Ruark Retreat ~ Mariposa

Dakota wearing my brother's hat

One thing I've learned in my adventures, especially when I was living in Alaska, that you can plan on doing something, and mother nature will have other plans. 

I wanted to go away on a snow trip with my dog. Dakota is a snow dog and he loves the snow. So, I mentioned this to my sister-in-law and the idea took off. We found a place, changed locations, found a new place (on AirBnb), and then kind of forgot about our trip. Since it was a three bedroom house, we invited my baby brother and his girlfriend, making it a sibling trip, with my dog. Since I don't spend a lot of time with my baby brother, I was looking forward to all of us being together. 

About a week before the date of the trip, I had a massive realization, it hasn't been snowing. The East Coast was getting slammed with massive storms, but here in Northern California, it hadn't been raining much, much less snowing in higher elevations. 

So my snow trip was not going to happen.

But we choose to still go. My sister-in-law was going to do all the cooking and we were going to bring board games and just all chill together. My niece, who is one of my favorite people on the planet, was going to be there and they were going to bring their dog since their dog sitter fell through. 

He has no legs!

We all arrived and our weekend began. My brother read aloud "A Die Hard Christmas", we all wrote up our personal lists of our Top Ten Villains of All Time. It was raining and so we stayed in the next day, took naps, then they played an epic game of Monopoly for six hours while I read for a bit, watched "What We Do In The Shadows" and then "Spiderman: Homecoming". 

Sunday morning was a bit stressful, since my brother's dog Rue had to be rushed to the vet because her face started swelling and they weren't sure why. Turns out, she was having an allergic reaction to something up there and ended up being just fine, but they had to leave early and my niece stayed with me and my brother and his girlfriend and I finished cleaning up the house and drove home. 

While it was an amazing bonding experience and getaway for my siblings and myself, I debated even writing about this because it wasn't a huge adventure BUT there was an element that will change my adventures in the future.

And that would be Dakota.

It became painfully obvious to me that Dakota does not like traveling. He was anxious and needy the entire weekend (not eating or sleeping much) and kept going to the door not because he wanted to go outside but because he wanted to go home. 

I knew he did that when I take him over to my mother's house and even sometimes my brother's house but I didn't realize he'll be okay for a couple of hours and then he wants to go back home.  I thought it was funny and cute until I put it together that he's very much a homebody and doesn't like long trips away and certainly not overnight trips. 

So this changes how I travel with him. When I leave for a weekend conference, I normally drop him off somewhere but I think I'm going to just hire someone to check on him and let him out, feed him, etc. I'm no longer going to worry about him for a short trip. 

Dakota all snuggled at home

I'm still going to have him stay with someone for my big trips because that's just too long to be by himself with just a kitty for companionship. 

But for me, I have to ask myself: do I even want to take him with me in the future? 

If I ever take out my teardrop trailer....maybe. 

A road trip, yes, he's coming with me....for safety and it's not the same thing as staying put. I think he does okay if we are moving and changing locations. 

But if we do a weekend like this again, no.....I don't think he'd like it and I think he'd prefer to stay home.

Thoughts? I'd love to hear your insights about this.

Diving into the past.....

My father and I don't agree on our politics. He's a Trump supporter and against unions. I am terrified of the violence and hate that stems from Trump's campaign and I am very active in my local teacher's association. After teaching up in Alaska without a union, I vowed never to teach anywhere where no one had my back. But that's a separate post I will save for another day....

And I don't need my father to agree with me. That's fine. 

You see, my father didn't raise me. My mother did. They split when I was 5. My father stayed in Connecticut and my mother moved back to California where she was from. Their story was an East Coast man meets a West Coast girl. What do you do when the story crumbles? Each person goes back to their coasts, licking their wounds. 

Most people think that I was born and raised in California. Not so, I was born in Connecticut and my parents moved back and forth from coast to coast having their babies along the coasts. They met and married in California, had me in Connecticut, my middle brother in California, and my baby brother in Maryland. Then it was back to California, where I was raised.

miss ruark in kindergarten

When I was six, my mother met my future step-father, Robert. He worked long, crazy hours and wasn't a strong presence in my childhood. But he's since retired and actually drove me to my oral surgery last week, waited 2 1/2 hours, drove me to the pharmacy, and then took me home. He's a good man.

