Home again, home again (another wordy travelogue and my New Year's Resolutions)

As I always do around the holidays, I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off, trying to finish up last minute things before we headed to Savannah to my parents'. My house was bristling with post-it notes because if I don't write it down, there's not a prayer in this world that it'll make it into the car (you should see some of these notes, which contain things as mundane as underwear and jammies and as ridiculously self-evident as the dogs but I know my weaknesses and forgetting the most obvious stuff is a big one of them). After being told by my husband that for the first time in about a hundred years, he was actually driving down with us and staying the whole time thereby not taking the extra car I count on and which necessitated changing my packing strategy to fit the extra suddenly occupied seat, I managed to shoehorn everything into the car. We all piled in around the stash of gifts and luggage and with everyone except me enjoying the feeling of their knees brushing their ears (this is why I'm the driver, although the complaints I heard--as if normal people don't try to see just how much one minivan can hold, almost crowding out people and animals) headed to T.'s indoor soccer game. After a Christmas miracle (they won), we all piled back in the van and headed down the road, wrapped in the sweaty stink of my soccer boy. Amazingly no one got sick, either from the smell or because carsickness is just fun and games in our family. Of course, dosing the chief offenders with Bonine before we left probably helped, as did their inability to breathe for the duration of the trip.

Got to Savannah with enough time to not only unload the car but to shower the rank smelling kid and visit my grandmother before we headed out to dinner with some family friends. I'm sure the restaurant folks saw us coming and everyone working there wanted to call in dead as our party consisted of 12 adults, 3 college students, 2 teenagers, and eight 4-12 year olds. We managed to finish our meal without breaking anything or raising the decibel level in there by too terribly much though. Once we headed back home, I had to buckle down and get started on the wrapping. People talk about the housework gap between men and women but not one soul mentions the inequality in presents and wrapping every blasted year. And let me tell you, it's an enormous gap! Not only did I have to buy all of the presents (save my own although I might start supplementing my own stocking if I'm honest), but I had to wrap and send them to my in-laws as well as buy and wrap for my own family and for D. and the kids. D. only wraps mine. It's like the laundry inequality on a larger scale and with a deadline. So it took me two evenings to wrap (I can't start until children are nestled all snug in their beds) and I get tired but I managed to pull everything off in time to lay it all out Christmas Eve by 11 pm.  But let me take this opportunity to say that I loathe wrapping on Christmas Eve.

Christmas itself was the usual present marathon although my youngest nephew no longer has to nap in the middle of it so that helps speed the process up some. W. was unimpressed by the sheer number of car related things in his stocking this year (jumper cables, small toolset, air freshener, a dancing dashboard bacon called Shakin' Bacon, etc.), culminating in an ice scraper. We might live in the south but the kid was too impatient to defrost his rear windshield one morning before he left for school and he ran right over our mailbox. It is now horribly off-kilter, the screws in the back of it are barely holding the front of it on, and the door to it doesn't actually close completely leaving our mail sodden and mushy on rainy days but replacing it per the neighborhood HOA covenants is muy expensivo (fancy pants mailbox, doncha know). So I protected us from having to buy a new one just yet by getting that super exciting $3 stocking present. It even has a brush on it were it to ever snow and stick (completely unlikely but better safe than sorry, right?!). The rest of Christmas was rather more appreciated by the recipients. T. in particular may never have a Christmas as wonderful as this one, receiving his first cell phone and promptly becoming inseparable from it, much like his father and his cell phone. Although T. has had to endure some mocking from W. and R. about the fact that he texts with hashtags. This is apparently ridiculous (as if the whole concept of hashtags themselves isn't).

My dad enjoys socializing and parties a bit more than my mom does so she's never offered to have a Christmas party at their house despite knowing that he'd really enjoy one. Well, this year, she called me ahead of time and offered to pay me to cater a party for them and a wildly varying number of their friends so she could give daddy a party as his Christmas present. Never one to turn down cash, I agreed. And thanks to my multitude of sticky notes at home, my very best heavy appetizer recipes made it into the car and down to Savannah. I spent the couple of days after Christmas prepping for the party so all I'd have to do the day of was stuff everything in the oven. Good thing since the day of the party saw us heading to downtown Savannah and the gallery of an artist who is painting a portrait of R. in one of her dances from two years ago. The portrait is going to be gorgeous. And R.'s lovely hands are also now on another portrait as well, something that completely tickles her. As we left to head home, we got a little turned around, driving through a not so savoury part of town. About 6 nanoseconds after everyone in the car yelled at me to watch the curb (high, sharp, historic beauties down there), I ran over it and sliced my tire but good. Immediate flat.  My parents, who promptly called AAA, had visions of a mugging, a shooting, or some other catastrophic thing. Even AAA put us on the priority list because of where we were stranded.  I was less worried about that than I was about none of the appetizers being finished for the party that was only a couple of hours away.  As D. and my dad wrestled with the lug nuts and the spare, I was not very popular, let me tell you. But they got everything handled so we didn't need a guy with a pneumatic tool and we headed home.

The following day after brunch (T.'s favorite holiday tradition), we piled back into the car and headed home. Every year I convince myself that we'll be coming home with less stuff than we drove there with and every year I am stunned when I am wrong. Apparently I'm a slow learner. So everyone, except me, got to ride home with their knees nearly as close to their ears as they did when we drove down. And there was no barfing in the car either. Thank heaven! There was, however, a brown water stain on the kitchen ceiling when we got home. Seems the supply source to R.'s toilet has been leaking for months (God bless teenagers who don't think to share vital information like this with parents). Luckily it was an easy and relatively inexpensive fix (far cheaper than the wonky mailbox will be) and after it dries out we'll just paint the ceiling and call it all good.

In trying to put everything away after we got home, I realized just how overwhelmed I am by *stuff.* The fact that we've lived here longer than anywhere else, ever, means we haven't had a moving purge and I can tell by the ridiculous accumulation in all cupboards and drawers. So one of my New Year's resolutions is to go through and ruthlessly purge the unnecessary from the house.  Probably a resolution I share with 12 trillion others.  Rather than come up with other completely predictable resolutions like losing weight (yeah, I need to) or finding a better life balance (ditto), I made some easily attainable resolutions. In 2014, I will go through the backlog of magazines I have sitting around. When all was said and done and I'd collected them together, there were 103 in the unread pile (but only 72 left as of this afternoon). I will finally mend the slight rips along seams that seem to plague my boys' pants. I will write some real snail mail letters again. And I will work on clearing off my biggest clutter areas (desk and chair by the basement stairs already accomplished so far). Yes, it has taken me a long time to get my s#!t together after getting home but I am getting there and now I have goals too. And speaking of s#!t, I am only using the guest bathroom for the forseeable future. D. got a copy of What's Your Poo Telling You? (and a bottle of Poo-Pourri, which we have yet to test) in his stocking and the book is surprisingly interesting. I mean, without it, I wouldn't know that you can poo as much as three times a day or as little as three times a week and still be in the range of normal. Who doesn't need to know that tidbit of information?! Oh, and doesn't this, combined with the ice scraper, make you wish you were part of our family, if only for the incomparable stocking presents we give?

