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Printed from https://p15.writing.com/main/books/item_id/1512801-The-Way-of-the-Zern/sort_by/entry_order DESC, entry_creation_time DESC/page/10
Rated: 13+ · Book · Family · #1512801
It's who we are. It's what we stare at in the middle of the night. It's a bug zapper.
My friends,

When we were young and newly hatched—also young and in love—my husband and I lived with our four young children on the Space Coast of Florida. The massive propulsion of rocket and shuttle launches from Cape Kennedy often rocked the windows and doors of our little love cottage. We were always properly respectful and impressed by the reach of mankind’s achievements.

It was a point of pride to stop whatever we were doing (dishes, dinner, dancing, sleeping, fist fighting, etc.) to watch the eastern horizon—hands on hearts, tears in eyes—as the United States of America raced into the frontier of space.

One deep, dark morning (about 2:00 am) I shook my husband awake to watch yet another triumph of human advancement.

“Get up,” I mumbled to Sherwood, “the shuttle’s going up. We gotta’ watch.”

Sherwood moaned, “The garbage is out all ready. Let me die.” He did not open his eyes.

“Come on. We should watch. Night launches are amazing.”

He dragged himself upright and clung to the window ledge behind our bed. We knelt, with our chins braced on the ledge, our bleary eyes fixed on a blazing light in the eastern sky. We watched. The light did not appear to move. We stared some more. The light remain fixed. We struggled to focus. The light blazed away.

We waited for the light to fade into the blackness of space. It did not. We watched and watched and watched. The light stubbornly refused to move.

At last, collapsing back into my pillow I said, “Honey, go back to sleep.”

Sounding confused, miffed, and a little whiney Sherwood asked, “Why?”

“Because for the last eight to ten minutes we’ve been staring at our next door neighbor’s bug zapper.”

He went back to sleep. And I lived to worship at the altar of space exploration another day.

This story pretty much sums up who we are, and how we got this way—excessive staring at bug zappers. And this is my blog, a space-age way of recording one’s thoughts, ideas, embarrassments, and foibles for the entire known world. Once upon a time, I would have made this record on papyrus, rolled it up, stuffed it into a ceramic jar, and asked to have the whole thing buried with me in my sarcophagus. I still might.

Disclaimer: Some of the stuff you will read here is true. Some of it is not. Some of it is the result of wishful thinking. Some of it is the result of too much thinking, and some of it is the result of too little thinking. But all of it will be written with joy and laughter, because the alternative is despair and weeping, and isn’t there more than enough of that stuff out there?

Thank you for your support,

Linda (Zippity the Zapped) Zern
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August 10, 2015 at 8:38am
August 10, 2015 at 8:38am
#857000
Least favorite question of all time:

“You know what you should do?”

It’s the question I am most often greeted with when my grown children and their growing children show up at my house. Sometimes there’s a list. With numbers.

They jump out of their various mini-vans and yelp, “You know what you should do first about that big mud hole in your driveway?”

Or . . .

“You know what you should do second after you fix that big mud hole in your driveway?”

Or it’s the same question with a technological twist . . .

“You know what you should do? You should be on Instagram. Are you?”

And then I have to ask questions of my own. “What’s Instagram?” or “What mud hole?” or “Why do I feed you people constantly?”

My grown children are full of great advice on what I should do. I suppose it’s payback for all the years I stood at their grubby childish elbows telling them how they should live their lives.

For example:

“You know what you should do?” I used to say. “You should shovel the garbage out of this bedroom of yours before I set it on fire or strip it down to a bare mattress on a bare floor and put you in solitary confinement. That’s what you should do.”

Recently, I’ve been working on marketing strategies to sell my latest book “Beyond the Strandline” which means that I’ve had to learn more about marketing than I care to know—now or ever. Slowly but surely, I’m learning the fine art of asking people for money. It’s not my favorite learning curve.

And if I had my way, I’d stand on street corners with boxes of books, handing them out for free, strangely, my one and only investor objects to this business model. So, I struggle with the algorithm of “hand me some cash and I’ll tell you a story.”

“You know what you should do,” my daughter said. “You should be on Instagram. That’s the cool new way of ‘getting your stuff out there,’ Mom.”

I groaned, loudly. “I don’t want to.”

“Sure. It’s easy,” she grabbed my phone. “What’s your I-Tunes password?”

And so the agony began. An hour later, after re-setting seven to one-hundred passwords, losing all my credit cards (inside my own house) and wrestling with a dozen or more blank screens, I am on Instagram.

