Testing or not

I am one who resist change at all cost. I have reached the age that I feel set in my ways and really find leaning new things such as anything technology orientated, a pain in my ass. I like doing things like pick up the phone that is connected to the wall and dial the number and talk. I have a cell phone but anyone who has called it will tell you the mail box is full and I never answer. One reason is it in the bottom of my purse dead. Now if I needed to make a call I would find it wipe of the crumbs  and plug it in and make the call. Good luck reaching me before the damn thing dies again. I got the thing around 15 years ago back in the days of analog, for all you seasoned folks. Now I used it because I am on the road a lot and found it necessary to have one on my travels. My plan was 150 minutes a month for 35 bucks. Now over the years they have added minutes to the plan, like I ever used 150 minutes a month any way, so I never cared. Don't raise my bill and I am happy. I never done anything to the plan so they can never raise the monthly. So when the thing got stolen I called to have service suspended so someone did not make some 1,000 dollar phone call. I went into the store and told them I needed a new phone and they better not do anything to my cheap plan or they could keep the service and I would buy a prepaid card. After ranting to the guy he said "now you have me curious about how much you use your phone". After telling me I use 23 minutes in the last three months, I really felt like I needed to reconsider the plan thing. He then says we have a cheaper plan that you will like for 20 bucks and you have 700 minutes and all the texting you want. I laughed and told him I don't know how to text so that's not a deal breaker.  I made the guy crazy before I signed on the dotted line. Two weeks later my Mom wanted to go to the hospital because she felt something strange in her heart, at 87 she has heart disease and congestive heart failure. So I left work early and took her in. Now with the new phone that I have not made any calls on yet nor have I gotten one, it just sits in the bottom of my crumb infested purse.  So before I left work I sent my daughter a Facebook message telling her to call me. I get my Mom and we are on our way to the hospital and I hear a strange phone ring and by the third ring I say in a loud voice to my Mom " your phone is ringing". "No, she says, I don't have one." Well what is that sound? My Mom said " it's your purse". I then realized my new phone has a new ring tone.  It was my daughter and I told her to meet us at the hospital. Now later that night my brother gives me his phone number that I have no idea how to program into my phone so I shoved the waded up piece of paper in my crumb infested purse and decided that when he calls me and yells at me for not calling him I would have his number in my phone automatically and not have to worry.  Next day I go to call my brother so he can go pick Mom up and yes the number is there but I will be damned if I can make the phone dial that number and call him back. Now I am pissed because  I must be in three places at the same time. Well I missed everything I was suppose to do after work and just went and got Mom. Now she has to stop at the Meijer (like a super Walmart) and get her new meds. My Mom loves to shop, that equals look and touch everything in the store but not necessarily buying anything. I really needed to get going if I was going to make the next hundred things I needed to do before bed. The mix up at the drug counter did not help so I made arrangements to have someone come back to pick up the meds and tried to hurry Mom out of the store. Try, being the operative word. Now after I drop Mom off I tried to call my daughter to let her know what time I would be there to pick her up. Again her phone number is in my old phone and I do not have it memorize.  I again try to get the new phone to dial back her number where she call the day before. While in my frantic button pushing mode I see a screen that says text with a blinking cursor. What the hell so I typed, call me. I had no idea what I was doing so I got pissed and shut the thing and thru it in the other seat and drove like hell to get home. Not long after the strange ring tone erupts into an ear piercing volume in the seat next to me. I answered and I hear, " did you test me?" What? Who is this? Ma it's me, Did you test me? You mean text? "Yes", she said "text". Oh my God I did text you.Your my first TEXT, Holly shit Batman I texted and don't even know how I did it. I can't call you and I will never figure out how I texted so this maybe my first and last time. Your  never to old to learn something new and Heaven forbid you didn't really learn anything you stumble on it, Then your just too old.

Vacation without the dogs.

Now as a norm I always load the kids and dogs in the van and off we go on 99.44% of all vacations and trips. It is what it is. Now we always do thing that we can with a van load of dogs in tow, mostly that mean the dog have to stay in the van. We have a second set of keys that is always glued around someone’s neck so there is no worry about locking said dogs in the van and not being able to get back in. Yes it has happened but that is another story.  The spare key gets use almost as much as the main key. Now the kids are mostly gone and there is just one living at home, and a dog transport gets cancelled so we decided to take a vacation with just the two of us and no dogs. The place that I have always wanted to see since the movie Goonies is the beach from the end of the moving. It had a wild, adventurous and mysterious effect on me that has stayed with me since I saw the movie 30 years ago. So my first thought is lets go to Oregon.  I did not know the whole coast is this way I thought it was just in one place. So to plan the trip to maximize the time to see as much as possible, the beach was not the first thing to see as soon as we left the plane.  Now I am very short on patience and hate to wait for anything. I had just enough time after landing and getting to the beach to make myself, a crazy driven woman, who will get there and get picture and nothing, will stop me.

