Wild and Wonderful

Something about the 4th of July doesn't feel right unless there's a million mosquitos, a swimming spot, a bonfire, and a bunch of dirty kids running around unsupervised. When I was little, I was one of those kids running around unsupervised, dropping firecrackers into septic systems, fetching beers for a nickel, and drinking as much Hubba Bubba soda as I wanted. It was awesome, true unabashed freedom.

Now that I'm a grown-up living in a highly flammable state, I crave that wild reverie. Luckily Indiana still delivers. Dad's got the woods, Tina's got the pool, Tee's got no sense, and my sisters and cousins have the kids. Some of my favorite memories in life are from 4th of Julys in Indiana, so I grabbed my sisters, jammed their families into a car, and north we went to cause a ruckus.

Dad set up the guest house (a tent) for us, and it was a matter of minutes before we'd eaten all his fresh caught wild Alaskan salmon and depleted his beer stores by half. We sat on the porch watching mosquitoes eat the children and laughing at Nynie who was simultaneously fascinated and terrified by the deer skulls all over the yard. Kieron and Lilly took off into the woods, and we didn't even care what they were doing. Chunks got mostly naked. Life was perfect.

City kids gone full country. 

Grandpa Greg teaching the littlest ones how to beat the heat.

Dad feeding the children with the sweetest meat to the skeeters. 

My cousin Kristin brought our Grandma over for a quick visit. All the chaos of the clan wore her out in just a few minutes, but it was such a gift to see this tiny little woman enveloped by two dozen people who love her. Dad baited the kids with popsicles and we managed to get a pic of him with his own half dozen sacks of chaos.

We gathered up the sticky, sweaty kids and headed to Tina's, where we swam and ate and drank to our heart's content. Jaden and Kennedy were the responsible adults (they are 16 and 12), and we put all our trust in them and the power of arm floaties. Ryan and I taught the next generation of cousins how to chicken fight. Aunt Becky waged war on UV rays. And we all gathered around a raft for happy hour. No cover charge and hands down the best bar I've ever been to.

Ben one. I was the base for one fight and my neck was broken for two days.

Max will never fully appreciate how much Grandma Wonderful adores him because boys.

Sam. This boy is everything. With a cute floppy hat on top.

Charlene and Nynie. Bonded since Nynie joined us. 

I don't know how Andrea made such perfect kids, but Kennedy is absolutely amazing. Chunks knows it too.

Didn't take long for Nynie to find her fearless. 

This is after Becky took the beer out of her cleavage and Leiah left to pee in the bushes. Hahaha!

In between swimming, the kids took breaks inside, mostly watching Moana and falling asleep. I caught Renee being nice to the little bits. Busted!

The day wound down with a cookout and some games of corn hole, where Kennedy and I got smoked by Uncle Vince and Jaden. Nynie tried to play too but mostly she just ran around being crazy. 

I swear I'm going to steal her one day.

Excellent form. Yet still, we were defeated. 

Shout out to Tee for keeping the beer stocked and playing with all the fire products. He's grooming Jaden for the takeover.

The cherry on the top of this mound of perfection that was 4th of July 2018 was getting a quilt custom made for me by my mind-glowingly creative and talented Aunt Becky. To start, the quilt is enormous. Me and 40 of my friends can easily sit on this fabric garden. But what really makes this quilt magical is all the personal touches on it. The flowers in the garden... Becky and I sewed some of those on a flight together. The picket fence... Becky put that in after doing a google image search of my house. The flowers going up the fence post have stuffing under them, making the whole scene a little three dimensional. In two of the corners, Becky put in chickens. CHICKENS! And across the top, she put in a strip of silky fabric because I have a silky addiction. It didn't stop there though. She embroidered the most wonderful sentiments into the silky part, all derived from adventures we've shared. I honestly think this is the most thoughtful thing I have ever been gifted in my life. 

Tee gave the day a proper send off with a bonfire so big it sent a bunch of us running to the pool to escape the flying embers and a fireworks show that puts most of the nearby small towns to shame. There's something to be said for being in the middle of nowhere surrounded only by the things that matter.

To think socks almost derailed her...

Laila is done. She slayed high school with physics and calculus and English, solving problems beyond my comprehension and writing poems so amazing and twisty they should be in a book. At one point during this school year she was talking about some physics thing and I just looked at her and said, "You've passed me up. I am of no use to you. Unless you want to learn to sew. Do you want to learn to sew?"

The kid who threw a three-hour fit about wearing socks to kindergarten has become one of the most extraordinary people on this planet. She's a safe driver, she keeps her room clean, she takes good care of her rabbit, her eyebrows are on fleek, and she is freakin' funny. She has good self-esteem, manners, and expectations. Sure, she's a bit of a noodle and can't open jars, but that means SHE NEEDS ME STILL.

I don't have or want my own kids precisely because I have Laila. She gave me a taste of what parenting really entails, of how children really are, of the capacity of love and the hilarious joy in the unpredictable. I was talking to some of my peers at work the other day about making friends, and I was like, hmmmm, my best friend is probably my sister-in-law. She's the person I call to do stuff with when I know Mack will say no. She's the person I can goof off with or just veg out with. She's on my wavelength. And then I thought, is it weird to be best friends with an 18 year old? Laila assured me it's not and she's a damn genius.