But there's a whole chunk that I don't really refer to. I don't hide it because I'm not ashamed of it by any means...it hurts in a different way.

But more background is needed: my grandfather is wealthy. As in old money wealthy. But he comes from the beliefs that being given a large amount of money isn't a good thing. He believed that people should go out and make their own way. So when his daughters reached the age of 18, they were expected to leave his house, get a job, and start living their own life. He didn't think women needed an education, so he refused to pay for college. My mother never went to college.

When my mother left my father she had 3 kids ages 5 to 18 months, no education, no job, and nowhere to live. Her parents weren't an option. So, she went on welfare and rented a trailer in a trailer park in West Pittsburg before it became Bay Point. 

My father refused to support us. I've heard his different reasons over the years...he didn't have a job but he's also said that my mother left him to run back to her father, my grandfather. He expected my grandfather to support us.

My grandfather wasn't around much in my childhood. He didn't come in and rescue us. Someone else did.

After a year in the trailer park, my mother found out she was being evicted. We were going to move to the projects when my mother's new boyfriend (Robert) said that we could all come and live with him and his daughter. 

My mom learned a trade (medical transcription) and built up clients. She got herself off of welfare. We moved to Benicia. We weren't as poor as we were before but we never had a lot of money. I would say we were lower middle class. Instead of being able to afford a child getting the Star Wars Trilogy for Christmas, one year each of us got a movie and we put them together and shared. My movie was Star Wars: A New Hope. That's how we got presents like that. We'd get one big thing we wanted. 

My father sent gifts and called but he didn't pay child support. I didn't see him again until I was in the 3rd grade. Then he came out again the next year for a day. He was a "Disneyland Daddy". He would shower us with gifts and be super amazing and then disappear for long stretches. I saw him again when I was in high school. He was bad mouthing my mom to me and the boys so badly that the boys started being mean to my mother. I felt bad so a lot of the presents I picked out for my father to buy me were actually gifts I picked out for my mom. 

In stores, he never turned around when we called out, "Dad!" I started calling him by his given name just so he would know I was talking to him. I've never called a man Dad. If you notice, I never refer to him as my dad. 

me and my brothers around the time of the split

Dads are something special. Dads stay. Dads know you. Any man can be a father, but only a special man can be a Dad. I saw that on a card once, and it's brutal truth stuck with me.

I've tried to have a relationship with my father. There have been years where I didn't hear from him, both as a child and now as an adult. He told me once the reason he didn't call me on my 18th birthday was because he didn't have anything new to say. We really only connect through Facebook. My brothers don't have a relationship with him at this time. 

Lately, my father has been slamming my political posts on my page. It's been pissing me off. I saw a post on his page complaining about people on welfare....that was hard, doesn't he know his own children were living off of welfare? Has he forgotten? He posted that fathers and daughters are best friends for life on his page. But he didn't tag me or anything, or post it to my page. It was almost like it was for his friends to see it, to show what a good dad he is. 

Facebook is my only contact with my father and he's not making it easy. Acquaintances of mine will see his comments, see that he's my father, and think he's my dad.

So here's my truth. I need it out there. I don't want to hide it. My father was a dead beat dad who told me once that he wished my mom had gone after him and thrown him in prison for not paying child support because then he would have had the time to work on his novel. 

Not everyone has to agree with me. Not everyone has to support me. But he doesn't get to express himself on my posts. He has his own page for that. To pretend whatever thing he wants to pretend, and I leave it alone.

Geez, daddy issues much? 

2015 Reading Challenge Update

So I started the PopSugar's 2015 Reading Challenge in January. 

I don't know when I became such a big reader. I remember, as a teen ager, sitting in the living room with my brothers, and all of reading our own books. Maybe I was a reader back then but in a house full of readers, I never noticed it because it was our norm. 

I remember as a punishment for not completing pretty much any of my homework in middle school, I had to back up my bookcase and turn my books in with my mother. (Since she wasn't looking, I stashed some of my favorites away in my closet. Then I'd sit & read in my closet instead of doing my homework.)

