Summer is Over, Pack the Van and Let's Go Home The sun has set on yet another great Pugliese family vacation. It all wound to a close yesterday morning when, at 7:16 a.m., Spud woke up and looked at me. After sharing a double bed in the back of a camper with the long-legged, snoring 10-year old who in his sleep reminds me of something from the film "Arachnophobia", you can bet your sweet bippy I was ready to hit the road. We had arrived at our tree-lined campground just miles from the shore at Assateague, Maryland a mere week before. We had left western Pennsylvania in the late afternoon, stopped at Breezewood, PA for a light supper and then pressed on to the beach, arriving just before midnight. For pretty much the whole trip we turned to one another and thanked our friend Phyllis who has lent us her AC/DC converter and a tv/vcr which kept Spud occupied for the entire trip! If you don't have one....you should! It was a wonderful thing, keeping parents sane and child occupied watching Haley Mills in "The Parent Trap" all the way to the Chespeake Bay Bridge! We breathed huge "vacation at last" sighs as we got out of the van in the damp, oppressively humid air of the beach and unloaded our vehicle. The next day, we were up and at 'em early - ready for vacation to start! It's hard to say what we did when as the days just seemed to melt one into the other. Mornings were spent at the pier, fishing or crabbing and when the lifeguards finally arrived, we couldn't keep Spud out of the pool. When he wasn't begging to swim, he was begging to go to the park to play. We just sat under umbrellas reading or playing cards. Afternoons were spent napping or reading as the hot afternoon sun consumed the campground. Nights were spent building campfires, sitting under our twinkle lights and sipping beer or walking to the camp pavillion to watch the evening movie. There were trips to Assateague National Seashore and Rehoboth Beach. Evening excursions to Ocean City to wander the Boardwalk and get our family portrait taken - this year in old fashioned baseball uniforms! And finally, the last camp movie and the last campfire. My wonderful husband packed the van with everything we couldn't live without for a week while Spud and I watched Jaws. As we drove away, we were more than ready to leave camping life behind for another year. It's funny how, after about a week of mosquitos, humidity, sudden thunderstorms and a camper canopy that requires a Ph.D. to put back together, you're ready to re-enter your regular existence. The trip home took 7 1/2 hours including one stop for lunch at the dirtiest McDonald's I have ever been in (Kent Narrows Island) and a short stop at a Maryland rest stop outside of Frederick and another in Breezewood for bubble gum. We got home tired, dirty and pretty much ready to start planning our adventure for next year.

Top 10 List of things NOT to do three days before you leave for the beach...

Top 10 List of Things NOT To Do Four Days Before You Leave for the Beach 10. Attempt to have your corporate website moved to a new host before you leave for vacation by an incompetent moron who has no idea how to accomplish this and pretty much doesn't care one way or the other as long as HE doesn't have to do the calling to get it moved.... 9. Realize that you have two pairs of wearable shorts and one t-shirt that can be worn in public. 8. Remember that your beach chair and umbrella are 200 miles away in your father's basement. 7. Decide NOW is the time to "power lose" 10 lbs so that you can hold your head up as you parade through the water park to your lounge chair. 6. Decide this is the best time of the whole year to institute a new accounting system at work that no one has any idea how to use. 5. Figure out the dog needs a refill on the $40 per bottle eye drops he needs so his eyes won't swell up from the weird "allergic to the sun" disease he has and bleed to the point of anemia - and what you have won't last even another 24 hours and the vet insists on seeing him for the obligatory $100 office visit so she can write you a new prescription. 4. Realize your bathing suit has split along both side seams and everyone at the water park will see a little of what you DO have and be able to accurately envision the rest as their retinas burn out. 3. Make arrangements to move all of the dining room furniture and a bedroom suite from your husband's aunt's house which is actually owned by her jailbird son who happens to be locked up in the county jail and HAS been since last May thus creating a severe financial disaster which includes foreclosure of said house which will be happening so fast that if you don't move fast enough, the house will be padlocked for sheriff's sale before you can get the furniture out. Or yourself for that matter... 2. Decide now is the time to reduce your belongings so that you would be able to pack to move with a week's notice - thus creating an avalanche of those blue city garbage bags that the city forces you to purchase for .25 per bag in the front of your house...causing your husband near physical exhaustion from having to haul your life's possessions to the curb which means humping them down the porch stairs, the stairs to the yard and then slinging them into the pile at the far end of the curb. And finally, the number one thing NOT to do four days before you leave for the beach.... 1. Find out your father has double-booked his seasonal beachfront camper to your WASTE-OF-SKIN sister, her pot-smoking husband and their two filthy kids (one of who has suspicious cat activity on his resume and the other took his own cast off by himself supposedly) and you will be sharing the 3 double sized sleeping areas in a suddenly WAY too small camper with them for three, fun-filled days. By the way, your father thinks this is pretty funny, snarking something about "quality sister bonding time."