I still don’t know what it is.

You know what I should do?

Hire an admin.

Unfortunately, administrative assistants want to be paid—with money.

Linda (Books 4-Sale) Zern















August 7, 2015 at 7:45am
August 7, 2015 at 7:45am
#856710
My husband’s family was horrified when I decided to breastfeed our first baby. They insisted I remove myself from the public rooms, retreat to a bedroom, cover myself with a blanket, and nurse my baby in shame and private.

Which was rich coming from a family that regularly discussed—at the dinner table—the various uses of whipped cream in dating situations. Boobs covered in whipped cream, complete with a cherry on top, was considered wildly humorous. Breastfeeding was considered . . . well . . . icky.

It was confusing at best.

When I had our second baby, I said, “Nope. Not going to the bedroom of breastfeeding shame. If you want I’ll cover the baby’s head with whipped cream and call myself dessert. But that’s it. Now back down.”

They backed down.

Over the years I’ve tried to figure out the mixed messages that society expresses when it comes to female breasts. Sorry, I got nothing. Society is nuts.

However, here are a couple of random observations on the subject:

God gave women boobs and then said, “When you can get a guy to look you in the eye, even if it’s for thirty seconds, marry him.” NOTE: It’s still good advice.

National Geographic magazine did more for modern underwear makers, than any advertising agency on Madison Avenue ever thought of—ever.

Women in the 1970’s burned their bras to protest the repressive 1950’s when Madison Avenue had decided women’s breasts should be shaped like nuclear missile silos.

Then something called “Cooper’s Droop” was discovered. Women put their bras back on in the 1980’s and invented Victoria’s Secret.

The secret was that Victoria was a hooker.

Breastfeeding threats are the best threats on earth to control older children. When my kids gave me a hard time about pulling the plug on leaving the park, the swimming pool, or the Little League Field, I would simply shout, “Come get in this van in three minutes, or I will tell everyone at this park/pool/field that I breastfed you and for how long.” Enough said.

When I got married I was still wearing a training bra. No joke. It was true love on my husband’s part.

Once you get them trained, they’re kind of fun, because being a girl is fun.

Nothing has changed. GQ magazine this month, a men’s magazine for men, has a picture of a topless girl wearing a flower lei over her boobs—sort of. Men are dopey.

Feminists would have us believe that there is no biological difference between boys and girls. No seriously, I had a college professor tell me that. “If girls were treated like boys they’d be big and strong too.” I noticed that Dr. Kooper was wearing a bra, and I was pretty sure I could take her in an arm wrestling contest.

Boys of all ages find girl stuff fascinating or as my grandson Conner asked me one fine day, “YaYa, why you got so many booby bras?”

Or as my daughter (mother of four boys and one future bra wearer) said, “Oh no, I don’t go anywhere near the underwear aisle of the store, or all four of them will run through the bra section, fondling the merchandise, yelling, ‘Booby bras, booby bras,’ at the top of their lungs.”

Therefore we can conclude, who the heck knows? But as a friend of mine remarked, “Burn my bra? Bras are expensive.”

I know, right?

Linda (Hang Ten) Zern














August 4, 2015 at 4:05pm
August 4, 2015 at 4:05pm
#856489
A GREAT AMERICAN BOOK LAUNCH * BEYOND THE STRANDLINE * AMAZON.COM * LINDA L. ZERN * AUGUST 5, 2015



29 FIVE STAR REVIEWS AND COUNTING . . .


Seventeen-year-old Tessla and her teenage sisters, Ally and ZeeZee, live by one rule: don’t venture beyond the perimeter of the family ranch. Years ago, solar flares burned the power grid to ashes, plunging the country into mayhem and instability, but as long as the girls stay behind the line of their grandfather’s property, they remain protected from savagery.

But when the call of the unknown proves too alluring for rebellious Ally to resist, Tessla must enlist mysterious Richmond Parrish to help rescue Ally from the trouble she’s walked into.

The Florida coast is overrun with warring tribes and pirates, and orphaned children-turned-soldiers roam the land.

The quest to find Ally leads Tess and Richmond into the epicenter of this barbaric new world, but even if they find her, now that they’ve left the safety of life at the S-Line Ranch, will they really be able to go back?

Beyond the Strandline is a thrilling story about the struggle to stay human in an inhumane world, the importance of emergency preparedness, the illusion of safety, and the power of love to redeem even the most desperate.
August 3, 2015 at 1:01pm
August 3, 2015 at 1:01pm
#856334
Not too many years ago, the very best scientists thought that scrambling the brain matter of mentally challenged folks with the equivalent of a knitting needle was a fine idea. Some of these “mentally challenged” folks were not challenged at all. They were just annoying. Didn’t matter. Scramble. Scramble. Scramble.

