Did I ever tell you that I didn't even go to my graduation?

I started to write a post about my upcoming high school reunion, but it got bitter, and fast. Apparently I'm not ready to see the people I spent four years avoiding and 10 years not missing. Give me another 10 and maybe we can talk.

Also: I am not going to pay 60 dollars to watch people get drunk when I had plenty of opportunities to do it for free in high school.

Ooh! The bitter is back, baby.

And then someday I will grow the fuck up.

Stupid pie.

....So, that's what I did today. Can I tell you how hard it is to take a picture of a charmingly shiny apple pie that doesn't make it look like it came out of a Betty Crocker cook book from the 70's?
Surprisingly hard. I had to mess with it to make it look like anything you'd want to eat, and even now I think you might only want to eat it in your dreams. With Cool Whip and Colin Firth. Riding on a horse. On the beach. Naked.

Ok, ok, what I meant to say was...

Right, so there was some mentioning of a vacation, and it was mentioned in somewhat bitter terms if I remember correctly, which I rarely do.
Let me clarify a few things:

• Yes, vacations with the little ones suck the big one.

• But! It doesn't mean you can't have a damn nice time anyway. What with the enriching of the little souls and all.

We had a good time. Really. We had our own house with our own bedrooms and our own coffee pot where we could brew our own coffee and also there was a Whole Foods down the street and a little further down the street was the best beach I've ever been to period.

Well not the BEST beach I've ever been to, but I'll bet, hands down, that it's the best beach the kids have ever been to, and it is, without a doubt, the best beach I've ever been to with the kids. Too bad it's a 4 hour drive away. A 4 hour drive that I swore last summer I would never drive ever again with the kids ever. But! We did it and it was fine. Also, the beach was awesome.

Pappasan took the kids kayaking (!) in a big kelp bed and Peanut saw an otter and Bean saw...well, he got to help pull garbage out of the ocean, so he had a good time too. Sprout and I sat on the beach while I got a stupid-huge sunburn on my lily white back (Sprout was smart enough to stay in the shade and also stay completely covered in sun block. His mom, however, is a complete moron.) and watch two older English couples turn themselves into nicely roasted tomatoes. Sundried English Tomatoes! Merchant-Ivory (or whoever is doing period English dramas involving characters who "suffer from disillusion and tragic entanglements" (Thank you Wikipedia!) ) should totally get on that. A tale of sunburned love on a California beach complete with harbor seals and hot dog vendors. Now THERE'S something worth driving 4 hours for.

Back.

So. We left. Went on vacation.

Are back now.

Rejoice! For lo, vacations with the little ones are not vacations at all but more like cranky whining hitting pooping cattle drives. But at the end of a cattle drive you maybe are able to perhaps eat one of the cows, thereby making it worthwhile. Also, I guess you get paid for it. While after a vacation, you are so totally not allowed to eat the children you have driven hither and yon and possibly into madness, nor do you get paid for it, unless you accept payment in the form of hideous nasty gashes on your chest inflicted by the baby while riding in the peaceful Ergo carrier which mothers won't give you a hard time for wearing, unlike Baby Bjorns. Because, dude, I totally saw that episode of ER where the whiny doctor with the batshit crazy mom (Sally Fields or something) took her baby to Gymboree or something with her baby in a Bjorn and there was a mom there and she totally took her ass to task for fucking up her baby's spine and hips by placing him (I think it was a boy. I don't remember. All I remember is that she left the hospital without her uterus. Thank you ER!) in anything other than a sling. I hate slings. But I'm pretty sure the bitchy mom would have approved of my Ergo. Which is totally why I shelled out the hundred dollars for it. To please the bitchy mom on ER. Also, I'm in love with Wood over at sweet-juniper, and I'm pretty sure she has an Ergo.

In other words: I need a vacation. Baby herding is not my strong point. Ending up in pointless tirades involving ER is not where anyone wants to find themselves on a beautiful summer day.

Also, there's some fucking asshat in our neighborhood who's been...breaking into people's houses or some shit. Tried to take a 3 year old out of her bed a couple weeks ago. Have I mentioned that I'm not sleeping? Maybe I can blame that ER stream of consciousness bullshit on that.

Tales from the Dark Side

--OR--
Dignity? We don't need no stinking Dignity!

I had a rant all ready to go, but the series of events that prompted the rant occurred a couple of days ago now, so the steam has evaporated and my ire forgotten. Also, it involved Toys R Us and if there's anything worse than actually going to Toys R Us, it's wasting time writing about Toys R Us.

Instead! We had a 4th of July! Freedom reigned! No one I know or love lives in Guantanamo! We haven't been killed by The Terrorists (tm)! We have nothing to fear but fear itself!
Well, that and adult games played by drunk adults at a family 4th of July BBQ.

Oh my holy hell. I haven't checked YouTube today, so who knows? I could totally be a celebrity with my mad hands-free grapefruit-in-the-neck passing skillz and not even know it! Although if there had been a person at the party yesterday with a video camera I most likely would have skinned and eaten them and their children and their grandma before I let them leave with footage of me doing things like:

• Passing a cucumber between my knees to a hot teenage boy, but not before it had been passed to me by an older man with lots of stubble. Did I mention something about grapefruits in the neck?
• Running an obstacle course with a ball clenched between my thighs. Oh, the tits were a-flyin' in my vintage sundress.
• Running full-bore into my friends ass in the hopes of popping my balloon with the force of our collision and then having the aforementioned teenager do the same thing to me.

Oh, yeah. Fun times. I wish I had been waaaaaaay more drunk so that I might be spared the memories.

Also: poor teenage boy. The team next to us was full of hotties his own age and he had to get stuck with the lady with questionable scratch marks on her boobs (the Sprout has got to get a damned manicure!) and beer breath. I hope I didn't scar him too much.

edited to add: Ok, the hot teenager in question? Probably wasn't really a teenager at all. He was a college student and maybe even of legal drinking age. But! He was young. He had braces for chrissakes. In my memory (damn you, drinker of the beer I brought to the party that wasn't me!) he was and always will be a teenager.