Friday night date

Friday night was our last alone-together evening of vacation week, so my husband and I decided to go for the all-out romance and go for dinner at the local authentic Mexican restaurant where they have cheap, delicious food and wondrous-to-behold margaritas and then home to watch Slumdog Millionaire, a movie I have been urging my husband to watch ever since I returned from CousinFest.

To be honest, the Mexican restaurant is usually a bomb, and the only reason we continue going there is because it's so inexpensive. Let me explain: It's owned by members of the same extended family, all of them eye-achingly beautiful and as friendly as a pack of chupacabras. After you're seated, a waiter eventually comes to your table and slams down a basket of tortilla chips and a bowl of homemade salsa without comment; fortunately, the chips and salsa are good enough for you to overlook this surly behavior.

After a good, long time, a time in which I imagine a group of handsome servers are huddled in the kitchen drawing straws to see which of them has the misfortune of taking your order and suffering the unimaginable misery of refilling your Diet Coke, a fabulously beautiful young man with melting brown eyes and a curled lip will approach you with order pad and pencil held at the ready. If you have any questions about the food, he will answer them in the bare minimum of words, albeit in delightfully accented English, somewhat in the manner that his Spanish ancestors may have had to answer Torquemada. If you require an extra slice of lime in your margarita, a dish of the salsa caliente or a fork to replace the one you clumsily dropped on the floor, forget it.

On one memorable occasion, my mother was able to obtain a dish of the extra-hot salsa, but I attribute that to the fact that the waiter could see that she was fully capable of not stopping talking to him about what part of Mexico his family was from and how she'd once gone to Cancún and stepped on some coral, cutting her foot rather badly, and how much she'd enjoyed the missions trip she'd gone on, that he relented and brought the salsa, scurrying back to the kitchen after practically hurling it like a frisbee at our table from a distance of ten feet. But that's the only time I've ever had it. It was good.

This restaurant creates succulent beef tamales, the meat as tender and deliciously seasoned as any I've ever eaten. They can take humble foods such as rice and beans and turn them into masterpieces of ethnic culinary art. Their way with guacamole must surely be magic. But if you go there hoping to find mariachi and shining white teeth beaming from smiles in faces the rich color of café au lait, forget it. The atmosphere is brisk and businesslike with a vague underlying hint of irritability and you just have to get used to it because the food is so good.

After we were given the bum's rush from the restaurant, we came home to watch our movies, both Slumdog Millionaire and the Liam Neeson movie, Taken, about the man whose lying little poophead of a daughter gets kidnapped into a middle eastern prostitution ring while in France. We were going to watch both, but my husband ended up being too tired, so we watched Taken first. It was actually a very good action movie and the perps were given a very satisfying beatdown by Neeson's character, a ex-CIA agent who took early retirement in order to move to California to be closer to his teenage daughter.

We watched Slumdog Millionaire yesterday evening while waiting for the call from Pop, Nan and the girls that they were within an hour of New Castle so that we could go get Meelyn and Aisling. Our longing to see them had progressed to the point that my husband and I were both fidgeting and trying not to look at the DVR's clock every single second, so it was a good thing we had this movie to distract us.

Slumdog Millionaire was every bit as good the second time around, with Jamal once again proving to be the romantic hero of every girl's dreams, and maybe even some who couldn't really be classified as "girls" anymore. *ahem* ("Mr. Big," I thought scornfully. "Mr. Bug, more like.") Just as I did the first time, I spent the last ten minutes of the movie in an absolute storm of weeping, but my husband? What did he do?

Oh, nothing much. Just sat there in his seat, just at the point when Latika answered Salim's cell phone as Jamal's Phone-a-Friend and said, "I have never known," talking to the dogs.

"For twenty million rupees: Who. Was. The. Third. Musketeer," said the slimy game show host.

"I have never known," said Latika.

"Do you have to go outside again?" said my husband, causing me to erupt in an explosion of outrage.

A few moments later, when Jamal finally reached Latika's side and embraced her, she said, "I thought we would be together only in death."

"No," Jamal said quietly, kissing the scars on her cheeks. "It was our destiny."

"Here, boy! Want a cookie? Sit!" said my husband and then I strangled him. It was his destiny, for being such a...such a....MAN during the final moments of what is possibly the happiest ending in the history of film.

When "It was written" appeared on the screen, I was using the cloth off the dining room table to staunch my flowing tears and my husband was looking at me, all, "What is your damage?"

Hmmmph. Wait until Meelyn and Aisling see it. They'll be able to appreciate it. Showtime starts after lunch this afternoon. Then we shall see, my fine man.

Here's the video for "Jai Ho," complete with stills from the movie.

Homeward bound

The Florida travelers packed their bags tonight and apparently rented a trailer to bring home all the shells they picked up in their beachcombing expeditions and also all their purchases made in the shops they found, including a patchouli soap intended for me.

They were planning on staying overnight somewhere on Saturday night, but instead have decided to drive straight through. They should be back home late tomorrow evening, and my husband and I are planning to go and sit on my parents' driveway with all the determination of couple who used to compete in dance marathons, only stationary.

A week is too long. I am so READY to see the girls, I simply can't relax. It's taking every ounce of self control I possess not to get in the van and start driving with the one determined thought that maybe we'll cross paths somewhere in Tennessee.

I will never complain that Meelyn and Aisling are making me crazy ever, ever again. This Saturday. On Sunday, all bets may be off, depending on what kind of mess they create upstairs, unpacking their suitcases.

From my brother, trapped in Old Florida

I got this email from Pat late last night, feverishly typed in one long, eyeball-busting paragraph. I present it to you here with minor editing for punctuation. And paragraphy-ness.

*****************************************

Okay so I saw the update Meelyn sent in. Here’s a reason to be glad you didn’t come down.

After several days of eating TLC food (a.k.a home cookin'), we finally decided to take the longer than expected trip to civilization last evening for dinner. Everyone purtied up, which included me shaving, Poppy showering,the women applying make-up, Kiersi and Dayden getting sand out of their hair and Kieren putting on a nice shirt.

Everyone climbed into the Tank and we set off for commercialized Florida with visions of thick steaks and potatoes overflowing with butter in our heads and leaving behind the dreaded Deliverance music that seems to be playing almost constantly. I say "commercialized Florida" for Nanny has taken to calling everything “old Florida” which in my estimation refers to the lack of normal human necessities such as a Wal-Mart or even a Starbucks! Who knew such a reality still existed!

So anyway, off in the Tank. We drive for the better part of one-half hour when we see the 1st signs of humanity i.e. Burger King. Sad to say after driving around the town, Burger King appeared to be the closest thing to Outback in this alternative universe. We did stop at the town
square which appeared to have some potential food that didn‘t have whiskers or a tail or been described as road kill. Suddenly Nan points out a barbeque restaurant down the road.

