Planes, Trains, and wait, what?

I’ve been away from my writing for nearly two weeks and haven’t so much as touched a pen or the keyboard the entire time. I guess we all need a break sometimes and it’s taken me these near two weeks to regain my interest in writing. Well, that and a laundry list of distractions I have been forced to work through so I can get back to business here on Ashmarlin.

First I had to plan a trip to Taiwan and Hong Kong, which I was not looking forward to. I tend to travel to Asia a couple of times a year for work and this sort of travel really gets old. The good news is the trip was cancelled, the bad is that it was replaced with a trip to Florida.

I’ve been to Florida on several occasions and have always heard the state laid claim to the highest number of strip clubs per capita in the country. If you’ve even been, you understand the reason for this reputation - I really dislike Florida. And, frankly, would prefer Taiwan and Hong Kong even with the accompanying 25 or so hours of flying and the 4 - 5 days of jet lag recovery.

The swap to Florida was bad news but I guess the upside was that I was supposed to be meeting with Tiger Woods to work through some design stuff. He ended up canceling.

During this on again, off again travel planning I got a call from my daughter Leah. She’s nine and was crying so hard I could hardly tell what she was saying. Between sobs I caught, “Car...sob, sob, sob... acci... sob, sob... dent...,” and then she hung up. It turned out to be minor, “just a fender bender,” agreed the body shop. Then suggested the repairs should only take a couple of days.

This was before the insurance company got involved, though, which turned into a nightmare of it’s own. A nightmare that morphed and grew of it’s own accord for over a week and has required dozens of phone calls, voice messages left, and letter writing. The upside to this little adventure is that after nine years our family car has been replaced with a spanking new one with all the whistles and bells.

To kick off this little personal pain session, though, was a relaxing evening with the family. Leah and Margaret had been begging for weeks to play a game as a family. Following dinner one night Linda and I finally agreed to a round of balderdash. This is the one where one player has the actual definition to some unheard of word in the English language and the remaining players make definitions up before everyone guesses which one is right. We played 5 or 6 rounds before, out of the blue, Leah claimed, “The only thing Dad and I have in common is we both like treats.” While it is true, in fact, Leah and I do both like treats; I like to imagine we have a bit more in common than a taste for sweets.

So for the past 10 days or so while stumbling through my many distractions, all I could think of was what else I shared in common with my daughter Leah.