Making plans…

“We need to go away Alice, before I “rip someone’s head off and shit down their throat.”

I remember that line, or something similar from some movie, perhaps. It doesn’t matter. It is time for a little R&R, VaCa, a quick Holiday as they say.

“Alice, we’re hitting the road for a few days. You’ll love it!”

“If it is anything like the intermittent doggie day care and daily abandonment my life now involves, I’m sure I will love it.”

We surf the web for rustic, one bedroom, secluded camps on a lake. Something that will afford us total solitude in a new surrounding. I’m not sure what Alice’s preferences are beyond being there, so I hone my list of amenities to the bone.

Airbnb, Homeaway, FRBO, the classifieds, and real estate sites. I’ve perused them all and I have to say the best deals most likely to fit my budget and tastes are on the less traditional listings. I have to wonder if someone renting a remote cabin on a lake to just anyone like Alice and me, might not harbor some sociopathic traits? Or do they wonder the same about who they are renting to? It is the wild west out there. I’ve done the Internet dating thing (very briefly) and as that famous cartoon says, “On the Internet, no one knows you’re a dog.”

cartoon caption by Peter Steiner and published by The New Yorker on July 5, 1993.

Being off the grid and anonymous is overdue. It’s that time of year when soon the world will fall back into a routine and the days will shorten. But for the moment, it is also the beginning of the political warm-up for the presidential elections and with New Hampshire being a bell-weather state, we are awash with candidates. This leads to excessive advertising on the nightly news and robo-dialer telephone marathons. My stress level at the intrusiveness of it all is running high. Best to vacate the premise for somewhere with no internet and no cell service.

Yes, I could unplug the phone or just not answer it. I’m generally deep in my mind, writing monumental thoughts, when it bleats out a disturbingly urgent ring.  It has now officially interrupted in my ruminations and must be shut up. During the last presidential election, my phone was without service for 3 months while Fairpoint (unfair-point) went out on strike. That was a blessing in disguise. This time I think I will flee to the woods and the water for a few days.

My previous, official vacation, (where I paid money to go and be anywhere but home) was in 2012, Jamaica with Michael. No phones, no internet, no way to stay connected so we totally disconnected. I started/worked hard on the first draft of Therapeutic Misadventures and found strength in sitting down to write every day. A project that took on a life of its own and allowed me to leap, for many months after, into another skin.

Thanks to my loving Doppelganger, I had a respite from daily life in 2013 when she bought me a ticket to Charleston. I was immersed for a glorious weekend with her in the Southern life and found much to write about. But I wasn’t disconnected. That is the need I feel now.

I am leaping into a much smaller pond and taking Alice whether she agrees or not. Alice never disagrees with the word, “Go?” We have been together for 5 years now. Some of our parts are worn shiny where love rubbed our fur off, others sag into luxurious folds. I think she hates it when people remark, “Owners and dogs often look alike!” The last thing she wants is to be mistaken for a 60-something, skinny old lady.  And there is no one I would rather go on vacation with…