Mistake #1 – not realizing a place called Jim Bob’s Bar-Bee-Q would not serve steak. Having in my mind Damon’s and knowing they served steaks and tators, I backed out of my spot and drove to the restaurant expectantly. The 2nd sign of trouble was the “restaurant” was in a house. Being somewhat distraught, we sent Nanny in to scout the joint. Mistake #3: She was in there for quite some time. Long enough that Dad and I made a bet on what she was doing. I was sure she had passed on the place and was asking the locals what restaurant they would recommend. Dad was sure she was tasting food, talking about the history of the store, and reminiscing about “old Florida.” Mistake #4 – don’t bet against a man who has been married
to a woman for the better part of half a century. Nanny re-appears toting a cup of punch and tells us to roll out of the tank. So we get into the “restaurant” and immediately my Spidey senses start tingling or maybe that was my hunger pangs longing for the steak that now was a nothing more than a heavily spiced, medium cooked dream.

To my dismay, the “restaurant” contained a total of 4 booths and a corn-o-copia of trite tourist trap nick knacks. Having been raised to not be rude, I fought a valiant internal fight to not flee and leave my family in the midst of these master deceivers. Mom and Dad and the girls ordered
first. After that, everything started to swirl. I somehow placed our order. What happened next will be something I won’t quickly (or easily) forget. Instead of a flaming grill, my beef Bar-Bee-Q was scooped out of a pan, slopped into a Styrofoam plate, squirted with a ketchupy substance, and an ice cream scoop full of baked beans and coleslaw added.

Gray dots started swirling all around me and I am quite sure I saw a tunnel of light with Jesus beckoning me to a better place. I summoned the power to down the beef and baked beans, but no way did I consider even a bite of the presumed salmonella-laced coleslaw. I walked down trodden to the front door, all the joy ripped from my heart. And then the coo duh grace (Indiana version) – I looked at the restaurant store door and saw that it had closed 20 minutes earlier. We had actually kept them open late so we could have the old Florida experience…. Insert Amityville music here.

***************************************

"Ketchupy substance"??!! No Wal-Mart??!!

I can't decide which freaks me out more. Upon consideration, it may be the area's lack of a Wal-Mart. Anyone who lives in the United States should be familiar with Wal-Mart's modus operandi, which is to invade even the more one-horse towns, the ones too small to be represented by more than a pinhead-sized dot on the map, build a Wal-Mart, operate for several years, and then build a Super-de-Dooper Wal-Mart four miles away, abandoning the first building and leaving it to decay on the little town's main thoroughfare, looking haunted. If the place they're staying in Florida is too small to warrant even a Wal-Mart -- a Starbuck's! -- it must be really Old Florida, the Old Florida of Jody Baxter and Flag and those weird neighbors of theirs who wanderered around in the Everglades a-shootin' at things. Also, if Old Florida is anything like Pioneer Indiana, well....GET OUT!!! GET OUUUUUUUT!!!!!

The thing that really worries me, though, is that Pat, who is normally so stoic that you could poke him in the arm with a sharpened pencil and all he'd do is look at you with a raised eyebrow (well, and then grab the pencil from you and snap it in two), actually used two exclamation points in his email to me.

It's getting really serious down there. I am fighting the urge to go down there after them with a lantern and a rope and a hunting dog, which I'll have to borrow from someone else because neither Hershey nor Wimzie could track a roast duck if it was over five feet away from their noses, and go down there to bring them out safely.

Here's the 1946 theatrical trailer for The Yearling. Be advised that in spite of the happy, rollicking music (played with a complete absence of banjos), the deer gets it right in the head in the end. That should be fun in TechniColor!

Survey says....

Meelyn polled everyone on their Favorite Things in Florida and emailed me the list. Amazing how each family member's personality shines through even when giving Mee their messages via dictation.

Everyone contributed except for Aisling, who was going to write her own, but says her email is "acting funny."

From Poppy

Poppy is very happy over here watching golf and going to the beach and he said to tell you that the top of his feet are sun burned [This is nothing short of a miracle, because the tops of his feet have been the color of salt ever since I've known him. -SM]. He loves watching the ocean and listening to Rush and Sean, and of course watching his grandchildren flounder around in the ocean. He thinks that their should be a Ranch Beach House since their are a total of 60 stairs in this house. He says that Weigh Down is going not as smoothly because he says that he has been over eating ever since he got here.

From Uncle Pat

Uncle Pat is the main chef of the house, cooking cheeseburgers, pancakes, tacos and spaghetti! He has finished an entire book and has started a new one. He enjoys lots of ocean and private pool swimming. He also loves scaring Nanny while she is in the ocean by going under water and touching her feet and legs. Nanny screams at the top of her lungs, making everyone around look over and wonder if their is a stingray or shark of some kind. Uncle Pat also does not appreciate this area, which doesn't have a reasonable Wal-Mart within 50 miles.

From Nanny

Nanny loves the beach house, especially going out on her porch and reading her Bible and loves drinking her coffee out there too. She loves all of the balconies in the house with all of their comfortable seating and views. She enjoys grilling hamburgers and corn on the cob. She loves going to the beach and helping her grandchildren find shells. Nanny also loves going to the famous authentic Mexican restaurant Peppers. Nanny loves floating in the ocean with her legs together [Wha-?... -SM].

She loves watching HGTV, especially House Hunters, she also watched HGTV Showdown for the first time the other night. Nanny loves the quaint seaside towns, with their unique shops. She is very excited to eat dinner out by the pool because grilling is her favorite part. When the whole family got into the gulf at one time it was so much fun. Aisli is learning to float and we are learning, even thought it's hard, not to wear makeup!!! Think about that!!

From Kieren

It is fun and relaxing. He enjoys the beach and loves to get souvenirs with other people's money. [A true teenager! -SM]

From Aunt Angie

She enjoys spending time with family, especially on the way down. On the way down all of the kids switched vehicles at different stops. She loves the drive down seeing different sights especially palm trees. She really loved when The Tank's alternator gave out because that made the trip down even more thrilling. She enjoys sitting on the beach tanning because she does not like going far out into the ocean because of the little creatures that like to crawl across her feet. If Aunt Angie wasn't already married she would have married HGTV. [I would have married the Food Network, or maybe Fox News. -SM]

From Dayden

He has no comment so I thought that I would make one for him. He enjoys the beach; swimming and boogie boarding are two of his favorites. He loves playing on his DS, getting on the computer and going to Cartoon Network to play games. Dayden also loves playing in our private pool. He loves to pick a fight with Uncle Pat in the pool all of the time.

From Meelyn

I am having a fabulous time with family. I love going to the beach and I am building quite a good shell collection. We have seen hermit crabs, sting rays and crabs, all of which I prefer to think do not exist. I am also loving the beach sun. I am getting a very pretty brown color which I cannot get at the pool!