It has been a pleasure in my life to watch her evolve as a person and nurture her as a human, and I couldn't be more proud of her. This girl can be or do anything, and I'm stoked to watch her master this next part of life. I love you, Lablr. Always will.

Lordy, Lordy. Let there be tapes.

Actually I turned 40. And now I want alllll the tapes to be erased. Ya hear me??!!

My 40th birthday was just a continuation of the awesomeness that is my lucky life. In fact, this May 16th amped it up a notch.

I started the day getting my gray hair covered and getting my frizz tamed with a Brazilian Blowout. At one point two people were blow drying my hair and the whole scene was so utterly ridiculous I could barely contain myself. I am still not glamorous enough for two people to be working this head of mine.

After my hair appointment, I went to my favorite taco joint, El Gringo, and got my favorite taco, grilled mahi taco not blackened with white fish sauce. (I may have put the complete order here in case you ever need to know what food to order for me for my birthday or Christmas or because you owe me a favor. I have learned to helpful over the years.) I sat at a table by myself, and noticed the other two people sitting at tables by themselves were in their 70s. So I'm apparently getting an early start on that aspect of old age. It really is so relaxing to eat a meal by yourself at a restaurant. I can't believe I didn't realize this until I was almost 40. Grab a book and go get your favorite food for lunch. Bliss.

After my taco I went to Target for some reason I can't remember because I'm 40 now and ended up buying a romper thing that didn't seem too age inappropriate. I have wanted a romper since I was 30 but they all accentuate my love handles and stocky legs way too much so I avoided them. But this one I was like, hey, that ain't terrible, you're 40, it's now or never kid.

While I was waiting for my pictures to print -- ohhhh, that's why I went to Target -- I glanced at the ATM and there was a $20 just sitting in there. No one was around. The screen was on its home page. I pulled it out, said to the empty universe, "Is this anyone's money?" and then used it to buy my romper.

In my 40 years on this planet, one thing that I've learned is that when the universe gives you a gift, you accept it without question. Otherwise, it will send you a shit storm.

When I got home, I got the sweetest card from my oldest friend, complete with dancing chickens on it.

That night I met some girls from work for a cocktail. The 20-somethings drank half of their margaritas and I drank two Old Fashioneds and a beer all the way. My other friend, Patrice, who is beyond her 20s and who is the person I want to be when I grow up because she has balls of steel the size of the Jupiter, also enjoyed double rum and cokes. Which just proves that the older you get, the more edge you need to take off.

My birthday weekend was spent putting on an event at work honoring Trauma Survivors. It went off without a hitch, and that night, we caught a flight to St. Thomas to visit OUR NEW CONDO.

In the curious chaos of life, we found a little studio place when we visited the island back in March, and after some hemming and hawing and are we crazy yeah so whating, we bought it. It is about 10 feet from the water, across the street from the Ritz Carlton, and I fully expect a hurricane to come along and wash it away at some point, but for now, it is a little piece of paradise that our friends and family can escape to.

We had to keep our trip short because Mack had bought me second row!! tickets to see David Blaine for my birthday. I have loved David Blaine for about as long as I have loved Mack, but David does magic way better than Mack so in a love duel, he'd win my affection. When I found out Mack was getting me tickets, I was like, are you sure? because we may fall in love and then you'll lose me and I'll be David Blaine's wife. "That's a chance I'm willing to take," was his reply.

Last night, I saw David. He was close enough for me to smack his butt, standing there with an ice pick sticking out of his bicep. He was as gorgeous and wonderfully strange and funny in real life as he was on all those TV specials I watched. But his show revealed his intense nature, and let's face it, I am 40 and hate intensity.

Over the past 40 years, I have come to peace with the fact that I like easy and chill and a heart rate of 65 with a BP of 95/60. I like ordinary, I like the outdoors, I like laughing more than anything in the entire world. I like my family and my job, and I like eating tacos by myself. I like people watching more than I like perusing social media. I like taking walks and drinking beer and reading books. I like forgiving and forgetting. I like true crime entertainment. The thing I like most of all, though, is this life. The past 40 years have been a gift of experience that I was not owed and did not deserve, but I am so grateful for it all, for every precious minute of it, for every joy and every agony and everything in between. I don't necessarily want another 40 years, but I'll take what the universe has to give me... especially if it's free money left in an ATM.

Oh the places a hurricane will make you want to visit immediately... (part 2)

After surveying the effects of Hurricane Maria in St. Thomas, we flew to Puerto Rico to see what the worst natural disaster on record did there. Annnd we wanted to look at a place right on the beach that we'd seen on Zillow.

Before our trip, I knew nothing about Puerto Rico beyond Rosie Perez and that it was a US territory. Once we found the house on Zillow, we started looking into it more and found that it had an epic radio telescope called Aricebo Observatory, a tropical rainforest called El Yunque, bioluminescent bays, and a dry forest called Guanica. The house we wanted to look at was near Guanica, so we rented a car and headed to an amazing resort on the beach where we lost all gumption.

We headed into Guanica Dry Forest to do a little hike and check out the beaches. The dry forest is a pretty unusual eco-system. It's got pine trees and cacti, gobs of birds, and marshland that is home to bajillions of tadpoles. And condoms. There were an inordinate amount of condoms in this area. Good to see people practicing safe sex, I guess.

Every black dot is a tadpole.

Somebody knows where to find dinner.

We followed the walking path past the marsh to an amazing beach, complete with rocky outcroppings and iguanas doing some modeling. We also spotted some crabbies running around all dumb.

The path swung back inland through some scrubby little bushes and we found cotton! Just growing there! I know, that is not the most amazing, rarely seen plant, but it was pretty cool to see it just hanging out in the dry forest being all strange and puffy.

We kept walking, and, in true Mack fashion, we had to stop for a foot injury. Apparently, Mack had sustained a bug bite on the top of his foot and was unable to resist the itch. He carved off the top few layers of skin and his foot was becoming fly bait. We sat under a twisty pine tree to cool off and then headed back to the luxury of the Copamarina.

It's not vacation til Mack gets a foot injury! And moheads show up on his hands.

After we attended to some real estate business in Guanica, it was time to move on to other parts of Puerto Rico. I desperately wanted to see El Yunque National Forest, at least its waterfall, and the national forest peeps had cleared the road a few days before our arrival. We made a little detour through the steep terrain in the middle of the island on our way to San Juan and found the waterfall. We didn't get to do much exploration because the roads were closed and Mack's foot was dying, but it was pretty awesome to watch the water rush down the face of the flat rocks.

As we were pulling away from the rainforest we spotted this incredible tower rising up out of the mountain. I later learned this is the Britton Tower, which is now twice as visible as it used to be because all those trees got a haircut during Hurricane Maria. The tower was built in the 1930s as a lookout tower and on a clear day you can see all the way to the sea from it. The hike to the tower was closed, but that didn't matter because Mack's foot was dying.

The grand finale of our Puerto Rico trip was a day in San Juan. I fully did not expect to enjoy San Juan as much as I did, but it is a magical city, on par with Amsterdam. Our first taste came from this incredible street performer who was painted to look like one of the fountain sculptures and who did most of his performance with his eyes closed. He started on this fountain, then got down, then walked about 50 feet across the plaza, then walked back, intermittently yelling strange things in Spanish. It was totally captivating.

As we wandered through the blue cobblestone streets, the city kept on enchanting us. The streets are paved with discarded stones that were used as ballast in boats that came through the port, and they are steep and narrow and lined with extraordinary old facades that beg you to look through their ruins and new versions that are brightly colored and tidy.

We headed toward the door to the city to walk around its perimeter and really fell in love. Amazing artwork was set against walls 10 feet thick and 100 feet high, with lookout towers strategically placed at bends in the wall.

La Rogativa, a sculpture depicting a women-led prayer march that the British interpreted as the arrival of reinforcements, one so intimidating that they abandoned their hold on the city.

We followed the wall past a park full of cats with clipped ears and a charming pink house and eventually walked up on El Morro, a fort built in the 16th century to protect the entrance of the bay of San Juan from invaders, particularly the English and Dutch. I loved El Morro, from the gentle green lawn that gives way to the massive structure full of windwashed bricks and rusty cannons. Prepare to see how much I loved this place.  

Those cannon balls on the left were meant to shred you sails, in the middle were meant to blast holes in your boat, and on the right were meant to explode into little fireballs and kill whoever they hit and set fire to the rest. 

When we left El Morro, we continued to wander along the coast and came across one of the most incredible cemeteries I've ever seen. I looooove a good cemetery. New Orleans, Savannah, and Havana are home to my favorite cemeteries but this one in San Juan really put them to shame. Crowded, ornate, and pushing right up against the sea. I wanted to go walk up and down the dead but Mack was getting thirsty and had his eyes set on Booty's, a country-western bar he'd found on Yelp.

Booty's refreshed us with its air conditioning and mojitos, and Mack blew the minds of the staff by taking a swig of their house hot sauce like it was nothing. I dabbed it on my tongue and, believe me, it was not nothing. The meandering continued into the evening, when we headed back toward the Hotel de los No-See-Ems and stopped by a little roadside restaurant to try some of Puerto Rico's native dishes.

Mofongo, on the left is a fried patty of mashed plantains, onion, and garlic. I don't remember the name of that soup.We also ate bacalaitos, a salty pancake fritter that went down a lil too fast.

Clearly we hated it.

Hotel de los No-See-Ems, also known as the Beach Club Guest House, was in an awesome location right on the beach and super close to the airport. We soon learned that its location made the beach hammocks more of a human buffet area for the bugs and the soothing sound of the air conditioner was silenced by the roaring sound of jet engines taking off throughout the night. Somehow, though, we managed to make it through and left Puerto Rico with a feeling of fondness and hope that she'll get what she's owed in hurricane recovery efforts.