Indiscriminate Drivel

Well, I think I want the world to know.

Maybe.  Probably, I do.  Sometimes.

I’m pretty sure.

This isn’t about my sexuality or anything.  If you’re thinking that this is going to be a Ricky Martin moment, you’ll probably be disappointed.  Of course, that was a little disappointing, too, I think.  I’m pretty sure Ricky lacked a full-length mirror in his closet.  Otherwise,  he might have seen what we all saw years ago.

It’s about my name.

You all know me as Linda, just Linda.  Or JustLinda.  (I used to be JustLinda, but now I’m just Linda.)

You might be surprised to know that I have last names.  Three, actually.  I have the one I grew up with.  Let’s say that was Smith.  Linda Smith.

Then I got married that first time and I was Linda Jones.

After my divorce, and as I was establishing my career, I kept it as Linda Jones because I had a couple of little Jones kids and plus Jones was so easy to spell and pronounce.  (Not like that old German name Smith – people were always messing that up.  Z? They would ask.  Smith with a Z?  Yes, thankyouverymuch, there is a Z in my last name.  Deal with it.)

Eventually, I remarried and the new guy wasn’t hip on me choosing to stick with the last name of the estranged Mister Jones.  Plus he and I knew we wanted more children and I figured my name would have to match Set 1 or Set 2 but couldn’t match both.  Well, it could have if I had been able to convince my new husband to take my ex-husband’s last name and then give that to our children, but he wasn’t too keen on that idea.  So, long story short, I became Linda Miller.

Linda Smith Jones Miller.

With a Z.

I know, I know.  It’s enough to make a person dizzy.  It’s very confusing, right?  So when I started my blog, I was just Linda.  Or rather JustLinda.  Whatever.

And that was my evil plan for keeping my anonymity on the big, bad Internet.  “Muhahaha – no one will find me!  I am just one Linda in a SEA of Lindas.  I am safe and anonymous, and I can tell lie after lie after lie.”

Only that’s not how it worked out.  Somehow the name Linda Miller, through the voodoo of Google algorithms, got associated with my little corner of the Internet here, so anytime someone would search for Linda Miller, the first result in the search return would be my blog.

Sneaky, huh?  Hiding in plain sight like that?

It was okay, though.  I really wasn’t planning on telling any sort of lies so the fact that people could find me was okay.  Whatever.

Add to that the advent of Facebook where I am clearly Linda Smith Jones Miller, right out there in front of God and country.  (And country, and country, and country, ad nauseam.)

Then there is LinkedIn where I am Linda Jones Miller.  Oh, and on Twitter, I’m @LindaInDisguise.

It’s starting to get hard for me to keep up with who I am supposed to be.  I have to take a Sharpie and write it on my arm for those times when I get confused.

So the people on Facebook don’t know about my blog or my Twitter account.  Well, I didn’t tell them.  Some of them know how to use Google and were born with a modicum of curiosity so they found me that way.  But I don’t post my blog links on my Facebook account.  Or on my LinkedIn account.  And I don’t post my Facebook account on my LinkedIn account, but I think I have my LinkedIn account posted on my Facebook account.  I also don’t post my Twitter account on Facebook or LinkedIn.

You can see how I might be running out of room on my arms, plus my Sharpie is almost out of ink and I’m feeling addled and confused.

I’m pretty sure I could spend all my time social-networking just amongst myself.  While that would perhaps be entertaining (for ME), it will never get me rich and famous.  (Unless, of course, someone rewards that choice monetarily because it keeps me out of the way of everyone else who would prefer I not tinker in their social networks.) (And if that is the case, my PayPal account is linda@justlinda.net – small, unmarked bills only please.)

People, I’m just tired.  I’m tired of trying to keep it all segregated.  And frankly, it is all just barely held in place by some duct tape that’s losing its stickiness and expired Elmer’s glue.  It’s all held apart with only the most tenuous of walls separating one section from another.  It’s probably this close to collapsing into one big ol’ Web two-point-oh pile, anyway.

Whatever.  Bring it on.

I look around and I see Heather Armstrong, Alice Bradley, Eden Kennedy, Allie Brosh, and other bloggers I follow all using their last names and nothing bad has happened to them.  No Internet mutants have eaten their children.  (Well, possibly that did happen with Allie.  She claims not to have any children, but how do we know she didn’t used to have one that got eaten by an Internet mutant or maybe a zombie?  Perhaps said mutant zombie is the inspiration for some of her drawings.  Ever-think-of-THAT???)

Anyway.

What would happen if I told you all my last name?  What would happen if I posted my blog link on my Facebook account?  My Twitter name on my LinkedIn account?  My LinkedIn name on my … oh, never mind.  You know what I mean.

Would the world keep turning on its axis?

Would they stop playing those incessant Full House re-runs on Nickelodeon?  (Please?  Because then I’d do it in a heartbeat!)

Would my family disown me?

Would my employer fire me?

What?  What would happen?  Why am I unsure and hesitating?  I’m practically OUT anyway – only hiding behind the thinnest of flimsy veils.

