A good friend once told me I was her George Costanza. How you doin' Shannon?...it is obligatory to say that like Wendy Williams. We all have a friend like George, you know the one, on the verge of being really cool, but something always comes along at the last minute to swat them back down to reality. I didn't take offense to the moniker when Shannon bestowed it on me. I saw it as a badge of honor. Now, I am not letting Shannon off the hook, she is not any cooler than me...she stands shoulder to shoulder with me in nerdom... I just always have some mishap that tips the scales in her favor. In this case it was a wave, or to be a bit more precise...many, many waves.
I was dreading the anniversary of my mom's death. I wanted to get out of my head and needed a good distraction. Last year we took the girls to Great Wolf Lodge as an escape. Remember that escapade? No? Well here is a recap for those that are new to my blog;
http://talesofaminivanmom.blogspot.com/2015/03/accidental-fecal-release.html
Good, now that you are caught up I decided on something a little less dramatic. I booked a weekend on the Cape in a hotel with a wave pool and 2 small water slides. Not so overwhelming and what I thought would be a little more their speed.
So back to the weekend... Chuck picks up some breakfast items for us to bring. We are a family of 5. We are staying 2 nights. One of my children does not eat. EVER. Our plan is to have one breakfast in and one at a restaurant. Here is what Chuck purchased;
* 12 full sized donuts
* 16 mini-cereal boxes
* 2 boxes of Pop Tarts (each with 8 tarts each)
* There may or may not have been a box of granola bars too
I was not going to be seen carrying 13 Price Chopper bags through the hotel. There is nothing that screams "WHITE TRASH" more than using plastic grocery bags as your luggage. In an effort to not look like hobos, I emptied out the grocery bags into a suitcase. We get situated in the hotel and head down to the wave pool. The kids are having a blast. Well, 2 out of the 3 are. Emily, our 2 year old has a broken leg. Of course, right? We have plans to go to a water park and one of my kids breaks a limb. That is a blog for another day though.
Things are going well, we have a nice dinner and head back to our room. Chuck goes to turn the TV on and it doesn't work. It wasn't working when we checked in, the hotel said they would send someone to fix it. As you can imagine, it can't be fixed. So at 8:45 p.m. they tells us to pack up and they will send someone to bring us to our new room. Yay! We hastily pack everything up, no time to make everything neat and organized so I am forced to throw our belongings in the flippin' grocery bags after all!! The only thing missing from this hobo train were bindlestiffs....apparently that is the proper name of a hobo stick. You are more than welcome for that bit of useless trivia. A housekeeper comes to our hotel door, she is going to assist us in bringing the roll-a-way bed to our new room. Now their are ladies-- and then there are ladies songs are written about! She is of the latter. Forget "Your Body is a Wonderland", forget, "Brick House" she may just be the inspiration for one of the greatest songs ever written...I'm a Little Tea Pot, because man, was she short and stout. That is saying a lot coming from me, because we share the same body type. Now, it may not seem relevant for me to comment on her body type, but it will all make sense in a minute. So as the hobo train starts leaving the station, I am carrying an over tired child with a broken leg and have various totes, etc, wrapped around me, the girls each have 2-3 Price Chopper bags adorning them and Chuck has his hands full with the 2 suitcases, the girls swimmy vests, etc. Herculina (my nickname for the housekeeper) starts pushing the roll-a-way bed out of the room. We need to go to the first floor, we were on the 2nd. I ask Herculina if there is an elevator...she pauses, and then answers "no". So as we take this sh*t show on the road, Herculina turns and makes a beeline for the other end of the hallway. We make it downstairs without killing each other or breaking anymore limbs and wouldn't you know it, Herculina is already in the room with the roll-a-way bed and not a bead of sweat on her! Now, I am not calling her a liar, who knows maybe she had a weight belt on under her uniform and she flung the cot on her back as she navigated her way down a tight stairwell, wait, no, yeah...she is a liar! She took a secret elevator! She had to have.
So this is where I would say we all got a good night's sleep, but I would be lying. It sucked! This new room was so figgin hot and the air conditioner was as loud as a jet engine. I somehow was relegated to the roll-a-way bed which actually, believe it or not was a hammock in disguise. I laid down on it and no word of a lie my ass was about a quarter of an inch off the ground. I thought a sink hole had opened up underneath the hotel just as I got into bed! I was terrified! I thought I was going to be lost forever, but then I remembered Herculina had just started her shift and she would come save me! I started praying to all that was holy she didn't hear me mutter "liar" or "elevator" under my breath earlier in the night.
Chuck and Emmie head out to explore the Cape. I take the girls back to the wave pool. Sara is in all her glory...Anna, not so much. She would wait for the waves to stop and then take a turn swimming. I was hanging with her on the side of the pool and would occasionally go in with Sara. I was kind of avoiding the water a little bit this morning too. My regular bathing suit was still soaked so I threw on the extra one I brought. It is one I have from just after I had Emily. It was a little loose when I put it on, but it would do. I was so WRONG! Once it was introduced to water it took on a life of its own. The ass part was hanging down to about my knees, whenever I would get in the water all the air trapped in it would bubble up and all the kids in the pool would look at me as if I were a farting machine...the rouching (to help hide my post baby body) was floating around me like those booms they put in the water after a massive oil spill. I was a mess. Hence the reason I was avoiding the water too. Anyway, I had to be a mom and divide my time equally so Sara and I were frolicking in the waves having a great time. She wanted to sit down in the surf with her. Sure, that would be fun. So you know how the Victoria's Secret Models frolic in the surf having their pictures taken? OK, forget that image completely! I was the total opposite. The sea was angry that day my friends! The waves were no joke. I got knocked over and could not get up! Sara thought I was being funny, granted I was laughing, it would be my luck to drown in the undertow at an indoor wave pool. So there I was all tangled up in my bathing suit...because it was an old maternity suit it had about as much material as a bedspread. So there I was rolling ass over tea kettle in the surf, over and over and over again. My kids are in hysterics because they think I am trying to be funny. My bathing suit is floating away and not covering the parts it really needs to. I am trying to put all my lady bits back in the suit but sure enough when I get one part covered a wave would come and knock it loose kind of like when you finally think you have a fitted sheet figured out and that one corner keeps popping up? Yeah, kind of like that! I am flashing the entire wave pool, with each wave it is a different peep show, moon, stars, another wave--another round of the moon and stars coming out for all the world to see. My only shot at survival was trying to save myself. My kids were useless, I had no faith in the lifeguard. Why you ask? Oh, because he was slouched in a chair, with his sweat pants AND sneakers on, listening to music on those over-sized headphones...I know he was listening to music and not just noise canceling headphones because his head was bobbing along to a beat...and chewing on a straw to boot. So yeah, my confidence level in him was about zero.
I did finally manage to drag myself out of the man-made surf and I guess I an no worse for the wear. I guess Shannon was right all those years ago. I am George Costanza.
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