I really don’t want to be one of those stereotypical Midwesterners that’s obsessed with the weather. I even manage to (mostly) refrain from Facebook posts about it.
BUT COME ON. THIS FREAKIN’ WINTER. I mean, how many times can a woman run out of salad and/or wine and survive?
So our recent week-long vacation in Cape Coral, Florida, with our wonderful friends the Frasiers, was a gift, a reprieve, a restorative blessing. We experienced warmth, and sunshine, and saw our exposed skin. I even had so much salad that I was frantically trying to finish it off the morning we left by eating it for breakfast. (I refrained from having wine for breakfast).
The only downside of a lovely vacation is that it doesn’t necessarily provide good blog material. Maybe sunblock also blocks writing inspiration. And yes, I continued my tradition of poorly applying sunscreen so that I had sunburn in strange shapes. Perhaps a correlation with how my thoughts take strange shape in writing?
Maybe unhappiness is just more interesting than contentment, or at least many of us have learned to think so. The greatest art is always about tragedy and grief, right? My only vacation tragedy is that I was attacked by f#$%in sand fleas, by merely standing on a beach for 30 seconds.
And I don’t what the deal is with sand fleas, but their bites get worse over time and last forever (mine are finally fading after a week). Sand flea bites are way worse than mosquito bites, and I am a connoisseur of mosquito bites. Even Chad was bothered by the bites and noticed they got itchier days after the initial attack. It’s like the fleas were gaslighting us.
(OMG in “researching” sand fleas for this I just discovered you can get SAND FLEAS THAT BURROW INTO YOUR SKIN TO HATCH EGGS!!)
Oh yeah, and we couldn’t get into a Tiki Bar. Well, actually we got in, but they ignored us and wouldn’t even take our drink order after 10 minutes. To paraphrase an awesome John Hiatt song, “Thank god the tikki bar’s still open, but screw them for ignoring us.”
So except for being gaslighted by sand fleas and dissed by a Tiki Bar, our vacation was wonderful.
Chad has pointed out that I’m not very good at relaxing and doing nothing, but I was pretty close to not doing much on this vacation. I ran, I drank, I ran some more. And yes, this sounds just like my normal life, except it’s basically all I did.
And this vacation drinking was no normal drinking, it was DAY drinking. That relaxed, luxurious, indulgent, “I’m drinking at 2:00 in the afternoon because I don’t care because I’m not responsible for anything” drinking. No one here is responsible for keeping the dog alive or shoveling drinking. Day drinking followed by evening “It’s okay if I go to sleep at 10:00 p.m. drinking” because why even pretend anymore?
I actually DID almost accomplish one very vacationesque activity: I almost READ a whole physical book. This is in contrast to the fact I normally only listen to audiobooks, which I am not at all ashamed of, but it is nice to mix it up a bit sometimes.
We also branched out into some new touristy territory, and visited the Shell Factory and Nature Park with our friend Ken (thanks, Ken, for introducing us to this amazing place!). I can’t do the Shell Factory justice toward the end of a blog post (lots of shells, a huge tacky gift shop, weird creepy taxidermy), except to say that their website aptly describes the place as “dizzying.” It really made me want to revisit another cultural mecca, The House on the Rock. I was also really glad Chad didn’t go look at the snakes in the “nature park” because they looked like they could escape from their “aquariums” at any moment.
I really do love being a Midwesterner and am proud to live in Minneapolis, and I even think there are some benefits to being emotionally repressed and passive aggressive. But thank god the Tikki bar’s still open, even if they won’t serve us, and I’m glad we have our Florida vacation home booked for next February!
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