but I am going to try and conjure one up!)  In order to do well on an exam, you MUST study. In order to succeed in the work world, you must excel at your job. 

Although, if what I am saying above is true, why is it no longer “fair” to keep score at young children’s soccer games? Why does everyone get a trophy and told everyone is a winner?  I understand I might sound jaded. You might think that I don’t understand the reason why some don’t want our children to be so competitive at a young age because we don’t want our children to have hurt feelings, but I also take issue with this. In some ways, will this “everyone’s a winner” idealism leave them ill prepared for the real world?  For college and for the work world?  Will they grow up to think that no matter what everything will work out ok because otherwise it wouldn’t be fair?  And perhaps even think if it doesn’t go their way, they can do something to fix it, whether it is sign a petition or complain about it on Facebook?  It’s something to really think about, isn’t it?

School, Cars and Goodbyes

It’s hard to believe that spring break is only a few weeks away.  I cannot even begin to think about spring break until midterms are over.  Tomorrow I have my first quiz of the semester and I am crazy nervous about it.  For some reason I have 50 pages of notes to study for a 20 point quiz and though much of it is review, I am overwhelmed with information.  At some point our brains must hit maximum capacity, right? What happens when my brain is overloaded with information? Does my head implode? I spoke with my sister today and we agreed that we both have inherited some kind of neurotic gene that makes us worry incessantly.  Even when something good happens, we will think of the worst-case scenario.  I need to stop living my life waiting for the other shoe to drop.  Though I wouldn’t mind if a pair of shoes dropped as long as they designer Manolo Blahnik disco shoes, worthy of a night at Studio 54. 

Amidst all of the chaos that is every day life, our family had to say goodbye to and oldie but goodie last Friday.  Our precious 2000 Oldsmobile Alero had to be towed away to auto salvage graveyard, where old cars go to die.  Being the emotional nightmare that I am, after being handed a generous check from the salvage yard I turned around and took one last look and shed a few tears.  The Alero is by no means a luxury car.  In fact I believe somewhere back in 2002 or 2003 they stopped production on Oldsmobiles all together. Yet this was the first car my husband and I purchased together as a married couple, with both of our names on the title.  This car has been with us through trips to the country, trips to the city, camping trips, also driving through snowstorms and torrential rain.  This car has seen its share of sand from the beach, fast food wrappers from the kids, and even a little snot from our daughter when she was little.  It has been filled with car seats, dog and dog hair, luggage, winter hats found shoved under the seat in summer, schoolbooks and backpacks. It also has been the courier of some of the most precious cargo I could think of.  My husband, my friends, my pets, my mother, my sister, my children, my children’s friends.  And in the past year it has been the primary vehicle for my teenage twin boys.  The Alero has made late night Taco Bell runs and countless trips to the gas station because mom just needs a Coke.  It has sat parked outside of Franklin Middle School as one of the boys waited to pick their sister up.  It has sat in the parking lot of West High School, or on the street outside of the school.  It has been parked in friend’s driveways, family’s driveways; it had an argument with a fire hydrant …. And it lost.  It has spent hours in the parking lot of PDQ Car Wash or McDonalds, while one or the other of our teenage sons was working. So I want to take a moment on my blog to honor the Alero…. You weren’t just a car Oldsmobile Alero, you were my friend.