Summer 2012 travelogue

When the kids were smaller and had fewer commitments, I could pack them up and take them to my family’s cottage almost the minute school was out and not return until seconds before school started again. Now that they’re older, they have activities and things that make this impossible although it remains my ideal. Somehow, this year the stars aligned and we had the unheard of amount of 5 weeks in which no tennis tournament was planned (well, not any W. was going to play), no dance competition was scheduled, and no soccer game was happening. 5 weeks! Staggering, really. So I took full advantage of it and we headed to Upper Peninsula Michigan for a long and schedule-free vacation. As per in previous years, DH miraculously couldn’t get away the same day the kids and I could so I was left to do my usual 16 or so hour drive with three children, two dogs, and no other driver to spell me, although W., newly possessed of his permit, offered to help should I need it. (Pretty sure he didn’t hear me mumble “No freakin’ way” under my breath.)

We pulled out of here in the morning, later than I’d planned because I apparently hadn’t factored in the slothlike speed with which teenagers move in the a.m. even when they are heading to the place they love most in the world. Noon would have been a more civilized departure time according to them. But it was lucky we did leave when we did because we encountered terrible, scary storms on our way up through Ohio. The wind and debris swirled all around the car, smacking into the windshield hard and then the rain poured down sideways. It was really a bit apocalyptic driving through it and even once it was over, no one for miles (and I do mean many, many miles) had any electricity. We had to sit on the highway for a while waiting for crews to remove the trees that had blown down and into the road. I had put off stopping for dinner because we don’t make the drive north without having Skyline Chili which we cannot get down by us. The first two Skylines we stopped at on the outskirts of Columbus had no electricity and were therefore closed. The third one was apparently the only one in the metro area to have electricity so we got to stop and I averted total mutiny by my loving children who were threatening to eat my arm by the time we found the open restaurant. Luckily we didn’t plan to stop in Columbus on our way up and so after some very satisfying three-ways and coney dogs we kept driving until we were out of the storm’s swath.

Our second day of driving started off fine as I forced the second car-sickness pill down Gatsby’s throat. Entertainingly, she and R. can both take the same motion sickness stuff (Bonine) which means there’s no worries about giving the dog the kid’s drugs or vice versa. It worked great. Unfortunately, Daisy was the one to get car sick and she hadn’t had any meds. I probably shouldn’t have really hoped that we’d make the trip in the new van without any vomit episodes; I’m sure that jinxed me. But small puke puddle aside, we made it all the way north without any further incident and settled in to our blissful existence up there.

Not many days into vacation, W. discovered that people were in fact not lying when they warned us about the Coast Guard, DNR, and sheriff being very active on the water this year. He and a buddy had gone into town in the boat and on their way back, they were stopped by the Coast Guard. As typical, always ravenous teenaged boys, they had gone into town to pick up pizza and the CG actually asked them “Can we look in that pizza box?” They must have looked shifty or something. Turns out all the boys were smuggling was a meat lover’s pizza.

Gatsby found herself being just as ravenous as the teenaged boys since her diet continued up north. Of course she had many more chances to supplement her meals there than she does at home, digging up a well-seasoned pelvis and spinal column out in the woods to offset the scant amount of food we, her people, were willing to give her. She also managed to eat a few crickets, gnaw on one dead toad, and lick a turtle. This led me to come up with a book idea: The Dog’s Guide to Vomiting. It'll start out with "Step One: Find carpet. The lighter the color the better." See? My family has always maintained that I have a book in me and I’m pretty sure this could be the one.

Other things of note this summer? T. earned his boating license. It’s not valid until he’s twelve though so he’s already called driving the boat first in two years. W. borrowed my dad’s gun one Sunday when we went to shoot sporting clays and he managed to hit 40 out of 50 of them his first time ever holding a 12 gauge. He’s already been told he’s out of the will since he can now outshoot his grandfather. He passed me up long ago and R. can sometimes outshoot me too. At least I’ve still got T., for another year anyway. I made my annual donation of sunglasses to appease the lake gods. Thankfully they were cheap but they were my favorite pair. R. tried to learn to waterski. Despite her good sense of her center of gravity from dance, she failed miserably and gave up long before she got up on the skis. Tubing seems to be more my kids’ speed. I had to write some reviews while up there and since we don’t have wi-fi, I had to drag my laptop around to find it. Many of the reviews were written from very lovely and scenic spots but I discovered a drawback of sitting outside under trees. A small, wiggling white worm dived into my keyboard and despite my best efforts, I’m pretty sure the bottom side of my “s” key has worm guts under it. Ew! On a more palatable note, W. had his first summer romance this year. Given the lack of technology where we are (cell phone coverage is dodgy at best and as mentioned before, no wif-fi), we were treated to an old-fashioned summer romance. They had to call each other on land lines and couldn’t get too far from the base without dropping the call so I got to eavesdrop freely and without shame. Entertainingly enough, we went all the way to Upper Peninsula Michigan for him to find a girl who lives a mere 2 hours from us in North Carolina. What are the odds?

But the thing that dominated the summer this year? Bodily elimination. And by that I mean pee and poo. You’d think that as my kids get older, we would move away from all the bodily functions but we seem destined (doomed?) to live in toilet humor land forever. In order to not stress the septic system so badly, the boys have always been told to go outside and pee on a tree. T. was afraid to do this in the full dark of night so he was just walking to the edge of the porch and peeing through the slats onto the newly planted fern bed. My mother put an end to that, insisting that he go further afield, a decision that would come to bite her in the ass later. W. managed to lose his glasses for several days, assuring me that they were in fact somewhere in the cottage but unable to produce them. We all searched for them for days and couldn’t come up with them. W. had already been told that he would have to pay to replace them himself when my sister and her family arrived and my 7 year old niece finally discovered them outside the Rookery (the name of where we stay) on the ground under a tree. Don’t ask. I’m not sure why they were there either. We were off shooting sporting clays (and even blind, the kid managed to shoot 34 of 50 birds) when she found them so she handed them to my mother who promptly licked the lenses to clean them off. Again, don't ask me why she did this. Isn't it clear by now that my family is weird? When we got back from shooting, A. got to give them back to W. as mom told us where they were found. I sort of paused and asked if she knew that that was the tree on which T. was peeing since he wasn’t allowed to pee through the slats anymore. She hadn’t but it was too late and the lens licking had already happened. Sickos that we are, we’re still laughing about it and probably will be for years.

Apparently T. was having major issues with the toilet this year though as his fear of peeing outside in the dark wasn’t his only problem. He came waddling out of the bathroom into my room one night holding his underwear and jammies pinched between two fingers. I asked him what the problem was and he admitted that his stuff might be a little dirty. I sent him to drop the stuff directly in the washer rather than in my laundry basket, which was where he was originally headed. When he got back, he was still walking strangely and I called him on it. He told me that there had been no toilet paper and he hadn’t wanted to “inconvenience” me by telling me. I asked him how he’d wiped his butt and he admitted that he’d used the cardboard paper toilet paper roll! Worse yet, he’d then put it back on the holder. After some shouting on my part, he took the poopy roll down to the trash can in the workshop and tossed it. When he came back, I showed him where exactly the toilet paper was kept so he’d know in future and so he could finally clean himself off. On his third trip out of the bathroom, I made him come over and prove to me that he had cleaned himself off completely because, let’s face it, clearly my kid is gross.

