So, vacation drew to a close…..with a bang! As in the not-my-in-laws-yet getting into a big ass fight with Sam. For someone who’s been through anger management, I was pretty proud for keeping my mouth shut…well, for the most part. I’m a Jersey-born Russian. Keeping my mouth shut isn’t exactly a strong point for me. Unfortunately, I’m also acutely aware of how (let’s say fragile) Sam’s family is, and bearing that in mind, I decided that my interjection would only result in life-long psychological scarring for her folks and her stupid sister (who I’ll just keep calling the stupid sister, we hate each other, but we both have careers). Up until last Saturday, we treated each other with a tepid dislike, but kept it to ourselves. She made the mistake of trying desperately to drag me into the family fight…..bad move, chickie. Okay, so knowing her complete body-dysmorphia issues, I ripped into her about the inappropriateness of letting her saggy boobs and flabby stomach hang out during every…..single….dinner….with no bra on. In front of her parents, sister, and nephew. To be fair, I counted to 10 (at least 5 times), I gave her 3 increasingly stern warnings not to test my patience. And then I let her have it. Do I feel bad? Sorta. She isn’t fat. But boobs swinging around at a dinner table in front of an 8 month old and your own FATHER!? I don’t care if you’re Scarlett Johansson, that doesn’t fly. Put a boulder holder on those things, put the bottle of cheap vodka down, and act like a person that doesn’t need to constantly validate yourself to everyone in inappropriate ways. Anyway, Sam is “done” with stupid sister (so she says, and frankly, I’m not shocked….That’s been a long time coming). I’ve cleaned up my comments above to make them more palatable for people to read, but in reality, two sentences of my anger had stupid sister in tears and scream-crying. Am I a complete jerk for that? Probably. But, I can only be related to “F-in pond scum”, called “gross” “fat” or just arbitrarily cursed at so many times before I blow my top. And really, comments like that are nothing to me, they seriously don’t even strike a chord. I just got annoyed with stupid sister and decided to knock her off the damn pedestal she puts herself on. I’m evil. I know. I admit it. But from time to time, people seriously just need to be knocked down a peg. People have done it to me, too, and I believe I’m a better person for it. Every once in a while, every person out there needs to have their bubble burst or their pedestal knocked down so they can come back down to earth, take a breath, and realize how silly they’ve been. Nobody had ever done that to stupid sister from what I understand. First time always hurts, girlie. Not everyone loves you and thinks you’re as wonderful as you think you are. In reality, she’s a crap person, beyond self-centered, egotistical, and flat out thinks she’s better than everyone. She doesn’t care who you are, she’s better than you in her head. She doesn’t like the fact that her boyfriend has kids….so she purposely makes sure to keep him busy on the few weekends he’s supposed to have them so he either ignores them completely or just doesn’t bother seeing them. And yes, she’s admitted that she does it, because his kids “are gross” according to her….Not kidding…..So, keep that in mind before judging my actions too harshly. Though I welcome any insights that think I may have been completely out of line. So yeah, there’s my Clark W. Griswold vacation moment! (Please, someone give me hope that not ALL vacations are like that in fatherhood!)
Besides all of that fun stuff (which happened on the last full day in OBX, so there wasn’t a significant loss of vacation time), we had a lot of fun! Wes loves the beach and the numerous sea creatures we saw outside and in the aquarium. Although, I don’t think I’ll ever give him a Moon Jelly to check out again…..Despite the fact that they’re totally harmless when they’ve been washed up, I don’t think it was a brilliant idea to let him hold the thing. Of course, he tried to taste it. Yep, shoulda seen that one coming! Sam wasn’t thrilled with my lack of decision making there. lol! Oh well, can’t win em all, I guess! She did think that the makeshift beach I made for him out of a baby pool was pretty awesome though! Put baby pool on a slope (just dig some sand out), put dry sand on one end, add water to the end at the bottom of the slope, add some sand in between the high and low ground, and voila! Baby beach in 5 minutes! Complete with salt water and the lovely, mucky sand that kids seem to love! He enjoyed that a lot, well, until the one day there was a giant tide pool. That trumped “baby beach” by a mile! Can’t beat nature at her own game. I ate my weight in a variety of seafood and hushpuppies, made eggs for the little man one morning (of course, he wanted the ones on my plate instead. Haha!) I even coaxed Sam into letting me take him out into the water a little bit (she’s really not a swim in the ocean type, while I could spend all day out there) I got up to my knees before her panicked screams of “THAT’S FAR ENOUGH!” could be heard over the waves….in England. I dip him in, and wooosh! Off go the legs kicking like crazy and giggles every time a wave went by us! He was a happy little guy in the water! We took him up to the top of the Currituck Lighthouse, where he loved the views….and I loved clinging onto him for dear life out of fear of him wiggling out of my arms 100+ feet up.
Now, I’m gearing up for the ultimate father-son experience to date. Our first football season together. He has his official Eagles jersey, fuzzy football, and anything else you can imagine for a baby to watch football with! Although, for his first Eagles season, I’m handing off the “bad call brick” to him. Considering we’re in a rebuilding year, I’m going to be throwing that damn brick as much as Wes. And Sam is practicing her eye-rolls for me yelling at whatever stupid ref made a horrible call. 🙂 Because, let’s just admit it, our favorite teams NEVER make a mistake, the refs are just on the opposing team’s payroll. Yeah, we’ll go with that.
Till next time!