days away.

i think i've spent a whole week in the car.
hours and hours and hours,
every single day,
to and from places and spaces that aren't anywhere nearby.
and the back and forth was a big ol' pile of exhausting sit-down
shuttling from here to there and all the way back all over and over again.
i mean,
i've been driving a lot for a whole bunch of days.
and after traveling across new england for a week?
what is the one thing i've concluded?
i never ever want to live in vermont.
and that's no joke.
-
anyway,
my daughter harvest was part of a promotion ceremony
in the crackeriest public school performance machine i've been to yet.
yeah.
cheshire, connecticut takes their school system pretty flippin' seriously.
it's like a factory for producing all-american junior achievers by the classful.
so,
with plenty of pomp and sun and heat and all sorts of white people watching,
she graduated the eighth grade.
and that means that next year,
i'll have two teenagers, and one of 'em in high school.
yuck.
getting older isn't all that great, once you're old.
i'm sure my daughters are still excited about it,
but i'm all set with the onset of encroaching enfeeblement.
no foolin'.
it was worth the road-weariness of going to back down south
after being there saturday and coming home sunday and going right back to
working all day directly from the drive,
and then heading back again on monday to be at the ceremony tuesday at 8:30 a.m.
that's right.
8:30 in the morning.
that's the way it goes down there, i guess.
however,
since my younger little lady was at an amusement park,
i took the opportunity to see a little magic in the nutmeg state
at least until school was all-the-way officially over and done with.
what?
oh.
i went to a castle.
that's a thing.
check the teleport:

yup.
gillette castle, in hadlyme, on the connecticut river.
before actors were all A*-holes,
william gillette was busy being a playwright,
and he was molto famous for his play sherlock holmes.
c.a. doyle wrote a bad version for the stage,
and this guy got ahold of it and rewrote and starred in the new hottness...
he also made a fortune with it,
and he built a crazy-person house out of rocks he exploded off of a cliff.
there was a full-time carpenter staff carving wood
into elaborate and complicated doors and locks and levers and latches,
and there are secret entrances and all sorts of sh!t that really evidence that dude
to be an eccentric showboat and grandstander of the first and finest order.
i hadn't been inside the castle in years.
like,
more than fifteen, even.
it's still old and weird and awesome and elite and beautiful.
so are the grounds,
so is the river,
and so is the area leading up to it on every side.
country new england rural wealth and splendor an' that.
it's all pretty dang expert.
there's plenty of nature jauns all over the woods there, too.
lillies on lakes,
with frogs and fish and flies and flowers....
all that sort of stuff.
i mean it.
teleport:

amber got to see some of the fancy business that isn't all 'hood and grimy.
my 'back-home' haunts are very urban and blighted,
but there's plenty of other other stuff around that isn't.
and personally,
i think it's high time we made time to experience some good-lookin' stuff
when we're in the nutmeg super-socialist diaperbaby do-goodery
doo-doo of such a bleeding-heart waternancy place.
that's no joke.
she was luring in the charming princes, too.
teleport:

see?
oh, c'mon.
*
and well,
sure,
the idylls of positivity are awfully nice to span time in,
but there are also perils piled upon each other in these places, too.
check it out:

now you know.
***********
there was a whole lot of road between morning and afternoon.
there was a whole lot more between afternoon and night.
there was also pizza.
and kids.
and my folks.
and family togetherness.
and all of that was all really happening-
and that was the whole point.
i did what needed doing,
because that's just what is done in those situations.
i'm glad i had the chance to do it all the way i was supposed to;
never quiet, never soft.....