He was clean but I was startled to see that my 10 1/2 year old had started developing a bit of pubic hair. Never a mother to spare her children embarrassment, I pointed it out and asked when that had started. He tried to tell me that it was a year ago. His sense of time has never been strong. So I released him and called W. into my room to ask him because if you can’t mortify one kid, try another, especially a teenager. He was a bit non-plussed when I asked him if he remembered when he started getting pubic hair and suggested that asking him if his brother’s development was normal was a question better suited to a doctor. My kids are so going to get their money’s worth in therapy later in life! I wasn’t finished with the question though and asked a friend about her boys who are slightly older and slightly younger than T. or if she knew what normal was. She had no idea but when I mused that I should probably find out family history, she just about wet her pants laughing hysterically and suggested that she wanted to be there when I asked my dad how old he was when he got hairy testicles. I might have very few filters (duh!) but after practically choking on my own laughter, I did manage to draw the line and not ask dad. (I did ask my husband, who might have thought the question was a come-on if I wasn’t a thousand miles away from him when I asked it, but he’s used to my complete lack of propriety by now and simply admitted he had no earthly idea.) So I still don’t know but whether or not my kid is normal, I suspect it’s pretty clear that I’m not and that is probably genetic too.

Now we’re home without further antics or embarrassing questions and our unscheduled time is over. I’m finally unpacked although not everything has found its way to exactly where it belongs yet. The heat and humidity down here are killing me and I’m pretty sure if my parents call me to tell me that they are having another evening in the 50’s and they are having a fire on yet another night up there without me, I might just crack and ask my dad after all.

Easter redux

As we usually do, we went to my parents' house for Easter. Unlike in previous years, we didn't take our whole spring break down there. This year, we hung around our house for the bulk of the week (and so the almost 15 year old could take his driver's ed class) and then headed down for a long weekend. Even though we were there for such a short time, we had our usual crazy adventures although we managed to make it all three days (and both 4 hour drives) without one instance of vomiting, which might just be a record for us.

Our drive down was mostly uneventful but punctuated by T. weeping quietly about the fact that we had dismantled his single bed and were taking it to give to my 92-year old grandmother as it's significantly lower than the bed she was sleeping in (as she's short, getting into a high bed is just not easy at all anymore). You'd think the kid loved the bed more than life itself when in fact he rarely sleeps in it, preferring to be on his sister's floor. No idea what the woe is me attitude was all about but he managed to parlay it into not only prime seat in the car, but also lap custody of the non-carsick dog as well. Such a little scam artist!

Saturday morning I went on a nice long walk with my mom and intended to play some tennis with D. and W. as my dad took R. to the symphony with him. But after the walk, I took a shower and the sebaceous cyst on my head spontaneously burst. By the way, for those who don't know, sebaceous cyst is just the fancy and slightly less gross term for boil. So yes, I had a nasty boil bust open and derail my day. My mom insisted that I needed to go to urgent care to make sure I got antibiotics and frankly, even at my age, it's just easier to give in. Of course, several hours later, I was still sitting at my annual urgent care visit and cursing her for making me go. Eventually I was seen by a doctor who was 112 years old, a bit wobbly, seemed skeptical that this thing had burst open on its own, tried squeezing the gunk out of the inflamed and pulsing knob on my head, and ultimately was willing to prescribe me not only antibiotics but also Vicodin for the pain (which only occurred when he was trying to milk it like a zit). Pretty much blew my entire day by the time I escaped (sans Vicodin, I might add).

Up for church on Easter Sunday we did not manage to look like the lovely family pictures I've been seeing all of my friends post on Facebook. My parents, my husband, and I were all nicely dressed. My children looked like they got dressed in the dark, a pitch black dark at that. We opted not to capture photographic evidence but imagine this if you will: one Kristen with an infamed, superating, bloody knob poking up out of her hair, one T. weaing a not quite so white t-shirt with cute shorts a size too small, one R. with a holey shrug over her dress, and one W. wearing white socks with sandals and a pair of khaki pants we bought him at Christmas but which are now 4 inches too short and that made him sing soprano. Obviously I was talking to myself before we left when I asked them to make sure they had nice church clothes that fit. Why on earth would anyone try them on when they can just bamboozle mom by saying that they did and then having no better options available on the actual morning. ::sigh:: A completely and unashamedly ragtag and lying bunch, that's my crew. Even better, that's what we looked like in the midst of Southern gentility not only at church but at brunch afterwards although by then we had forced W. to change into a pair of too small shorts that showed his assets off slightly less well than the pants (he stubbornly kept the socks on with his sandals though.) This barely helped as by the end of the meal we had added more: my grandmother has a terrible case of shingles which wept through her lovely top making it look as if she'd had a minor accident. Guess it's no wonder the family behind us in church broke out the hand sanitizer after sharing the peace with us. (And no, I am not kidding. They all passed hand sanitizer down the row as soon as we all sat back down from the greetings.)

Lest we be a further sartorial embarrassment to my parents, almost as soon as brunch was over, we hit the road to head home. Other than obscene amounts of traffic, the return trip was pretty uneventful. And being gone such a brief amount of time has meant that there's less to do here at home to get us back to normal. Not a bad thing at all. Now we just have to wait for the phone call from driver's ed to schedule W.'s behind the wheel stuff and I have to keep measuring the subsidence of the knob on my head and decide if I want to follow my discharge instructions for a face lift, I mean to have the cyst removed by a plastic surgeon once the infection is gone (which should function as a tiny face lift given its location). Vanity or sound medical reasoning? Hmmmmm......

Summer vacation chronicles

It's taken me a long time to get around to my usual travelogue after our summer travels and I seriously thought about skipping it but then I realized that if I did, you all might miss out on your bi-annual vomit reading. And that would just be a crying shame. ;-) So here for your reading pleasure, what we did on our summer vacation:

You might be forgiven for thinking that we are incapable of reading a map given that this year we drove south in order to go north. Yes, we drove to Tampa and Orlando to get to northern Michigan. Why not add 10 hours to our already 15 hour trip, right?! R. had dance nationals in Orlando so I shipped the boys up to my parents and packed her, all her costumes, make-up, and assorted dance paraphenalia as well as all of our clothing (warm weather and cold weather) for the month we were planning on spending in the UP, both dogs, the frogs in their aquarium, and a half van load of toys and books that I planned to dump on my small niece and nephews into the van and headed south to my sister's house in Tampa. I got smart and asked the vet for anti-nausea drugs for the carsick dog so the trip south with the traveling menagerie was pretty uneventful. We drove back and forth from Tampa to Orlando each day R. had to dance and I took my niece with me a couple of the days. She is as girlie as they come and she thoroughly enjoyed the glitz, especially loving the day that I told R. to take her onstage for the awards. Pretty sure I'm aunt of the year for that one. Oh, and if it means my sister will have to suffer through dance for years and years too, I will feel like my job is done.

