Vacation 2010

Back home! Yay, sort of.

Our adventure down to south South Carolina was eight days long. That includes 29-and-a-half hours of driving … which wasn’t that bad. The driving sandwiched six days at Hilton Head, where we had a great time. The Little One especially.

We left a bit late Friday, July 2, around 8:15 or so in the morning. Originally we made decent time with C behind the wheel until hitting massive traffic around DC. Traffic like thirty miles in two hours. Then it cleared and we made better time. Stopped twice for the healthiest fast food we could find (Subway and Wendy’s). Pulled in to our hotel by 11:30 and, of course, they didn’t have the promised fold-up crib we needed for Patch. Little One slept in her sleeping bag on the floor, and Patch slept between me and C.

(My in-laws only have one spare bedroom, which we decided would be for the Little One for nightly sleepovers. They generously pay for a hotel about a mile down the road for the rest of us during our annual visit.)

The vacation really was for the grandparents to enjoy the grandchildren. Particularly the Little One. On the agenda for her was four days of morning tennis lessons, a visit (turned out to be two) to Harbortown to see Gregg Russell perform and watch the fireworks, tooling around the island with grandpa in his convertible, and making pizza for the family. Oh, and daily visits to the pool, in which Little One spent a grand total of just under fifteen hours.

And we were very proud of her, too. She really stepped out of her comfort zone, trying new things, often by herself, and performing admirably without complaint. The tennis lessons went very well; she even won the contest on the last day (first prize was two lollipops instead of one and skipping ball retrieval duties). She made two friends on the tennis courts and two at the pool. She volunteered to sit up on stage with Gregg Russell and raised her hand to sing a song in front of a crowd of at least 300. She wasn’t picked, but if she was she said she’d sing “You’re a Grand Old Flag.”

Sunday was Grandpa’s birthday, so they had two couples over in addition to LE’s wrecking crew. Monday we went in to Harbortown via bus shuttles to see the fireworks. Never again, though, as we had to wait nearly 90 minutes in 90 degree heat, packed in a long line with a couple hundred other “tourists,” to get back to our car. Tuesday my in-laws treated us all to a sunset dinner at a restaurant right on the bay. Wednesday was the Gregg Russell concert, and Thursday was the homemade pizza extravaganza. Friday we left early, around 7:15, and made it home by 9:30 that night.

I had a productive time, too. Not much writing, per se, but a lot of thinking and planning. Also managed to read two books, Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson and The Mind Parasites by Colin Wilson. Installed my mother-in-law’s wireless printer-scanner in exchange for a haircut. And I lost just shy of 5 pounds after all was said and done!

When we got back we discovered our little spot of northern New Jersey is under a water emergency. No watering lawns, etc, due to drought conditions. My lawn is yellow; it resembles a field of hay. The weather was overcast and humid, as was the house, and everyone is all the more snippy for it, especially combined with the post-vacation fatigue.

Yesterday me and Little One ran some short errands. One tragedy that occurred was that Goldie the Fourth, her goldfish, did not survive the trip back up. So we went to the fish store (I keep their business card in my wallet; they say “Hi, LE!” when I walk though the doors). This time, instead of a goldfish, we stepped out and bought a purplish betta. Little One named him “Indigo.” We’ll see how long he lasts; I’m just hoping it’ll get us to Little One’s birthday this September.

Want some pics from Vacation 2010? Okay!