I remember also in middle school, when my mother left a Jackie Collins book in the bathroom and I spent 3 days sitting on the bathroom floor, pouring over that novel. My mom left to run errands and I remember lying on the floor, half in the bathroom, half in the hall so I would be able to hear her unlock the front door. That book was the trashiest, most awful book I have ever read. Still to this day.

I did admit to my mom that I had read that book and after that, two things happened 1) my mom was much more careful about the books she left lying around and 2) she decided that I would be allowed to read adult romance novels, but she got to pick them out for me. Her choice were top rated (not trashy) historical romances. My favorite authors at the time were Julie Garwood & Judith McNaught. I am sure I was a middle school English teacher's worst nightmare.....the books I pulled out for silent reading were not your average middle schooler's.

Looking back, I guess I've always been a reader. But it didn't seem like being a book worm was anything to comment about it. 

I think I figured that everyone liked reading and read books. 

It wasn't until my friends started posting posts about loving books & reading on my Facebook timeline that I realized my love of books & reading was anything special. But those posts made me feel special. It made me proud of books & reading and that people associated me with something so fine & lovely.

I've never tried to compete with anybody or look down on them for not reading books. My sister-in-law isn't a reader, and I adore her. She interacts with the real world far more than I do. I admire her for that. She's constantly out doing things, having fun, so who I am to judge anyone for that. 

I just spent two hours laying on my bed, reading my Stephen King book. That was great fun (to me). 

Even though I'm not competitive, that doesn't mean that some people don't try to compete with me. I didn't grow up with that. My brothers liked their genres, and I liked mine. I'd read one of their books, but it wasn't my thing and that's okay. There are a few genres that I don't read. I would love to be into poetry, but I just don't read it. And horror books...I will read the master of horror (Stephen King) but I don't like to be scared normally. Military & war books don't interest me either. I like some biographies but I seem to be picky about the person I read about. I like to read about strong women in history who went against society's norms and kicked ass. 

I mention this because someone once tried to put me down for not reading the same genres as he did. I was told I was really limiting myself as a reader. That offended me, because I do consider myself to be well-read. 

Back to the Reading Challenge!

I like that I read some books that I normally would not have but I don't think I will be doing another challenge next year. I miss picking books out just for fun. Now, they have to be on my list or a book I can use on my list.

This challenge is a 52 book challenge. That averages to a book a week. And I've read 34 books so far this year. I have 18 left to go. Last year, my goal was to read 37 books (and I read 52, go figure). 

Thankfully, the challenge hasn't lessened my love of reading. It's just narrowed my choices. But I did go back & took another look at my TBR (To Be Read) stack & figured out how to fit in my new books into the the challenge. That helps. 

Here's my challenge so far:

Man, if I got a free book out of this challenge, that'd be awesome. But right now, I'll take the feeling of accomplishment & pride. Either way, after reading all those books, it's still a win. 

Burned.....

That last text my brother sent me was a fake one.....

He got me.

I will know revenge!!!

My Dastardly Plans....

were foiled!!!

In honor of my baby brother's birthday, I posted a heartfelt birthday wish on Facebook. Then, I posted a baby picture of him, again, wishing him a happy birthday.

I saw him two days later for a birthday celebration at his house. 

He made a crack how he never received a text from me about his birthday.

"Didn't you see my TWO Facebook posts!?!" I asked incredulous. 

"What?" he snorted. "That doesn't count. Besides, you got that picture from my girlfriend. You didn't even scan that yourself."

I decided he was going to rue the day he complained about my birthday greetings. He wanted texts, then I would give him texts!

I think he's on to me....

Oh, he's so funny!

It's true, my other brother's birthday was the next day.

He's getting cocky now....

Wait! What!?!

He posted on Facebook that his phone was broken.

This completely ruins my plan. I was going to keep this up for months! Maybe even a whole year until his next birthday.

The beauty of this plan was in the long term...sure it was cute now, but in six months it was going to be epic. I had a reminder set on my phone to text him. This was going to be beautiful....and it's ruined. Ironically, by the very technology that I was using to prank my brother.

Sadness descends in the house of Miss Ruark.