What I learned on my summer vacation: Day Six

-- The most popular items to bring back from the grocery store on vacation are generic Lucky Charms and People magazine.

-- Selma Blair and Ahmet Zappa are getting divorced, which, inexplicably, makes me sad. For some reason, I thought they'd make it.

-- Mid-day karaoke with seven-year-old girls is a really, really bad idea.

-- So is going in the swimming pool with your cell phone.

-- Route 12 North around here just sort of turns into a beach at its end, with pretty much zero warning. Good thing the Smelmooo now has his fancy new Escape, instead of the Buick, because it handled pretty well on the sand, although it took some getting used to; he said it was kind of like driving in the snow.

-- You're never too old to bury your mom's feet in the sand, or to try to dig a hole to China.

What I learned on my summer vacation: Day Five

-- Sand crabs on the beach in North Carolina are perfectly camouflaged as they scuttle along the sand. It's really remarkable, and a little creepy.

-- The anticipation of building a sand castle is more fun than the execution, which requires quite a bit of work.

-- I enjoy the brotherly banter among the Smelmooo, my brother and my sister's husband. It's as though they grew up ragging on each other, they do it with such aplomb.

-- Inadequate supply of Rice Krispies treats can throw kids into fits of tears and whining. I disagree that the appropriate response to such bad behavior is, "Okay, I'll make another batch, then!" as opposed to, say, "Suck it up," but there you have it.

-- My niece is a rat. When she and her parents and siblings arrived at the beach house this morning, the first thing out of her mouth was, "It took us longer to get here than we thought because we got a speeding ticket. I really have to pee."

What I learned on my summer vacation: Day Four

-- The premise of the movie Iron Eagle, as slurrily told by a drunk, drunk, drunk man.

-- I don't completely hate asparagus, all of a sudden.

-- I suck at mini-golf, but I enjoy it anyway.

-- Mac and cheese is yummier when it's made with gemelli pasta instead of elbow macaroni.

-- The Smelmooo is a big liar-pants, but I was delighted when he showed up at the beach house mid-afternoon, rather than late evening. Vacation is a lot funner with him around.

What I learned on my summer vacation: Day Three

-- For all the times I've watched portions of 10 Things I Hate About You on television, I'd never, until tonight, seen the first five minutes. I can't believe how young Gabrielle Union looks in this movie, and what a bad performance the actress who plays Bianca turns in, and how awful her white pants are.

-- I should never, never fiddle with technology. I am fairly certain that I single-handedly wrecked every device in the little theater room of the beach house, except the function that allows one to play X-Box with surround sound. But DVDs with both sound and picture at the same time? And satellite TV of any kind? Not happening.

-- "Bunghole" is an actual, proper word. The things one learns while playing Boggle.

-- People look at my mother a little strangely when she wears her Grover t-shirt in public. I got it for her at least 10 years ago, at the now-defunct Sesame Street store, and I love that she wears it, and she's disappointed that she can't find another one in case this one gets stained or faded. She joked today about us either putting it in a museum or auctioning it off when she dies, and then my sister pointed out that we should bury her in it to lighten things up at the wake.

-- Edy's makes an ice cream that tastes almost exactly like Cherry Garcia, but it's Pepto pink, and the cherries have a slightly stickier consistency; I think that those characteristics might be deal-breakers, but I suppose I can make do in a pinch.

What I learned on my summer vacation: Day Two

-- I should never, never check work email while I'm on vacation, because it just makes me stressed out and annoyed about all the stupid people I'll have to deal with when I get back to the office.

-- Sunshowers: not a huge drag; I can even suck it up and ride out a 5-minute, freezing-cold drizzle next to the pool.

-- Downpours the minute I start grilling dinner for 13: a HUGE drag.

-- A huger drag: the grill not working.

-- A super-huge drag: the other grill appearing to work, but barely warming the food after 20 minutes at the highest temperature setting.

-- The smartest, most wonderful person in the world, ever: My mother, who helpfully suggested that broiling might be a suitable alternative to grilling.

-- Honorable mentions: the whole rest of my family, who held umbrellas, transferred food from spot to spot to spot, fed the kids pasta when real dinner was half an hour late, sang "You Are My Sunshine," and complimented me out the wazoo once dinner was finally on the table.

-- My parents' singing karaoke is one of the cutest things ever; even though they didn't do a particularly spirited performance, they did it to make us happy, and it worked.

-- Beating my not-quite-nine-year-old nephew at poker gives me more satisfaction than is reasonable for a grown-up.

-- The surest way to get a bunch of kids to scream their heads off is to whisper, "Be quiet; Uncle Chris is sleeping." It's like Elmer Fudd and wabbit hunting, really.