Everyone enjoys souvenir shopping, eating, playing board games and it would not be a vacation if we hadn't brought playing cards to play Pounce ( according to some friends, Pounce is the whimpy version of Nerds; I on the other hand do not agree). We also are going to play Hand and Foot!

Everybody here is looking a maps to see where the hot spots of Florida are. We are taking beautiful pictures, the other day we saw people horse back riding on the beach, how romantic! It is very interesting how when we got to the famous food mart called Piggly Wiggly we were at the deli getting lunch meat when the man asked us if we were on vacation (People over here can tell who the tourists are and the locals.) [Probably because you all talk so funny. At least that's what Susie says. -SM] They told us that a good way to keep flies away is to hang ziploc bags of water in your house, so interesting, we thought for a minute that he was yanking are chains, but it is true, flies do not like water! A way to keep mosquitoes away is to keep fabric softener sheets in your pockets and around the house, that keeps mosquitoes away! Locals are so smart!

We all just love hanging around watching Fox, HGTV and old shows on TV Land. We are relaxing and nobody can stop us!

From Kiersi

Kiersi is still very young but I did get out of her that she likes the beach, pool and she LOVES searching for shells.

Aisling? Where R U?

BBA CHALLENGE: Casatiello

A dangerous bread, Kayte called this. Dangerous. I pictured Casatiello as the Michael Corleone of breads, but it actually turned out to be more of the Tony Montana of breads. Because with all those pieces of sautéed salami and pockets of melted provolone hidden within? Well. Let's just say it gives "Say hello to my little friend" a whole new meaning.

Casatiello is an Italian bread, kind of the flip side of panettone, the bread stuffed with candied fruit and nutmeats that Italians traditionally serve at Christmastime. The little cubes of salami and provolone are tucked into a rich brioche dough (poor man's variety) and I have to say, I think it is the best bread I have ever eaten. Ever. Whether in a simple slice or in a sandwich, it is so incredibly good, I can see why Kayte called it dangerous.

Making this bread was as easy as falling off a log because I CHEATED. Yes, I did and I'm not sorry. I halved Peter's recipe, sitting at my kitchen table with my bangs in my eyes and my glasses perched on the tip of my nose, doing subtraction problems on a piece of scratch paper and murmuring to myself. I finally just gave it up because, if you read my review of Poor Man's Brioche, you'll know that the handmade Poor Man's Brioche recipe in Peter's book, The Bread Baker's Apprentice, was identical to a recipe called "Egg Bread" in the little pamphlet cookbook I got with my bread machine all those years ago. Peter's recipe did call for a little more butter, but that was not a problem -- I just put more into the machine's baking pan.

Yes, I used my bread machine. However, I did set it on the dough cycle, so I did have to do a punch down, a short rising, another punch down and the final proofing. What? You were thinking I was totally lazy and let the machine do everything? Not me!

Since the machine was doing all the work doing the job it was built to do, I sat in the living room drinking iced tea and reading my book until I was summoned by a discreet beep-beep-beep to come and add the salami and the provolone. With that minor chore complete, I was free to do what I wanted for the next hour.

When it was time for the final punching-rising-punching-proofing sequence, I did it all with ease -- I have acquired a few skills! -- and slid the pan into the oven. I wanted to use a regular bread pan so that my loaf would come out ready for sandwiches.

And ohhhhh, did it. It came out of the oven about an hour before my husband got home and I was already hungry. I waited for forty-five minutes, which was surely a virtuous thing to do, and then sawed off the heel of one side. Oh, my gosh....the aroma! And the flavor! It was so delicious and completely different from any bread I've ever had before.

For dinner last night, then, my husband and I had big pub sandwiches made of thick slices of grilled Casatiello and stuffed with ham and provolone. Romantically, a pub sandwich would be consumed with a pint of home-brewed ale and maybe a side of mushy peas, but my husband made do with a frosty mug of Bud. If I asked him to eat mushy peas, he would rebel, although he is an enthusiastic eater of non-mushy peas. I, a total plebian, had a glass of milk. I was made fun of.

Today for breakfast, I had a thick sliced, grilled with a sliver of provolone on top.

For lunch, I had another slice, thicker, grilled on both sides and then topped with a sliced tomato that I'd picked out of my mother's garden forty-five minutes before. Then I put two slices of provolone on top and let the cheese get melty over the tomato.

I was in HEAVEN. There has never been such a lunch.

If you buy this book for no other reason (and it is a really great book, believe me) buy it for that Casatiello recipe. It is that good. And dangerous. It is a dangerous, dangerous bread.

A very pleasant day

I had planned to go to the swim club today since it is both warm and sunny, but not going to bed until 4:00 a.m. has put me in kind of a drowsy, dreamy sort of mood and I decided that since this was my week to decide, I wasn't going to pack the cooler and my swim bag and the towels and the blue burrito and lug it all over there.

Instead, I've stayed home and puttered around the house. This is the kind of thing that drives me insane when the girls are home, mostly because they're cluttering up the floor under my feet with their pressing need to DO SOMETHING LET'S EVEN GO TO WAL-MART, ANYTHING, whereas I have no pressing desire to do much more than read my book and maybe take a little nap.

I've not been totally idle, considering that I've also done the laundry, cleaned the bathroom sinks and toilets upstairs and down and vacuumed all the downstairs rooms. Right now, I'm in the midst of baking the Casatiello bread from The Bread Baker's Apprentice, which is proving to be a very absorbing project. Casatiello is an Italian bread that has little chunks of salami and melty pockets of provolone baked into a rich milk-and-egg dough. I just finished sautéeing the diced salami, and oh my gosh, it smells so incredibly good. The aroma brought Hershey to the kitchen from his snoozy place snuggled into the sofa cushions at a brisk trot. Wimzie followed him, trying to be all nonchalant, as if she was just coming to the kitchen for a drink and not because of that tantalizing odor wafting through the house.

"By any chance would the salami in that skillet be intended for me, the best and most loyal dog you've ever known?" he indicated with bright eyes and pricked up ears.

"Oh, you're cooking?" Wimzie's over-the-shoulder look communicated. "Salami. Hmmm. I was hoping for prosciutto. I guess I can take some off your hands. If I must. Since there's nothing better to do around this dump."

As soon as the dough comes off this first rising, I need to incorporate the salami and the provolone into it and set it up for another rising. Then a punch down and the final proofing, and it will be ready to go into the oven.

Kayte says that this bread is addictive, perhaps even dangerous. My husband and I will be finding out at dinner tonight. I'll write about making the Casatiello and that dumb brioche that I've been putting off for, like, three weeks now, tomorrow. I hope.

