Family Vacation #2, Part 1

It's happened again. (cue Jaws theme....da dum, da dum.)

My family nightmare vacation was a complete train wreck. Oh sure, I had a few good times, a smattering of fun amongst the chaos. But the majority of the whole debacle was a flippin disastrous kerbobble of  "holy crap get me out of here!" ness.

Let me start out by saying that the very beginning of the thing was plagued by terror and and angst. Yes, I said plagued. We had planned to leave on Friday, July 19th. We were going to fit 7 people into my sister's Minivan and head to new jersey to pick up my son - who was at Ocean Grove with his father's side of the family. Then we were to head down to South Carolina for a family reunion. Sounds easy enough, right?

Well, you would be completely, totally and utterly wrong. You see, the Minivan is my sister's van, and she had offered to take me, my mother, my son and my brother along with herself and her 3 tornadoes children, because her husband wasn't going to go, because he had college classes he couldn't get out of. (You follow all that?)

So instead of renting a car with just the first 4 of us, we decide to depend on the stability of the plan to use the minivan. Big mistake. My sister's semi-psycho husband finds out about the plan and gets all ticked off because it turns out he can get those darned college teachers to give him the time off for something as amazing and special as a family reunion with his precious wife and darling children. Huh. Right. And before you hummina wha? me - this man is pretty much an asshat to his wife most of the time. Doing things which I will not mention here, because a lot of it is unmentionable. The few things I can mention are these: He spent that entire week yelling, threatening to slash the tires in the van, taking the license plates and trying to bend them up - all so we can't go, because my sister is going without him.

Anyway, because of Nut Job, we come up with this cuckoo plan to sneak away a day earlier while he is at school. And then, to be really clever - we decide to double cross our double cross by leaving a whole 3 days earlier - just in case. We thought we were so awesome. I ask my exhausted and lethargic sister when Nut Job is in class this week, and she says Wednesday. So we plan to leave Wednesday. Then she tells me she was wrong and it's Tuesday. So we plan to leave Tuesday. My mother scrambles to find people to cover her shifts at Pizza Hut, I run around packing like a Tasmanian devil in heat, and my brother does what he does best and says "eh, whatever" to the whole thing. Then the sister calls back and says she's wrong, Nut Job has college on Wednesday. After a long moment - during which I seriously considered throwing my sister into oncoming traffic - we decide to leave on Tuesday anyway. Because what the hell, vacation is fun and you should make it a really long one when you're packed into a minivan like sardines with lots of small children and 2 semi invalids and one crazy mess of a woman. And my mother.

This is what it took to pack up that van. Every few days.

So, Monday, while Nut Job is at college, we super fast pack all the stuff we can and bring it to my house. The theory was that we would have all the stuff here, so that we could quickly pack the car on Tuesday morning. My sister says she'll show at about 10 am. So I spend the entire night worrying about if we are going to be able to leave or not. The next day, I text my sister at about 10:30, "???". She replies that she needs more time and she doesn't know how to get away from Nut Job. I tell her to figure it out, since she has a set of her own brains, because at this point I don't know what to say and if NJ will even believe any of it. She finally shows up at 2 pm, and says she told him that she was going to try and do a practice "pack up" of the van, since he spent all week whining about how 8 people would never fit in the van, and it was illegal. (It wasn't - we called the police and checked) I thought that was the most obvious lie in the history of lies, but hey - we finally got in the car and got it packed and on the road. We ninja pick up my mother, and I have to go 20 miles in the opposite direction to give my husband money for work and say goodbye. At 4 pm, we aren't even on the road and my sister wants to take this kids to say goodbye to their dad. Let me give you a small example of what the texts are like: (S is my sister, NJ is the Nut Job husband)

NJ: Where the @&*! are you?
NJ: If you come back here for anything I"m going to slash the #($^@)^ tires. 
NJ: I love you
NJ: I just want to see the kids and say goodbye
S: leave me alone
NJ: #($^ you. 
NJ: I love you
NJ: I just miss you
NJ: It's my (*&@^$( van bring it back
NJ: I'm calling the cops
S: we'll see you in a week, if you hadn't been such an *^& I would have brought the kids to say goodbye
NJ: $&@^ you

And that would have been a 2 minute text-conversation. All that in 2 minutes. It's rather sad. Anyhoo....we veto the saying goodbye thing, based on the aforementioned text/conversation and we hit the road. We find out Nut Job is on the road as well, looking for us. We get stuck in traffic right outside of our town, and we don't breathe a sigh of relief until about 50 miles later, when we know he must  have given up and stopped trying to find us.

this is what we all felt like

Officially on our way to Atlantic City.

