Vacation Odyssey: The Final Installment

MONDAY

It is the final day of the Vacation Odyssey. I will be sleeping in my own bed tonight after 16 days on the road.
The worst has occurred. At the moment I hate the words Mama, potty, hungry, thirsty, and the phrase “The DVD Player Broke Again.”
I’m currently drinking gas station coffee and feeding my pain with chocolate chip cookies and peanut brittle, which is not good for my cavity.
For the past two nights the Tyrant has slept with Husband and me, which is a bit like trying to sleep with a greased piglet. Every part of my body hurts, even the top of my foot, inexplicably.
We’re listening to Lady GaGa’s “Poker Face” for the 148th time this trip, since the Tyrant requests it every 30 minutes. It’s disconcerting to hear a 2-year-old sing, “Baby, when it’s love, if it’s not rough it isn’t fun.”
“Do you think you’re the only one suffering?” Husband just asked me.
“Woe. Is. Me,” I said. In other words, yes.
We left the Cape Saturday morning.
Here I must insert the caveat that I love my in-laws dearly, and that I treasured my time with them. My kids spent quality time with their cousins, and I’m grateful they’ll have these memories of summer bonding with extended family.
However. I have never been so glad to say goodbye to a purported vacation mecca. So long, weathered gray shingles. Sayonara, federally protected conservation land. Good riddance, fried clam bellies. No more renting wet suits so my kids can swim in August just down the beach from seals. Seals! The water was cold enough for SEALS!
Get me back to Florida, where the gas stations sell beer and wine and the beaches are free and nobody wears shirts when being interviewed on television about hurricane preparation.
After leaving, we spent the first night with friends in New Jersey. We arrived to discover they were having a big party, a social custom which Husband and I vaguely recalled from our youth. Our friends are fabulous hosts, and the food ranged from seared tuna and roasted veggie sandwiches to hot dogs and wings. We tried to be polite guests, although the Tyrant pooped on the party deck 10 minutes before guests were scheduled to arrive and the Pterodactyl threw such a tantrum later in the evening that Husband took him into a closet to mute the sound.
The hostess had worked her ass off preparing for her fabulous party, and get this: when it was over, she went upstairs to bed. Her husband stayed up until 3 a.m. restoring the house to its pre-party state of organized perfection. Then he got up at 7:30 a.m. to make us homemade chocolate chip waffles for breakfast, and the hostess sent us off with a huge box of homemade chocolate chip cookies for the kids. I’ve eaten 11 of them so far.
Perhaps the best thing they did was convince us to take the Cape May ferry connecting New Jersey to Delaware and drive down the east coast of Delaware and through Ocean City, Md. It was a great day for a ferry ride, and the kids ate a hearty ferry lunch of nachos and Lucky Charms marshmallows.
Husband was excited to drive along the beach in Delaware because as a boy he spent several summers there with his grandparents. And we got to spend a lot of time there because the children staggered their potty needs so that we had to stop four times in 45 minutes. I am not making this up. But luckily one of the stops was at a McDonald’s next to a street sign marked Evergreen Road, and Husband by chance looked up and recognized it and so found the little beach shack his grandparents called The Monsoon. That little bout of nostalgia nearly mitigated the toxic conditions we endured in the above mentioned McDonald’s so that the Diva could eliminate four drops of pee from her bladder.
We stopped last night in Emporia, Va., a town which, if judged by its I-95 interchange, should be evacuated and burned to the ground. We stayed at a very pleasant highway hotel franchise. I suspect it was so pleasant because it was about five minutes old. Certainly the paper walls will fall down soon and the building will implode sometime next spring.
But the rest of it? Shit. Even the water tasted funny.
According to our current schedule, we should be home HOME HoMe HOME by dinnertime. First we have to stop at the kennel to pick up the dog. She has been there for 16 days. I’ll have to sign off soon to work on securing a second mortgage to pay for her stay. It will be hands down the costliest single expenditure of the so-called vacation.

TUESDAY

I am writing this from my very own living room. I have survived. I need the proverbial vacation to recover from my vacation. But that’s okay. Not only do I have renewed appreciation for my neurotic little life, I also have renewed appreciation for my chaotic little family. If I ever again have to be locked up in a motorized landfill for 55 hours with salt water taffy, Lady Gaga and four people, there are no four people I’d rather be with for the journey.
Truthfully, though, let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.