Summer Vacation 2004

And I leave trails of bits of fingernails wherever I may go.

I had my vacation last week. I spent a lot of it in my parent's backyard, painting the shed a dark shade of khaki, to match their new housecolour. It has been white, with tacky blackplastic windowshades since in was built, in phases from 1972-1977, I think.

Now it will be a dark khaki, with the windowshades more rugged-looking, painted a dark dark dark green, which looks more like off-black. It's better looking than it sounds in internet text.

I listened to a lot of radio. 107.1, of course. But then there was 107.7 The Lake, which plays the less-obvious classic rock tracks. And also 95.1, which has finally died and been reborn, and is no longer The Nerve, but The Fox, which is what 103.3 used to be before it sounded like The Nerve, and anyways 95.1 The Fox is like The Lake. And both The Fox and The Lake have a refreshing lack of advertisements and DJ's. But what I liked was the less-obvious choices of songs. That was supposed to be the gist of this paragraph.

Also, I spent time with the classic troupe of cats, who are called Gollum, Huckleberry, and Sadie. We got Gollum in 1992, which makes him old. My mom got Huckleberry in 1994, which makes him old too. And my brother Kris found Sadie thrown out on the banks of the Erie Canal in 1995, with her arm broken and the victim of a attempted homicide, we think. Her arm healed at a 90-degree angle (she has no elbow), but she gets around as well as anybody these days.

I also attempted to relax in the backyard hammock, but it made me seasick. In addition to realizing my own claustrophobia recently, it seems I also get motion sickness now. When I told my Dad that the hammock made me sort of queazy, he almost seemed to get mad. "You'd better go see a damned doctor, bud."

I figured that it goes hand-in-hand with anxiety. I had bestman anxiety for many of the weeks leading up to Chad and Erin's wedding. All because of the stupid toast.

I figured it had to be the best toast ever. He has been my friend since before my memory starts to begin. We grew up together, from toddlers through presentday times. I needed to say spectacular and profound things.

But it all took me by surprise. I feel like I stumbled. I seemed like I was impersonating Steven Wright. I remember making jokes about dead monkeys. And trying to recount the thing that that buddhist man said at Greg & Sarah's wedding. Even though I didn't do it very well.

I wanted to forget it as soon as I was done, even though Chad and Erin loved it, and I got comments the rest of the night patting me on the back for how funny it was and "you should charge admission!" and blahblah. It wasn't supposed to go quite like that, and so I sat in a chair by my grandmother at the reception, and I drank jack-n-cokes while Chad danced it out to "What'cha Want".

Also, I probably look like an idiot in all of the wedding photographs. But the photographer put us in all of these cheesey poses, and it will be very difficult to make them not suck. For instance, he loved to have the bride and groom posed in center, kissing sweetly, while the six people of the bridal party "peeked" at them from over and around walls and trees in the background.

Um, what?

On another one, the photographer had the bride and groom reach out desperately for one another while the groomsman pulled the bride away and the bridesmaids pulled the groom away.

Yes, such cheese.

Something I did correctly was the rings. And when Father Joe blessed the rings, I wondered if some of that holy blessing was spilling off onto my heathen palms. Because then I might have holy stigmata. Or a blessed spot in the palm of one hand, at least. Which wouldn't be anything like stigmata, I guess.

So at the reception I talked with people I hadn't seen for a long time, and I drank jack-n-cokes and I sat next to my grandmother, who left at about 10pm. We watched the people dance, although there were never very many dancers. It was a pretty sober and sobering reception, really.

For the last song, Erin asked me to dance. I was caught way off-guard, because no one's asked me to dance before. And so all the dancing that I did do was with a bride.

The evening was framed around Chad and Erin though, just as it should have been. And what a great couple. They are some more of my favorites.

But the love didn't stop my head from keeping me up from 4 til 7 the next morning. Thinking about how I should have said things differently, and thinking about how much my hangover headache was aching. And how I didn't have any Tylenol.

I laid on the couch all day Sunday, with Linus sleeping on my chest. I watched documentaties about Jesus Christ and I did not think all day long.

-

I could have written a lot more about my vacation. Like about shopping for records in Buffalo, and drinking Tim Horton's cappuccinos, and how I saw Kate McElwain at Cafora's, and seeing The Passion (the vacation had a very Christian theme, I guess..), and picking up our tuxedos and eating at OCB afterwards, and falling asleep at Chad's bachelor party, but the bachelor party was only Chad and Mike playing Playstation, anyway, so I didn't feel bad. And the swimming pool adventures, with Chad and Mike and I beating the shit out of each other with woggles, and swimming with Chad's little nephews, and the littlest nephew crying whenever he was given to me, because holding babies is the thing that I am worst at in the whole world, or in the whole of my lackluster skillset, at least.

Y'know, and other stuff like that.

But I don't have all day to write. I have to go to work.

-

Something else is that I am an uncle. Sort of.