End of part one. (I'm serious - it was that stressful from the get go.)

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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.

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The Fun Vacation From Hell - Part 2

I woke up today with the intention of going to the gym.

Ahhh.......the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

So here I am, in my living room, being bored and wondering what I should do. So I decided to finish up my vacay story.So, where was I?

Ah yes, bad trip down, fun time there...now we were on our way back.

Now, I had a plan. My mother had to be back home by Tuesday morning to work her double shift at Pizza Hut. Mind you - we had left Thursday, gotten there Friday and decided to leave Sunday morning afternoon evening. The general idea was that - since we had had such a blast on the trip down - we should leave Sunday and get some mileage behind us. My theory was that my brother would get kidney stones again. I wanted to leave at about 3pm, but my mom gave me the ever annoying puppy dog eyes, and I thought maybe we could stay later, because I'm just nice like that.

Yeah, my plans never go right. Mom had to say a one hour goodbye to family at one house, then my brother had to stop and get his bag - and say a one hour good bye at another house. While mom talked to everyone and generally didn't want to leave.

We left at 9:30pm. Why do I even bother?
We drove for a while, I started getting tired, but got my second wind at about 11pm and decided to push as far as possible. We finally stopped at about 1:30 to stay at a Best Western I had found a coupon for. It had a pool, and my son likes to swim - so I thought it was a good idea.

Wrong again.

We checked in, I asked how much they'd charge for a later checkout, and the guy said they would charge a whole other day. Yay. So, I figured get in, go to sleep by 2:30, get up at 10, swim and leave.

I guess I enjoy being wrong, because that is so not what went down.

We walked into our room and immediately noticed a weird musty smell. It wasn't too bad, so it seemed like we could deal with it. We were exhausted and just wanted to get as much sleep as we could. We had all started unpacking, and didn't want to repack and lug our stuff around. We settled down, and about 20 minutes later, I realize I am having a really hard time breathing. I had just gotten over bronchitis, and this was not fun. I really felt like there was a weight on my chest. My brother got up, and I looked at him and he tells me he can't breathe. He has had lung surgery - so you get how hard it was for him to try and breathe in a musty room. So he calls down to the desk and explains. They were really nice about it, and gave us another room immediately. My brother carries my son into the new room and I grab a few things. Then we go to wake up my mom, and she's half dead asleep and mumbles "no, I'm fine" and Luke (my brother) tells her no, she'll get a migraine if she stays in that room. She finally got up and moved. Then Luke starts moving all our stuff (they had said we could keep both rooms) and I help out. I think we got to sleep eventually....like.....5 AM.

I had set the alarm for 10am (yeah, right) and got up at about 11:30. Check out time was 12. I had briefly woken up at about 9am , to the sounds of my brother calling the front desk to ask for more time. They gave us till 2pm. I took Logan swimming, and my mom comes to tell me she had talked to the front desk and they gave us all the time we wanted to leave.

So we left at 4pm. Only us...only us.....

Generally all went well, it was an enjoyable drive. We stopped for gas, and I couldn't see the name of the station - but I went anyway, and Luke tells me it's a BP. So I acidentally supported the Great Oil Spill people. Then Luke decided he wanted Taco Bell for dinner. Sounded like a good idea - but mom had reservations about Luke eating tacos. He has stomach problems too. But we went anyway, because I wanted me a Mexican Pizza. Yummy. We ate, got more gas, and left. About 1/2 an hour later, 4 hours from home - my brother starts holding his side and groaning again. We're down to 5 bucks and need to get home. There was no question of staying anywhere, no one could afford it.

Luke was yelling pretty loud, and took some Vicodin. He yelled some more and took another one. I felt awful - I couldn't stop, it hurt him to go on - we were stuck. He took a 3rd pill and the pain finally let up. It turned out he had had kidney pain and stomach pain. So that was a bad episode.

We got home at about 2:30 am, without further issues. What a trip. I don't think I'll be going on a 'vacation' again for a while.

I am so ready for Christmas. Really, I am.

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Let Me Sum Up

Is today Thursday? Really? What happened to the week?

I'm so tired. I can't believe the amount of crap I've been through this summer.

I had a plan.

It was a good plan.

I was going to spend the summer going to the gym, losing weight and spending time with my son, my friends and my family.

So what happens?