Once the competition was finished for R., we re-packed the car with all critters, clothes, and dance junk but minus all the outgrown toys and books and hit the road. I was caravanning with my sister, S., who had asked specifically for R. to ride with her to help entertain her kids (6, 4, and 2). It was really rather pleasant to listen to the audio book I chose without the constant accompaniment of the binging and pinging noises of a Nintendo DSi acting as background noise. The dogs slept peacefully on the front seat (carsick dog was blissfully drugged once again) and I only ever heard unpleasantness when S. called me from her van to say she needed to stop for gas or food or whatever. Then I was treated to a screaming cacophony over the phone.

The trip ultimately took 3 days and because I was alone for all of it, it was not a bad drive. The first night we stopped at my dad's apartment in Atlanta. Almost as soon as we walked into the apartment, S.'s puppy Packer vomited right at my feet. She dragged him outside as I cleaned up puke not even of my own family's making, Miss Gatsby still being looped on her pill. When S. came back in with Packer, he promptly squatted and pooped in the middle of the family room and since we were screaming at him, moved into the kitchen to pee. Darned good thing that dad was in the process of moving out of that apartment. Because if it hadn't needed to have the carpet replaced before we got there (it did), it sure would have afterwards. Entertainingly, Packer was scared of the open concrete stairs to get up to the apartment so after each accident, S. had to either drag him down them or carry his heavy butt down them. After a day of screaming in her car, she was not in the best of moods that night. I, however, felt perfectly fine. ;-) The second night we spent at my in-law's. Luckily no dogs had accidents or I probably would never be welcome there again. We did have to try and shove Packer into Gatsby and Daisy's travel crate and that provided some hilarity since he didn't fit and kept making it cartwheel across the floor. We left him in it with it collapsed around him, rationalizing that it had mesh ends so he wasn't going to suffocate. Day three of driving was a repeat of days one and two and we were all terribly grateful to finally make it to the cottage.

We settled into our regular summer life once we got there with one big change. For the first year ever, we allowed W. and R. to drive the little boat all by themselves. They got their boating licenses last year and this year they earned a little freedom, at least for a while. We put their licenses in a plastic baggie that they stashed in a cubby in the boat and at some point the licenses must have blown out. Curtailed all their freedom and meant we had to run our own errands again so it was a bummer for all of us. But if their caution in the boat translates to driving a car, I feel much better about the fact that W. can take driver's ed as soon as next month.

One night I was out late picking up R. and we came back to the cottage after dark. I reminded myself to turn off the running lights as I came into the dock. Both of us went to our respective beds and went to sleep. About 2 hours later, my mother came storming into my room, woke me up, and accused me of not turning the lights off on the boat. As she grumbled about dead batteries and responsibility, I went downstairs to head to the dock. We grabbed a flashlight to light the way. I clicked it on and then off again. When it clicked off, the boat lights were no longer on. I asked if there was someone down on the dock but she told me not to be ridiculous and grabbed the flashlight. I admit I was being totally chickenshit, which is probably related to batshit crazy in my case but that's a whole other story, but I was sure there was someone there. Damn near wet my pants when we almost ran into my dad on the path from the dock, where he had been down turning the boat lights off. I kept bleating that I had turned them off and I didn't know how they turned on. No one believed me and I felt like a delinquent little kid. But lo and behold, the local poltergeist turned the lights on at least twice more in the night (turned out it was a loose connection) so I was completely vindicated.

The summer was filled with the usual swimming, sailing, and tennis fun. T. attended a 3 day kayak camp and according to him thoroughly enjoyed himself, except for how hard he had to work paddling. Uh, yeah, that's kind of the deal with kayaking!

We went out for pizza one night and looked away from the box just long enough for one ballsy seagull to snag an entire piece of pizza for himself. Unfortunately, he was also a discerning seagull and snagged a piece of the fantastic Greek pizza instead of going for the plain cheese. No wodner sea gulls are so rotund.

Miss Gatsby, who is also fat as a little toad (from lack of exercise, not from stealing pizza) played and romped with my mom's dog but continued to get fatter. I'm claiming she's got a glandular disorder but I think that might be a bit like me stuffing my face with cookies and then wondering if I have a thyroid problem. We might not share any DNA but it's good to know my dog emulates me in the ways that make us truly family.

T. spent the summer impersonating Nature Boy. He told my mom that I told him he only had to wash his pits so he didn't bother to soap any other parts. Obviously I have to be more specific with dirt boy. He also decided that plain old peeing on a stump wasn't enough of a break for the septic system so he was apparently regularly pooping in the bushes (thank heavens we're isolated on our bay!) until the dog busted him. I swear the child has an allergy to cleanliness.

Every night in my bed, I tried to claim alpha dog status but by morning it was clear I'd lost again. (And no, this is not a reference to my sex life; get your dirty minds out of the gutter.) Trying to share a single bed with two small dogs is not recommended unless you too like hanging your uncovered, goose-pimpled butt off the edge of the bed.

This summer I acquired a new name: Aunt DooDoo. Rather charming, don't you think? I suspect that I will be thanking my two year old nephew for that one for years to come. I'm pretty sure that translated to "Hey $hithead, I'm trying to get your attention." I could be misinterpreting though.

There were several statements this summer impossible to misinterpret. The best of these was when I had my friend's youngest with me in the boat. He told me that T. told him "If Ki-Bam (our boat) was nicer, we could pick up babes." So I looked at C. and asked him he he wanted to pick up babes. His response? "No. But T. does." Yeah, that's about right too. Of course, he'll have to start bathing and stop shitting in the woods for any girl in her right mind to be interested in him so I guess I don't have to worry any time in the near future.

The other unmistakeable comment this summer? Both W. and I signed up to play in the annual, just for fun Butzie Tournament. W. twisted his ankle rather badly in the first set but my partner (who is a phenomenal tennis player) and I made it to the finals. Before the last match, W. looked at me and said, "Good going mom. You can get second!" Brat! R. and I didn't get second. We won. So when we got home, T.'s comment on finding out that I'd brought home the crystal clock? "So I guess R. did all the work, huh?" Both boys are fired as my kids until further notice!

Other highlights of the summer included having a damsel fly land on my nose causing me to go just about cross-eyed. Better up close and personal with that bit of nature than with the skeeters and black flies though. W. got up close and personal with a nasty case of creeping crud from the water. He played stump the ER doctor one night and had us driving 45 minutes to see a dermatologist a few days later. Turned out to be a particularly virulent case of impetigo. He's still all polka-dotty from it, just how he intended to start high school, I'm certain. On the plus side, I now know that if I insult him to the point that he is laughing uncontrollably, blood draws are much easier. I suspect that the ER staff thinks we're completely loony tunes but they have no idea how much easier I made their lives!

This year we were up north for the annual Pirate Party and that was good fun to watch as a whole pirate flotilla motored up and down the channel, firing cannons, waving cutlasses, and lobbing water balloons. My friend J. and I went to the bar that night but we did not go in costume like so many other people. I fully intended to close one eye and say "Arrrrg" if I was called on it but my smart ass response was not needed, more's the pity.

