It's Not a Cult

I have been to L1thuan1an camp and back!

There is no air conditioning at L1thuan1an camp. There is no Internet and no cell phone service. You share a bathroom with ten other families, you sleep in a bunk bed, and you let your children run rampant sporting Kool-Aid mustaches. All in all, it's a jolly good time.

I've told you a little bit about my family's cultural background, yes? But I can't recall whether I mentioned that V-meister and J-dog are bilingual. I've been speaking L1thuan1an with them since they were babies, so they are both fluent. And, see, there's this total immersion sleepaway camp in Michigan that I used to attend as a child where we conversed in our mother tongue, drank Tang, sang ballads, folk danced, and occasionally re-enacted ancient pagan solstice rituals. It was always the highlight of my year.

I loved it so much that I used to be inconsolable for weeks after returning home. When I became too old to attend as a camper, I signed up to be a counselor. So, when the opportunity presented itself to attend a weeklong family camp, the Ramas were among the first in line to attend - even the P-Dawg who has not a lick of L1thuan1an in him, went with us.

He was quite a trooper, eating cold beet soup and kugelis (potato and egg casserole) with the best of them, teaching a childrens' juggling class, participating in a campfire skit, and learning a few choice L1thuan1an phrases ("Let us drink ale.")

Now we're back, fighting off a summer sickness and digging out from underneath a mountain of laundry. But it was definitely worth it.


Me, running an obstacle course - and moving very quickly, I might add.


Obstacle course, leg two: pile diving off a picnic table


The V-meister and I performing in front of the campfire.


The V-meister and her cousin dressed up for L1thuan1a's one thousandth birthday party. (Can I get a what? what!) It is actually older than that, but was first mentioned by name in the annals of history about a thousand years ago.

So we had a birthday party. The kids dressed up all medieval-like, ate pizza and cake, and later watched Shrek II dubbed over in L1thuan1an. And while they did, we adults drank mead and ate whole chickens with our bare hands in the next room over.

Okay, not really, but we had a beer pairing dinner featuring everything from maple cured ham, to Lithuanian garlic bread with Havarti dip, to cured salmon finger sandwiches, to shrimp gumbo, split pea soup, black bean chili, and sour cherry pie. It was a pretty sweet birthday party.











Some other scenes from our trip:


The P-Dawg posing in front of some nature and a couple of SUVs.


The P-Dawg, preparing to juggle raw eggs over my mother's head as part of a campfire stunt.


Thorn Lake ("Spyglys")


The beach at dusk.


A cross. L1thuan1ans were one of the last in Europe to convert, but now they're as Catholic as they get.


That's all for now. I hope to be back on a fairly regular posting schedule soon!

I Took a Vacation

I've been on vacation, my peeps. As you may have surmised, I went AWOL on the blog, but I also took a couple of trips, including one with family and a group of good friends on Lake Michigan:


The blue house is where we stayed.


V-meister on the beach where we played.


J-dog reveling in the feeling of wet sand between his toes.


Rima and P-Dawg Jolie-Pitt-Rama


Rima "Baywatch" Rama.



My friend Vida at the dinner table, eagerly anticipating the evening's repas of wagyu steaks, lemon chive smashed potatoes and fresh greens. Her husband, Chef V, cooked our fabulous dinners. While the men gathered 'round the kitchen island to keep him company, we ladies sipped adult beverages out on the deck:


"We don't cook, but we do chill."

One day we went cherry picking, and V baked this pie:

It was the best pie I ever put in my pie hole.

Evenings, we'd sing by the fire pit while Derek played guitar:





We made wreaths out of wildflowers.


And danced ancient Lithuanian folk dances by twilight.

It was the kind of vacation I've wanted to take ever since V-meister and J-dog were born: a large house, a beach, good friends, good food, good drink, and sunkissed children scampering about. Bliss!

In short, I've simply been enjoying myself and seeing to it that my kids have the lazy, unregimented kind of summer I remember from my own childhood - full of slow as molasses mornings, picnics, sprinklers, sandboxes, sidewalk chalk, afternoons at the pool, ice cream, and morning cartoons.

It's been good. But I've been thinking . . .

"Perhaps I should dust off the old blog."

Some photos in this post were unabashedly pilfered from the Facebook pages of my friends.

Send in the Clowns

The hubster and I decided to give massotherapy a try over our anniversary getaway weekend.

As spa virgins, we were anxious about the rules of etiquette.

Because we are two people who will spend a good half hour debating whether or not to tip the airport shuttle driver (And if so, how much? Should we slip it to him during a handshake or just run up and throw all our change in his hand? What if the exchange is fumbled and our meager contribution ends up on the ground? We would never be able to ride the airport shuttle again, etc., etc.), we spent a great deal of time before our scheduled spa appointment discussing various scenarios.

The P-Dog, for example, was prepared to don his bathrobe whilst in our hotel room, then hoof it through the series of interconnected tunnels that lead from the hotel to the spa in his robe and slippers. We discussed this for at least ten minutes before deciding it’s possible they may have robes for us to change into at the spa and darn it all to heck, we’ll just go in our street clothes.

But.

To shower or not to shower?

To shave or not to shave?

And the biggest question of all:

Rimarama: Are you going to take your pants off?”

P-Dog: “Are you?”

Rimarama: “What if you accidentally pitch a tent?”

Silence.

P-Dog: “I don’t think that’s likely.”

Rimarama: I’m afraid that you'll pitch a tent and that I'll fart. If I am, in fact, able to achieve a state of relaxation.

P-Dog: I guess that’s possible.

Rimarama: Are you insinuating that I would fart during my massage?

And so forth.