Life's a beach, and then you go shopping

I talked to Meelyn and Aisling before they left for the beach this morning; I was sitting outside on the front porch bench watching the dogs do their business on this SUNNY morning where it finally feels WARM. Miracles still occur, please don't ever doubt that.

Meelyn told me that the gang had been looking into visting a nearby water park, but they balked when they found out that the admission price was $32 per person. And here's a weird thing, and I hope it sounds right because the phone was kind of dodging in and out, it was more expensive for tall people? So the admission price was going to be more for Pat and Kieren?

That can't be right, can it?

Anyway, everyone really liked the beach they went to yesterday, so they're going back there. Meelyn tells me that there were lots of pretty shells on that beach, and she found a particularly lovely one, a small one of cream and grey and delicate pink. She thought there was a creature inside it, but when she took it to my mother, Mom said that she didn't think the shell was inhabited. Meelyn put it in the bathroom she's sharing with Aisling and left it.

Some time later, she came back into the bathroom and heard the little sea creature gasping for breath. Horrified, she hurriedly grabbed it up and ran it back to the salt water and released it back to its home. We were both in agreement that we didn't care if it was a yucky little mussel or mollusc or whatever -- anything that can gasp for breath needs to go back where it can be alive.

I'm just assuming that it wasn't gasping in horror at the state of that bathroom, since I'm not there to make them pick up the wet towels, polish the mirror, neatly store their various hair products and makeup, and clean the globs of toothpaste out of the sink. Heh.

Florida, finally

The family journey to Florida was finally completed yesterday, but not without a few setbacks that had me clutching my cell phone in a frantic grip and instructing myself to breathe in and out, repeating as necessary.

First, they were a bit behind schedule because they -- my parents and the girls in the minivan and Pat, Angie and my nephews and niece in The Tank, an aged yet comfy Suburban belonging to Angie's parents -- got stopped three different times by road construction.

I didn't find that all too worrisome, however, because that's just the kind of thing that happens. Many's the childhood vacation I remember being stuck in traffic, usually in Georgia, which is the longest state ever in the world. Everything is 250 miles away: First you're in Tennessee and Atlanta is 250 miles away. Then you're in Atlanta and Savannah is 250 miles away. And then, panting, you get to the Savannah area, where the signs say that Macon is 250 miles away. After Macon, the signs assure you that Valdosta is 250 miles away. The Florida state line is 250 miles away from Valdosta and all those people who say that Texas is the biggest state are big fat liars.

One particular stuck-in-traffic family vacation from my youth is particularly memorable because it is the time when Pat and I had been so horrible to each other in the back seat -- I think a roll of masking tape stuck down the middle from the rear window down all the way to the drive train's hump in the middle of the floor had been employed to divide MY side from HIS side -- that my dad had insisted that we put our seat belts on. Because? That's how parent PUNISHED THEIR CHILDREN in the 1970s -- they made them wear seat belts.

"If you kids don't shut up, you are going to put on your seat belts until we get to the Florida state line," my father would growl. And then Pat and I would weigh those consequences up against the actions we hoped to take, which of course meant slapping at one another over the masking tape. If we were near Atlanta, we'd restrain ourselves and be content with just shooting each other hateful glances. But if we'd already passed Valdosta, WATCH OUT.

Pat and I both knew that our dad was a soft touch, exhibiting lots of bark with very limited bite. So, as our car rolled to a halt on the broiling interstate through the fine state of Georgia, my brother and I escalated to the point of open warfare, with Nancy Drew books and G.I. Joes and magic markers and the little pieces of one of those magnetic tic-tac-toe sets flying around like the first five minutes of Saving Private Ryan.

We suddenly became firm allies, however, because our mother, who is of a much more energetic and temperamental temperament than our father, made even more so by the fact that her two children were acting like jackals in the back seat of an otherwise staid and practical family sedan, driven to the breaking point, I say, by our pinching and hitting and yelling and kicking, suddenly emerged from the front seat with a scream of rage, brandishing a paperback Agatha Christie novel.

"I. HAVE. HAD. IT!" she shrieked. "HAD. IT! HAD IT!!!! HADDIT!!!!"

She leaned over the front seat, flailing around with her book, swiping at us with a ferocity unmatched by Santa Ana at the Alamo. She whacked us and thwacked us and smote us with such vigor, the book started coming to pieces, pages floating through the air and entire chunks plopping onto the seats and the floor. At one point, I looked out my window (arms up to protect my head) and saw a trucker in the next lane staring at us with wide eyes and open mouth: two kids crouching down in their seats trying to avoid being bludgeoned by a Penguin paperback, a very pretty, angry blonde woman windmilling around and the man at the wheel nonchalantly looking for a radio station and trying to pretend that nothing. Was happening.

Anyway, the vacationers made it through the road construction and decided to stop for the night south of Birmingham, as I related in my other post. But what I didn't know is that Nanny, Poppy and the girls ordered a Pizza Hut pizza to be delivered, and Pat, Angie and the kids went to Chick-fil-A. And I also didn't know that when Pat/Angie/kids returned from eating their chicken, Kiersi got into the shower and slipped, cutting her little chin badly enough that they had to take her to the emergency room.

See? This is the kind of stuff that keeps the manufacturers of my brand of hair color in business.

Kiersi got those new kind of stitches that are actually glue -- don't ask me, I didn't know about it either -- and was apparently okay, although Dayden was terribly upset that she was hurt and crying. But believe me, that's NOTHING compared to the hurt and crying I was experiencing, all by myself in the house back here in Indiana. Hearing about emergency room visits over the phone is just not good.

The next day, they sailed off in fine form and got over the Florida state line, traveling down the panhandle until they were a mere ninety minutes from their destination. And then guess what happened? Well, my phone rang.

"Hello?" I said breathlessly.

"Hi, Mommy," said Aisling in a disconsolate tone. "Guess where we are?"

"At the house? Is it nice?"

"No, we're still far away from the house. We're at a Hardee's. Because The Tank broke down and we can't find anyone to fix it."

That was the point at which I realized it was a good thing that I don't believe in solving problems with alcohol, although I have been known to try to solve them with the contents of the refrigerator.

"What's going on?" I whimpered.

"Nanny and Poppy are going to drive all the grandkids on to the house and then one of them will come back to get Uncle Pat and Aunt Angie and the luggage," she said in a small voice. "They're just going to sit and wait for the tow truck, and then Pop or Nan can pick them up."

This just didn't set well with me. Like, AT ALL. I wanted to get my father on the phone and imperiously tell him and all the rest of them to just STOP RIGHT THERE: I was going to go get in the van and start driving and I didn't want anyone to MOVE until I was there to sort this thing out. Unless, of course, they wished to order a sausage biscuit.

