Journal of a Vacationer

Using notes taken from Girl's vacation journal.

Day One: Kevin is fresh off five straight shifts, so we start out a little late driving north at 9am and stop frequently for bathroom breaks. We eat packed food for breakfast, lunch, and snacks, but save dinner for the next day when we cave in to stay at a hotel in Pennsylvania, and get some sort of fast food which we let the kids choose. The kids spend awhile jumping from bed to bed and we all rotate through the showers and then cartoon ourselves to sleep. Actually, I feel the mood to write and stay up later than everyone else tapping away in the glow of the laptop. I even jump back up out of bed late at night to jot down some notes on the new novel.

Day Two: We take off pretty early and eat what is left over in the coolers as we wind our way up through the mountains and into New York. We arrive in Dewitt around lunch time to a very happy Nonny. The day is finished off just hanging around the ol' homestead (which Kevin's great uncle built some 50+ years ago) with Papa and Aunt Tayah and Uncle Matt and Uncle Paul and Aunt Jessie and Chelsea (who arrive a few hours after us) and all the cats (reported in the journal as kittens; drawing of Jorj). For dinner, it's always Mario and Salvo's pizza on our first night in town. Girl establishes herself as hairdresser of the dolls.

Day Three: Jess and Chelsea take our nuclear family to a sort of po-dunk water park which turns out to be a riot, especially the Toilet Bowl water slide (like exactly what it sounds like) and all the fun the kids have. Sun. Water. A lazy river. Tons of smiles. Every one reconvenes for dinner; a Jessamy-Chelsea cookout which we eat at a picnic table in the back yard, in the shade of the old trees.

Day Four: Jess and Chelsea take the kids down to a friend's pool for another day in the sun and for a cook out. Kevin and I stay back at the house and chill. I sew some tshirts and do some more writing and we grab some groceries at the hugest Wegmans ever. I start cooking dinner at 3pm--which is the only cooking I did for ten days--an Indian dinner. I wanted it to be similar to what I would have eaten in Tamil Nadu, so I made a brothy potato dish (which lacked tamarind), a cauliflower and lentil stew, buttery basmati rice, and a sauteed green bean dish (which was supposed to be snake gourd, but I swear you couldn't hardly tell the difference). It turned out perfect.

Day Five: We drive a couple hours up to the family cabin outside Booneville in the foothills of the Adirondacks. By cabin, I mean no water, electricity, etc. If you want to risk the shocks on your car you can drive all the way in on a dirt path, but no joke, it takes like a half hour? We cook out, have s'mores, catch and confine newts, laze around, and Tayah and I drive the kids down to the Black River where we go (with Jessamy and Chelsea) rock climbing through some minor rapids and then up to the top of the dam for a leisurely swim. People drop like flies at bed time and I have one of the worst sleeps of my life on a deflating mattress (worse than none, I tell you), in a stuffy two-man tent with four of us, pushed against a wall, listening to animals nuzzle around the tent in the dead of night).

Day Six: Wake up at the cabin, sore and grumpy. We go for a long walk and a little hike into the woods and then leave the site as Jessamy and Chelsea head back to Wisconsin. On the way back, we talk Kevin into another stop at the Black River and do it all again. Let the kids pick out more fast food on the way back to Nonny's and Papa's. The rest of the day is a blur. Girl says in her journal we ate cereal bars for breakfast. I think toasted marshmallows were also involved.

Day Seven: Nonny makes pancakes for breakfast. The kids and Kevin and Papa go to some supposedly awesome exotic pet store and I stay back doing my usual: writing, sewing, staring into oblivion. For dinner we walked just a couple blocks away where one of Kevin's oldest friends lives and where another friend was meeting us for yet another cook out. (If I don't see another burger or slice of pizza for a year, that will be okey by me.) It was good clean fun with these two guys and their pregnant wives and their gaggle of little kids. Are we actually past high school, then?