And lest you think that my sister's dog is the only vomiter this year, I have to add that once I ran out of the good drugs for Gatsby, car travel suddenly got dicier. We took her 45 minutes to Sault Ste. Marie to the groomer and just before we pulled into the parking lot a horrific stench filled the car. I thought she'd pooped all over but it turns out that she had eaten poop and her stomach had finally rebelled. (And given her weight issues, I'm guessing poo is quite high in calories.) With my mother gagging, my kids hollering, and every one of us hanging a head out of the closest window in order to breathe, I pulled into the groomer. Every last one of them fled the car, including all four dogs, at top speed and left me to deal with the atrocious mess. We actually had to buy a bottle of Febreeze to keep in the car.

The last bit of fun this summer was the regatta. Sailing in it alone for the first time, poor R. had every sailing mishap possible short of capsizing (she ultimately took third though). The fact that she kept going back day after day was pretty impressive since I could hear the crying and shouting all the way at the dock on day 2. Rather a good thing that W. opted not to sail because I'm sure there would have been blows. Shortly after R. collected her trophy, we had to pack the critters back up and head home.

15 hours felt positively short compared to the 3 days it took to get up there. And the drive was uneventful if much noisier with the addition of the boys. Of course, just to remind me of her capabilities, the night we got home, R. up-chucked pizza all over the power room. I'm still trying to find paint that will cover those grease marks permanently!

Spring Break Travelogue

We are very lucky to have family living in a place that is very appealing to visit for spring break and so once again, we packed ourselves up and headed to Savannah. Living in the south as we do now also means that there's not an entire day's worth of driving ahead of us and so we can take our time packing and starting out. That bit us in the butt this year though. The kids had no decent shoes to wear for church on Easter and so I hung around long enough to hit the only store in town that carries shoes the width of shoe boxes themselves for my Fred Flintstone-like, wide-footed children. And we managed to choose pretty quickly (not a hard task when your appropriate size choices are A or B and sometimes only A).

No matter how quickly you do the last minute errands, though, my newest travel advice is to never try to leave town when the President is visiting. It's a guarantee that every road in the city will be beyond bollocksed up. And if you're really lucky like we were, the highway will come to a complete and total stop a mere mile from the exit you need. 45 minutes stuck on the highway is never any fun. On the other hand, it was sort of entertaining to see the cops picking up and ticketing folks crossing the median to turn around and escape the highway closure. That's one way to increase the city's badly needed revenues, I guess. God bless government. :-P

Once we finally escaped the long, circular parking lot so incapacitated by the POTUS's visit, we ran headlong into 3 fairly impressive accidents on 95. I swear that particular highway is an accident magnet. Despite the fact that my GPS promised me a 3:03pm arrival in Savannah, we rolled in at 4:45 as I was starting to come down with something nasty. Normally being late wouldn't be an issue but we had a music festival concert to go to that night with my parents. D. was unaffected by my late arrival because he had driven down earlier on his own (he also didn't experience the seventh circle of traffic hell, the lucky b@stard), but I had to pull off a presentable quick change in 10 minutes after 5+ hours in the car. By the time we left my parents' house, I could barely breathe and my throat was impossibly sore but I was dressed pretty, dad gum it.

Coughing and hacking and sneezing during all silent portions of the evening added to everyone's enjoyment of the music, I'm sure. The evening was a jazz thing that showcased the top three high school bands from the morning's competition and many of the professionals who had judged the groups. Kids behind us had played that morning but were not playing that evening and clearly knew their stuff. One kid was amazed during a sax solo. The saxophonist was playing something multi-tonal. Apparently this should be incredibly impressive. Quite honestly, it sounded like crap to me. Then again, I was listening as if underwater I was so stuffed up and I'm completely non-musical at the best of times so... Although I may have been congested from my eyeballs to my toes, I still heard the reedy whifflings by that same saxophonist and I know that those can't be good no matter that he can pull of the discordant to me multi-tonal thing. Lest you think I can only be grouchy and snarky when I am sick (99% true, incidentally), I will say that Amazing Grace played by Wycliffe Gordon, Marcus Printup, and Marcus Roberts was absolutely the most awe inspiring piece of music I've ever heard in my life. The minute they finished, the whole audience was on its feet. And the concert should really have ended on that note. Unfortunately for my highly contagious and plague-y self, it didn't.

The next night, rather than being smart and babying my sick self, D. and I went to more music from the festival. This time it was bluegrass. We parked the car and as we headed out of the parking garage, I walked right off edge of sidewalk and fell flat. Good thing I refuse to be ladylike and wear nylons because I scraped the snot out of my knees. More importantly, I looked like an idiot. Lesson learned: nevermind operating heavy machinery when under the influence of heavy duty drugs, don't even try to walk unaided. (And I'll pretend I wasn't the one who drove us downtown that night too.) Sitting in the chairs in the auditorum made the plague hit again full force so I once again accompanied the musicians with my very own nose trumpet. Catering to my misery, we left at half time (or intermission for those of you who are not my sports-minded husband or father).

The major reason we had pushed to get to Savannah when we did was to celebrate my grandmother's 90th birthday (and my nephew's 1st). Not wanting to cause E. a heart attack, we told her we were having a surprise party for her. The beauty of some memory loss: by the time people started walking in, it was a pleasant surprise to her again. My sister S. and I got a kick out of the birthday cake as my mother had asked for chocolate roses. They looked just like cow patties on the cake. Good thing the kids don't care how appetizing cake looks as long as it is chock full of sugar and butter. After food, we trooped downstairs for a puppet show that my mom had won in a charity auction. Normally the puppet show travels to schools and presents to kids about music (see the theme from the weekend?). They didn't alter the show at all and so it was one of those mind numbingly dull educational shows that kids welcome at school if only to get out of class for a few precious minutes (and I was one of the kids in school with a *good* attitude!). I think the old folks enjoyed it though. Mom had discovered that the retirement home wouldn't charge her for the room if she opened the show to all residents so we had the whole gamut of oldsters there. We are nothing if not cheap and resourceful in our family. ;-) Personally I think borrowing somebody's cane and thwacking the puppets over the heads would have livened the whole thing up, but no one else seemed to have the attention span of a gnat during the show. Maybe I was still just sick and crabby (entirely possible) or maybe I'm correct about the mind-numbing (I prefer this option).

After all the birthday festivities and Easter egg hunting and whatnot was all through, we settled down to stay for another week, especially since my dad was having an operation. You'd think this would mean that we would be nice to him. Au contraire. I told a few people he was having cosmetic surgery (you're welcome dad) and chewed him out for being a lousy patient. I think I'm probably officially out of the will now. Maybe my sister had the right idea, leaving before he went under the knife! My kids are likely out of the will too as they had one of their favorite conversations about who in the family has hair. (Why this fascinates them, even at their advanced ages, I don't know but the boys should watch out because they too will sport chrome domes one day unless the hospital switched them at birth with some less follically challenged family's kids.) Anyway, T. said my dad didn't have hair. My mom protested that he did. W. agreed: "On his back." Yup. You're welcome S., you and your kids will be inheriting everything!