I get bronchitis. For 2 whole weeks. I literally spent almost a whole week in bed, laying on my side watching Netflix and playing games on pogo.com. I spent 2 weeks breathing in the Vick's that was smeared on my chest and stuffed up my nose. I couldn't breathe without coughing, so I certainly wasn't spending any time running around with the boy in the back yard.

So, I get over my sickness (mostly - I'm still coughing a little) and I get my period. Not a ho-hum I have cramps boo hoo let's take some ibuprofen and lay down period.

I get a holy crap kill me now take me to the er and let me die now period. I spent a whole evening with instruments shoved up my hoo-hah just for them to tell me nothing was wrong - go home and take some ibuprofen. I wanted to kill people. Ibuprofen?? If I could have taken (over the counter) ibuprofen to get rid of my pain - I wouldn't BE here, you dimwit. Let me chop off your leg and hand you some ibuprofen. Tell me how you feel then. Hmph.

So about a week after that I get a pain in my side. I think I'm full of gas, but my pain level says otherwise and I end up on the floor - clawing it and hollering. I go to the hospital again - and we figure out that I have a kidney stone. It takes the ER 5 hours to figure this out by the way.... I could have just taken ibuprofen and saved them all the trouble, but I thought I was dying and my liver or something had blown up - so I ended up in the ER. For 5 hours. For a 3 mm kidney stone. How something that small can cause that much pain is beyond me. Anyway, they finally finish up at about 4am, and send me home with  - you guessed it - Ibuprofen. This time my mom and I put our foot (feet?) down and make them give me the real stuff. Jeez. You think they'd think I was a drug addict or something. My mom theorizes that it's because I'm fat. I think there's some truth in that, medical discrimination against fat people. My brother weighs like 5 pound dripping wet and he gets Vicodin if he blinks funny. I get ibuprofen. Yay.

Life's Little Cure-All

Anyhoo....after that loverly episode of pain and torture, I get a yeast infection. Digging around your personal parts, smearing them with Vagasil and anti itch cream is not a good way to spend a week. Especially if no one's had sex in about 3 weeks at this point. Then you get horny and itchy and that's not a good combo. Trust me. I never, ever want a yeast infection again. I think I spent about 4 hours a day in boiling hot water in the bathtub. Literally.

It doesn't end here folks. Oh, no. The good Lord has more up his sleeve for me. (thank you Jesus for teaching me about humility and pain - no further lessons are needed, k thanx bai.) At the tail end of Ye Old Yeast Infection....I get my period again. Dun dun dun. Doing the math I'm kind of like What the-?, but hey, who ever said my body was any good at math. So, for those of you who have tried to insert a tampon into an itchy vagina.....I totally understand and sympathize. That's a kind of torture I wouldn't wish on Obama my worst enemy. (is it wrong that I'm laughing because Obama isn't on the spellcheck list?) On second thought.....

Then I have vacation.  A simple, uncomplicated little trip down to South Carolina for my family reunion.

Right. I guess God never got my little memo about me needing a break from...well, from life. You can read all about some of that little trip here. Not fun. Well, fun, but not fun.

So, I get home 3 days ago today and what do I wake up with on Tuesday morning? A freaking head cold. In August. August. Really Lord? Seriously? How can all this crap happen to just one person this summer? Why? What for? Howcome?

Well, now that the summer is pretty much over, I plan...wait a second. I plan nothing. If I plan on nothing...then I can't be disappointed.



I am so ready for Christmas.

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The Fun Vaction From Hell - Part 1

I went on vacation.

I think.

The original plan was this:

We were going from NY to SC. I would take myself, my son - Logan and my brother, Luke. My mom would follow me down in her car. The reason for this was that my mom had to be back earlier, and she also had to meet my other brother, Liam - and his girlfriend, Kaycee - in SC. They had flown there from Washington state. They would ride back up with my mom and I would stay in SC longer and visit.

We were operating on a shoestring budget, and would have to drive about 11 hours straight. No money, or time, for stopping and staying anywhere. We left at about 1pm - no one in my family is a morning person, and that's just how we roll....always late. Anyway, my mom was going to follow me, seeing as she couldn't remember the directions.

(which - by the way - was this: 81S to 77S. Yeah, that's it......)

So off we go. My brother, Luke was riding with me, and my son, Logan was riding with my Mom. Sure enough - we hit some roadwork. There was a highway split, both one lane, surrounded by barrells and cones. You either went straight on 81S, or veered right to go on 80 East. Nearing this split I had a sinking feeling something would go wrong, and my mom did not dissapoint.