What I learned on my summer vacation: Day One

Sunday, June 25

-- Delaware is the largest state in the nation. Okay, fine, maybe not technically, but when its main throughway is closed and the guy directing traffic says, “Just turn ’round and go right at the light and then you’ll come to a parallel dual highway”? Delaware is bigger than New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia combined.

-- Going to the grocery store at 8:45p.m. on a Sunday is an excellent way to avoid the crowds in a huge tourist area where most weeklong rentals run Sunday through Sunday. Unfortunately, it’s also an excellent way to find a grocery store -- a 20-minute drive one-way, of course, from the house -- that has been emptied of the following items: marshmallows, chicken breasts, butter, any ice cream not covered in a 2-inch layer of frost.

-- My sister and I can laugh hysterically for 20 minutes over absolutely nothing, and it makes her husband get very quiet and uncomfortable, which makes us laugh even harder.

-- My dad really, really prides himself on the “two-buck Chuck” wine he got at Trader Joe’s. As he should; it was really tasty; much better than the Boone’s Farm I got for two bucks from the MobilMart in college.

-- There seems to be a competition along Route 13 South for dirtiest billboards and/or town names. I wish I’d been quicker with the camera, because I could’ve had at least half a dozen “found porn” submissions for whatever Stuff/Maxim/FHM/etc. magazine runs it.

-- Even after a good 15 years, and a modestly revised version of the game, my Super Mario skills are in adequate shape, although I remember very few of the secrets, like how to get to all of those high-flying question-mark boxes after going down the hidden tube.

-- I find Augusten Burroughs hilarious. I picked up “Possible Side Effects” at the library yesterday, and I read the first two chapters in the same room as my mom, and I was just giggling and giggling and giggling, which made her giggle and giggle and then finally go to bed because she got tired of asking, “What? What is so funny?” I wasn’t in love with “Running With Scissors,” despite all the hype and recommendations from friends, but this one is off to a great start.

-- Even though there are about 12 television sets -- half of them gigantic flat-screens –- plus a theater room in our vacation house, I still want to abide by the “no television” rule that my parents established for vacations before I was even born. Seeing my sister and brother-in-law and their three kids, tanned and exhausted from a long day in the sun, piled onto a bed reading stories together after dinner, made me appreciate that rule even more.

-- I miss the Smelmooo terribly when I’m not with him, even for a day, and I’m going to feel a big empty space for the next few days. I’m glad not to be at work, and I’m glad to be with my family, and I’m glad to hear the sound of the ocean from the balcony, but I feel lonely and not quite whole.

Humiliation

All of my best friends at work are out of the office today.

If they were here, I hope that one of them would have pointed out before I discovered it now -- at 2:44 in the afternoon -- that my underpants are completely visible through my skirt in the proper light (although if someone HAD told me, I don't know what I'd have done about it, so I guess it's the one good thing about no one having my back today?).

I think I wouldn't mind so much, were I not wearing my pink Oscar the Grouch underpants today.

Good thing I've mostly been stuck in my office, firmly planted in my chair, but yikes. I'm now making a mental list of all the people who did see my butt off the chair, and wondering how many of them snickered as I walked away. People forget about this kind of thing pretty quickly, right? Right?

[shudder]

On my way to work this morning, I heard a story on the radio about a new study that found that clown therapy is associated with increased success rates for women undergoing in vitro fertilization.

Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeesh. Bad enough to endure the stress of IVF, but to add clowns to boot?! I really hope they were conscientious about getting informed consent on this one, because if I were in a clinic and they brought in a clown? I would run screaming from the room.

I actually quite liked clowns when I was a kid: I had a ceramic clown that doubled as a pencil sharpener; I got a poster at the Chester Flea Market of a teddy bear dressed like a clown (weird, I know; it was when I was going through my pink and purple phase, and the color scheme fit the bill, and I for whatever reason thought it was super-adorable). I don't know when I developed this total aversion to clowns; it wasn't because of a Stephen King story or anything like that, or a harrowing incident at the circus. But at some point in my adolescent or early adult life, I just began to find them creepy, and I've never gotten over it.

Apparently the lead researcher previously attended mime school, so I guess it makes sense that he would pick clowns for his research intervention. But I'd like to see a follow-up study (the conclusion of pretty much every research study is, "More research is needed...") that looks at whether a magician in street clothes, for example, would have the same effect. Or a massage. Or an episode of the Daily Show.

Because I feel like clown aversion is actually a fairly common thing, and I bet clown therapy would reduce the chances of conception among people like me pretty much to zero, because they'd be total basket cases. Nerdy me would now like to go read the actual study to see if the authors address this issue at all in their methodology or in their discussion of study limitations.

