Vacation Recap: Day One

I’m back from vacation, y’all. And I can’t wait to tell you about it!

First, I think it is appropriate to give you character profiles of those that joined me on the vacation:

Daughter: Since I’ve talked about her before, you probably already know about her. But in short, she’s six years old, loves fart jokes, is as smart as a whip (and I’m not just saying that because she is my kid…I swear), is very inquisitive (i.e., asks a million questions a day), never stops talking, is not very shy, loves superheroes, and is very loving and affectionate. In a nutshell, she’s a great kid and I’m glad she’s mine.

My Mother: Relatively speaking, is probably not as big a pain in the ass as I give her credit for (I’m sure all mothers get on all daughters’ nerves), but she has a special talent for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. She also has a sense of humor that blindsides me, because sometimes I think she has NO sense of humor. More about this later.

My Aunt…we’ll call her “Auntie Millie”: My mother’s younger sister. She is a single mother, didn’t finish high school, never has enough money, is very defensive when it comes to anything and everything, and is jealous of my mother (because my mother lives the dream, apparently. However, if you’ve read any of my posts, you know my mother’s life isn’t all roses and sunshine). Divorced her husband (who lives in Greece) about 15 years ago because not only was he 25 years older than her, he was also a Cheap Fucker and treated her like his servant. More about Auntie Millie later.

My Cousin…we’ll call her “The Greek Goddess”: Just turned 18 (literally, her birthday was the first day of my vacation), thinks she knows everything when in reality doesn’t know shit. This is demonstrated by the fact that she’s planning to go to college in the fall but didn’t know that there are prerequisites and required courses that you have to take in order to finish your degree (such as taking an English class, a History class, etc.) Actually argued with her mother (Auntie Millie) over this (Auntie didn’t know this either since she never went to college – my mom had to fill her in on the whole concept of prerequisites). Oh, she’s also a Vegetarian. This is important to future vacation stories.

Cousin’s friend, “Brittney”: While I try not to judge a book by its cover, I couldn’t help but think this girl is a skanky slut. I’m sorry. When I first saw her I decided to try and give her a chance. Really, I did – I swear. But her eye makeup is too heavy and her hair was two colors. I’m far from old-fashioned, but if it looks like a slut, and acts like a slut…chances are the girl is a Slut. I promise you’ll agree with me when I’m done with The Vacation Saga.

DAY ONE: Thursday
I have to count Thursday as my first day of Vacation, because that’s when we arrived in Florida. Even though our flight didn’t land in Orlando until close to 9:30p.m., there is a decent story to tell.

First, the plane trip down to Orlando was rather uneventful except for the fact that there were two girls (looked to be around 20 years old) in the row in front of us with surgical masks on. Obviously, they were trying to avoid any possible contact with the dreaded Swine Flu. My mom decided to send them into a panic by fake-coughing and fake-sneezing periodically during our flight which I found HILARIOUS every time she did it. This is what I mean by her having a sense of humor that blindsides me. Just when I see her as My Mother, she does something that I would have done with my friends or something. She even made up a fake dialogue between the girls: “Wow, did you hear those people behind us coughing and sneezing during the whole flight?” “Yeah, I’m sooooooo glad we wore our surgical masks!” It was so funny. Maybe you had to be there.

Auntie Millie was picking us up at the airport because she rented a car. Her, The Greek Goddess and Brittney were staying in Orlando for the whole week, instead of the four days like we were. Please understand that Auntie Millie and my mom have a love-hate relationship. My mother has turned nit-picking into an art form, and Auntie Millie has played a victim since she left her shitty ex-husband. I usually feel sorry for Auntie Millie because she has no education (dropped out of high school) and will never be able to find a good paying job. Don’t get me wrong here -- I know lots of smart people who do not have post-high school education, and I’m not trying to imply that a college education makes you intelligent or you get a better job because of it. I know one does not necessarily correlate with the other. However, in Aunt Millie’s case, it does. She is a horrible speller (when she lived in Greece 20 years ago, she would write my mom letters. Notable misspellings -- the word “busy” was spelled “buzzy”; “pretty” was “prity”. You get the idea.) Auntie also says the dumbest shit sometimes and also isn’t able to connect the dots, so to speak. She’s not retarded or anything – she’s just not that smart. She also makes my cousin the center of her world because she has nothing else. No boyfriend, no money, no hobbies, etc. She just works and plays mom. My mom often reminds Auntie Mille of her lack of education – like stating the reason she can’t find a second job – she’s been looking and has applied online at places like Home Depot -- is that she probably has misspelled words in her online application. Then my mom giggled about it. I guess I’d be pissed at my sister too, if she said stuff like that -- and then giggled -- instead of being supportive. But my mom just not the “supportive” type. Personal flaws are always meant to be pointed out and made fun of…Any-who…

Aunt Millie had taken an earlier flight to Florida, and got to Orlando around noon on Thursday. She had rented a condo for the week – the trip was originally The Greek Goddess’ graduation trip – so she had also gone grocery shopping earlier in the day. When she picked us up from the airport she had a serious attitude. Not only was she “exhausted” from “running around all day”, she was bitchy. She informed us that she had been circling the airport “forever” and that she hadn’t even unpacked yet. I’m sorry, but my flight was on-fucking-time so number one, no one asked you to circle the airport for ½ hour and no one called you to tell you the flight was early. And number two, it’s not my problem you are such a piss-poor time manager that it apparently takes you 12 hours to run to the grocery store (which was on the same property as the condo and was literally a 5-minute drive from the condo). I mean, seriously? You haven’t unpacked yet and you’ve been in Orlando for 10 hours? She said she hadn’t even been down to the pool yet! I have no clue what she did all day long besides go to the grocery store, because when my mother asked her – she just got all in a flutter and couldn’t answer because she was too busy saying how tired she was. She acted like picking us up at the airport was a MAJOR inconvenience. I was PISSED.

After having to endure the 30 minute drive from the airport to the condo, and hear Auntie Millie repeat how tired she was about 40 times, we arrived at the condo. The Greek Goddess and Brittney were watching Grey’s Anatomy. Neither of them got up to greet us or say “hello” or anything – not even to say hi to my kid. It was at this point where I remember it was The Greek Goddess’ birthday and neither my mom nor I had brought her a present. Whoops! In order to avoid any further awkwardness, after all, no one was getting up, I ran into our room, unpacked, took an Ambien and went to bed. My mother, Daughter and I were going to Disneyworld the next day and we all needed to get to sleep. Auntie Millie was dropping us off in the morning at The Polynesian so we could take the Disney Monorail to the Park instead of having to deal with Park traffic. Oh, boy. Auntie should be thrilled with having to get up early and also having to pick us up….I hope she has time in the 16 hours we would be gone to go sit by the pool for five minutes!