Since dad was out of commission, I went to a fancy party with my mom. We toured the house in which the party was held and I spent most of my time looking at the bookshelves instead of the artwork that was supposed to be being highlighted. The folks that owned the house had kids about 10 years younger than I am. How do I know this? The kids' book originals they had saved for their grandchildren were just past my time. My mother who is used to my weirdness about books and bookshelf snooping, laughingly reported this to the lady of the house, who appeared to think I was mildly boring as a result. She got us back later by making us look at her daughter's high school graduation album though so we were officially even as that made me think she was also mildly boring. No wonder the bookishly socially backward (me) don't get invited to these kinds of shindigs very often--not to mention that we (also me) are most likely to dress in black pants and a white blouse, making us (still me) virtually indistinguishable from the wait-staff.

Most of the rest of the spring break we just hung around the house making sure someone was around to harass daddy into getting out of bed and walking around like he was supposed to be doing. The kids said he looked like an oompa-loompa with his goofy post-op bonnet on. I think he looked like he'd lost a fist fight with a shovel. When not endearing myself to the cantankerous patient, I sat around and read. The kids finally begged to do something so we drove out to Tybee Island the day before we left. In all the years we've been visiting my parents, we've gone out to Tybee a grand total of twice. The traffic has something to do with it (it's ugly) but my dislike of sand is also a factor. We circled looking for parking for quite some time and finally found a spot for less than $20. There was even time left on the meter. (Remember the resourceful and cheap thing in my DNA?) So I added my few quarters and told the kids we had an hour with which to play. It was windy and chilly on the beach. The kids went in the water while I sat wishing for a down blanket. Does this make me a real southerner now? Shaking my head at the crazy Yankees who were apparently unaware it was too cold to be sitting there in a bathing suit? Actually shivering occasionally? OK, probably not, but I think I'm getting there. The current kept pulling the kids way down the beach so I was very grateful when our hour was up and we headed back to the car, sandy and with a stinky shell collection.

The next day we packed everything up and braved the journey home. 95 proved to have several delays again as we rubber-necked past some more impressive accidents. But at least the President was off tying up traffic in some other city by the time we got back. Since we've been home so long, the laundry is finished and put away and one of these days I'll work up the motivation to take down the Easter decorations too. It may take until the Fourth of July decorations have to go up, but I'm workin' on it. Oh, and as for my dad and his recovery, he had to have the surgery again on one eye since only one healed like it should have. Bet he was spectacularly pleasant after cosmetic surgery take two. ;-) (OK, it wasn't really cosmetic, it was necessary but he got the equivalent of a face lift out of it so I can give him grief--plus he bequeathed me the same condition so watching him is just watching my future and if I can't laugh at myself...).

Christmas travelogue

We're back from Christmas. And for those of you who have known me a very long time, you know that means a travelogue. Unfortunately the kids are getting older, less funny and more snarky so this will probably be less entertaining than my usual ramblings.

Both going and coming home, the car was so overloaded that the kids were lucky I didn't strap them to the top like grandma in National Lampoon's Vacation. Actually, they'd probably have had more room if I had! I very carefully went through R. and T.'s clothing to take anything outgrown down to my sister and her young brood. W. escaped the mad flurry of clothes trying on since his clothes just get passed directly to T. In addition to the clothes though, I weeded through the books and the toys as well. We are free of all learn to read books here and even though this means the kids are all reading independently and well, it still gave me a pang to get rid of them. I wouldn't wish for another baby or toddler or preschooler ever again but it kills me to give up books. I'm so maternal, aren't I? T. willingly gave up his Rescue Hero boat command center thing and all of his rescue heros so I had to pack an entire plastic toy bin in the trunk, which didn't leave room for much else. But I happily squashed everything in under the mistaken impression that I would be leaving with a much emptier car than we arrived in. Ha! The best laid plans and all that.

So with van groaning and tires so weighted down they looked flat, we headed out on the four hour drive. Amazingly, it was completely uneventful aside from the fact that the kids had to curl up into little balls to sit in their seats since I had managed to use all spare room for bags and that meant they had no leg room. No vomiting, no traffic, no nothing. We suspect the blizzard up north kept the highways relatively empty for us. Bad for them, perfect for us.

The day after we arrived, the kids were not thrilled about being woken up for church. They were even less pleased when they saw the clothes I'd brought for them to wear. One of these years they'll wise up and actually help me pack but this wasn't the year. And so W. ended up wearing dress pants that were two inches too short and a pair of sandals from last Easter that were likewise too small. Guess I should have made him participate in the clothes try-on frenzy before we left! He was not thrilled to hear that these were the same clothes he was expected to wear to Christmas Eve services.

T. and my grandmother have a very special bond so no one blinked when the two of them sat together at the end of the pew. But we didn't think about the fact that it would be the blind leading the blind trying to follow along in the hymnal. T. would wildly flip pages and finally settle on the current hymn just as it was ending. On the plus side, that meant only a handful of us were adding our croaky voices to the song. Between the two completely confuzzled and a couple more of us trying to stifle laughter, our off-key singing had far less volume than usual.

Come communion we all trooped up to the railing. The kids expected to be blessed so it was a bit of a surprise to W. and R. actually be given communion. Poor R. had no idea what to do with it. She finally popped it into her mouth and promptly gagged. T. was desperately hungry through the service and so when he was the only one left out of the body and blood, he turned to me and said sadly, "I didn't get any." He was unappeased to hear that it wouldn't have quieted his rumbling tum. Of course, when we got to brunch later, he promptly dropped (and shattered) his plate full of freshly made to order omelet and a mound of bacon so he just wasn't having a good food day.

For the first time over break, we signed the kids up for various camps. This was supposed to be so I could get a jump on wrapping the presents I had sent on ahead with my parents the last time they were here (you didn't really think I got *all* the presents for five people plus our gifts for seven more in the trunk with the Rescue Hero bin, command center and D.'s golf clubs taking up gobs of space, did you?!). In reality, it turned out to be a time where I just vegged, knowing that meant I'd probably be doing the Christmas Eve scramble to wrap again.

R. and T. went to a craft camp followed by swimming. Thanks to the crafts, we are now the proud owners of reindeer antlers. Is it problematic that the boy also added jingle bell earrings to his reindeer's ears? Maybe I should stop giving R.'s outgrown girl clothes to her cousin and just let T. cross dress. Certainly would save money! Well, except for the fact that camp was the last time we remember seeing T.'s winter coat. Honestly, I'm going to start stapling the things to my kids. Remember mitten strings so you didn't lose your mittens? I need the coat version and I suspect that it would be made of the aforementioned staples and duct tape. While the younger two were crafting and swimming, W. was off at tennis camp. Of the 3 days, he was monarch of the court the first day, and king of the court twice the second day. On the third day (this story would have worked so much better if it had been Easter instead of Christmas!), he got shellacked. My suspicion is that the 16 year old girl finally got tired of the gloating little gnat and played her A game instead of going easy on him. But he had fun and got a new t-shirt. Wonder if it's remotely thick enough for his brother to use as a winter coat?

After the requisite trip to the seventh circle of hell (aka Chuck E. Cheese), with ears still ringing from the noise and eyes still smarting from the flashing lights, we waited for the cousins to arrive. Once they did, my crew swooped in like locusts and smothered the little kids with love. Poor A., my 4 year old niece, had only one eye visible so wrapped in hugs she was.

