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Tuesday, March 20, 2007

My Weekend...

I love getting away by myself. I usually come back on Sunday night completely relaxed... recharged and refreshed. Which I did this time too, but also very tired! It's taken me a day to recoup!
The Lodge we go to is owned and operated by a group that also has about 12 cabins, a larger camp building (to house 40 people) and a campground. During the summer, it is mostly rented by summer camp type groups. Our lodge fits at most 14-16 people, although there are beds for more. It is nice with a open kitchen, dining, living room area... although we completely take that over with our tables set up for scrapbooking. The plus is the great fireplace in the corner of the living room which we keep going all weekend long. The grounds it sits on is great for long walks thru the woods however, we purposely plan our trips for colder weather. Most of us want to get pages done and found that when we went during the nicer weather we didn't get quite as much done.



We had 13 ladies participate in our weekend and one (my SIL enjoying Europe) was missing. We have never had 14 and honestly, that is quite enough! We definitely need to put a halt on any more newbies being added to the mix. All involved know a college friend of mine, whether it be from college, school, church or work... LH is the common link. Most of the ladies are scrappers with a few others doing other crafty type things. It is supposed to be a time for us to get away from our kids and husbands... the cooking and the cleaning... the yells of "Mom!"... It is supposed to be a time of relaxation, a time to work on hobbies, a little bit of ME time.

My weekend started off weird. I wasn't prepped like I normally am and just felt disorganized and unfocused when I arrived. It also didn't help that I had been awake for 36 hours from noon on Wednesday til midnight Thursday and then slept only 5 hours that night. On Friday night, after completing one page, a couple of glasses of wine and a little bit of conversation, I was ready for bed before midnight... a first for me! But I got some much needed sleep and felt like I could tackle my craft. Not so. I still struggled for awhile... The creative juices weren't flowing... I just felt stuck. Someone popped in a Sarah McLachlan cd which was a first... usually we spend our time talking and loud music tends to get in the way of that then there are the variety of tastes to compete with. Traditionally people who want music bring a mp3 player for their own use. I don't know what it was but the cd was grating on my nerves. I only knew one song and the rest was like nails on a chalkboard. I finally pulled out my mp3 and tuned out. That worked for about 15 minutes til the battery died. Then when I tried to recharge the battery (via a laptop) it wouldn't work... nothing, nada, zip! I really started to get frustrated at this point... it was back to the cd. During the next hour, my SIL sitting at the same table with me, kept saying how the music was driving her crazy and would I please ask them to turn it off. WTF??? Why does it have to be me? Isn't she an adult that could open her mouth to ask? Finally, I couldn't stand it anymore and had to say something before I blew... so I asked the one who put it on if we could turn it off. She readily agreed. The crazy thing... I had 5 people besides my SIL who all thanked me for asking for it to be turned off. If that many people hated it, why didn't someone ask before me? This is not a quiet, shy bunch... yet no one opened their mouth. Finally after the whole music fiasco, I finally was able to settle in and start turning out some pages. I ended up staying awake until 5:15 a.m. working on my stuff. All but two others had long gone to bed.

As far as the scrapbooking goes, it was a fairly productive weekend. I got 21 pages done (minus the journaling) and have FINALLY completed my Florida vacation album from 3.5 years ago! I just need to finish some journaling and get it all put into an album. But damn, after working on it for 3 years, it feels good to be looking at the end of it.

The other thing, besides the music, that irritated me was the topics of conversation. Normally, we laugh, we joke, we tell stories about our kids and husbands and sometimes we get into serious topics of conversation... but normally we stay away from taboo topics. A couple were brought up this weekend and almost erupted into something more. For example, I don't remember how but abortion was mentioned. How much more taboo can you get? You had some that were on the pro-choice side and others who were on the pro-life side. I tried to stay out of it... it is a highly emotional topic and most people have strong opinions. However, when two of the pro-lifers made comments, one lady(DP) just said "I am not saying anything." Well, it was like throwing blood into the water and seeing the sharks circling. LH is in front of her saying..."What? You can say what you want. It's okay. You can voice your opinion... I think its wrong but you can voice it." Then you have KW behind her trying to get her to enter into the discussion all the time loudly voicing her opinion, "I want someone to tell me at what minute, at what second does it become a baby? When?" Poor DP just kept scrappin away, desperately trying to keep her mouth shut but turning bright red from the effort (which was even pointed out by LH). What was the point of this? Did we really need to get into it? There was no where for this conversation to go... all parties had their opinions, some highly emotional about it and honestly, it was a no win situation. It had the potential of ruining the whole weekend. I think DP did the right thing by staying out of it but it never should have came to that... with the other two ganging up on her (one in her face on the front, one at her back). I wish the topics could be discussed on a healthy less emotional table, it would really be interesting to hear others viewpoints. BUT when you are told right off the bat that your opinion is wrong, you know that the discussion isn't going to go that way.

It is usually at these weekends that I feel the need to make comments of shock value mostly to irritate, gross out my SIL... call me mean, but I so enjoy getting a rise out of her especially since she makes a whole production out of it (putting fingers in her ears and singing "la la la, I'm not listening"). My favorite moment came on Sunday. My SIL is my husband's sister and she doesn't want to know that her brother actually has sex (despite the fact that we have 3 children). So this is the area where I usually try to ruffle her feathers. On Sunday, I asked LJ if her husband was French Canadian (which I knew, but I just needed a lead-in)... When she said yes, I replied that my husband was Australian. Both SIL and LH, looked up and said, "He is NOT!." I then said "Well, he should be since he goes 'down under" so well." *snickers* Mission accomplished... it got laughs, groans and huge "Ewww" from my SIL. Now I will have to start thinking of one for next year. :)

5 comments:

SINFUL said...

That place is fabulous! Looks like mission style furniture - certainly you could work that into next years shock therapy - or maybe why you feel such an affinity towards Kilauea - or damn - a dental dam lesson!!!

The mix of people sounds condusive to getting a lot of work done. Imagine trying to scrap/read/have rational thought etc. on an OP!

And are you sure about your timing - you really went over an hour before duct taping the irritating CD to somebodies pinking shears? - that doesn't sound like you DTF!

R&R said...

Glad you had a nice getaway. The accomodations look lovely...the conversation, not so much. I'm with you, best to stay away from the taboo subjects in groups.

LOL @ how easy it was to get an ewww out of your SIL. I suppose to really set her off, you could add her to one of the Brigade group emails...

: D

Janet Webb said...

Oh this just makes me YEARN to go on a retreat ... a place I've enjoyed going is St. Columba's in Inverness -- Prince Charles went to church there when he was in California last year ... http://st-columba-church.org/gallery.php

And like you Carrie, the fireplace was a huge draw -- that and the peacefulness :)

Thanks for sharing your wonderful weekend!

emily said...

carrie, i'm ROTFLMAO (ok, actually - i'm sitting at my desk at work and trying not to laugh out loud because people will KNOW i'm not working if i do) at your "down under" comments to your SIL... SCORE!! lol nice one...

the place you stayed in is gorgeous!! that fireplace looks heavenly... the conversation sounds brutal though - yikes! i wish people could have hot button topic discussions without it going sideways, but it never seems to work... it just gets nasty...

gingabread said...

LMAO@down under....good one Carrie!!! Okay now about the newbie comment....pouts :( I wanna join in....but is it okay if I don't craft, but instead just sit around and drink?