TABLE ROCK IS UPON US!

So, in 4 days from now I will once again journey away from home to the place I think I love more than home. Well, that week anyway and if a transporter is to ever be invented in my time, besides planes, trains and such, that is where I would go everyday. This year is my 13th consecutive year and still makes me giddy leading up to the trip, just like when I was young and counted down the days til Christmas when Santa comes to visit.
This year, the trip consists of myself, my parents, brother, my friend Doug, a few other couples from Albuquerque and a few families from Clovis, New Mexico. Our group is anywhere from 25-30 people this year. The first year I went to Table Rock there were 50 some New Mexicans!! Since then, the numbers and families have changed and evolved.
Table Rock Lake is a rather large lake in Missouri and also has a channel in Arkansas. We stay in the quiet town of Shell Knob that comes alive in the summers. One may call it a touristy town but I see it as home. The summer months are when the town makes its revenue but after the bountiful, colorful leaves have dropped, it is just lives with the townspeople.
My family packs up the truck and our boat Thursday evening and Friday morning before we pack in and jump on I-40 until we reach Oklahoma City where we decompress, relax and also get amped for the next week. After unloading our overnight bags and get situated, we pop beers and mix drinks that we enjoy pool side before walking to dinner in the hot humid climate of Oklahoma, nothing like the dry heat from back home. Our sweat and buzz leads us to act a bit wild at dinner, making jokes, telling stories from years past from our adventures. Like last year when Eric, a friend of the Clovis clan was tricked into eating a salted and sugared burger. Never, I mean never accept a challenge if you have left the table because we are more than likely going to prank you. And if you accept a challenge, there is no quitting!
The next morning, we pack up the trucks and our tummies with the continental breakfasts and hit the road to Missouri. It is only a few hours away and with each mile closer, I get giddy. I want to cry because I am so happy!! And excited for what the next week will bring.
The lake is blueish green looks incredible peaking between the lush hills. It only increases my excitement to get to our cabin, unpacked and on the water.
I think water has always brought me tranquility over the years of swimming and does the same now. I feel like a little kid just thinking about the lakeside. I have always loved it and have a hard time describing it. It has always been a place I get to escape to, a place where I don't wait for the next day or the next week but the next ten minutes. I feel more alive there in that week than most of the year. It sounds strange, I know, but I wish I could just stay there and slow down time and bottle up my feelings from there and bring them back home with me somehow.
I want the feeling of a great ski run or surfing in the afternoon sun, with music pumping out the speakers and hitting the trees or the shores all around. I want the peacefulness of napping in the sun, feeling the waves below slightly rocking the boat. I want to feel the love of my family and friends at dinner time and sitting on the swings in the evening looking over the lake, where the sun hides and the moon wakes up. I want the fun from the night of the 4th under the stars while fireworks shoot above us. I want all of these things that make me feel alive to make me love life more at home.
And yes, I digressed, a lot. Table Rock is me and I hope to never have to skip a year for work or because I will not be able to go. I want to go for my life so I get these same feelings and never have to grow up from this vacation.

Round 2

After 5 months of nothing, thought I may try again with this blog. Starting out, I was ambitious, or at least thoughts that I would be ambitious and write frequently. Well, thoughts are that.. just thoughts. Nothing came to me I felt like sharing or I thought people may even want to read and I think that now too, but since I can not sleep, I decided to try again.

Here goes nothing...

Currently I am deciding how much to share in my blog and if anything I write is relative or just the jumbled stuff going on in my head so I assume this will be a lot of nonsense and mostly to help with writers block.

As of 1 AM on a Saturday night, I can not sleep because of anxiety with my job as head swim coach and pool stuff in general. I used to always dream about my job, only more it was a nightmare when I worked at a bar in town (Stoneface). I dreamt that I would close and had the whole bar to myself and it would be dead but I would be so tired that I would go in the back to clean while checking to see if anyone new came in to have a drink and fall asleep. I thought I actually fell asleep at work and then, out of nowhere, the bar would be packed and I would be alone and overwhelmed with people wanting anything and everything. Then I would be running and slinging drinks, sweating and people would run out of their tabs. This dream or should I saw nightmare was re-occurring and freaked me out. Why should serving 2-3 shifts a week be so stressful? This is when I wake up because I am grinding my teeth. Currently, I think I am having anxiety over swim meets and ordering things for the pool, keeping parents happy, making sure my guards are doing their jobs, watching the steps for kids who go under, the pumps, the chlorine and Ph levels, etc.  Really, these are things that should not be a big deal but I am anal and will admit it. I like things done my way and I can not clone myself so have to hope the guards I hired will do a good job.

So, that started my rant which everyone needs to do occasionally, but if done too often, people stop listening. Hopefully I have contained enough above that you wont get anymore because I wouldn't want to read this either.

Moving on...
Less than one month until the annual family vacation to Table Rock Lake in Shell Knob Missouri!! This will be my 13 or 14th consecutive summer going and love it. I love the week before we go, eve though it is stressful. I think this summer I will make  TO DO list and get things done in time so it is not all the night before or day we are leaving. And the best part is making it super long with lots of easy stuff to cross out and feel accomplished when you have finished everything on the list! I will admit I am a list freak!
Missouri is beautiful and so different from New Mexico. I love the greenery but the humidity is hard to get used to coming from Albuquerque where cactus thrive and we get dirt storms rather than flash flood warnings. Shell KNob is a small town, about an hour from Springfield and is so homey. It has one grocery store, hardwood store, two gas stations and lots of mom-n-pop shops like the RX store rather than a Walgreens or CVS. Shell Knob is a sleepy town that gets its business in the summer when boaters come to stay, eat, drink, play and buy stuff they really don't need like at the Ski Shop with their cool water toys, cute swim suits, sun glasses, flip-flops, and the store dog who has been there for years. I cant wait to get our cabin and turn the AC up. We call it a meat packing plant after a day on the lake when we first walk into the cabin and freeze. I love the face that there is an ice cooler that you just take and put a tally for the number of bags next to your cabin number and the walk down to the boat slips. I love the fireflies that glow at dusk into the darkness and the moon that shines on the lake, no matter how cliche it may be. I love the old swings that are staggered between the cabins for a couple to laugh on and talk about the day or just to catch up while the spiders web the metal corner rods and crawl over the splitting wood underneath the couples butts. I love the boat dock where we all plan the day to go play and the two across the way that we swim to and do dives and flips from the tall metal bars, where more spiders spin webs and catch creatures, specially the ones that fly in the light, under the boat docks when the music is playing and the underage kids sneak down to drink and make out. The boat dock across the way is where he first kissed me one afternoon. Both of us being tipsy, he finally made his move and something I will never forget. That was the summer I fell in love. That kiss and on made Table Rock even better, even though I didn't think that was possible. Trips to Big Cedar and walking in Bass Pro Shops and the bus ride from the dock to the lodge where we always get kicked out of the pool. Those little details never fade and year after year, they start to stack upon each other.

SO, there is a start. I feel less anxious and hopefully can now get some sleep. This has inspired me to get back to writing, even if it is just for myself. I think this will be an online journal for me and it may be really bad but I am going to try to be honest to myself and readers if there are any out there.
Good night to all.