Connie is retired, but has an Internet business refurbishing old trunks. Her website has some pretty nice trunks, if you're in the market. She told me that round-topped trunks were the most expensive and desirable because those trunks had to be on top of the trunk pile because the rounded top prevented anything from being stacked on top. Who knew? Not me before I met Connie. I really like talking to people on planes because I always learn something new. Unless of course, this is the situation:
Dad was nice enough to meet us at the airport and was able to pick up our luggage while I got the rental swagger-wagon. The Girl was a big help in identifying the luggage, which we had tagged with bright pink ribbons. Thank goodness she was familiar with the bags because Dad and the Boy are both colorblind (thanks, Dad for my defective chromosome), and thought that the ribbons were red.
Once we loaded up the luggage and got on the road, we made good time to Dad's cottage. Still, it was about 8 pm when we arrived and we hadn't eaten any dinner. Dad had gotten some pizza for the kids, but for some reason, the oven wouldn't heat up. If it's like last year, spider webs have clogged a vital part of the heating component and some nice guy from the appliance store will have to fix it. Dad has an army of helpers to keep the cottage in some semblance of order. My favorite of his handymen is the plumber, who has the unbelievable name of Jason Buttman. Whenever Dad talks about him, he calls him by his whole name. "Well, it looks like the toilet is clogged. Better call Jason Buttman." I snicker like a 5th grade boy.
Anyway, by the time the kids went to bed - all three on air mattresses in the tiniest bedroom - it was 10 pm. I covered the window with a dark sheet, because the sun comes up at about 5:30 am. Despite my precautions, they were all up before 6 am. What a long, long day we had ahead of us.
We decided to play mini-golf, because the Boy loves mini-golf and we never seem to play in Atlanta.
These are all before the game, when we were all still relatively cool and happy. By the end, we were all screaming at each other and sweating bullets. It turned out to be about 10-12 degrees cooler at Dad's cottage than it was in town, so we were all over-dressed, which is an unpleasant combination with being tired and frustrated.
The Baby doesn't like to be told how to do anything, so she was not about to let me suggest that turning the club around might help her short game.
And, the Boy was fine as long as he was winning. As soon as the Girl posted a better score on a hole, his attitude got pretty bad. This culminated with him hitting his ball off the course and into some wildflowers. He crawled around for about five minutes trying to find it, and finally discovered it under a wild rose bush.
Honestly, I think the whole experience would have been less exhausting if the golf course wasn't piping some lite-rock music station from fake boulders in the middle of the course. I used to like 10,000 Maniacs, but that was before, "Give Them What They Want" was playing while the Baby slashed me the golf club and the Boy purposely sent his ball into the water hazard for the fifth time. We made it to the 10th hole and had been playing for 1.5 hours when I called the game on account of extreme crankiness.
We had a nice lunch at Cappy's Chowder House, which I highly recommend if you find yourself in Camden, Maine. It has the best burgers and the kids' food comes in a cardboard boat, which is great if you want to sail it in Camden Harbor.
The kids got their second wind after dinner and Dad was nice enough to build a fire so they could roast marshmallows and make s'mores. He got some of those jumbo marshmallows:
Which resulted in this:
And all the sugar led to this:
And an early bedtime!
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