Tuesday, August 25, 2009

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.

24 comments:

Jen said...

Better on the car door than your ass which is where all cake ends up here even if I'm not eating it. Happy belated to you mom and my kid has been pionting out beer since she was pre-ambulatory. Don't sweat it, just teach him how to identify good beer.

Meg said...

Oh crappy! I can't believe you went all weekend in that cabin. I would have said "screw 'em all" and gone for a day trip somewhere.

Say, is Junior drinking the beer yet? That's the next pertinent step in his training. THEN the other mother's can glare.

Mrsbear said...

Mmmm, yes, you probably should've turned back. Our last trip to Disney started with a blown up transmission and ended with a hurricane. Haven't been back since.

I can't believe you dropped the cake. You couldn't have scripted it better. Did you cry? I think I might have cried. That insane half laughter half sobbing that gets people committed. Hope the lobotomy works out for you. ;)

Anonymous said...

Oh, hell! Thank goodness you haven't completely disappeared from blogville. You just made me burst out laughing. I needed that.

I think it would have rivaled Junior's beer identification program if he'd have been there to shout "Dammit!" loud enough for anyone with ears to hear(like my 2 year old would have) when you fell with the cake.

Good times! Good times!

Frogs in my formula said...

I didn't cry when I dropped the cake. I started laughing maniacally. Then I posed for a picture in front of the mess, with my middle finger pointing towards the sky.

blognut said...

It was all well and good until you had to go and kill the cake at the end of the story.

That was heart-wrenching.

brokenteepee said...

Rumor has it I had beer in my bottle. I certainly would have gotten it in my mother's breast milk if she had nursed.....

Now you really deserve a vacation all by yourself. Somewhere quiet. Somewhere without...family.

Joanie said...

You are just a disaster magnet!!! That cabin looks like a detached garage! Happy Birthday to your mom!

Julia said...

Oh goodness. Even I would quell at the thought of THAT vacation.

Lindy said...

UNCOOL! That is a waste of some perfectly good cake.

Katherine said...

That's one AWESOME mini-vacation! *sarcasm*. I completely understand trying to navigate the toilet. That last cabin we got talked into staying at was missing half the floor in the bathroom and the toilet was trying to join the missing boards.

Cabins are WAY overrated!

Jenni said...

seriously, a lobotomy sounds so relaxing after that weekend.

Little Ms Blogger said...

Isn't it the worst when you need a vacation from a vacation?

Sheila said...

You poor thing!

Keely said...

Yeah, those are the kinds of vacations that are only fun in retrospect. As blog posts, or horror stories to tell over a large bottle of wine. Bummer.

I hear the scars from lobotomies hardly show these days.

Grand Pooba said...

NOOOOO! Not the cake! Anything but the cake!

Unknown said...

ROFLMAO...SHUT UP...seriously the picture just made my day...sorry to laugh at your misfortune, however, I do believe it is why you post...to make us laugh.

so thank you.

Anonymous said...

Until now, I felt sorry for myself.

Otter Thomas said...

What a rough outing. It would take a lot of beer to make that cabin fun for several days.

Suzi said...

Good Times! Come on, you will all laugh about it in a few months...okay years.

The Mother said...

And yet, these are the vacations you will remember.

Ms. Salti said...

Oh my God! That just sucks. Glad you're home and relatively unharmed.

Dto3 said...

Icing looks tasty, though!

Mary@Holy Mackerel said...

Oh shit. Sounds like our camping trip, except that we had no rain.
That icing looks more like footprints. Are you sure you didn't walk in the cake, then stomp on the car?

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