Honestly, I should have known not to accept this story verbatim from the lips of a disgruntled and travel-weary fourteen year old. As it turns out, the situation was not as dire as she'd portrayed it to be. My parents did set off with the grandkids and got to the beach house just fine; Triple A arrived at the Hardee's only twenty minutes after the call was made and a car repair person was enlisted to replace the alternator. He made quick work of that job and Pat and Angie set out and arrived at the beach house only an hour after the first wave got in.

The house, they tell me, is very nice, although Dayden thinks it has too many stairs. The bedroom the girls are sharing is right by the door that leads outside to the swimming pool, so everyone woke them up this morning, the girls being the only two late sleepers in the family.

The waters of the gulf beckoned today, and they spent the day in the sand and the sun, searching for shells and playing in the waves. There seemed to be surprisingly little sand castle building, which is always my favorite thing. Go figure.

Meelyn sent me an email and said that they're thinking about water parks, a different beach or maybe a trip to the piney woods for tomorrow. I wrote back, piney woods? Excuse me? If you want trees, you can have them all you want in Indiana, both evergreen and deciduous. But beaches? Those are a bit more hard to come by.

I vote beaches for them. And the pool for myself -- we're going to be experiecing a heat wave here tomorrow. It's going to be seventy-seven degrees outside. Woooooooeeeeee!!!!!

Anticipating the return of summer weather

Here's Carly Simon, one of my all-time favorites, doing "Anticipation" live in her 1987 Martha's Vineyard concert on what looks to be an absolutely perfect summer evening.

Quick note: I am not sure why Carly, who is so gorgeous to this very day it makes my hair hurt, is wearing those weirdly baggy pants and the sneakers -- did we all wear pants like that in 1987? I don't remember. Unfortunately, I do remember about the shoulder pads. Anyway, if anyone could make a pair of drawstring-waist pants look oddly adorable, it's Carly. Nobody does it better.

HA! Didja catch that? SONG TITLE REFERENCE!!!

I am ON today. Must be the cool, crisp tang of fall in the air. Wait a minute....

And then I turned into a popsicle

I am sitting here on a Saturday afternoon in mid-July at a time when the central air-conditioning is usually roaring away, huddled into a sweatshirt and actual pants -- not shorts. The frikkin' Snuggie is starting to look good to me, may all of heaven's holy angels help this (hopefully temporary) madness to pass.

At 12:45 on a mid-July Saturday in Indiana, one can count on the fact that the heat and humidity are both in the eighties, verging towards the nineties. At 12:45 on a mid-July Saturday in Indiana, one can count on every bench at the swim club being occupied by a body. Today, I'm not sure if the pool is even open; I'm sure not going there to find out. The swim club is out in the country surrounded by corn fields and if you can catch a breeze anywhere in the county, it's there.

I've been to the pool plenty of times when I deemed the water to chilly for my swimming pleasure, but I've never been there when it was too cold to sit on a bench without being dressed like Nanook of the North.

My big plan for the day was to go to the pool and get in the water to read my book propped on the edge as I often do, wait until I was deliciously cool, and then get out to roast on a bench with my Shakespeare stuff. Lather, rinse, repeat until it was time to shower and get ready to go to Mass. Now I'm not sure what to do, other than turning on the furnace.

Here are our deplorable current conditions:

Indianapolis, Indiana

Currently: 66°F Cloudy
Wind: West at 8 MPH
Humidity: 65%
Dewpoint: 54°F
Barometer: 30.02 inches and steady
Sunrise: 6:31 am
Sunset: 9:10 pm

Have you ever seen anything so ludicrous?

I called the travelers a couple of hours ago; they'd all gotten up fairly early and were well south of Montgomery. As they were driving along talking to me, they caught sight of an electronic billboard that had a time and temperature posting: It was eighty-eight degrees where they were.

Does anyone have Mother Nature's email address? I have a strongly worded letter I'd like to send to her.

One for the road (make that nine)

Early this morning, a caravan consisting of Pat, Angie, Kieren, Dayden, Kiersi, Poppy, Nanny, Meelyn and Aisling set out from New Castle, heading for a place in Florida on the gulf coast of which I've never heard. It's a house with a private pool not far from the beach, and if I didn't absolutely hate the thought of my husband being at home alone all week with the dogs, I would SO be with them. It's just that our current economy isn't very conducive to commissioned salespeople taking a ten day break - it's hard to sell cars from five states away.

Meelyn and Aisling spent the night with my mom and dad last night so that early start could be facilitated more smoothly. I drove back home, alone in the van, wondering why it is with kids that they drive you crazy with their messiness and their constant saying of your name and their need to tell you every detail about a very long dream featuring a bicycle, that little cartoon dude from the Hawaiian Punch commercials and a cell phone with a dead battery; their whininess when told to unload the dishwasher; their obstinate resistance to comply with my order not to leave their wet bath towels on my bed...oh, so many things. And then you send them off for a week with their grandparents and aunt and uncle and all the way home you just want to cry.

ANYWAY, I got back home and my husband and I, treading dangerously around a swamp filled with sadness and I-wish-you-could-have-gone-at-;east and No-I-don't-want-you-to-be-lonesome-and-have-to-eat-fast-food-all-week, were strangely polite and formal with one another to the point where I felt like a bawdy slut sleeping next to him when I finally went to bed at 3:00 a.m.

Here's a call log from their travels today:

AROUND 1:00 p.m.

I've called the girls once and they've called home once. They're currently in Tennessee and Allison's nose was out of joint because they ate lunch at McDonald's. I just got off the phone with her and she says they're nine hours away from their destination, so they've made excellent time.

They plan to stop around dinner time and find a hotel with a pool. The kids are all switching off every two hours, so Megan was riding with Pat, Angie, Kyler and Kiersey. Dayden was in the van with Pop, Mom and Allison and I could hear him in the background chattering like a magpie.

"He sure seems excited," I said.

Allison dropped her voice to a whisper. "He has not. Shut. Up. Since we got in the car after lunch."

When he realized she was talking to me, he started yelling, "Hi, Auntie Shelley! I love you, Auntie Shelley! I wish you and Uncle Brian were here, Auntie Shelley! I miss you! And Poppy misses you! And Nanny misses you! And Allison misses you! And Megan misses..."

Finally, everyone started shouting, "Enough! Be quiet! We'll lash you to the luggage rack if you keep yelling!"

Sulkily, he said, "Well, we ALL MISS YOU," and then he was quiet.

AROUND 6:30 p.m.

I talked to Pop while sitting on the front porch, waiting for Hershey and Wimzie to do their early evening business. He said wearily that they'd all been stuck in three come-to-a-complete-halt traffic jams on the freeway today due to road construction.

"I like to travel on Saturday and Sunday when there's no work going on," he said. "We're only a couple of hours south of Birmingham and we've been on the road for twelve hours. Luckily, we are only about six hours from where we're staying, so hopefully tomorrow's drive will be easier."

