Vacation, All I Ever Wanted, Vacation, Have To Get Away

I know it's been awhile since I last updated. I can't blame my absence on the lazy days of summer, because nothing around here has been lazy since camp ended. I don't think I can emphasize enough how much I am ready for SCHOOL TO START!!!! Our house is filled to the brim with arguments over IT'S NOT FAIR and HE WON'T LET ME HAVE A TURN and YOU'RE NOT THE BOSS OF ME.

So we're getting out of Dodge. We're going to a place that's three hours away and supposedly has some hot weather and a pool. If I'm honest, there's something nostalgic driving this trip for me. When I was a kid, my parents and I went up to a place in northern Michigan every summer. We stayed in a cabin that was on a small lake, and we just hung out. There was a beach and paddle boards and a game room and other kids. There was also a ghost that inhabited one of the buildings, and she prompted several intense searches that would rival anything you could see on the A&E channel's Children of the Paranormal (and this show is HILARIOUS. You should check it out).

(And I know my parents are reading this right now, saying, "That didn't happen. There wasn't any ghost hunting." But you have to trust me -- they were too busy leisurely reading books to notice any hauntings).

Anyway, I want that kind of vacation for Blue and Green. You know, the stuff of good memories. The only difference is that my kids are not really inclined to run off and dig holes and find companions and search for ghosts. They're more likely to turn their freckly faces up at us and say, "What now?" as if we hold The Itinerary of Fun in our back pockets. This has made it so that I have to plan for every contingency. What if they suddenly become really independent and go hunt for ghosts? I'm bringing 3 books and a silly magazine just in case I magically have the time to read. What if it pours down rain for three days? Ack! I'm bringing a sack full of Legos and some craft projects and a big bottle of whiskey. What if it's too cold to swim but not raining? Tennis rackets! Balls! Board games! It occurs to me as I write this that maybe the reason that our kids can't just amuse themselves is that their imaginations are buried somewhere under the luggage.

The most pressing question that plagues us as we get ready to go on vacation is whether or not to bring the laptop. Isn't this the biggest thing that distinguishes the Brady Bunch vacations of the seventies from the trips we take with our own kids? Michael is worried that he might slip in his fantasy baseball rankings if he can't stay connected (and while he's checking the stats, he could also make sure everything's going OK at the office...). And then there's our habit of watching The Closer DVDs in the evenings. What will we do if we have to wait until the weekend to find out what color lipstick Kyra Sedgwick wears in the next episode? I'm all about rustic family time, but that might put us over the edge.

I do think that the computer will tether us to our daily lives in a way that will diminish the getting-away quality of this trip. The question is, do we have the fortitude to leave it behind? Stay tuned.

John Edwards

Last Friday afternoon, the boys and I were hanging out at the Baskin Robbins. Blue was in a bit of a funk. He had spent a fair amount of time choosing his flavor, taking free samples here and there and acting totally oblivious to the line of 45 people behind him. In the end, he chose Cherries Jubilee (because that’s what Green picked, and Blue didn’t want to be left out). The trouble was that Blue doesn’t much like cherries or whatever constitutes Jubilee. So he had to sit there picking out the flecks of cherry and dark chocolate and miscellaneous other stuff that made up the bulk of his treat.

Anyway, Blue was half way through his ice cream excavation when a senior citizen in a tennis outfit came running in the store. “Did you hear about John Edwards?” she shrieked to a cluster of ladies sitting by the door. “HE HAD AN AFFAIR!!!!”

Green had barely spat out, “Mama, what’s an affair?” when the woman continued,“He’s a skunk! Did you hear me?! A skunk!”

We all know that skunks are smelly, and stinkiness is a topic my boys enjoy. “Hee Hee Hee,” Green giggled. “She said skunk! P.U.!” And with that turn of fortune, I dodged the problem of having to explain to my six-year-olds why Democrats have trouble keeping their pants up.

Of course, upon learning about the Edwards indiscretion, my first thought was, “Aha! Now I can blog about politics! That’s what my readers said they wanted, after all.” And so I went home and readied myself for the flood of who/what/why/what position/what kind of cigar media coverage I assumed would follow.

But the flood never came. I didn’t even receive a call from my father-in-law, whose outrage over the Monica Lewinsky escapade has yet to diminish. I did a quick search today, and the Edwards story fell well below the news that Cindy McCain sprained her wrist from shaking hands. (And in fact, there would be no story at all if Elizabeth Edwards’ family members would stop talking to People Magazine. I guess they figure that the National Enquirer shouldn’t be the only tabloid to benefit from Elizabeth’s humiliation).