The following day was Christmas Eve and we all dressed up and trooped off to church. When we got home, we sent the kids to bed. W. didn't want to go and after the littlies were out of earshot tried to lobby to stay up and help put the presents under the tree announcing "I know it's just you guys. I don't believe in Santa." My dad looked at him and told him that he should be careful because non-believers end up with clothes for Christmas. When W. opened a box filled with several new pairs of pants the next morning, dad's comment was, "See what I told you about the clothes?" Bwahahaha!

Christmas day was a whirlwind, per usual. The kids tore through their stocking bags and somehow T. had gotten ahead of everyone else (we are anal retentive and take turns opening so we can all see what everyone else got). He looked at me with a completely straight face and said, "I'm finished with my stocking. Can I go and start on my presents under the tree?" Um yeah, no. Meanwhile, my sister noted the rather large number of books in my kids' stockings so she asked R. if she liked to read. The answer? "I like to read plus mom is our mom." Wonder if that means Santa's lost another believer. We did all finally make it out to the tree and the glut of presents there and I think everyone was happy as little clams with their gifts.

We cleaned up the wrapping and ribbon mess and I had to pack the car up since we were leaving at 7am the next morning. Somehow we acquired enough stuff (including the large trash bag of Christmas garland my mother no longer wants) to make up for everything I brought to pawn off on my sister and the kids were no more comfortable on the way home than they were on the way there.

As we went to pull out of my parents' driveway, my dad tapped on my window and asked if we intended to take the dog with us. In the flurry of getting kids in seats and feeding in the last of the bags, we had let her run free and forgotten she wasn't in the car. Damn! I'm not only a bad human mom, I'm a bad dog mom! We popped her on R.'s lap and headed out.

At one point I glanced back and noticed that R. was reading one of her new books. It crossed my mind that the notoriously carsick kid should probably not be reading but I didn't say anything. When we stopped for gas, D. got R. a grape soda for the remainder of the trip. And she started reading again. An hour and a half from home, the dog bolted out of R's lap as she blanched white and wailed that she was going to get sick. The first bag had a slight hole in the corner and dripped on the seat despite me having pre-screened the bags on purpose. Double bagging solved that problem though. And blase parents that we are, we just made her hold onto the bag until we got home, knowing from experience that stopping wouldn't make her feel any better. You'll all be pleased to know though, that grape soda smells sicky sweet enough on its own to mask any vomit smells, especially when it has spent very little time in someone's tummy.

We got home, tossed all the Christmas stuff through the door and D. and I zipped off to work the Panthers game for R.'s dance. After a very long day, we arrived home to a complete disaster. The kids had opened boxes and strewn legos and all sorts of other Christmas presents all over the family room. It looked like we'd had Christmas at home and never gotten around to cleaning up. Next year I don't think we'll work the game immediately following Christmas so the mess can stay at my parents' (hi mom!).

The Upper Peninsula's First Wooden Boat Submarine Commander or how I spent my summer vacation

Usually I write a long and detailed travelogue at the end of the summer. I highlight some of the kids' more entertaining comments and chuckle with all my friends (don't think I've ever done a travelogue here on the blog before) over the silly mishaps that seem to dog our vacations. Last year I didn't even write any, despite having our usual quota of chaos. This year, because I wanted to make up for last year's complete lack of entertainment value, I have outdone myself and you all therefore get a mid-summer travelogue. I'm just sure you can hardly contain yourselves! Of course, if you read my post An apology you already know the culmination of the disasters but here's the longer version for your reading enjoyment.

Our original plan, upon leaving the sunny southland for the unseasonably chilly north, was that we would all drive together. This never happens. Every year I suspect that D. will find a reason to avoid the hours and hours and hours of enforced family closeness in the car on our way to vacay-land. But this year he swore he was coming with us. However, the week before we left, a business meeting mysteriously popped up. Am I surprised? Nope. But I am such a pro by now that even the threat of 2 days (16 hours) trapped in the car with only the dog, my offspring, and the annoying music on their Nintendo DS's doesn't faze me. I will say I thought it rather ridiculous (and costly) to drive up in a caravan of two but whatever. And of course, since the snacks and the Harry Potter CD's (we're prepping for the new movie) were in my car, so were all the short people. The day we left, I ran R. to her dance rehearsal and then ran around like a chicken with her head cut off taking care of all the last minute things that needed to be done before we pulled out. D. sat at home, hunched over his laptop, muttering about missing so many days of work. I gave him one task: to take out the trash before we left. We picked R. up at dance mid-day and headed out. Amazingly enough, especially if you know our usual track record, we made it to Columbus and our friends' house without incident. Karma was apparently saving up for the following day!

Not long into our second day of driving, the notoriously carsick kid mewed pitifully that her tummy hurt. Given that we were trapped in the left lane of a highway, barreling past lumbering semi-trucks, on a holiday weekend, pulling over was not really an option. Luckily, getting a bit older has enabled her to learn some coping techniques and so the contents of her stomach stayed put until we could pull over, gas up, and grab lunch. With lunch (always to go when driving hundreds of miles, incidentally) in hand we hopped back in the car and I handed R. the magic dramamine pill to slug down. She's not very good at swallowing pills and since I hadn't given it to her in a spoonful of applesauce, she got creative and decided to tuck it into her hamburger (a food she's not particularly fond of anyway). Now we adults know how ghastly pills can taste when inadvertantly chewed, but apparently 10 year old girls do not have that knowledge base. So she blithely bit into the burger, chewed a second or two, and promptly vomited into the bag I'd thrown at her earlier when her tummy hurt. Argh! But not only can she practice coping techniques, her aim is much better now that she's older and so no upholstery or contents of the car were sacrificed to the vagaries of rampant motion sickness. She managed to choke down a second pill and we pressed on. (How to tell you are completely jaded and tired of your trip? Don't even offer to stop when your kid yaks. Mom of the year, that's me.)

So we arrived at the dock, unloaded the car, and happily piled into the boat my parents had left there for us. When I get in a boat, I am in my happy place, like a dog hanging its head out the window experiencing sheer joy. We headed down the channel and I soaked it all in. Apparently the boat was soaking it all in too. My kids pulled me out of my reverie by shouting that water was coming in. I told then to turn on the bilge pump and kept going. Hearing some panic in their voices, I turned around and saw water to their ankles. I hollered at them to turn on the bilge as I watched the water continue to pour in. The bilge was shorted out. I told D. to call my mom and tell her we needed help. He proceeded to get on his cell and tell her that we were half way to the cottage, in the middle of Musky Bay, and were sinking. Then he hung up.

Meanwhile, the water in the boat was continuing to rise and bits of luggage started sloshing and floating about. The kids were standing on the back seat and T. was in full panic mode, screaming that we were all going to drown. I calmly told him that no one was going to drown and that that was why we make them wear life jackets. Despite being calm for him, I was a little panicky for me at this point. The boat was clearly going down, my youngest child was screaming like a banshee and the fishermen who were fewer than 100 yards away just continued to calmly cast their lines. So I made the decision to head for the nearest point, despite knowing that it is a rocky point, not a nice sandy place to beach a boat.