The trip started with the Columbia River Gorge and then  we worked our way back to the coast. So one and half days later just 1 hour before dark we reach the Hay stack rock. As soon as I get on the beach I realized that is not the beach I saw in the movie but the rock was. It is raining like hell and I am enjoying the beach but bothered by the fact that there is another beach with a view of Hay stack and  I am not on that beach. We were leaving early in the morning to stay on track with the itinerary I have worked up to maximize our quantity of what Oregon has to offer. I just had to give it one more shot to find the beach. I seen something when we entered the Cannon Beach community that showed a state park to the North of the city and I had to go there to see if this was the beach I have stuck in my head. Now only a driven crazed women would do this in the middle of a rain storm and before sun up. So off we go, the wind is driving the rain sideways and the rain drops are a big as soft balls. One drop and your drenched, no dodging these big water bucket drops. We get to the car and proceed back to the area that showed us the state park, wet as hell. Now it took us twenty minutes to get through the park and out to the place called Indian beach.  It is a up and down the mountain and the curves at each plateau is so sharp you have to slow it down to 3mph, narrow for one car and trees are part of the shoulder on each side. We make it out to the beach right at the time of sunrise. The rain and fog do make the light of day impenetrable.  The ranger is there so this sets me to worry as I did not purchase a day pass so I was there illegally, I could not force myself to spend the money to get rained on  and then leave. I decided to wait a bit to see if the rain would ease up enough so I could at least see if this was in fact the beach. I watched the ranger to see if I would get busted or not but realize the ranger had no plan on getting wet either.  10 or 15 minutes later the rain eases just enough for the ranger to grab the garbage and drive away and for me to see we are at the beach of my dreams. Now I should have left then but I had to have a picture. So we sat another 10 minutes and it did ease and I  said "lets do it " and we rolled up our pants and jumped out of the car and ran down the cliff side path to the beach. I took my camera and an umbrella my daughter took her phone and an umbrella, not sure what the hell we were thinking in 40 mile hour winds. We are like to kids running down the beach umbrellas inverted and drenched laughing and snapping pictures climbing on rocks and just have a great time. My daughter yells "Ma you left the lights on the car". I looked but with out glasses I don't see much so I just see head lights on the top of the cliff. No, I did not. Must be some other person hoping to catch a little view of the beach.  I then can see the head lights move away.   We started make our way back when I see a big van pull in and park down from us.  I have watch every crime drama ever made  and I am going to arm myself with a rock in the pocket of the jacket just in case there is some foul play at work. A few more steps and I decide I need another rock, one can never have enough rocks if things get ugly. We get to the cliff path and start our way up when a man sticks his head over the side and yells down at us" Hey is this your blue car up here?" Ya "Well the window is smashed in" he says. What the hell and we take off. Yes the side window was smashed and they got our purses, the boyfriends nice camera that my daughter did not want to ruin by getting it wet.  They got a host of other things in side the purses. At that point the mans wife appears from inside the van and we started the 911 call. As we all discuss all the events leading up to this point I realize I still have a rock in my hand and feel like a fool just dropping it in font of the guy so I just hold the damn thing. The police show up and I am on the phone with one of my banks and they are talking with the guy and his wife and then he comes to us and says "do you have any ID"? No the bad guys have it. Then he says "do you have anything with your picture on it"? No but you can see me in pictures on the camera. Then my daughter pipes up "Ma, Ma will this work" and she pulls out my old drivers licenses that I had replaced two years earlier. What the hell, you have been carrying that damn thing for two years. Ya, Ma my friends tease me about it. That stupid license was my salvation for the rest of the trip. Who knew that a stupid argument two years earlier that ended in, what ever, would save my bacon on a vacation 2 years later and 2000 miles from home. 
Two hours later as we are getting in our car and leaving the beach I dropped the damn rock only to find the other one when we stopped for potty break. The front seat was full of glass and it is still raining like hell so we shut a towel in the door to keep the rain from drenching the car and us but my daughter has to sit in the back and hold the corner of the thing so it does not smack the shit out of me while driving.  Now she is balancing herself on the edge of the back seat holding the corner of the wet towel in one hand and the phone with GPS in the other and she says " Ma if we would have taken the dogs we would have never been robbed."