Can you tell I have a lot of work I don't feel like doing today?

The best present ever

Minnams is a consistently excellent gift-giver: she gave me super-fun jewelry for my bridal shower; an awesomely nerdy word book just because; a gift certificate to any inn in New England for a wedding gift. She even brings me orange slices from Target on a regular basis.

But my very favorite gift, I think, was the rubber editing stamp she brought me earlier this week:


It will come in sooooooooooo handy and will make me soooooooooo happy as I read through all the crappy documents my consultants and co-workers throw my way.

Thank you, Minnams! You know me so well.

Peas, peas, they're good for the heart!

I don't know where they've been all my life, but I have lately been LOVING me my snow peas/sugar snap peas. Like, to the point where I might have a problem. At the party for my goddaughter's first Communion, I ate about 30 of them off the veggie platter; they were gone before half the guests showed up. I had three servings with my dinner last night.

I just think they might the world's most perfect food.

They're versatile: I enjoy them raw, but their firmness and crunchiness holds up beautifully in a stir-fry, better than most other veggies.

They're simple: wash and go; no peeling or chopping, no chasing them around on a plate with a fork like peas-not-in-a-pod, no getting a big messy face like from corn-on-the-cob.

They're delicious: not too bitter, not too sweet, not too bland, not too salty unless I make them that way when I cook 'em up.

I could probably write a lengthier -- and perhaps more passionate -- tribute to ice cream as the perfect food, but I must there concede the points of calorie and fat content, along with potential for headache and backache from overly vigorous consumption.

So, for now, the snow peas are my drug of choice, which is not the worst thing in the world.

Untethered. Ahhhhhhhhh.

The Smelmooo is my hero for a number of reasons, most recently because he hooked us up with wireless internet service over the weekend (he reasoned that the cost was roughly what we would've otherwise spent on a dinner out).

Anyway, having Internet access on a laptop in the living room has me two steps away from being that guy who has a keg built into his couch so he never has to get up. I've watched NINE HOURS of the first season of 24 since yesterday morning, but I feel less lazy because I'm able to multitask on the laptop. This is so, so dangerous, especially because I just got the first season of Felicity on DVD, as well.

Really, I may never make it outside this summer. In fact, I may never get off the couch, ever.

An athlete, I am not

The Smelmooo and I went to the driving range on Saturday, and I could not have sucked more. Not in the sense that, say, the ball only went 75 yards, or veered to the left, or whatever. More like, I only made actual contact with the ball once every five or six attempts. Such that, the Smelmooo asked, not at all unkindly, "Are you actually meaning to hit the ball?"

Later, we played basketball in the driveway (inspired by having watched Glory Road the night before), and I was so pathetic that we ended up just playing Horse instead, and I wound up with H-O-R-S-E three times, and I think the Smelmooo had MAYBE one H.

Really, I don't know when this happened, that I turned into this uncoordinated goon. I was the best athlete (ath-a-lete, for those who've seen Benchwarmers, which was a-maz-a-zing) in elementary school, skilled gymnast, always picked first among the girls in gym class, all-star softball team, blah-blah-blah. Actually, I know exactly when it started: stupid Chris O'Connor called me a showoff in fifth grade gym class, and I let it get to me, and then in sixth grade we had a crap-ass gym teacher who hated all the girls, and she segregated us and had the girls play duck-duck goose and make up dance routines and such while the boys played dodgeball or whatever.

So thank you, Chris O'Connor and Ms. Whatever-Your-Name-Was, for turning me into a ridiculous girly-girl and capable only of shining at the damn potato sack race.

Strike two

When are we going to learn to call ahead? The Smelmooo and I again tried to go to the new Red Robin near our town, and from across the street it looked like it was open for business. But alas, it was not meant to be. I made whimpering noises when I realized they're still not open; I'd been so looking forward to a big greasy burger all day long.

Instead, we went to another chain restaurant and ordered burgers there. Our server was one of those, "I don't need to write it down; I'll remember it all with perfect accuracy" guys. And, of course, my burger arrived with a thick layer of Burger Sauce.

I politely pointed out that I'd asked for my burger without the sauce, and could I please have a new one. The server gave me an, "Oh, really? Sorry about that. I'll take care of it," and headed back to the kitchen.

I knew it couldn't be good news when he was back in about two minutes with my plate; I lifted the burger and, sure enough, signficant Burger Sauce residue. Which is even worse than the repeated offense at Crapplebees with the scraping the cheese off my chicken sandwich; this was just a big, gloppy disgusting mess, and they didn't even appear to make an effort to hide the fact that they just ran the burger down the side of a wall or something to get rid of half the sauce. At least pretend to make me a new one.

