When someone says rustic, you should probably ask her to elaborate

I'm baa-aaack. Where have I been?

Here.



In the Cabin From Hell.

Right after I posted my sandwich love story last Thursday, my cousin, Megan, called me. Her mother, Michelle—my mom’s sister—and she were renting a cabin on a lake in New Hampshire. She thought it would be great fun if my mother and I joined them for an extended all girls' weekend—with Junior, of course (I guess his testicles aren’t mature enough to count as contributing to the hormone pool).

Megan assured me it would be the perfect way to celebrate my mother's birthday so Friday morning into the car we went.

You know how when you start driving toward your vacation destination and bad things start happening (traffic from construction work, torrential downpours, broken sunglasses, forgotten cell phones, misplaced wallets, etc.), you start to think, “Gee, maybe we should turn back”?

We should have turned back.

It rained for four days straight.

You might assume that an indoor day trip or some other recreational distraction would solve the problem of what the fuck do we do it's raining again? but no, Aunt Michelle had used vacation time to stay at a cabin on a lake and godammit we were going to stay at the cabin.

And when I say "stay" I mean:

• drink in the lovely aroma of mildew and wet towels

• fend off spiders and wriggling bugs that clearly wanted to eat our flesh

• sleep in twin beds in one room around Junior’s Pack 'n Play

• try to navigate a toilet that leaned to one side every time you sat down

There were some rays of sunshine, like an unexpected visit from my mother’s other sister, Diane. After watching her guzzle beer from a can for three days, Junior started pointing to fellow campers carrying cans and shouting, “He’s drinking a beer!” Funny? Maybe, but not so much when it’s a six-year-old holding a can of Pepsi and his mother gives you the how-does-your-two-year-old-know-beer-comes-in-a-can look.

Ah, screw ’em.

(Are you wondering where Diane slept? I’ll tell you: on an air mattress in the kitchen. Climbing over someone to make coffee while holding a toddler who’s shouting, “She’s sleepin’ Mommy! She’s sleepin’ in a bed! Look, Mommy! She’s sleepin’!” really bites.)

On Monday afternoon, the sky finally cleared and we were ready to sing Happy Birthday to my mother (Aunt Michelle wouldn’t sing unless the sun was out—at that point I was ready to club her and drag her body down to the lake). I carefully brought the cake across the campground—I’d kept it in the community fridge in the main lodge all weekend—and as I was walking, I tripped over a tree stump



and fell cake-first into my mother’s car door. Then the cake fell on the ground.

How very fitting.

And now I’m home. My lobotomy is scheduled for tomorrow morning.