Vacations Are Nice.
I have no idea what I’ve been doing for the last 15 years of my life, but I do know this: USA Mike & I have not taken a proper vacation since our bizarre Disney World trip in ’95. (please remind me to recount that story for you someday…) Even our honeymoon was sandwiched in between tours and we ended up staying at Tom & Jacqueline Lord Alge’s condo in South Beach on our way to play a show in Ft Lauderdale or something like that. Seriously – we crashed on our friends’ couch (a very nice one, of course) for our honeymoon, for chrissakes. We are terrible vacationers.
Usually when we go home to Boston, we think, “Oh, we’re in our hometown so we should play a show.” What happens next is that we turn a perfectly lovely visit with the family into a giant clusterfuck of commuting from the Cape to Boston for rehearsals and then we have to try and see all of our friends for dinner and then we have to play the show and maybe we should get a hotel so we don’t have to worry about the drive and hey mom & dad would you mind just babysitting for our kids while we do this other stuff and so on and so forth.
This year, we made an executive decision to peace out on all that. I am doing nothing but sitting on my arse and laughing with my sisters until our tummies hurt, arguing vigorously with good ol’ Tom Hanley about politics, weeping with my Mom about the gorgeous ways we’ve failed each other over the years, watching from the beach while USA takes ZoZo and Henry swimming in the Atlantic Ocean because I’m afraid of seaweed and allergic to freezing salt water and watching every moment of the Red Sox in real time. I will not go anywhere that involves driving a car if I can help it although I will make a few exceptions:
- Tea at Patricia’s house.
- Guinness with Fish & Chips at Liam McGuire’s.
I will eat at least 75 oysters, 1 lb. of USA’s pulled pork, 150 steamers, 2 lobsters, 50-100 fried clams (with bellies), 3 hot dogs and/or cheeseburgers, and a dozen steak tips from The Ninety-Nine. I will drink 12 Harpoon IPA’s, 2 Grey Goose dirty martinis (extra dirty & extra cold) and an incalculable amount of white wine. Some of that white wine may come out of a spigot attached to a box.
We’ll invite the usual suspects to our annual summer hang. Pete Stone will tell everyone for the billionth time how if he and I were the last 2 people on Earth after a nuclear annihilation of some sort, the human race would die out. I’m starting to think he isn’t totally afraid of my cooties because c’mon now, who goes on and on about such an unlikely scenario? Pete, do we need to talk? Great! I’ll see you next weekend at my parents’ house and we’ll sort it out then. Quigley & Casey will bring the Frisbees I think, but I might be making that up. They may just bring a case of beer. Some Horrigan family representatives would be nice. Nate, please feel free to bring your lady. You can introduce me as your frail, elderly aunt.
Whew. It’s been a wild year. Even though I’m too wired to sleep, I am so content to be sitting outside in the pitch black, listening to the lighthouse horn and gearing up for a few moments of much needed nothing.
Fuck. I just got drilled by a mosquito. Mommy!!!!!
-xok