That’s it.  I’ve decided.  I’m pretty sure.  I think I can.  It’s time to boldly step forward.  Here I go.  Right now – I’m going to do it.

Hi, I’m Linda Smith Jones Miller.  You know me as JustLinda.

Nice to meet you.

Whew, that feels good.  (Not as good as topless sun-bathing, mind you.  It’s a different kind of liberating… a fake deceitful kind of liberating, I’d say.)

DAMMIT!  Why can’t I do this?

OK.  This time I mean it.

Linda Banana-Hammock Pederschmidt.

Oh, never mind.

Last week, we did our seven day Caribbean cruise with four excursions.

One of them was Belize.  If you’re like me, you might think that someone totally made up that country to see if you were as dumb as they thought you were.  You might be saying “You’re pulling my leg.  Belize?  You totally made that up, didn’t you?”

Well, you’d be WRONG.  There really is a Belize.  In fact, we came this close to seeing its king.

But, alas, he never came out to wave to the crowd of onlookers so we can only imagine his royalness.

We took a tour bus to the Mayan ruins to look around a little.  (They all pretty much look the same.) (Just in case you wanted to skip that part and go lie on the beach with some Pina Coladas or something.) And then we took a riverboat tour back to the port where our ship was.

Oh, and in the middle of all that, I had a cheeseburger for lunch.

(But I don’t think it was made by the burger king of Belize, just FYI.  It was a pretty mundane cheeseburger.  I expect the ones made by the burger king of Belize would be special, like maybe with some guacamole on them or something.)

Here are the ruins:

OK, now you can go have a drink.  You saw it.  Cool.

My husband is the one who wanted to book this tour.  Me?  I have no culture whatsoever and am kind of boring and apathetic.  It’s part of my charm.  I could have skipped it.  I mean, we were on a bus for two hours.  Do you know how many ice cream cones I could have imbibed in those two hours?  Really.

He said “You could at least ACT interested.  I pretend to like your stuff way better than you pretend to like my stuff.”

That is absolutely true, and there is no better evidence of it than the arena of oral sex.  Ahem.  (Hey!  It’s not your birthday, mister!  Get that thing away from me!)

After the Mayan ruins, we had that cheeseburger and then we boarded a riverboat for a tour down the River Wallace.

It was more boring that the ruins.  The good news was that I got a seat in the back of the boat where the twin outboard motors were and there was a strong gasoline odor back there which sort of got me buzzed.  It wasn’t as good as a Pina Colada, but you have to take what you can get.

We saw alligators:

And iguanas:

And other stuff too.  Monkeys and humming birds and whatever.  But the photos are all boring (I’m not in ANY of them!!) so I won’t post any more.

Every time we saw an alligator, everyone on the boat would run to the side where it was and start taking pictures.  This is how we ended up with 117 pictures of alligators.  And let’s face it – they all look the same.  Oh, I’m sure if alligators understood the English language, they would call me a racist for such a remark but whatever.  I’m not scared of them.

Except that I’m totally scared of them so don’t tell them I think they all look alike, OK?

When people ran to one side of the boat to take pictures, I felt it was my responsibility to keep my weight on the opposite side to keep us from tipping over.  Because if there is one thing I hate as much as getting eaten by sharks, it’s getting eaten by alligators.

Before long, I realized I could make the puppets dance and I would say “LOOK!  Alligator!” and they would all run over and I’d say “Oh, wait.  It was just a stick.”

Eventually they started ignoring me.  I had to up the ante.

“OHMYGOD – an ANACONDA – it must be nine feet long! Holy shit!”

When they’d all run over, I’d say “Oops, you just missed it – it went under the water.”  or maybe “That alligator just ate it.  Next time move faster when I pull your strings.”

Hey, you have to make your own fun when you’re on a tour of the River Wallace in  Belize.  I’m sure the gas fumes were influencing my behavior.

As we came to the end of the river where it pours out into the sea, we even saw a manatee.  Now, sure, it was dead and bloated and stunk to high heavens, but I made Bill take a picture anyway.  Mostly because it was the only time all those other jokers didn’t run over to that side with their cameras, so we finally got a clear shot.

Rest in peace, gentle sea cow.

When I was tallying all the animals we saw, I included the manatee.  Bill said “You can’t count that.  It was dead.”  I argued with him.  “I can TOTALLY count that even though it was dead!!  When I tally up how many countries I’ve been in, I always count Japan even though it was just a flight connection and I was only in one arm of the airport for a few hours and I never stepped foot outside.  If Japan counts, then the manatee counts, too.”

The problem with Bill is that he doesn’t think Japan counts either.  But whatever.  He knows better than to fight the crazy so he conceded the point and the manatee was included in my tally.

Alligators (lots), iguanas (three), monkeys (about a dozen), hummingbirds (I think it was four but it could have been just one doing those hummingbird Jedi-mind tricks where it moves so fast I can’t tell if it’s the same one or not), and manatee (one, dead and bloated).

