Vacation Hard: Part 9 - It's the end of the world as we know it......because I forgot to take my watch off?!

First a gentle reminder. If you experience any of the following:
Easily hurt and/or compromised feelings
Extreme religious and/or political opinions and mentality
Diarrhea of the mouth while suffering the above afflictions
Please do not read my blog.

If you have an aversion to cursing, violence, sex, destruction of property, having a sense of humor, or Article 19 of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights please do not read my blog.

If you dislike or have difficulty understanding satire/sarcasm, just don't even bother. Nobody likes you anyway.

Let's have some back story before I begin the next part of the tale. I was adopted and raised by wonderful people. My folks were strict, but fair. I know, without a doubt, that if not for them I would be in prison right now instead of doing nerdy things like writing a blog.

That being said, and with all due respect, my parents were a pain in the ass. Most people's folks are, and you and your siblings sit around in your 20's and 30's talking about all the times you got in trouble and laugh, but when you're an only child........you get in ALL the trouble. The focus is all on you.

 

 

My Mom was notorious for waking me up for school with an animistic sort of shriek. Dad would just come in and pull covers off and threaten to pour water on me and I knew I had to get up because he'd actually do it. He threw away an $80 pair of sneakers once (Reebok Pumps....remember those?) because I didn't get them out of the living room before I went to bed one night. I never take a threat from him lightly, cause he'll do whatever crazy ass shit he thinks needs to be done to make a point.

The absolute worst habit he has is getting anywhere on time and I think he actually gets off on blaming other people for him running late. He gets himself worked up into a super shitty mood and has this whiny sort of growl when he talks, very much like I imagine my voice to be when I'm bitching at some of you Village Manor people when you don't do something I want or don't follow my instructions or when there's bickering. Y'all know I hate that shit.

Vacation Day 6:

So anyway, I'm woken up at 0430 by a slamming bathroom door. A moment later I'm in that twilight state right before sleep and I hear my father's whiny growl: "Danny! It's time to get up!" Needless to say, I'm grumpy. I had finally found a position on that bed where the iron bar wasn't raping my back about an hour bef-"Daniel! Get up!! Let's go!! Do you want to be late?!"--ore and I was comfortable and didn't want to move. I layed there, trying my best to remember that I'm a grown ass man now and I don't have to take this shit anymo---"Hey! Are you awake? IT'S TIME TO GO!!"

Here it comes, Reader: "I BEEN AWAKE, DAMN IT!!"

"WELL THEN.........GET THE FUCK UP!!"

So...........I got the fuck up. If it is possible to violently get dressed, I did that. Also violently brushed my teeth and violently packed my shit. I sat down, violently, to have a cup of coffee Irma had put on minutes after the bitching started, and again: "We don't have time for that! We gotta go! Right now!"

Pushing.......my........mother........fucking..........buttons...... "OK then! You wanna go? Let's go!" - So I grabbed my luggage and blasted out the door. I got about 20 steps away from the room and realized I had forgotten my camera bag and hat, so I turned around and came back. As I entered the room I hear Irma ask my Dad what was wrong. Dad says: "Oh, he's just being an asshole cause we have to go and he didn't get to sleep in and have his coffee." I grab my camera bag and Larry turns around and realizes that I heard him. "Well, it's the truth," he says. "Got that right," I say, because it was indeed the honest truth. Of course the annoying wake up call had nothing to do with it.

 

 

We get all our crap packed in the car and head out. Smooth sailing to the airport, park the car in the long term parking and make our way into the wrong end of the terminal. Got to the Southwest desk, checked in and boogied down to TSA, where my hazy, caffeine deprived brain caused serious issues at the metal detector. I was shuffled down to one of the stations where I mumbled something like "Whassamatter?" assuming that it was even English I was speaking. "You didn't take off your watch.....I have to scan you now." I look down and notice it there, something so simple, and become highly frustrated with myself. "Well, shit," I say. TSA guy frowns at me and says, "It's not the end of the world, man."

Somehow I am accutely aware that is not the end of the world. I am severely agitated that this guy (who was only doing his job because of my ignorance) would remind me of something so evident. I think the lack of earthquakes and boiling oceans and, you know, Jesus didn't drive by on one of the little airport wagons and say "Hey everybody......just a head's up. Might want to start doing some praying," might have tipped me off..........and then the truth of the situation hits me: I'm having a man-period. My sissy ass has been in airplanes and cars and in the heat entirely too much over the last few days and the idea of having to get on another sardine can coupled with no sleep, breakfast, or coffee has decimated my internal monolouge filter to the point that my most cynical of thoughts were going to declare war on everyone in the airport, especially Larry. 

 

There's no reason everyone else should have to suffer because I'm "being an asshole", so I apologize for my language and finish up with TSA and we get moving. Irma and I decide we want to stop by a McDonald's there in the terminal for a quick cup of coffee because (like you need me to tell you) she had forgotten to grab her cup back in the room because Larry, the fucking time nazi was rushing everybody out the door. So we stop and get our quick meals to go and then book it on down to the gate. As soon as we get there, I noticed people lining up to board. Since I have an early bird pass for this flight as well, I get no time to enjoy my coffee or shitty hash brown.

 

 

So........as much as I do not want to admit this, the time nazi was right all along. If we had left any later I wouldn't have been able to enjoy my precious early bird boarding pass. So all you Readers keep your traps shut about it, because you don't know what it's like to suffer that man, ok. It's a terrible, ego-sucking ordeal that I hope to someday share with my own child, along with many other Larry traditions such as:

 

 

Taking F-O-R-E-V-E-R to get up on Christmas morning so we can open presents.