Having read a little bit about the lobotomy years, I remain somewhat skeptical of the “no problem-easy-peasy” claims of the scientific community. I’m also wary of knitting needles.

Computers are, quite possibly, the lobotomizing knitting needles of our time.

I write books—all kinds, all genres. I am a self-published author mainly because I did NOT have an affair with anyone of fame or fortune and then write a tell-all about it, thus guaranteeing me a fifty thousand minimum advanced sales number. After reading that last sentence I realize I should clarify. I’ve never had an affair—period, at all, ever. It’s the literary equivalent of having had a lobotomy.

Anyway.

Computers. They be dumb.

My new book BEYOND THE STRANDLINE went live last night on Amazon. A couple of people found out and started posting reviews (which is WAY COOL) and then one or two others saw the early reviews and wondered if they should post reviews even though I said that Wednesday is launch day, but now it’s NOT so I decided to send out reminder emails to my advanced copy readers a little early.

There are a lot of email reminders to send.

“Easy. Peasy,” said my computer savvy family. “Any monkey with a lobotomy can do it.”

Sure. Sure. I thought.

Turns out . . . it’s a pain in the brain.

“Won’t there be too many?” I queried, as I tried to figure out emailing more than one cuddle bunny friend at a time.

“Clop,” said my computer-loving husband. He may have said nope. Hard to tell when his head is covered with earphones, microphones, and wires.

Slowly, painfully I pasted, copied, clicked, closed, and opened. Nothing worked. He rolled toward me in his roller chair to demonstrate more pasting, coping, clicking, closing, and opening.

Finally, he turned to me and stated flatly, “See?”

I didn’t.

He said, “See?” again and louder, with a hint of impatient frustration.

I felt like a monkey with a lobotomy.

For two hours I stabbed and pounded at the keys, trying to do as he did.

I clicked SEND.

A message blared back at me: TOO MANY MAIL RECIPIENTS. FAILURE IS INEVITABLE. GIVE UP. GO AWAY. YOU BE DUMB.

I wept.

My husband rolled at me in his roller chair again. He cut, pasted, shifted, farted, clicked, and Google searched and finally SENT.

If I had to repeat what he did . . . well . . . let’s just say that science be fine when it works, but when it doesn’t and you have to have a degree in Robot Vision to figure out what’s what you might as well take up knitting.

Linda (Stamp Licker) Zern

















July 28, 2015 at 8:21am
July 28, 2015 at 8:21am
#855642
Yankee women are tough, according to one of my dear friends from the frozen intrepid north.

“We women of New England can give birth on an iceberg, swim back to the mainland across the North Sea, while carrying our newborns in our teeth—naked.”

“The mother is naked or the baby’s naked?”

“Both.”

New England women are tough. Right up until they come to semi-tropical Florida, that is. Give me one Yankee woman from Connecticut for a weekend, and I’ll show you a former Navy Lieutenant rolling around in someone’s St. Augustine grass shrieking “Is it on me? Is it on me?”

Two words. Tree frogs.

Tree frogs are sucker footed, car hopping, slime flinging, gooey-tongued attack animals. They are notorious stowaways and lurkers. It’s common knowledge here in the semi-tropics.

Tree frogs lurk in car doors and automobile air conditioning vents; they cling to windshield wiper blades and plot ways to leap through car windows so they can plaster themselves to northerners—also everybody else. Tree frogs are not Florida’s greatest ambassadors of good will, in my opinion.

“Let’s head over to the beach and experience the glory of a Florida horizon line,” I said to my Yankee friend, anxious that she had a positive semi-tropical visit. She’d already excreted enough sweat to fill a kid’s wading pool in the 150% humidity.

She was game—also gamey.

My son, Adam, decided to go along for the ride.

When Adam jumped into the backseat of the Grand Am, a tree frog followed. It jumped into the car in an elegant curving arc of slimy tree frog goop, landing with a plop on Adam’s leg. It’s little sucker feet attaching with efficient amphibian sucking action.

Let me be clear.

Adam jumped into the car. The frog jumped in. Adam jumped out—screaming. The tree frog stayed in—clinging wetly.

Panic spread like mildew. My friend was out of that car and sprinting for Maine before you could say “Kermit.”

I tried to appeal to my friend’s Puritan heritage and “can-do” Yankee spirit.

