Okay, I was down for the count there for a while... the pollen count, that is. The older I get, the worse my allergies seem to be and pollen season has been in full swing in NC. As much as I tried to avoid being outside, I just have to take Grover to school (those darn administrators...) and I have sneezing fits, coughing, red eyes, the works. My head has hurt constantly and the snot - well, I'll spare you the gory details.
Before pollen hell descended upon us in the form of irritating yellow dust, Grover had Spring Break. Now, why kindergarteners need spring break is beyond me, but hey, it was a great excuse for a beach trip, so who cares? Unfortunately, my husband got stuck working that week so in a fit of insanity I asked my friend if she and her two boys (ages 3 & 5) wanted to come with me and the girls. It sounded like a good idea at the time. Really, it did. We had booked a two-room suite at a "resort" in Myrtle Beach with indoor pools and a lazy river, so there was plenty of room for all of us and swimming to boot.
I volunteered to drive us all - seeing as I have the mom taxi that comfortably holds 4 children in car seats, two adults and all the crap that inevitably came with us. I made sure I was properly caffeinated to drive for 3 hours (a large portion of which was on I-95 and I won't even go into how much I hate that highway). After two large cups of coffee, a Mountain Dew and a large tea from Bojangles, I was like a meth addict looking for the next fix. We checked into the hotel and headed to the Giant Crab (Grover's favorite restaurant in MB) for an early supper. For some stupid reason, I ordered a Mountain Dew and halfway through it, I realized I couldn't stop my hands from shaking. Can't have shaky hands with all-you-can-eat crab legs, so I promptly switched to water! Mmmmm, crab legs. The Giant Crab is so named because they have a 4-ton cement crab over the door to greet you:
You can see why it's so popular with the kiddies. Oh, and the crab's name is Tommy by the way. Not sure why.
So after gorging ourselves on crab legs and other assorted seafood delights, we returned to the hotel to stuff ourselves into bathing suits and head to the pool. No, you will not see a picture of us in our suits - let's just say it's a good thing they outlawed whaling. Anyway, I put my fat ass in an inner tube to take Ollie for a ride in the lazy river. She loved it up until the part where I turned us over and almost drowned her. The whole incident probably only lasted a couple of seconds, but it seemed like she was under water forever. Like a typical toddler, she shook it off and was ready to get right back in. We opted to move over to the 1-ft kiddie pool for obvious safety (and calming mom's nerves) interests.
The next day, we threatened the kids with complete loss of priveleges to get us through a couple of hours of outlet shopping, where I spent money I don't have buying clothes I don't need, then went to Dick's Last Resort for supper. I'd been to the one in Chicago so I knew what we were in for. The humor of it was lost on the kids, but they got to wear funny paper hats on which our waiter wrote various hysterical quotes so it was all good. Grover's read "I'm smiling 'cause I just farted" and Ollie's read "I pee in the pool". Mine read "Will knit for sex". Obviously, that waiter didn't know me at all - I don't knit! The girls loved it and still have their hats in their rooms. We were just glad to be somewhere loud enough that the kids' noise didn't offend people and we could be as obnoxious as we wanted to be (which was VERY).
By about the third day, we were ready to feed the kids to the sharks at the aquarium or at the very least drown them in the pool. We kept our cool, however, and all made it home none the worse for wear.