So what do you make of this? Have we drawn a line between scandal and Real News? Are we more interested in thinking about Michael Phelps in his swimsuit than another slimy politician in his birthday suit? Are we more cynical, or are we smarter?

Weigh in, bloggers.

Twelve

Since we’re getting in the habit of achieving last summer’s goals, I decided that it would be fun to finally go on that coastal hike that Michael and I wanted to do last year. Unfortunately, when I checked out the trail I found that, once again, we would have a high tide problem. But you know what? I’m sick of obstacles. I’m sick of Mother Nature trying to tell me what I can and cannot do. So I persuaded Michael that we could get to the coast, hike the several miles in to the beach, and see all the natural wonderfulness before the ocean whisked us away.

This, apparently, was an error in judgment. Tides do not like sassy ladies to challenge their authority. More on that later.

We deposited the kids with my parents (Junk food! Toys! Constant attention!), and headed out for the drive to the ocean. We used to be road trip experts. There was no blue highway too rural for us. So much of our history together involves a travelling adventure or an odyssey. But these days, I am tired. Time is in short supply, and my butt gets sore if I sit too long.

We discovered this time around that what may look like a short distance on a map could really be a very lengthy, tedious drive on a poorly-maintained gravelly road. I had hoped to spend a little time in a town called Pysht --- because, really, how funny a name is that!? I thought, “Hey! I could do a remote blog from Pysht!” But it seems that Pysht is too small a place to actually have a building, so we must have driven right through it. This cracked me up. “Hey Michael,” I said. “I think we already pashed Pysht. I am Pysht off! Hee Hee Hee.” (At this point, Michael thwacked me on the back of the head with the map).

My interest in Pysht reminded me of one of our notorious wild goose chases. We were on a road trip up to the Canadian Rockies, and we decided to meander through rural Washington instead of taking the direct route. In particular, I saw on the map that Ronald McDonald was buried in the northeastern part of the state. No one told me that he had died! Poor, grief-stricken Hamburgler! We definitely needed to go see Ronald’s grave and lay a greasy french-fry bag by his headstone. Something like seven hours later, we finally stumbled upon his memorial site. Except this wasn’t Ronald McDonald’s grave after all. It was the gravesite of RANALD MACDONALD -- not a junk food-selling clown, but, rather, the first man to teach English in Japan. My dream of standing on a mountaintop and mournfully singing the early 1980s jingle, “Big Mac, Filet O’Fish, Quarter Pounder, French Fries, Icy Coke, Thick Shake, Sundaes, and Apple Pies,” was dashed.

Anyway, once we pashed Pysht, it was a mere 2 more hours to our destination. This offered me the opportunity to ask Michael, “What are you thinking about?” nearly 3000 times (His responses: nothing, baseball, weather, nothing). I have since learned that it was a good thing that we did not stop to explore the loveliness that would have been Pysht, because a human foot in a tennis shoe washed up on the nearby shore of the Strait of Juan de Fuca that very day. Many such disembodied feet are turning up on beaches throughout the area, inspiring feelings of general creepiness and providing a reminder to keep up-to-date with one's pedicure.

We arrived at the trailhead just in time for the rain to start. The hike involved three miles of boardwalk trail to the beach, three miles along the beach, and then three miles back along a different boardwalk. Michael went into the ranger station (remember how he loves a pretty ranger?) and was told that high tides were no problem. You just had to climb up and over the impassible parts. In my normal, city life, I tend to walk about 3 miles a day. 9 miles with a little up-and-over shouldn’t feel that different, right?

Wrong.

3 miles along a rocky beach with the tide rushing in does not make for an easy stroll. To this place’s credit, it may have been the most gorgeous, rugged, jagged coastline I had ever seen. And for a moment, I sighed heavily and drank in that seemingly untouched beauty.

Then I had to stop sighing and climb upon a huge dead tree and slide my way across its branches to escape the rushing water. After that, we had to lie down flat and wiggle on our stomachs to get under the next fallen tree. A quick shimmy up some enormous boulders preceded the realization that we were completely stuck. I’m not sure what was louder – the crash of the waves or the crescendo of my whine.

So Michael, what you may not have heard over the noise was the fact that there is no one I’d rather dangle off the edge of the world with than you (even if I get blisters and the bugs make it impossible for me to eat my lunch). Happy 12th anniversary.