“It’s just a little tree frog. The whole thing could fit on a nickel.” She continued to panic. “You’re too big to swallow. Come back. What’s a little frog toe glue?”

I watched as she stopped, dropped, and rolled her way across a neatly manicured lawn in suburbia. Just in case, the attack frog had secreted itself about her person, I suppose. Adam shuddered and brushed at imaginary suction cup glue on his leg.

My head started to hurt from excessive snorting, howling, and guffawing—all glazed over with a dash of nasal drip.

I kept right on laughing until out of the corner of my sharply trained eye, I caught sight of the tree frog making another grand leap. It jumped over my car seat like a thoroughbred riding to the hounds and landed on my right anklebone. There was a wet sound when it hit and sucked on.

I was out of that car and screaming, “Find it. Find it. Find it,” before you could say sucker feet.

There in a quiet Florida cul de sac, two middle-aged women stood weeping and shuddering. We yelled—okay—I yelled at Adam to begin a perimeter search. My formerly intrepid friend didn’t yell. She just faded away into “no-can-do” whimpering.

“Adam, you have to find it, or I will not hesitate to wreck this car should it jump on me while I’m busy exceeding the speed limit.”

“No-can-do, Mom, I’m still in recovery.”

We looked toward the car. Nothing moved. We looked at each other; no one moved. Time passed. Still nothing.

Without warning or explanation, the nickel sized tree frog jumped out and disappeared into the green, green grass of home. We had been the victims of a drive by frogging . . .

. . . and survived—not gracefully, or well, or even with our self respect in tact—but we had survived.

Bring on the icebergs.

Linda (Two Words) Zern

July 24, 2015 at 6:50am
July 24, 2015 at 6:50am
#855263
I am a southern woman of a certain age, born in a decade known for its stability, modesty, conservatism, and success—even hippies were pro-America. It was a different time. The greatest generation was still alive and bringing Kentucky Fried Chicken for dinner on the weekends to the grandkids.

We had a black and white television and Jiffy Pop was the first product that Madison Avenue seduced us to buy over the airwaves. Marketing was in its infancy.

Now, several way-out decades later, I’m a self-published author in a sex tape kind of world, and I’m having a hard time with self-promotion.

Self-promotion feels like bragging and bragging is bad and when you brag people will tell you that, “children are seen and not heard.”

Oh wait! That’s what my mother used to tell me when I was kid—twenty-four, seven.

So anyway . . . I’m a self-published author, publishing my fifth book, and I’m trying that marketing/self promotion thing for the first time, and it’s confusing. How do I toot my horn louder than the ten-hundred-million other people tooting their horns, many of them without their clothes on, especially when tooting my horn feels vaguely creepy?

Oh well . . . here’s the news. I’ve written my fifth book. BEYOND the STRANDLINE. It’s my first full-length novel. It’s an action, adventure, dystopian, grid-collapse, romance, survival, young adult story set in Central Florida, in the tradition of Pat Frank’s “Alas Babylon.” It’s been edited by a champ and re-edited and then re-checked.

And the advanced reader’s reviews are GLOWING:

“Okay, seriously, I devoured your book.”

“It was awesome.”

“This book has it all.”

“My heart beat faster and faster . . .”

“CAN’T PUT IT DOWN.”

And here’s the best part: I’m not the one saying it without my clothes on!!!

When I was little and I would ask my mother if I was pretty, she would say, “I’m not going to tell you that. I don’t want you to get a big head.”

I don’t want a big head or to make a sex tape or to have to set myself on fire to get attention. I want to write great stories that people enjoy and want to read—and maybe even break even. That would be pretty cool.

Linda (Toot My Own Horn) Zern

















July 20, 2015 at 5:17am
July 20, 2015 at 5:17am
#854854
In the beginning—I sent my children to a school that was REAL. To get to the real school they rode a publically funded, publically fueled big yellow school bus. You know the one; it’s the big yellow vehicle with wheels that go ‘round and ‘round.

The last year that I sent my kids to real school on the big yellow school bus my kindergartener got in big, big trouble.

The crime?

Singing.

The song?

“Peanut Butter, Jelly!”

Maren was a bit of a handful. No! I mean it. She was about as big as a handful of Care Bear fur. The driver of the big, yellow bus used to have to reach down and pull her up the first step of the bus.

When I took her to school for sign-up day, I told school officials, “She’s not ready.” A quick vision of Maren’s school checkup at our general practitioners flashed through my memory. When we tried to get her to stand on the big girl scale she refused. Instead, she folded her legs up underneath her bottom like a baby bird waiting for crushed crickets.