She followed the wrong little red car down 80 East. You heard me. So Luke called her, and told her to turn around and get back on 81 South. we would meet up at the next available rest area. Sounds simple enough - right?


Wrong. My brother was trying to explain the plan to my mom over a really crappy cell phone, and I only heard his end of the conversation. So I"m filling in some blanks here - but the conversation went a little like this:

Luke: Mom, meet us at the next rest area.

Mom: Where?

Luke: The next rest area.

Mom: Where is it?

Luke: Just..the next rest area.

Mom: How far is it?

Luke: Mom, just...the next one!

Mom: Will you be there?

Luke: I don't know, just stop and wait for us!

Mom: Will you get there first?

Luke: I don't know, just stop at the next rest area, if you get there first wait for us. If we get there first we'll wait for you.

Mom: Where's it at?

Luke: The next @*$@*# rest area, Mom. The next one you come to. Meet us there!

Mom: But...how far is it?

Luke: I don't @*(%&*%# KNOW. Just drive until you see a rest area, and stop there!

Mom: But how will I know where to stop?

Luke: You see a sign for a rest area and you @*$#^( STOP.

Mom: How will I know when to stop?

There was a lot of swearing after this one, some more yelling, me hollering and Luke swearing some more, and I think she finally got the picture because Luke swore some more and then hung up. It was sort of comical.

Anyway, we get through the traffic and are zipping along, looking for the next rest area, and the phone rings again. My mom's car had broken down and we had to turn around to go get her. She tells my brother that she's next to the exit to Hazelton (PA) and hangs up.

There are 6 exits into Hazelton. We try to call back to see which one she's at, and there's no answer. We call, over and over, and over, and over. No answer. My brother and I start to worry.  A lot. He keeps saying that they've been hijacked. I keep telling him to shut up. (he was scaring me, and I just need to focus and drive) There's a lot of swearing, yelling, finger pointing, and screaming in each others faces. There was almost some hitting and throwing someone out of the car. We were worried. It was hot, and I didn't know where my son was. She finally answered and told us which exit she was at. We find them and get to a gas station, and ask for directions to a mechanic. Needless to say - we get lost trying to find the mechanic, ask for directions again, no one knows anything about anything, ask someone else, and finally find the little tiny podunk place. Fun, fun, fun.

Turned out her radiator fan had broken. It was Thursday evening at about 5pm. The mechanic can't get the part until Monday. The reunion is on Saturday. We make the decision to pack her into my little Honda Civic - 2 door hatchback - and continue on. In hindsight, it was a good thing in a way - because my mom had had a 2 day migraine and was really sick. She was having a hard time driving. Anyway....

Now, me, my brother Luke and my son Logan had each packed a duffle bag and a backpack (for inside the car). We go to get my mothers luggage and try and fit her into the car.

She had - and I quote -

1 suitcase, 1 make up case, 1 small bin of medicines, 1 large bag (her purse), 1 tote bag (personal papers, her Bible), 1 cooler, 1 tote (paper products)1 camera case, 1 fan and 1 tripod. Oh, and 3 bags of food. Which I guess, in her defense, we asked her to bring. There was no way we were getting all that into my car. So , she pared it down and we were finally off. Again.

About 1 hour late my brother tells me he has to go to the bathroom. We stop, he goes in, and - wait for it - comes out holding his stomach. Turns out he was passing a kidney stone. He had vicodin, but was still groaning. He tells me to just keep driving - but by now, it's getting to be near midnight, and we're in Virginia. Virginia is......empty. And the stops are far and few between. And my brother needs a bathroom. So, I finally see a hotel, and I decide to stop for the night. It was a good idea. We got a good nights sleep. We wake up pretty refreshed, and get back on the road at about 2pm.

We drive....and my brother gets a migraine. So, for almost the rest of the trip...he's sick. I feel bad, but we had to keep going. The reunion was Saturday, and this was Friday evening.

But...we finally make into SC at about 7pm. We all head to where ever it is we are staying at, and my brother's migraine goes away. We had a good time while we were down there. The reunion went great, I even played volleyball. My son found the tree fort in the woods, and we all had a blast. I saw cousins and Aunts and Uncles I hadn't seen in almost 15 years. I met all their wives and children. My son even came away from the event with a whole box of Dragonball Z tapes. He was in heaven. We laughed, goofed off, fooled around, ate lots of food and generally made idiots of ourselves. It was awesome.

Until we head home.

But I'm going to make that Part 2.

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