Going to BlogHer

The one thing the Fords do very well — I would even say, exceptionally well — is travel.  We are a traveling machine, able to visit places we’ve never been to efficiently, diverging easily from our daily schedule, and generally sucking the marrow out of every experience. Our specialty is beaches — we have all beaches down to a science — but we are equally impressive with amusement parks.

Whereas other families get bogged down in the noise and crowds of the amusement park, get stuck with that deer-in-headlights sensation surveying the enormity of choices, have kids fall apart because they are being fueled by cotton candy and ice cream, the Fords sail through the park with a strategy for attacking rides and meals.  We get there when the park opens and we stay until the last ride shuts down and along the way, we take that park for everything its worth while spending very little money or parts of ourselves in the process.  We call this process “Jiffy Lubing” and refer to ourselves as the well-oiled machine.  We can withstand high temperatures and lack of sleep and poor food choices all in the name of chasing fun.  And by G-d, my family catches Fun and throttles her in a big bear hug.

But somehow, our figurative roller coaster went off the tracks this summer.

Disney was perfect — Disney, with its high humidity and above 100 degree temperatures was fine.  The kids rolled with midnight bedtimes in order to see the parades and stood in long lines for short rides with patience usually unseen in five-year-olds.  When we came home from Disney, life somewhat imploded and the kids rolled with that too, helping me keep this insane pace of work and swim lessons and packing.  Our reward was going to be a small amusement park in Pennsylvania; an old-school, Amish-themed, please-dress-modestly, amusement park.

We’ve been before and the kids love it, so this should have been a cake-walk.  Our first day went well, and I even conquered my fear of the Sky Ride with the help of the Wolvog, who stroked my arm and whispered how proud he was of me while I pretended I was anywhere but over the park (he also told me he would buy me an iPad as a bravery prize, which I am totally holding him to).  But the second day can only be described as a goat rodeo, the sort of day that required several family meetings and had me calling Lori outside the park in tears.  Instead of sucking the marrow out of the park, the park sucked the marrow out of us.

That night, I had a dream that Kymberli and I rented a house on the beach, a single-room glass-walled house a few meters from the ocean.  In my dream, I was pointing out why I wanted to keep visiting this house for the rest of my life.  It was beautiful, the location was perfect, it came with blogging friends.

I think this summer has kicked the collective Ford ass, and the tantrums at the amusement park were simply the embodiment of all the stress we’ve been under as well as looking forward to stress-to-come.  I think we have all lost our Mojo — that necessary energy that turns us into travel machines or leaping blogging buildings in a single bound.  I know I have felt wilted as I crawl towards BlogHer, this event I look forward to all year.  And the kids certainly showed how wilted they are at the amusement park.

I may not have shown it by slowing down on posts, but I have certainly not felt my usual energy.  I have felt quiet, discombobulated, isolated all summer.  I have not felt a part of things.  I’ve felt like I’m here and not here at the same time.  I think the dream was about BlogHer, about finding my friends within perfect surroundings and recharging.  I always associate the beach with letting go and plugging back into necessary energy — perhaps I was a mermaid in a past life.  And while it’s a lot to put on a little conference, I am looking to use this time in New York to find new people to read, and find my mojo and new projects in the process, but more, to plug back into community and reconnect with friends.

If you’ll have me.

I will be blogging about the conference (as well as posting pictures and video) under the BlogHer Diaries tag.  If you want to follow along from home, please use that category heading from the dropdown menu on the left sidebar since other, non-BlogHer posts will probably be scattered in between.

And don’t forget: Friday is the 200th/300th Friday Blog Roundup cake extravaganza.  On Friday, upload a picture of a piece of cake (and don’t get hung up on the words “a piece of cake” — if you want to bake a whole cake or celebrate with an oreo or simply walk by the bakery and take a picture and not put anything in your piehole, it’s all good) and then link to your blog post using the linky function that will be in the Friday Blog Roundup.  It would be lovely if you wrote something about what community means to you.  Why you love being part of the ALI community, and how you feel when you read a particularly satisfying blog post.