The nurses finally had to put her in the baby scale. She fit. Her doctor surmised, “She’s not ready.”

At Geneva Elementary and after expressing my concerns, I was petted, coddled, and dismissed. “Oh now, Mom, she’ll be fine.” Which is an expert’s way of saying, “Oh now, silly Mom, leave this to the paid, public school educated professionals that have a 2.98 grade point average in Crayons: Tools of the Trade.”

I shrugged and waited.

Six weeks later, after extensive testing, evaluating, and coloring inside the lines her teachers called me to a parent teacher meeting, “She’s not ready,” the experts reported.

I smiled and started to hum, “Peanut Butter, Jelly!”

Turns out, she really wasn’t ready. She failed kindergarten.

Why did I wind up homeschooling—back when people were moving to mountaintops and swarming to communes so they could teach their own offspring without fear of jail time?

Because no expert is a bigger expert than this expert when it comes to being an expert on my kindergartener.

Never fear, public school expert! That peanut-butter-jelly singing kid graduated from Stetson University with loads of student debt.

Linda (Hum On) Zern



July 16, 2015 at 12:14pm
July 16, 2015 at 12:14pm
#854519
Occasionally, and under the advisement of my lawyer, I like to share with my readers a disclaimer of sorts, disavowing responsibility for anything I say, type, write, express, indicate, or declare. That’s right. This is my categorical denial. If you were confused or offended by anything I may have written, I’m sorry . . . that you felt that way.

When I was a girl I would have said, “I’m sorry. I was wrong. I wish I could take it back.”

But fashions change and evolve and get a little squishy around the edges.

Now, it’s acceptable to say, “Gee. I’m sorry that you misunderstood the words coming out of my brain. That’s rough . . . for you.”

I’m fifty plus years old, and I’ve seen a lot of changes and so I disclaim:

When I was a girl, female types were burning their bras, freeing their girl bits from the enslavement of elastic and masculine demands for perkier parts. Women literally set their brassieres on FIRE and celebrated droopy boobs.

Now that I’m a grownup, women are building perkier boobs out of plastic, ripping hair out of their follicles with hot wax, and men are getting their own boobs. Perky and bald are IN.

When I was a girl, getting married was considered the old-fashioned, repressive, uptight demand of a morally square society. Being cool and groovy meant NEVER getting married. Shacking up was the hip way. It was the way hip couples gave society the hippy finger. Out of wedlock was IN style.

Now that I’m a grownup EVERYONE wants to get married, order a cake, throw a reception, and get new sheets as gifts from other people. I remain skeptical.

When I was a girl and the president lied he got fired.

Now that I’m a grownup . . . well . . . not so much.

When I was a girl, my grandparents considered collecting social security a moral, ethical, and societal failure. Being dependent on the government was a hideous reminder of The Great Depression and the bread lines that epitomized hitting bottom and it was OUT.

Now that I’m a grownup, figuring out how to get to the front of the bread line is a full time job. Especially for that guy in line at Walmart who declared loudly, “The only work I want to do is walk to the end of my driveway and collect my check.”

Now I’m not saying that the changes I’ve seen are good or bad or gray or nothing. That would be offensive and judgmental. I’m just saying that I’ve seen fifty plus years of stuff, and I’ve read a book or two, and most of the social evolution I have witnessed over time is hilarious—except when it’s not.

Lately, I’m waiting to be impressed by the tens of thousands of Americans who are going to be able to rise up and shout, “Hip. Hip. Hooray. I sure am happy. All my dreams have come true.” We’ll see.

When I was a girl, my mother used to tell me that I’d attract more flies with honey than with vinegar. Gross. Who wants flies? I sure didn’t.

I poured imaginary vinegar over myself in the form of a sharp tongue and a razor edged laugh and sarcasm, let’s not forget sarcasm.

Want to catch flies? Go pour honey over yourself. Want to laugh at the world as it figures out if it wants its boobs droopy or pointy? Hang around. I’m your girl.


Linda (Quick Witness) Zern
July 10, 2015 at 5:44am
July 10, 2015 at 5:44am
#853893
Zern Family Policy on Kidnapping and Other Acts of Piracy



In a great big modern world where travel is supersonic and tweets are faster than lightning that is greased, it’s important to be savvy about the kidnap policies of modern Barbary Pirates, the ransom demands of Somali warlords, and the acceptable amount of time that the terribly young and wildly attractive widow (me) should wait before cashing the life insurance checks.