I thought we were done seeing animals but shortly after that, we saw some dolphins:

If you’re like me, you’re probably thinking “SHARKS!!  Shoot the mother-effers!  Shoot them dead!”  But you might have regretted shouting that out because, dude, they’re dolphins.  But I totally understand your fear because I, too, want to shoot dead anything that might be a shark.  That movie – it did a number on me.

Still, dolphins are cute.  I used to watch Flipper, so I know.  I’m also pretty good at doing a dolphin imitation which I learned from Flipper.  There were dolphins all over Belize – I totally heard them.  “Did you hear that?” I’d say to Bill.  “Dolphins!”  He would roll his eyes and say “That sound came from up in the trees – those were birds.”

Maybe they were mynah birds imitating dolphins.  Maybe.  But they were probably dolphins that had migrated to the trees.  Dolphins are mammals, you know.  Poor Bill – I have to be patient with him.  He’s not as sharp as I am.

All in all, this whole jaunt took us about seven hours and cost a few hundred dollars.  I wanted to tell these people that the Internet is FULL of photos of alligators and Mayan ruins, but the internet cannot bring me a Pina Colada on a tray.  I’m quite sure they wouldn’t have understood – people are kind of dumb.  It’s only life experience that will teach them and maybe someday they will know better and prioritize Pina Coladas over some dumb tour of rubble from people who are dead and a bunch of animals that would eat your legs off if you let them.

To each his own.  That’s my motto.

Of our whole vacation, this is the only day that was overcast and so it was the only day we didn’t slather on sunscreen.  Of course, it was also the only day we got sunburned.  Bill said “We fell victim to one of the classic blunders, the most famous of which is never get involved in a land war in Asia but only slightly less well-known is this:  never spend the day outside without sunscreen even when it’s overcast when SUNBURN is on the line.”

I spent that evening shivering under the covers while my skin emanated enough heat to roast marshmallows.

That’s what I get for being a cynical smart-ass all day.  Perhaps this is the sort of thing that led to the demise of the Mayan culture.

Aw, who cares. Someone bring me a Pina Colada, stat.

I’m back!!

We had a fabulous time.  I was so damn spoiled and pampered, I felt like Paris Hilton should have been carrying me around in a little expensive purse.

In fact, it was almost embarrassing.  I now know why rich people always wear big sunglasses – because they don’t want to have to make eye-contact with the plebes.

It all started with the upgrade in our hotel in South Beach.  We were upgraded to a suite with a big, private balcony.  It overlooked the pool and the beach.  Here’s a view from our balcony.  Oh, look – there’s me, too!

On Sunday, we headed to the cruise ship.  Bill had surprised me by upgrading us to a deluxe stateroom, which also got us VIP status.  When we walked into the cruise terminal, the lines were incredibly long.   I was sure we’d be waiting for hours but then we saw signs for a separate VIP check-in.  We entered a quiet lounge furnished with overstuffed furniture, cool air, and soft music.  We were invited to sit and relax until our name was called, which took about 5 minutes.  A few minutes later, we were ready to board the ship.  We walked passed those huge lines with a sense of glee and delight cracking jokes about how it’s good to be king.

The rest of the week, we noticed, there were no special VIP lines.  Our punishment for the glee we felt during the boarding process was to have to wait in line with the little people for everything else all week long.  Oh, the humanity!

We spent time in the cruise ship bar.  Oh, look – there’s me again!

I got up solo and did karaoke!  I never had the nerve to do karaoke before, not going up there alone, but given that I knew no one and would never see those people again, I did it.  I sang Simon and Garfunkel’s Cecelia and I rocked it.  Seriously.  (If it shows up on Youtube and it’s determined by popular opinion that I didn’t really rock it, I’ll come back here and edit this post to say I crashed and burned.)

It was the vacation of bikini wearing.  I assume this is what is referred to as a bikini.  The bottoms were full-coverage and, really, that was by necessity.  Trust me on that.  Still, it felt pretty good to be rocking a 2-piece suit for the first time since I was a little kid.

It was, also, the vacation of topless sun-bathing.  OH YES I DID!  I did that on Miami’s South Beach, before the cruise.  The beach itself was not a topless beach, but there were plenty of sunbathers doing it.  And, yes, if they all were jumping off a bridge, I just might have joined them at that too – IF bridge-jumping was something on my bucket list!

It was the vacation of the private cabana at the beach in Honduras.  The cabana had a hammock and lounge chairs and waitstaff service.  Oh, look – there I am again!  And again!

 

There was a security person who worked the row of private cabanas who would shoo off any interlopers who came from the public beach area and tried to use our chairs.  We had a few people who just wanted to use the hammock for a minute, to take a picture.  I thought we should charge $2.00, but then Bill said if the women flashed him, he’d let them take the photo for free.  See how generous we are to the little people??

It was the vacation of ice cream cones and books and good music from my iPod.  It was the vacation of no phone and no TV and no Blackberry and no Internet.  It was the vacation of eating and sleeping and gambling and relaxing and shopping and reading.

It was the vacation of me looking adorable.

 

Oh, and yeah – he was there too:

And we were even together in a photo occasionally: