Yuku free message boards

When I was a little girl -- we're talking about the nineteen-seventies here -- we lived in southern California for about five years and change. I had no idea that we were poor: we lived in military housing, and my dad had a clunker of a motorcycle for "his car" because it only got used when he wasn't on a six-month naval deployment, and my mom scrimped and saved until she could afford a seasonal pass to the San Diego Zoo and to Disneyland. We'd visit the zoo once a month and Disney every two to three months, especially during the summer, and I quite rightly knew that I had the awesomest childhood possible.

(This was during the time when gate prices were quite a lot cheaper, but tickets also had to be bought in order to go on rides or enter the Hall of Presidents or anything beyond "walk around and get your picture taken". The "E Ticket" phrase floated over my head more than once.)

I always knew, as best as a four-to-nine-year-old kid can understand such things, that someday we'd move away from California, and someday there would be a Last Trip to Disneyland. I wasn't worried about it. Dad even said we would stay at the Disneyland Hotel on our way out of the state to wherever, and ride the monorail directly into Tomorrowland.

For some reason, it didn't work out. Moving costs ate up any chance of our staying at the Disneyland Hotel; I had a serious disbelief that this was our last visit even though our house and dog were someone else's and I'd said goodbye to the last friends I planned on making until the Navy quit making us move. In effect, a piece of my subpsyche spent years expecting that we'd be going back to the Dumbo ride and checking the time at the Small World giant clock and driving a car through Autopia and voyaging on a jungle cruise and singing with the Tiki Birds and the Country Bear Jamboree. That little piece shriveled slowly -- I think it faded away completely sometime during the end of adolescence.

Honestly, we do much worse things to ourselves in adolescence! And that was all roughly thirty years ago, anyway. Who I am has changed so much from that little girl, that I barely see any resemblance between myself now and my self then.

Well, usually.

I took this picture a week and a half ago:



Five seconds later, I had to put the camera down, because I was crying ... and had no idea why.

Oh, hey, this is a good moment, too, a little earlier on Tuesday:


Let me just recommend Neutrogena Ultra Sheer SPF 100 sunblock. I got sunburnt, despite hat and parasol, but the Neutrogena made the difference between the inevitable sunburn and "hey, wow, blisters! on my arms and face!" Dearly Beloved had an allergic reaction to it, but hell, he's part Seminole, not part Irish; he needs SPF 55, not SPF Vampire.

Disneyland is as great a place for childfree adults, singly or in groups, as it is for an eight-year-old-girl who's convinced that Minnie Mouse really is waving straight at her. The people I saw having a cranky time at Disneyland were people who put effort into not being happy. We had two earthquakes, I hobbled on a strained-nearly-sprained foot the entire visit, I always lose my appetite on vacations and can't eat most of the food available, our hotel didn't have a shuttle service so we walked to and from the park, and the wait to get our picture with the Princesses (and thus become insta-heroes to our Arizona nieces) was two hours at best, and it was certainly the happiest five days I have experienced in the past two years.

Even knowing that I'll never be back.

Unfinished business in my life, that I'd all but forgotten, has the best possible feeling of completeness, and I pray it makes me a better person going forward.