We traveled to Lake Martin, Alabama last week for a family reunion. What a great weekend it was. We spent three full days doing what Rodney’s family seems to do best: drink and do watersports. Fortunately not at the same time. Sort of. I did witness a close relative get up on the wake surfer, ask for a beer to get chucked overboard, catch it, and drink the whole thing as he surfed. Which was kind of incredible from a coordination standpoint. So although I don’t condone drinking and driving a boat, I now think that drinking a beer while surfing behind one is the pinnacle of human achievement. Meeting Anthony Weiner in person and shaking his hand would be a close second.
Here are more details from our trip:
First of all, is it so wrong to get your hosts a gift bag of food that you know you would enjoy yourself? And to think that maybe there’s a chance they’ll put it out on the counter and you can slowly eat through the stash, hoping that nobody will notice?
Am I going to be eternally damned for that move?
I hope not because the goodies were from my favorite grocery store, Forager’s Market, and I’m supporting a local business. The good I’m doing is clearly outweighing the bad. I would like to also argue that I’m probably the only person who has ever bought their $17 bag of artisan-made chocolate chips. And their $7 half pint of gooseberries. The defense rests its case.
Gift bags aside, I started off our travel day to Alabama with a brisk walk past legendary nightclub 1Oak. I get nostalgic when I walk by that place – now that Lindsay Lohan is in rehab, will I ever hear any more stories of her trying to strangle friends and ex-assistants with their own scarves? Launch Mai Tais in their direction while dancing to the beats of DJ Sinatra? The good old days…Fortunately 4 girls teetered down the street in heels just as I snapped this early morning pic, reminding me that at 1Oak, the show must go on.
Here we are on the outbound leg of our trip. Doesn’t everyone look like they’re in good spirits? The beginning of vacation is always so exciting, making everyone giddy and happy. Contrast this experience with our return trip. 3 overtired and overstimulated kids on a 14-hour journey back to New York. Let’s just say there was a lot of finger-pointing, order-barking, blueberry-smearing, high-pitched crying and i-Pad watching going on. And that was just me.
At the house on Lake Martin, Sam and the kids made friends with Auntie K’s pet panthers. I mean cats. Fortunately there were no attacks on the kids after all of the lifting, poking and grooming. At one point we caught one of the cats streaking by in a bikini. Another time she had pigtails. No wonder she finally locked herself in a secluded closet with a severe case of depression. I would have done the same if a family of panthers had descended onto my house for the weekend.
Rodney proved that he can do the impossible. That he can wake surf on his first attempt…And that he can do so with only one leg, no prosthesis. Wait a second, he wears a prosthesis? How come nobody told me! And what other secrets are you hiding from me?
A morning of family photos. Look, what a nice family. They’re all wearing the same thing! Here is what my conversation with Lauren looked like that morning:
ME: “Lauren, here’s what you have to wear today.”
LAUREN: “No.”
ME: “OK, well choose from this bottom and this bottom.”
LAUREN: “I hate shorts.”
ME: “Lauren, it’s only for 10 minutes, after that you can wear anything you want.”
LAUREN: “Nooooooooo……aaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh” (think of the sound someone would make if they were being stabbed in the forehead with a safety pin)
ME: “OK, calm down, we’re not going to fight over this. Everyone is waiting for us. Pick something white. Anything.”
LAUREN: “That.” (Points to the shirt that I’m wearing, which she proceeds to wear as a dress.)
Note: Follow the arrow above to see that after I lost a year of my life to the anxiety and stress of it all, you can only see her head. At least I’ll know for next time that she can wear her favorite feathered boa and 4-inch platforms. I won’t argue with her again on this topic. I won’t. I’ll just bury her under a mountain of family members and hope for the best.
Finally, the return trip home. As a travel precaution, I make sure to test that all three kids can be thrown into an overhead compartment if necessary. Sam almost got the star treatment after he woke up on the plane with pins and needles in his leg and wouldn’t shut down the wailing.
ME: “Sam, please calm down, it’s upsetting to the other passengers to hear you crying like that.”
SAM: “Waaaaaaaahhhhh”
ME: “Sam, if you don’t calm down by the time I get to 3, you’re going into the overhead.”
SAM: “Waaaaaaaahhhhh”
ME: “OK, 1…., 2…..”
That conversation didn’t happen, but I was thinking it.