So back it went, and over the manager came, and he couldn't have been nicer; he comped our whole dinner, and brought me cheese sticks while I waited for my new burger, which came out piping hot and perfect. Except, I'm sure, for a big wad of semen or something, but at least they hid it well. Yeesh. Red Robin, Red Robin, please don't foresake us again!

Scattered thoughts are all I can muster

I have had lots of fleeting thoughts this week about potential blog topics: how bizarre it is to me that everyone expresses such deep love of my argyle cardigan from Target, not in a Mean Girls way, but with absolute sincerity; how I had no recollection of where I'd been sitting after I got breakfast on the train to D.C. the other day; how uncomfortable it makes me when my co-worker tells me stories that illustrate that she has zero boundaries with her 20-something daughter; how much I enjoyed seeing my nieces and nephews on Sunday but how annoyed I felt by my niece's drama-queen routine when she spotted Tucker and refused to get out of the car until we put him on his leash. But I'm having a little bit of ADD, I think, and can't really pull a coherent entry together. Other random tidbits floating through my brain:

-- I have a ridiculously high tolerance for MTV programming, and always get sucked into watching the Real World/Road Rules Challenges, but this latest one is just too much. I can't stand any of these people, and I am done with them. Finally. This is actually a huge relief.

-- In other "I'm turning into an old lady" news, I decided this morning that above-the-knee skirts are no longer acceptable to me, not because of fashion trends but simply because I feel like I'm too old to wear them. Maybe this will change, or maybe I'll wear them on vacation or on the weekends or whatever, but I just feel like the cute dresses I've worn for years are inappropriate.

-- Movies I watched all or part of on TV last weekend: Cruel Intentions, Save the Last Dance, Never Been Kissed. Bless you, TBS.

-- I am obsessed all over again with the show Felicity; I am always surprised how well it holds up over time, and how much I love almost everything about it. And I was thrilled to learn that people I work with are willing to lend me the DVDs so I can watch the whole thing.

-- I found out yesterday that this incredibly smart, bright, beautiful woman I worked with a few years ago basically up and joined a cult. She's about my age, was married very young to a guy who was pretty much a jerkoff who was just in it for the Greencard, divorced a couple of years ago, and moved out of state to be closer to her mom, but didn't have much of a support system there. She found this "meditation center," changed her name to something like Fluffy Woodcrest (that's actually my stripper name, but you get the idea"), and is now living at the center and is "spiritually married" to its leader. I guess I'm not entirely shocked by this news, but I am incredibly saddened by it.

-- Minnams has been gone all week, in San Francisco, and I've missed her desperately. It's not like I'm rocking in the corner or non-functional or anything, but I am definitely much less happy at work without her here. On the other hand, I got to see my dear friend Jenny in D.C. on Wednesday, along with her new baby, and it made me extraordinarily happy. It's still a little surreal to me that Jenny -- whom I've known since she was a shy, scrawny, boy-phobic 14-year-old -- has a husband and two kids, and is so poised and grown-up and beautiful. I'm just so proud of her and wowed by her, my heart almost bursts.

-- I don't understand why, on the wall next to the drive-up ATM at my bank, is a sign describing the audio technology available on the ATM for those who are visually impaired. I understand the braille on the ATM keypad and even the audio device, I guess -- I'm sure they're probably standard across all ATMs, not separate designs for drive-up vs. walk-up -- but why the sign?

-- Is escalator etiquette (i.e., walk on the left, stand on the right) not universal? I was helping a new intern through his first D.C. Metro experience the other day, giving him a pretty thorough explanation of the drill, I thought: here's where you buy the ticket; here's how you figure out the fare; you need to save the ticket and put it in another machine when we get to Union Station. And then we get on the escalator, and he stands on my left, and I try to explain that he needs to move over or start walking -- it was 5:30 in the afternoon, so fairly crowded -- and he looks at me like I'm speaking Greek. And then, on the next escalator, does it again, although he quickly said, "Oh, yeah, I need to move over." He's a really smart kid, and I just don't understand how he's made it to 21 years old or whatever without knowing this.

Just one of the guys

For the last two or three years, the Smelmooo and some of his buddies have been playing poker every couple of months, or as schedules allow. While the guys play poker, some subset of their wives/girlfriends/other women (not the guys' "other women," but other women not married to or dating the guys) usually take part in a Wives' Night, during which we go to dinner or a movie or just hang around yammering and being stereotypically girly. But we never, ever play poker, because tradition has dictated that these be Guys' Nights, where the men can drink tons of beer, and burp and fart freely, and generally let loose and act like jackasses without the judgmental eye -- or in my case, eyebrows -- of their significant others.

