Building the Perfect Beast

subtitle: Vacation time

We're doing final preparations for the American Iconic thing known as the family vacation. Every summer we rent a beach house with another family. We have gotten so good at this, I can prep with my eyes closed. Or something like that. If my eyes were closed, I'd probably tumble down the stairs and broken limbs tend to ruin a beach vacation.

I'm borderline OCD, because I'm somewhat addicted to my creature comforts, so last year, I made a "beach box" and "inventory list" of all the things we take on a regular basis. I love to cook, so I have duplicates of all my favorite gadgets (in case the house doesn't have them) and a list of spices to remember. We have a small market there that will pre-shop our grocery order so that we just pick it up on the drive in.

We always make souvenir tie-dye shirts, although in recent years that has expanded to bandanas, dresses, and hats... and we have all the supplies for that ready to go. One year we had a photo of all the kids in a row wearing shirts that said "We" "Know" "We" "Match". The two we's however, thought it would be much more amusing to stand side by said and be a "wee wee". That was the last year we did writing on our shirts. Live and learn.

Another tradition is the "happy hour". Our preteens think we invented the word. We usually did a theme happy hour, until we asked the "we we" kids what they wanted. Since potty humor remains a staple of their comedy routine, they requested tinkle and poop. We thought we'd teach them a lesson and served lemonade and tootsie rolls. It was an abyssmal failure. There just weren't enough margaritas to compensate.

We've perfected the art of doing nothing. It takes a lot more work than you'd imagine to do nothing. I will read, sun, and swim. The biggest stress of the day will be what level of SPF and what to grill for dinner.

Ta ta for now. Have a good week!