Day Eight: Nonny takes all of us to the Onondaga State Park, which is like a metro park outside Syracuse on one of the most polluted lakes in the world. Sound promising? Actually, it was. We rode a tram up one side of the lake and back again and then played for awhile at a big park. Also picked up brochures for day and weekend cruises on the Eerie Canal, which I am determined to do sometime sooner than later. Good times. When everyone has gone home for dinner, Ma and Pa (aka. Nonny and Papa) take us out to a little cafe/student union/pizza shop/book store for a slice. (Actually, do I have this on the right night? Not sure.) From there Ma talked us into dropping by the WalMart retention pond to feed geese. Another winner? Surprisingly so. There was a perfect breeze coming in over the pond, a demure sunset, and just tons and tons of geese, ducks, and seagulls... and Ma had a huge bag of corn feed in her back seat, waiting for just such an occasion.

Day Nine: Nonny and Papa are back at work, but have set the kids up with no less than a two-sided easel with two sets of water color paints on the front porch, a new kiddie pool in the shade in the side yard, a huge tub of feeder gold fish in the back yard, and a supply of juice popsicles and Newman-Os (which Girl calls Mario Cookies and Boy calls... stink, I forget. It was funny but I am tired). Kevin and I both spend time painting a bathroom.

Day Ten: Girl goes shopping with me to get groceries to stock the coolers for the return trip and then I spend the afternoon packing while Kevin takes the kids on walks and whatnot. By dinner time, we are loaded up and ready to go but we leave the kids with Nonny and Papa (bound for Mac 'N' Cheese and a duck pond, we later discover) so Kev and I can go on a DATE! We eat at Dosa Grill, a new Indian restaurant around the corner which wins my vote since Dosas were my favorite thing to eat in India. I order two appetizers, an entree with rice AND naan, and a GIGANTIC paneer masala dosa. Then, stuffed, we walk for miles along the Eerie canal on a very mild, summer evening. We hit up the local mall (which boasts the name of Shoppingtown), then a bookstore, and then Denny's, just for somewhere to sit for a little while longer. Back to the house, catch a movie about a nerdy teen girl who is actually really cool and witty. Been done! But it was fine.

Day Eleven: Drive all eleven hours back and eat COMPLETELY out of the coolers (yay, us!) and I am stuck driving through a traffic jam south of DC. I miss the ramp into the commuter lanes and I fume for about an hour. Plenty of bathroom breaks. Get home about nine and the kids go right to sleep. And then we do, too.

Day Twelve: Yep, we are home, and I am having a completely crappy day already and unpacking is really just a thought in my frazzled brain when Boy runs proudly into the room to announce that he has eaten medicine. Further questioning reveals he found a yellow pill next to the toilet and ate it. Call poison control. They force me to rush Boy to Duke, which I do. To my surprise (it it likely that the pill was dropped unknowingly by Kevin and is either an antidepressant or mood stabilizer) they admit him, and before I know it Lindsay has come to take Girl for the night and I am upstairs in the pediatric wing waiting for Kevin to come from work with a toothbrush and clothes, Boy in his big, white, railed bed watching Thundercats reruns and beeping incessantly from all the probes and stickies and wires they have covered him with. Another of the worst sleeps I have ever had: it's roomy enough in the bed with Boy and with Kevin in the recliner, but we are waiting and watching for seizures or heart problems or electrolyte problems, and Boy has a very low resting heart rate, it turns out. Every time the alarm goes off (from that or from him moving and knocking something off) I am listening, quietly, in the night, and waiting for the nurse to come in and answer my whisper. Is everything alright? But when roused, his heart rate always peaks immediately, and I find it wonderful to know that I can also increase his heart rate just by kissing him in his sleep.

Day Thirteen: There is a lot of waiting and eating nasty hospital food and trying to convince Boy to stay in the bed hooked up to the monitors, but he is finally discharged (by no less than four doctors) before lunch. We drive down to Fuquay to pick up Girl and then head home. I have not often been more tired, and not in a long time, not with two kids under my care. So we curl up with a movie and rest, then baths and chicken noodle soup which has crazy ingredients because we have not yet made it to a store, and then bed time. I am exhausted, body and soul, and tomorrow finally marks the beginning of a return to normal life, or so we hope, and not for long.