But on Friday, HYB and I found ourselves at the poker table, along with our husbands and two guy friends. A bunch of the guys bailed, and none of the other women were joining us for Wives' Night, so we were included, I suspect because the guys figured we'd be easy targets. I'm proud to say, though, that we pretty much held our own at the table, and both of us came out ahead individually at the end of the night (I was only up three bucks, but ahead is ahead, in my book).

In addition to the Limit Hold 'Em game that was the order of business for the night, the guys started up a "short" No-Limit Tourney, which lasted for ages, and I was just too much of a pansy -- and too much of a cheapskate -- to join. But I quickly realized that I should've participated, because No-Limit is much more suited to my poker sensibilities. I hated, for example, that I flopped Kings and Threes in one of the Limit rounds, but then the board paired Sixes on the river and HYB sucked out a win; if we'd been playing No-Limit, I feel like I would've taken that one easily. But it was all in good fun, and I was secretly delighted when HYB started raking in pots near the end of the night.

And I like to think we women didn't put too much of a damper on the fun, although I suspect if we hadn't been there, the guys wouldn't have been talking about the National Spelling Bee (with which I was completely obsessed; I could not stop talking about it all day Friday), or about Jen and Vince in The Break-Up, and they probably would've been drunker and cruder. So who knows; maybe next time there'll be enough men to fill the seats, and we'll be relegated to doing our knitting or playing Bunco or something. But if we are, I know it's 'cause the boys are scared of us.

Let the games begin

I think I've mentioned this before, but I'm too lazy to do a search: at the end of the month, we're taking a family vacation to the Outer Banks. Nineteen of us in one house, although it's now unclear whether everyone can stay the whole time becuase of a couple of work conflicts. All these people with solid work ethics; what can I say?

Anyway, we figure that we need to be pretty organized about the trip so we don't end up eating pasta every single night or having everyone bring five beach chairs but no one bring a towel, or toilet paper or something. So, on Mother's Day, my mom trotted out sign-up sheets for meal preparation (each little family is responsible for making one dinner for the whole gang while we're there) and communal goods (laundry detergent, English muffins, condiments) so we know who's responsible for what. Each little family (6 -- five kids plus my parents) also got a packet containing information about the house and a handwritten list of everyone's cellphone numbers. Not even a photocopied list -- my mom wrote out six sets of 13 cell numbers.

To save her from having to handwrite six sets of who's-bringing-what assignments, I volunteered to type everything up and email it around, which I finally did this morning (the Smelmooo and I were both up and about before 4:30 this morning, and it's unbelievable the things I've gotten done already today; it feels like 2 in the afternoon, at least).

Anyway, there's already been a huge flurry of email activity around the stuff I sent out. I was expecting more of a "I said I'd bring dish soap, not hand soap!" kinds of crap, but once my oldest sister said she was bringing Scrabble and a wiffle ball set, the trash talking began, and it's cracking me up. I'm reminded of the little family softball games I used to organize as a kid, where I rounded everyone up on a Saturday to go play in the front yard, and they humored me because I was the youngest, I guess, but we haven't as a family played a game of wiffle ball or softball in at least 20 years, and it's been at least 10 since we've even all played Scrabble or Taboo or cards or anything.

So I'm starting to get a little bit excited about the trip. I realized that I was always giving a little eye flutter when I talked about this vacation, a hint of a "Crap, can you believe that 19 of us are going to be in one house for a whole week?" and "The Smelmooo and I are going to need a vacation just to recover from this one."

But I sort of don't feel that way anymore, in part because today's email traffic about the trip has been so lighthearted and fun and has helped to assuage my fears that everyone's going to be difficult and nitpicky and stressed-out about the trip. But I think the other reason is just realizing that we won't always be able to take trips like this. Our parents are healthy; their grandkids aren't old enough yet to be cranky about family vacations; we for the most part have jobs where we can up and leave for a week without too much difficulty, and where we make enough money to go on a nice trip and board the dog at a resort. And who knows when we'll get to do it again. So I'm really now in a place where I'm thinking it'll be really nice to have this time with the family, despite all our quirks and flaws, the adolescent tendencies that we still tend to dust up when we're together for too long, the kids shrieking and giving us headaches. Because along with that will be time to relax on the beach, building sand castles with the kids; to chat in the kitchen while we're making dinner; to laugh and reminisce and have real conversations with my siblings after their kids are in bed.

And to kick some ass at wiffle ball and Scrabble.