What!?

Listen, the Malaysian government lost an entire, complete, gigantic 747 airliner. My husband travels a lot and has been known to fly on one of those actual aircraft.

Big plane goes bye-bye. Husband goes bye-bye. It was important to discuss our family ransom/kidnapping/disappeared-off-the-face-of-the-earth policy!

In the days of Queen Victoria pirates sailed around looking for loot, and according to a guy named Wiki, other stuff: “The main purpose of their [pirates called Barbary] attacks was to capture Christian slaves for the Ottoman slave trade as well as the general Muslim market in North Africa and the Middle East.”

Today, pirates are still looking for loot and cash and slaves, but those are mostly for sex. Ransom is big. Kidnapping is a career choice. And when my husband flies off to the ends of the earth to help foreign companies figure out their software knots and tangles, I occasionally contemplate the pirate possibilities.

So here’s the discussion behind the policy:

“So the Malaysians lost a whole airplane,” I observed, sitting next to my husband in our home office, tapping away at my keyboard. “Haven’t you flown on that airplane-losing-Malaysian-airline?”

“Yep.” My husband said. He never complicates our conversations with excessive word use.

“So, what’s the policy? How long should I wait before I cash the life insurance check?”

He looked up from his laptop. He did not blink. He was intrigued. I could tell.

“Okay, here’s the deal,” he said. “All the desk dwellers are probably going to dither around for a bit, if they can’t find any floating seat cushions or Skymall catalogs after the crash, but Oracle is still going to have to pay me until they declare me dead. So here’s my advice, CASH THE CHECKS FAST.”

“Got it.”

We both went back to tap, tap, tapping on assorted computers.

“Okay, so what if you’re taken captive by angry maroons posing as pirates looking for the pin number to our checking account? What’s our policy? To negotiate or not to negotiate.”

“No negotiations.”

“What if they grab you, torture you, record it, and send me the hideous Youtube video.”

“No negotiations and no second mortgages.”

“Okay, but you have to promise me that you’ll be so obnoxious they’ll kill you all the way dead, right off, so I won’t have to worry about you wasting away in a flea infested hut.”

“Got it.”

“But what if they sell you as a sex slave?”

He pondered. “I’ll do my best to make my escape.” He re-pondered. “Or not.”

“And who should I sue?”

“Everyone.”

“Got it.”

So that’s our policy. Cash the checks fast. No negotiations. No second mortgages. And sue everyone.

When I tell people our family policy on kidnapping they tend to be shocked by our cavalier attitude toward tragedy and piracy in general. Then I tell them how rich I’ll be when I cash the checks, and they’re mollified—also a little jealous.

Because money fixes everything, just ask a Barbary pirate.

Linda (Can’t Buy Me Love) Zern





















July 8, 2015 at 2:51am
July 8, 2015 at 2:51am
#853683
My husband is the world traveler. I am the woman that goes with him but not too often. Mostly, I’m the woman who stays at home in my easy chair, staring at a vintage atlas . . . happy . . . that I am not being yelled at by TSA agents.

I know that traveling is the goal of all smarty types. Ask a college student what’s on their future agenda and you’ll hear, “Graduate. Work for a non-profit. Travel.” Apparently, non-profits pay more than they used to pay.

Wishing them well, I say, “Bon voyage” and “Don’t over pack because you’ll be mocked by strangers.”

Seriously, not only is traveling the new standard of “all things meaningful,” it’s traveling while carrying a single pair of underwear and a tiny bottle of hand sanitizer in a worn backpack slung over one languid shoulder. Anything else is considered over packing.

As an older traveler, packing that light can be challenging. I need stuff: shoes that work with a variety of outfits and foot stiffness; a variety of outfits; gummy fiber and other assorted supplements; lotions and potions designed to relieve stiffness, dryness, soreness, hairiness, and rumpledness; enough makeup to cover the ravages of life out in the open, and, of course, a makeup mirror with enough magnification to see craters on the moon.

On a recent trip to North Carolina, I forget the mirror and my face disappeared. It was distressing.

I literally had to stab at where I thought my eyelashes might be when I put on mascara, hoping that I wouldn’t wind up looking like that lady I saw coming out of Home Depot one day. She looked like she’d forgotten her makeup mirror and had used crayons to sketch in the missing bits.

So I travel, once in a while and with way too much luggage. Better that, then wondering where my face went off to without me, and wishing for my vintage atlas and an easy chair.


Linda (Blink Twice) Zern

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