Somehow we made it to the point and I scraped the snot out of the bottom of the boat, finally ending up in water to my waist and up to the gunwales. My mom had gotten on the phone and called everyone she could think of so while W. and R. slid over the side of the boat to squelch their way around the point to fetch help from that quarter, one of my parents' friends arrived in his little rubber Zodiac. It was the perfect boat since he could actually get into where we were without too much danger of hitting the rocks. Of course, before he arrived, T., still sobbing but no longer convinced he was going to drown, had climbed from the backseat of the boat onto the gunwales, desperately clutching his bunnies and blankie. When I suggested he follow his brother and sister into the chilly water, he announced, "I'll wait to be rescued." He didn't give a rip about his siblings, his parents, or his dog's well-being but by golly bunnies and blankie were going to be rescued!

The dog (also wearing a lifejacket) had climbed onto the bow of the boat just behind the windshield (seems like it should be called something distinct and different from the bow but dashboard seems more a car thing) and was shivering there. She was the first warm body rescued from our final resting place. D. had climbed out onto the bow of the boat himself, fussing like a girl about keeping his laptop dry, nevermind everything else in the boat that was swirling around in the waves or sitting sunkenly lumped together two and a half feet under water.

Once all of our luggage was removed, dripping, from the boat, the kids and I were dropped off at the cottage, leaving D. and my dad to deal with the boat. For those interested, it is/was a 1950's wooden Cruisers. It looks similar to this boat which can be found at Lady Ben Classic Wooden Boats. Please note that this was not the boat we were in (although I am highly entertained by the commentary offered by this boat's seller that the boat takes on water, especially given my own exploits). Luggage that is heavy before a dunking is insanely heavy after a full on drowning and it took us the better part of an hour to lug everything up the hill to the cottage and to start unpacking. While we hauled bags with water still pouring out of them up the hill, the dog decided to offer her contribution to the catastrophe. She had a raging case of nervous diarrhea right smack in the middle of the walkway. Luggage hauling was interrupted in order to fling said smears into the bushes as I cursed under my breath like Yosemite Sam. Then back to the luggage, hoping against hope I'd gotten the poop before anyone stepped in it.

Dripping clothes had to dumped, load after load after load, into the dryer. The things we hung on the clothes line took two and a half days to completely dry out. And nothing we had was even just damp so we wandered around, leaking a bit, until pajamas were dry enough to change into. All the electronics on the boat, including but not limited to my camera and two lenses, iPod, GPS unit, and a Nintendo DS are all completely waterlogged and presumed dead. You can actually see the water sloshing around inside the lenses and the camera body. ::sigh:: And insurance won't cover anything. Apparently losing possessions via sinking a boat is not covered by our homeowner's policy. Since it wasn't intentional and certainly wasn't an act of God, I'd really like to know why not but the answer just seems to be that it isn't covered.

Every year I take scad loads of books on vacation with me. And every year as my family helps me unload on the island, someone makes a crack about me trying to sink the island with all those books. This year I took between 75-80 books. And instead of merely *trying* to sink the island, I actually *did* sink the boat. So I guess the lesson is to aim lower and you'll achieve your goals. Okay, not really, but have you ever tried to dry out books that have taken an unintentional dunking? The covers are curling up into the strangest of shapes and the pages are sticking together unpleasantly. I'd take a picture to show you but oops, the camera accompanied them to Davy Jones' locker. And it goes without saying that I am one of those anal retentive souls who cherishes her books and keeps them in pristine condition at all times. ::sigh:: I'm going to have to put them all on their own set of shelves and label it the mermaid library or something. They were all the books I was going to read (and then some) this summer, including the books I'd committed to reviewing over the next few weeks. Yeah. I guess translucent pages would help the speed reading since I can now read three pages at the same time.

But pre-occupied by sinking the boat as I was and wondering if I had caused it somehow, there was more waiting for me. First though, the official diagnosis on the boat. Apparently a board along the keel had slipped out so the faster the boat went, the faster this board peeled backwards, sending water rushing into the boat. The only way to slow down the gush leak would have been to throw the boat in reverse. Obviously this is a bit of an unusual choice for combatting a sinking boat and clearly didn't occur to me but so it goes. So it wasn't anything I did. Insert Hallelujah chorus. I did snap off said board when I beached the boat, but other than that, I only scraped some paint from the bottom. So I was left feeling only slightly guilty, given that it was my parents' boat, not ours, and it sank on my watch. I'm also still pondering the irony that the only thing on the boat that didn't get wet was T.'s swim suit. It was completely bone dry. Everything else, submerged and dripping. What are the odds?

The following day when we headed into town to see the Fourth of July parade, W. stepped cautiously into the boat and said, "I guess things can be unpredictable on a lake." Well, that's quite the understatement! I got back on the horse that threw me and drove a boat to the mainland. Once there, I realized that the vomit-filled bag was still in my car. Since R. had thrown a few things away at the gas station where we stopped for gas, I had naturally assumed that the nasty bag was one of the things she chucked. They always say that when you assume something, it just makes an ass out of you and me. And boy howdy does day old vomit that has festered in the sun in a closed car smell badly. So charmer that I am, I shifted it over to my sister's car. (We were taking her car into town where it could be tossed but it was also a bit of payback for me being pulled away from dealing with our soaking belongings to put the crib together for my newest nephew, despite there being three other quasi-capable and highly educated adults banging around in the new cottage who weren't needed to try and salvage our stuff.)

Gag inducing stuff disposed of, the next couple of days were fine and started to get back to some semblance of normal. Since the boat I sank (now being repaired at the boat yard) was the biggest one we have, we needed something else capable of holding as many people as possible (my family of five, my sister's family of five, my parents, and my grandmother) instead of making so many trips in the two small boats. Luckily we have a great family friend who sells boats. And she happened to have one that would fit the bill, relatively inexpensively. Unluckily, its name is Wet Dream. There is nothing like explaining to your two pre-teens and your 7 year old exactly why the name cannot stay if we buy the boat. Sex education via maritime disaster, as if they hadn't been traumatized enough going down with the ship!

Yesterday R. and I drove down to Detroit, hopping on a plane home this morning. She has dance rehearsals and Nationals coming up in the next two weeks. We left the boys up north so I won't have to listen to them whine about watching days worth of dancing. R. and I will fly back up to Detroit and get a second try at a vomit free handful of hours once the competition is over. In the meantime, I brought a bunch of my books home in hopes that they'd dry quicker here in the heat. And their covers are curling much faster here than up north. 40 or so soggy books do not make for light carry-on baggage and I think the poor taxi driver got a hernia when he took the bags from from me. The camera and lenses will go into the shop to see if they can be salvaged for a reasonable amount of money. As for the rest of the summer, well, there won't be any pictures this year but on the plus side, I have a whole slew of things I can ask Santa for this Christmas. I'm hoping he'll think I've been punished enough since I'm generally not good enough to deserve such bounty!

Oh, and remember that I gave D. one measly task to complete before we pulled out of here? Yep. He didn't take out the trash so walking into the house was like deja vu smell-wise. I'm not sure which is worse, old vomit or advanced rot and decomposition (there was a chicken carcass in there among other things). What a lucky girl I am! Here's hoping the rest of our summer and continued vacation will be significantly less eventful than the first half!