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Saturday, July 6, 2013

How I Ended Up Promising To Go On Vacation With My Family. Again.

I'm going on vacation with my family. I haven't decided yet how I got tangled up in this grand plan, but it's happened. I mean, I'm pretty sure my mother managed to guilt me into the whole thing, all I heard for 2 weeks was -

"Please?"
 "I can't drive all that way by my little ol' bitty self, but I will if I have to"
"Do you want me to die in fiery car crash because I was too tired to make it and couldn't keep my eyes open?"
"Pretty Please?"
"I'm so old and tired but all I want to do is see my family this year and I won't be able to enjoy it if I have to drive all the way to South Carolina by myself"
"After everything I've done for you..."
(insert big blinky blue puppy dog eyes here)

Can someone explain to me why I've signed on for another round of this?

That's pretty much what it sounded like in my head anyway. So now I'm roped in and committed to a two day drive to from New York to South Carolina. At first it was all like - 'I'll pay for everything', and now it's - 'How much are you chipping in?' And somehow the "I'll rent a car" has changed into "We're going in a mini van with your sister and her 3 children", but I'm still going.

I'm pretty sure I did this 2 years ago and it ended up disastrously. (Part 1 and Part 2 for your reading pleasure) And that was without the screaming children. I can see it all now -

We'll get on the road 2 hours later then planned. Ten minutes into driving someone will have forgotten something vitally important so we will argue for another 5 minutes about whether we should turn back and go get it or maybe we should find a Wal Mart along the way, but by the time we figure it out we will be one hour into our journey and won't be able to turn around because no one wants to waste gas. Then the complaining person will complain about having to spend money on something they could have gone home and gotten. After another 25 minutes arguing about that, one of the kids will have to go to the bathroom, while the other two fight over the Nintendo DS and the bag of chips. The chips will spill and the youngest will cry. As soon as that's over, one of the adults will be too cold. The other adult will be too hot and then I will yell at one of them to put on a jacket and the other one to take off the dang sweater. As soon as that's resolved the oldest kid will be hungry, and so will I, but we don't want the crappy food we brought - we want Burger King because it's fun and yummy. So we will find one, commit to getting dollar menu items but then spend $30 on greasy french fries and soda when we have sandwiches and cans of coke in the cooler. After that two of the kids will fight about something else while the littlest one falls asleep and the adults whine about what music to listen to and one of us will have a headache so we shouldn't listen to music at all. My mom will stop us every 3 minutes and tell someone to pose for a picture, or make us stop the car so she can get a shot of that beautiful tree, or sunset, or blade of grass. And we will all alternately smile and yell at her for the duration of the trip while she snaps crappy pictures of us and posts them to facebook so all our friends can see pictures like this:

Thanks for the triple chin angle, Mom.

 And this:
The inevitable "shoving food into face" shot.

 And this:
What the heck? You wasted film on this?




I swear I am feeding the kids benadryl with breakfast that morning, and bringing lots of cheap vodka in a flask.

I'll let you know how it turns out.

2 comments:

  1. Hey, I told you you shouldn't go, but do you listen to me? Nooooooo... I know what to expect though when you get down there and when you get back. :) You know I love you though.

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  2. Gotta complain about the first picture you chose - it's the most awful pic of me from the 2010 reunion! :P Anyway - you've given me chuckles again. I love your wit, facetiousness, and - dare I say it - sarcasm. LOLOL Have a wonderful time. I'm looking forward to your mom's pics of everything she sees. Love you all!!!

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Be nice. Or I will find you and sic my pet zombie on you.