They were all sitting in the parking lot of a hotel, but he told me it looked as if the only rooms vacant were smoking rooms, which didn't interest any of them. However, he told me that my mother had just come out of the hotel office with both thumbs up and then gone over to talk to Pat and Angie, so I don't know if that means they're going to go to the nearest Home Depot and buy ventilator masks or if they're all going to take up smoking.

I got the strong sense that everyone was tired, hungry and grouchy, so I kept the call short. I told my dad goodbye and then called the dogs, telling them to come in for a treat. They both rushed in, bumping into each other and I went out to the kitchen to feed them a stale fig newton and pretend that it was fun, having the entire silent, echoey house all to myself.

I am just WAY fun.

Boats, hot dogs and water slides - more news from the lake

The girls called yesterday afternoon from a boat, of all places. A big boat, they emphasized. A big double-decker pontoon with a grill for hot dogs and a water slide.

"And guess what?" Aisling said eagerly. "I got to drive the boat a whole lot!"

This gave me a moment of...something or other. You see, I spend a lot of time with Aisling and I know her very well. And ordinarily, I wouldn't dream of letting her drive some Matchbox cars around the dining room table, let alone drive a pontoon filled with the closest members of our family around a big lake.

"Oh, it's okay," she assured me. "Kiersi got to drive the boat, too."

Kiersi is my niece. She's just a little over two feet tall and is nineteen months old. What were all the adults doing? I wondered. Lounging around on deck chairs while Meelyn served Long Island iced teas?

As it turned out, Poppy was at the wheel, too, supervising all this boat-driving in a very responsible manner. I feel so relieved. I had this picture of Aisling, a captain's hat backwards on her head, driving the pontoon so fast that the front end was lifted out of the water like a ski boat, straight at a little canoe full of nuns or something.

"And guess what else?" Aisling asked me. Honestly, there are times when I hardly know how to answer this question. It's highly possible that I could say. "Uhhmmm....you were skipping rocks in the lake and all of a sudden, the Loch Ness monster appeared and said, 'Hi! I'm visiting from Scotland!' and then offered you a powdered sugar doughnut?" and she'd say in disappointment, "How did you know?"

So I'm careful. That's all I'm saying.

As it turns out, the other thing that happened is that Aisling was walking barefoot and stubbed her fourth toe on some cement and it bled a lot. Nanny bought some peroxide and Aisling cried a lot. "Because it hurt," she said. "It made me miss you."

I gulped and managed to squeak, "Did Nanny kiss it?"

Aisling giggled. "No, Mommy. It's my toe."

"It's a rule," I said sternly. "Tell her that I am citing her for dereliction of duty if that toe remains unkissed."

"Nanny, Mommy says you have to kiss my toe," Aisling called to her.

"And my toe, too," I said. "Tell her that. That's what she gets for being a big toe-non-kisser."

Meelyn got on the phone after that and told me that she had gone down the slide on the pontoon a thousand times.

"And we pulled an inner tube behind the boat," she said. "That was a lot of fun, but Uncle Pat was driving and he made the boat go fast and the water all came up over the inner tube."

"Did he think that was funny?" I asked, knowing my brother and how he would never be able to resist pushing that speed up just a little bit faster...just...a...little...faster. It's exactly the same thing I would have done, or expected to have done to me, if I were the one on the inner tube.

"Oh, yeah," she said, laughing. "He did it to everyone. But Kiersi doesn't like being in the water. She got a little grouchy. The boys and I are having fun though, going down the slide. Poppy went down, too."

I had another moment or something or other, trying to imagine my portly father, one of the most dignified people I know, going down a curvy water slide off a pontoon. Will wonders never cease? It's like someone just told me that apples can fly or that my mailbox is a portal to another world, like Narnia only better.

The girls will be home tomorrow. I'm so glad. And I can hardly wait to see my dad, to see if this water sliding experience has changed him.

More news from the lake

The telephone rang yesterday afternoon, just as I was getting ready to leave for the library.

"Mommy?" came an indistinct voice, accompanied by much background interference of happy shrieks and squeals and music being played over an intercom.

"Hi, Aisli!" I said, feeling an enormous warm rush of happiness at hearing her chirpy voice. "How are you, honey?"

"I'm fine! I am so fine, you just don't know! We're all at a water park right now and we're having so much fun!"

"What have you been doing at the water park?"

"Well, first of all, they have this thing called a wave pool? And it makes waves just like the ocean? Nanny and I thought it looked like fun, so we got in it and a wave came and knocked us down and we skinned our knees on the bottom, kind of like when you're at the beach and a wave throws you all around on the sand."

I got an amusing mental image of my mother and Aisling whirling around in a wave, both emitting piercing screams and getting their mouths full of water. "Oh, dear. That sounds a little rugged. What did you do next?"

"Next we went down the water slide. The first time, I leaned forward instead of backward and I just about got drowned, but Nanny pounded me on the back and I coughed and choked up a bunch of water."

This was slightly alarming to me, until I realized that Aisling's coughing and choking is usually due to the fact that she simply cannot keep her mouth closed, even if she knows that water is going to come in. "Did you try it again?" I asked.

"Yup," she said. "And that time, Nanny and I went down together and my bathing suit top fell down."

"Oh my gosh...."

"And I didn't even know it! We got to the bottom of the slide and stood up in the water and Nanny was laughing and laughing, but I didn't know what she was laughing at and then she pulled up my top."

By then, I was doing some laughing of my own. "I bet Nanny was disappointed that she didn't get a chance to flash the park. She probably thinks there are some Mardi Gras beads around there somewhere."

Aisling began to laugh and I heard my mother ask her what was so funny. Aisling said to her, "Mommy said you were probably disappointed that you didn't get to flash everyone."

"Give me that phone," my mom said.

"Hi, Mom!"

"I brought you up better than that."

"You tried. I give you credit for trying."

"Anyway. I already flashed that beach in Hawaii -- ACCIDENTALLY -- when your dad and I went there. Ever since then, I've known to hang onto my top."

"All it takes is one moment of inattention, Mom, and then BAM! Mardi Gras beads are coming at you from all directions."

"You shut up. You are such a bad girl. Be ashamed."

"I'll try!"

"Here's Aisling back."

Aisling said, "Do you miss me?"

"Like a world without chocolate," I said lightly. "Where's MeeMee?"

"She's just now coming from the big water slide. Do you want to talk to her?"

"Yup," I said.

"Okay. Here she is. I love you, Mommy! I miss you! I'm having a good time! Tell Daddy I love him!"

"I will, honey," I said. "Mind your top."

The phone was transferred from one wet hand to another. "Mommy?" said Meelyn, excitement in her happy voice.

"Hi, sweetheart! How is the world's most awesome teenager doing?"