On the morning of our appointment, we presented ourselves in the spa reception area, where we were greeted by an attendant who gave us detailed instructions about where each of us was to go and what each of us was to do.

Instructions to which I paid no nevermind because I was too busy trying to decide if I was going to stay in my skivvies or not and fretting over the possibility that the P-Dog might inadvertently pitch a tent. I was prepared to die of embarrassment for him if this should happen, even though he appeared to be untroubled by the possibility.

In the ladies locker room, I was handed a pair of child size slippers in a size five and a half (oh, the injustice!), a one-size-fits-all-except-me robe, a plastic bag I considered puking into, and a locker key.

Once in my spa duds, I really had no idea where to go or what to do. The person who gave me the robe and slippers was nowhere in sight, and I seemed to recall something about meeting up with the P-Dog in the communal area, so I embarked on a little tour.



I got lost and ended up in the bowels of spaland, where I saw some frightening things:

What in God's Name are those nozzles for?

Eventually, an employee found me. She seemed a little skeptical (“Are you sure that’s what they told you?”) when I explained that I had been instructed to come down here and wait for my husband in this here communal area, but she went ahead and summoned him forth from the actual communal area, where he had been contentedly sipping green tea and munching on an apple like a model client.


Once our massages got underway, things went very smoothly. The massage therapists were consummate professionals and I am happy to report that the underwear dilemma turned out to be a non-issue.


I was so relaxed, that when I tried to speak up to tell the massage therapist what a great job she was doing, my words came out all garbled up. Then I just gave up and smiled into my face pillow for the remainder of the session.


It was awesome.

Cigars, Massages, and Bears (Oh My)

Gentle Reader(s), I had myself a vay-kay-shun this weekend!

It was absolutely blissful.

After a brief conniption fit on the drive up when I became convinced that I had left my Ambien sitting on the kitchen counter at home (false alarm), I was able to relax and enjoy my stay at the beautiful Nemacolin Woodlands Resort.

I give Nemacolin near-perfect ratings in all categories except "name appeal," because for all of its charm and luxury, I could not refrain from calling it Nemacolonoscopy Woods all weekend long.

Immediately upon arrival, we made ourselves comfortable in our new digs:

After a brief interlude during which the P-Dog familiarized himself with his surroundings:

"According to my calculations, there should be a large Tiffany skylight right about here."

It was off to the cigar bar in which Bill Clinton himself was once-upon-a-time presented with a very special gift:

Bill to self: "I know just the place for that cee-gar!"

The next morning, we headed to the Woodlands Spa for our appointments (more on that tomorrow):

Later, we took a hike around the grounds:

"Ohmahgawd this totally sucks I'm supposed to be on vacation!"

Where there was no end to my delight upon this discovery:

There Was a Nature Preserve There

But I didn't get too close this time, because:

I Saw That Episode of Lost!

I really don't understand why National Geographic Explorer has not contacted me yet.

After a spectacular dinner, during which we were serenaded by a bagpiper on the 18th hole of the green:

. . . .We did a lot of other fun stuff.

The only low point of the whole weekend was when I hurled the craptastic in-room blow drier across our suite, nearly missing the P-Dog's beautiful head on the occasion of our seventh wedding anniversary. Because if you are going to pay an arm and a leg to stay at the resort whose personal airstrip Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt used when they flew in to visit Frank Lloyd Wright’s Falling Water, you’re going to want a blow drier with more horsepower than a puppy fart and one that does not cause you to break out in a hot sweat and begin foaming at the mouth while you are using it:

This Blow Drier Can Blow Me

Stay tuned for an account of my dreaded, yet surprisingly rewarding couples massage experience!

Somebody Save Me From Myself

I’m all in a tizzy today because this afternoon, the P-Dog and I are leaving for a short vacation, sans enfants.

It’s just a little weekend trip to a spa/resort a few hours from here, but we plan to sleep in till noon every day, take our meals sitting down, and swear out loud at every turn.

As is always the case before any trip we take without the kids, I am starting to get zippy and my OCD tendencies are kicking in to full gear.

Not a single item of dirty laundry may be left in the basement, not a dirty dish in the dishwasher, not one item of garbage in the bin. If any of these conditions equal “true,” and I were to realize it on the drive up, my mind would simply leave my body and return home to reside in the dishwasher or dryer, or, more likely, the garbage can.

I must line up all of our shoes in the foyer according to size, straighten the hand towels on their racks so the hems are perfectly lined up, and make sure that not a drawer or cabinet is left ajar. All stray hairs must be eliminated from the sink and tub, and the calendar days must be marked off to reflect the day on which we will return.

If we return.

All this on top of the necessity to pack enough crap to last me through an exile worthy of a queen and the nagging suspicion that this act of selfishness and greed (the vacation) constitutes an enormous withdrawal from the Bank of Equilibrium and will naturally come around to bite me in me bum in the shape of harm to my children.

See why my panties are all in a knot?

I’m really going to need that couples aromatherapy massage we signed ourselves up for.

Hopefully this time I’ll work up the courage to go.

I am petrified.

Besides the sheer terror of disrobing (I'm keeping my drawers on, y'all), there are other issues. Years ago, I had a decidedly unpleasant experience on a visit to the fatherland involving my wrinkled Auntie L, a cedar wood sauna, and an ancient Nordic massage therapy that included a wet birch branch and vigorous thrashing. And because I didn’t have the foresight to pack my swimsuit on my mid-winter sojourn to the frozen north, I had to endure this procedure in my birthday suit itself. It’s a post for another day.

So.

I’ll be MIA for a few days, but with any luck, I'll be back next week, bright-eyed and bushy tailed.