NOT telling me when to be careful of something when working on a car. Well, technically he'd tell me, but only after I've busted a knuckle or crushed a finger by saying "Ooooooh.......that shit hurts, right? Yeah, don't do that", and then laughing about it for 20 minutes and telling his compadres when they come over to shoot the shit. A routine question some of these guys would ask when I was at the shop, "Hey, Danny....anything bleeding today?"

Stealing anything in my apartment that he may have thought was initially his. Fucking pack rat disease.

Pretending like he can't hear you when you're spelling something unless you use the NATO phonetic alphabet.

Calling me to ask about something on his computer that's frustrating him. The man has worked with computers in cars and on multi-million dollar government aircraft, and yet a Windows operating system baffles him for some reason.

 

 

And the list goes on.

 

 

On the next episode of Vacation Hard!: An Adventurous Venture for the Venturless Adventurer

.........What's that Stirdivant?.........You want to wait until Daniel Briggs is on vacation here?......Hmm....sounds reasonable. Did he buy a really expensive camera just for this trip?......perrrrrrfect......."

Vacation Hard!: Part 8 - This ain't vacation. Normal people sleep on vacation. And there's less yelling......

First a gentle reminder. If you experience any of the following:
Easily hurt and/or compromised feelings
Extreme religious and/or political opinions and mentality
Diarrhea of the mouth while suffering the above afflictions
Please do not read my blog.

If you have an aversion to cursing, violence, sex, destruction of property, having a sense of humor, or Article 19 of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights please do not read my blog.

If you dislike or have difficulty understanding satire/sarcasm, just don't even bother. Nobody likes you anyway.

Awesome blog reading discretion has been advised. Don't be mad, Boo.

Vacation Day 5:

We all get some much needed rest and wake up late in the morning, which for me (with this whole 'sleep at night' thing) is like 7am. I take a quick trip to Corpus Christi to have breakfast with Terri and Allesyn (another part of my second family and Laura's mother and younger sister respectively). We went out to a pretty good Mexi place Terri frequents where we chatted and reminisced. I was told later that when Terri went back there the folks asked about who I was and she said "That's my other son", which gave me the warm and fuzzies. The older I get the more nostalgic I become and that meant a lot coming from her. We get back to their place and look through some pictures I had mostly forgotten about and found some of the only pictures left of my Mom (Loretta) that were taken before she died, and on the night of my high school graduation. It was kinda hard not making the eye water when I saw those pictures, because I thought they were gone. And so I extend my sincerest love and gratitude to Terri and the whole family for keeping and caring for those pictures. It means a lot. And now that everybody knows what a big titty-baby I am, we can continue......

I jump in the truck and head back to Kingsville. Irma booked us at the family barracks on Lackland AFB in San Antonio for that evening, so we wouldn't have to get up early and drive all the way from K-ville for the flight out to D.C. that left around 8am. So we fart around, nagging each other to death, Dad showing me how well he's honed his considerable pack rat skills and Irma and I rolling our eyes at him like some kind of synchronized event in the Suburban Olympics.

We get the car loaded up with all our luggage and get going back to San Antonio. On the way I text Bunny and let her know I'd be in town in a couple of hours so we could hang out. We get to Lackland and get all our stuff unloaded and get ready to go out to the Naval Exchange (military shopping mall), which my Dad finds fascinating because there's no sales tax on base (something I enjoy statewide in Oregon).

After wandering around at the Exchange, we head out to Wal-Mart to get some much needed medicine for Dad, and I let Bunny know where we were and she picked me up. Off we went to Casa Rio (a popular mexican restaurant) on a Sunday evening. This place is right on the Riverwalk in San Antonio, which most people from those waters can tell you, is packed on any given weeked. But this is Labor Day weekend.......so yeah. After waiting outside in the stagnant heat we go in to eat...........Ok, Reader, I know I whine a lot about the heat, but you should go live in tropical climates where the only seasons are 'wet' and 'dry' with 4-6 storms a year that leave you without electricity and running water for days, take baths in trash cans filled with rain water, go to schools with no air conditioning, deal with bugs that will carry you off in force right after they give you any number of respiratory diseases and then tell me if living with the heat is worth it.

We spend less time eating than we did waiting to get in. I'm already in a foul mood because I'm uncomfortable with the heat, not to mention I've been couped up with all the traveling over the last 4 days, and I'm ready to really start taking pictures and having fun. So we finish up dinner and get out of there, walking all along the River Walk and the surrounding streets in downtown San Antonio, which at night is quite nice.

 

After that Bunny takes me back to the Lackland gates and Dad comes out to get me back on base. We get to the room and I feel like I need a pressure washer to get all the sweat and grime off of me. After a quick shower, I walk out and Dad's watching TV:

"Boy, I dunno what's wrong with these dumbasses. They can't seem to catch that Jason Bourne. He's a crafty motherfucker."

I chase him off to bed and......uh......well, I guess you could call it "sleep" on the pull out bed in the couch with the enormous iron rod cross bar that effectively raped me for the entire 4 hours I "slept". I was violently woken by a slamming bathroom door and began suffering flashbacks from my childhood:

"Danny! It's time to get up!"

On the next episode of Vacation Hard:  It's the end of the world as we know it......because I forgot to take my watch off?!

"Pushing.......my........mother........fucking..........buttons......"