"Ooooh, Mommy! It's so great! We're having so much fun! I've gone down the biggest water slide a bunch of times. You have to climb, like, five flights of steps to get up there. I was so scared, but I told myself I was going to do it since the boys were doing it. And it is so much fun!"

"That sounds so great, honey! Are you....errr....having any troubles with your top?"

"No," she giggled. "I hang onto it real tight."

"So what else have you been doing?"

"Well," she said thoughtfully, "Aisli and I took Kiersi for a little walk last night and we swung her between our hands and she laughed so hard and loved it."

"Oh, how fun. She's such a cutie."

"And we've played a lot of ping-pong. Did you know that Poppy is a very competitive ping-pong player? He about makes you swallow the ball."

(Can you get delirium tremens from being away from the golf course for a week?)

"How's it going with you and Aisli in the same bed together? Or do you have separate rooms?"

"No, we're in the same room. We like it better like that."

"Do you have fun, giggling and talking before you go to sleep?"

"Nope," said Meelyn. "We are way too tired to talk at night. We hit the sheets and don't move until morning. We're having the best time!"

We talked for a few more minutes and then Meelyn said she needed to get back to the slide. "I love you, Mommy. Tell Daddy I love him. I miss you both."

"We miss you, too. And we're so glad you're having a good time!"

"We are! This is so much fun! I'll talk to you later, Mom. 'Bye!"


Ooooh, ouch. OUCH. I have been really enjoying my days, but I didn't think I'd miss them quite this painfully.

Reveling in vay-cay--see-own

Okay, so I'm kind of sad that my husband and I didn't get to go to the lake with the rest of the family. Finances wouldn't allow and sometimes adulthood sucks and that's al-l-l-l-l I have to say about it.

But I have no complaints about today, that's for sure.

I got up at 8:45 a.m., showering and dressing in record time. Since I didn't plan on leaving the house today, I eschewed all makeup, although I did brush my hair and hair and put on a necklace. I always like to wear a necklace. Well, and have clean teeth and a head of hair that doesn't look like a bird's nest, obviously.

Cheese and crackers made a very nice breakfast along with a glass of iced raspberry green tea. I have fallen in love with Crystal Light and would sleep with the canister of little powdered-drink- filled tubs under my pillow, if I could. I ate while luxuriously reading a creepy Mary Higgins Clark mystery. The dogs begged relentlessly but I did. Not. Make. Eye contact.

After breakfast, I spread Hamlet books and papers all over the dining room table and sat down at the computer to begin creating handouts on Aristotle's Six Elements of Drama and Freytag's Pyramid and all the rest, coming up for air about five blissful hours later. I don't know why I find this so endlessly fascinating, this literary activity that would make most people run screaming into the path of an oncoming train. I am a bluestocking at heart, no matter how much Def Leppard I listen to. I think I've read four or five different commentaries on the characters, themes and motivations in Hamlet and I feel like it's Christmas or something.

A phone call interrupted me; it was another homeschooling mother asking me about a teen activity that I agreed to undertake for next year. We talked for about half an hour about this new course, which is to cover public speaking, and it turned out that we were on the same page about everything. We hung up, greatly pleased. I've never taught an actual speech class before, although I've done some public speaking, plus put in several years both as a high school speech and debate team member, and then later as a judge. I am really looking forward to this.

Lunch was leftover from last night's dinner, plus a Diet Coke. Once done with that, I went back to work on Hamlet, that poor boy, only letting up in order to type this post.

My husband will be home from work in about forty-five minutes. I'm making baked spaghetti with meatballs for dinner, which sounds very good. We have a couple of shows waiting on the DVR tonight, which will be fun. Much more fun than The Godfather last night. Puh. I am so over the mafia.

I think I'll go get dinner ready and then sit down to enjoy The Dog Whisperer before my husband gets home.

No word from the family yet today, either by phone, cell phone, or email. I'm looking forward to hearing what they did today.

The first news in from the lake

My husband and I just got a call from a Frisch's restaurant at the lake where Meelyn had just ordered soup and a salad and Aisling had just ordered penne pasta in a sauce with broccoli. The girls were enormously excited because their bedroom for the week is "heeeeyoooooge" with a "big vanity" and a "great view over the mountains down to the lake."

Aisling thought that maybe she was going to try sleeping in the extra bedroom, but she and Meelyn have shared a room since they were tiny little things. So I wonder if that will actually happen. Aisling and Meelyn both thought it would be really cool to sleep in queen-sized beds by themselves.

After I talked to them, the phone was passed to my younger nephew, aged six, who was excited about the thought of sleeping on a bed while his older brother, my 13-year-old nephew, sleeps "on a little couch with no blanket." My younger nephew expressed delight in the idea that if my older nephew gets cold and starts to cough, he, my younger nephew will sit up in bed and shout, "STOP COUGHING! STOP COUGHING! STO-O-O-OPPPP COUGHING!"

I don't know what will happen if my older nephew sneezes. Something bad?

I think maybe my older nephew ought to sleep in that spare bedroom, where presumably there are blankets. And no one to yell at him at night.

My dad was the next person on the phone and he told me that they don't know the telephone number of the lake house yet and they can't find the internet connection, which is a poky old dial-up. I hope to get some emails from assorted family members soon. I'd like to piece together a story for the scrapbook and that way, maybe it will seem like my husband and I were actually there, instead of staying home with the dogs and eating pork chops and green beans for dinner. Which were good, but not as good as going to Frisch's with the whole family while anticipating a fun week at the lake and then going back to the house to play cards all night.

My husband and I have spent the first afternoon of our vacation watching The Godfather on television, although I pooped out with only ten minutes to go. Michael Corleone's nephew is getting ready to be baptized, which means the shootin' is about to start. I love the irony of all those dons' bodies being riddled with bullets while Michael meekly renounces Satan and all his works. Nice. Very nice. Martin Scorsese and Mario Puzo, I think it would have been even nicer if Michael Corleone had spontaneously combusted while committing blasphemy as he stood before the Blessed Sacrament, but that would have ix-nayed Part II and Part III, wouldn't it? Darn.

My husband has just realized that the actress who played Michael's sister is the same one who played Adrienne in the Rocky movies. He's very pleased. Hershey just threw up from eating a pork chop bone - it must have been too rich for him. My husband just informed me that no clean up was necessary, as Hershey was helpfully eating his vomit. Nice. Very nice.

I think I'll go do the dinner dishes.

At it turns out...

I didn't need to feel stress after all.

On Thursday, I wrote on my Thursday's List that I was stressed out about getting Meelyn and Aisling's stuff packed up for their week's lakeside vacation with Nanny and Poppy. I was dreading the washing, folding and suitcasing of clothes; the making sure that miscellaneous items, like toothbrushes, were stowed away, and that Aisling doesn't leave the state without Izzie and Meelyn without her MP3 player.

