Maybe annual is an exageration, but we visit the Smokies with such regularity, I can recite a twelve year timeline of the leasing history of many commercial properties in this tourist trap where we are lodging.

So far, I have seen one mullet (and I am not refering to fish) but we have five days left so I anticipate more.

On a recent roadtrip, we visited Washington D.C. I wish I had gone when I was younger, and possessed by that palatable patriotism elementary school children have after their first year of American history, and not at an age when I carry so much disdain for the ugliness that envelopes politics.

I am indifferent to many monuments of our nation’s capital, in so much as it is possible to remain respectful, indifferent, and American simultaneously. Still, I’ve wanted to visit the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

The Vietnam War is an enigma. In grade school, history ended after WWII but Vietnam wasn’t mentioned until secondary school and then it was so biased and confusing as to muddy the water of understanding further rather than clarify it.

When I asked my father about it, his explanation was beyond my comprehension, with the exception of making certain that I understood Jane Fonda was evil. Vietnam left many Americans feeling raw and unable to explain the event to school children in a dispassionate manner.

I understood more about the controversy surrounding the design for the memorial by Maya Lin than I understand about the war.

From an artistic standpoint, the design is absolutely brilliant. It is understated in a way that many memorial are not. Grandiosity is replaced by sobriety. Names, so many names, make the loss more real than a symbolic arrangement of nameless bronze figures. Integrated within the environment, not elevated above it, the wall becomes one with the people.

Visiting the memorial didn’t improve my understanding, but seeing all those names etched in stone, helped me better understand why it was difficult to be objective.

Creeping Phlox

White Fringed Phacelia

Crested Dwarf Iris

Cataract Falls, near the Sugarland Visitor’s Center

There is little that makes you want to do something even more than a voice of authority proclaiming you should definitely not do something, or that it wouldn’t be wise to do something. Verbal prohibition just makes you want to show them how wrong “they” really are….Then again maybe it’s only cabin fever. Regardless of motivation, we had to survey the township after the snowstorm.

The roads are icy messy and school has been canceled all week. The only places open Monday were the grocery store and the wine store. At least they understand what the community really need when there is seven inches of snow on the ground and limited childcare options.

Snow contributes to a gradual mental transformation. On the first day it’s magical and pristine, and there is sledding to be done. On the second day, you are sore from the sledding and your attitude begins to shift due to the unfortunate realization that is you don’t shovel the walkway soon, you will break a wrist when you slip on your way to the car. On the third day, the snow is dirty from all the traffic and you start checking the weather report to see when it will melt. On the fourth day you feel like you are living in a way zone, because you can’t get used to the sound of icicles crashing on the deck. On fifth day, you check the forecast again hoping for fresh powder to sled on soon.

I didn’t know cabin fever was contagious, but even the cats have it and they spend winter indoors.

Photo unrelated. This is the third downy woodpecker, I’ve witnessed fly into the kitchen window this year. I wouldn’t proclaim it an epidemic, but the cats are uh, watchful. She sat on the deck stunned for a few minutes and then flew away.

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There are limits to how much time I can spend engaging with people, even people I genuinely like. Strangers can be easier, because they lack the internal knowledge that makes family dangerous with expectations fueled by first-hand knowledge. Strangers are armed with conjecture, based their assessments of posture, body language and sex, but lack concrete knowledge and base prejudices on actuarial standards coupling probability with individual experience.

Having spent a long weekend tethered to three strong-willed adults and a small child with a rigid napping schedule (as a small child is and should be entitled to have) and unable to snap the lead, I am mentally and socially exhausted. I tried several times to separate from the group without success. When it appeared it would cause a larger conflict, I relented because it was easier than explaining the uneasily explained or spending the weekend arguing with the spouse. It is questionable as to whether withdrawn compliance really is better avoiding verbal disagreement.

I’m not so melodramatic as to pronounce the weekend an abject failure, but having my experience controlled by other people was exhausting. In this specific arrangement potential conflict looms like a a dark cloud on an otherwise beautiful day. As for the eight-hundred gorilla in the room, yes it was a trip to see family and I went of my own volition hoping to earn more influence over my itinerary.

Compared to being confined to the boundaries of someone else’s small world, being stuck in the airport alone for five hours was a welcome relief.

I’m sorting through the weekend’s events in my head. It’s a necessary process to put these slights behind me and move forward. The spouse brings up one incident or another, and I try not to engage because I can’t seem to comment yet without erupting. And whether I express myself thoughtfully or succinctly in a fit of rage, it does nothing to change the situation. He perceives my criticism of the situation as being critical of him wholly, and the actual message, the things I am trying to change, get lost in his righteous indignation, leading to no useable results unless the cold shoulder counts.

These gatherings are usually brief (3 days or less), so the least confrontational solution is to eat shit politely with a knife and fork since civil discussion has proved utterly useless (confrontation doesn’t work either). I’ve no interest in talking this out for the sake of talking it out, if I can’t alter the outcome.