Although my husband tells me that they do, in fact, sell toothbrushes in states other than Indiana. Who knew?

On Thursday afternoon, I heard something going bump-bump-bumpitty-bump down the stairs and went to make sure that Wimzie wasn't going tail over teakettle after spying that black, white-booted cat from an upstairs window. She hates that cat. It wasn't Wimzie, I was Meelyn. And she wasn't falling, she was bringing down the laundry hamper that she and Aisling use.

Meelyn, my beautiful, sweet, funny, volleyball-playing girl, washed, dried and folded all their clothes. She and Aisling carried them all upstairs and put them in our biggest suitcase. They got out my vanity case and put all their toiletries in there. They put the PlayStation2 in the suitcase and cushioned it with their beach towels and packed two tote bags to take in the car, full of books, music and DVDs (Nan and Pop have a fancy van that plays movies. I know! It's pretty cool, isn't it? Our van is so old, it's carpeted in purple shag and an 8-track player with a wizard painted on the side making the words "Pure Magic" spin out of his staff.)

(Okay, that was a slight exaggeration, but it doesn't have a DVD player.)

In short, they packed everything. By themselves. All I did was make a packing list here on the blog.

All mothers know that our job as mothers is to work ourselves out of a job. Today is one of those days when I know that I have worked myself out of another job to add to my list of feeding, potty-taking, shoe-tying, tooth-brushing, toe-and-fingernail clipping and jacket-zipping and other myriad tasks that the girls are competent enough to do on their own, possibly even better than they did when I was helping them.

I still do kiss owies, however. That is a task I will never relinquish.

Packing list

Meelyn and Aisling are leaving on Sunday morning to go on a weeks' vacation with Nanny and Poppy, their three cousins and Uncle Pat and Aunt Angie. This is the first time they will be away from me for more than two days (I leave during the annual CousinFest with Lilly, Carol and Susie); this time, they are going to be gone for seven whole days and six whole nights and other people will be listening to their incessant quarreling over whose turn it is to rinse off the corn-on-the-cob pokers and whose job it is to carry my blue foam water float from the car to the pool (I already carry the cooler and my bag full of twenty-seven different Shakespeare books.)

I am really going to miss them and I try not to think about it because I keep getting something stuck in the back of my throat that feels like a tennis ball, only furrier. I'm really kind of hoping that they'll spend the next four days being absolutely unbearable, with lots of huffing and saying, "Okay, now that she told you that big bunch of lies, let me tell you what really happened," and feet stomping up the stairs, so that when we take them to Nanny and Poppy's on Sunday morning, all we'll feel the need to do is stop briefly in the driveway, offload them in a bum's rush sort of way, and then burn rubber in the minivan, riding back home listening to Lenny Kravitz belting out "Fly Away" with the windows down and rejoicing in our freedom from bickering.

But most likely, anticipating the impending separation, they'll cease hostilities and be adorable for the next one hundred and sixteen hours, which will cause me to stand in my parents' driveway long after the van full of waving arms has pulled away, moodily inspecting the asphalt for signs of their footprints that I can bend down and touch, and then driving back home in silence punctuated only by long, wet, drawn-out sniffles from me and occasional comments about the height of the corn from my husband.

I went on a long vacation with my grandparents the summer I was twelve. We went to Myrtle Beach and over to Fripp Island, where my Uncle Hamp was the golf pro at a country club, winding our way back through the mountains and having a wonderful time. My friend Chrissy, also aged twelve, went with us, although actually, Chrissy was not so much my friend, being as she was the daughter of my grandparents' widowed friend, Evelyn. At any rate, we got along smashingly until the point when I was sick of being bossed around by Chrissy and locked myself in my grandparents' bedroom in the enormous beach house we'd rented with some other friends of my grandparents (all of whom had teenaged children at that point), flatly refusing to come out. My grandma let the storm break and subside before she knocked on the door. I let her in and she sat on the bed with me, lowering her voice to whisper, "She's a lot like her mother" when I complained about Chrissy and her know-it-all ways.


Myrtle Beach, South Carolina - not the way I remember it Way Back
When, back when Chrissy, Megan and I could walk a mile down the
beach to eat breakfast at a little diner, past nothing but sand dunes
and ocean views. Photo credit: FamilyFriendlyVacations.com

That must have been in about 1975, I imagine. Myrtle Beach wasn't what it is today. Back then, huge old beach houses with lamps made out of driftwood and plaid bedspreads made out of what felt like upholstery fabric stood where hotels and tattoo parlors and gaudy t-shirts stands are today. In the beach house, my grandma and her three friends cooked up enormous pots of spaghetti and beef stew and made endless sandwiches to satisfy the appetites of five teenagers, three adolescent girls (the other girl was named Megan), four husbands and themselves. The teenagers, I remember, were incredibly kind to me, Chrissy and Megan and we played the transistor radio on the local Top 40 station and the Pingrey girls allowed the three of us to smear ourselves with their potent suntanning combination of baby oil and iodine. One of the boys had a guitar and we sang songs by the Eagles and America at night before my grandma came to shoo us to bed.

Remembering this is how I know that Meelyn and Aisling will have an amazing, memorable time, but I have to get started on their packing lists so that one of the memorable things about this vacation won't be: "Remember that time we went on vacation with Nanny and Poppy for a week and I forgot to bring any underwear?"

So!

Vacation Packing List (keeping in mind that the house they're going to has a washer and dryer)

Personal Packing

pajamas

5 tops

5 pairs of shorts

bathing suit

beach towel

6 pairs of undies

bras

1 nice outfit (no church on this trip because we'll go to Mass on Saturday evening, and they'll be back next Saturday, either in time to go again on Saturday evening, or in the morning on Sunday)

2 pairs of socks

sneakers

flip-flops/sandals

1 nice pair of shoes to go with nice outfit, if flip-flops or Crocs won't suffice

toothbrush

deodorant

bath pouffy

hairbrush

hair do-dads

purse

rosary

books to read

makeup (Meelyn)

MP3 player (Meelyn)

Special Bear (Meelyn)

Izzie the Real Dog (Aisling)

Madeline Molly (Aisling)

Elizabeth Felicity (Aisling)

Curly (Aisling)


Shared Packing

toothpaste

shampoo

conditioner

shower gel

sunscreen

Non-toiletry shared packing

rosary CD

CD player

neck pillows for car sleeping (gift from Nanny, whose eyes slam shut the moment the engine starts)

bag of pool toys (must retrieve from swim club locker)

little fan? (for night sleeping, or is ceiling fan in room? Must ask.)




That's all I can think of right now, but I may have to come back and revise it.

Note to Self: Aisling shall not be allowed to take more than the allotted amount of stuffed animals.

It gives me great pleasure to think of Kayte clutching her hair and screaming while she reads this. Heh.