New Comments Section I just wanted to point out a new comments box I have added along the left hand side of this page. This keeps a running list of the comments. Additionally, at the end of each entry is a comment section where you can also leave comments...AND my email is on the side too. Gratuitous self-promotion??? Nah!

King of the Road Well, the good news is that the Road to Hell is done being paved! Woohoo! Although Golden Eagle Construction Company did do one of those little teaser things where they pulled all the heavy equipment and left for a few weeks, lulling us frequent flyers into the mindset that the construction was over, they suddenly reappeared one hot and muggy morning with cones and blinking arrows and suddenly there we were all sitting again. But now, it is all done. The road is one smooth, asphalt superspeedway and my mornings have sunk back into the mindless distraction that is my commute. And, of course, we all know what happens when you turn an old, decrepit, concrete roadway into a smooth, asphalt superspeedway. That's right... everyone thinks they're Dale Earmhardt, Sr. and they become ... Idiot Drivers. This particular condition manifested itself one afternoon after work as I came up to a light and stopped. This dude was sitting in the middle of the intersection...STOPPED. All of the through traffic had gone but then he just sat in the middle of the intersection as the light changed from green to yellow. The lady behind him in the Jeep was NOT impressed. As he went by, I realized why he had been sitting there as if in a daze. He had been entering a phone number into his cell phone and as the light turned yellow and he sped by, he pressed "send" and started to talk. Consequently, the lady behind him who was ALSO halfway through the intersection when he stopped had to continue on through a red light just to CLEAR to intersection. Of course! That's exactly what I'd do if I were him. The next category of Idiot Drivers are the ones merging onto the highway. It's 4:45pm and here we are coming up the ramp and merging into the rest of the drone commuters headed home in their mindless commuter-daze doing about 55 mph. I am tooling along in my Saturn, so low to the ground, I am starting to think my car is a skateboard. I am alternately checking out Dufus in front of me who SHOULD be merging and the rest of the Dufai (that is, incidentally, plural for Dufus) behind me to make sure I am not going to be rammed into the idiot in the front. In the meantime, I am also taking some quick sideways glances in the side mirror to see when the most opportune time is for us all to just go for it. I see in the side mirror that life is SWEET. Lots of merging room...no one is coming for MILES! A quick check to the back and I see no one is planning to make a permanent impression in my bumper and then a quick check to the front. What the fah.......????? Dufus has come to a complete and grinding halt. Apparantly this tattooed, cigarette smokin' bimbo has to light up and chose the time when we all had primo merging opportunity to do it. I slam on the brakes as do (thank G-d) the Dufai behind me. Hand signals are not my style but I did toss some well appropriated f-darts her way and while now I seriously doubt she was even aware she had nearly caused a 10 car pile up in her wake...at that moment, I did have SOME consolation that my feelings had been made known. So after Princess has lit her ciggy, we all start to merge again. I swing into the passing lane to flash Princess yet another f-dart. But she's busy adjusting the radio and her bra and the moment is lost. My final example is that of the moron who thinks we're drag racing the Indy 500. I'd prefer to think we're in Daytona when I do racing but hey, this guy seriously thinks he's in a car that has chutes coming out its rear end. There we sit at the light. This time I am in my Toyota Sienna minivan. You know...nothing says WAY cool vehicle MORE than a minivan. Anyway, Snots McGee sides up to me in a souped up Yugo. He's probably all of seventeen years old and naturally, he is riding in the first beloved car. His wheels. The chrome is polished. The windows have been blacked out. There's a cool thingee hanging from the mirror and let's not forget, the stereo. And it's BOOMING. It's playing some foul Eminem stuff (not that there's anything WRONG with that if you like it...) and suddenly, he's taking a sideways glance at ME! I recognize that look. It means "the race is on!" Which, of course, is ludicrous because here I am - barely an old lady but an old lady nonetheless or at least I SHOULD be to this pimply-faced, Mario Andretti-wannabe - and sitting in a green minivan. I mean, my G-d, it's a MINIVAN for crying out loud! It's not some souped up Mercedes or even a cool Chevy Monte Carlo like Dale Earnhardt, Jr. drives around the track. It's a freakin' MINIVAN!!!! But then the light changes and off he goes in a blaze of blue smoke as his head gasket breathes its last and the remnants of the Eminem song start to fade as he sails past. Unfortunately, what he doesn't realize is the next light is 25 yards away and as I cruise up beside of him and stop to wait this especially long light out, I just look at him and smile. Obviously this kid has missed one important detail - and that is I THINK I am a NASCAR driver MOST of the time. MY license plate says "I am not speeding, I am qualifying!". I KNOW these roads and the ways they work. I know where the asphalt superspeedways are and I know how to hang onto that one curve in the industrial park on the way to work so I don't even have to hit the brakes when I round it. He has no idea what he's messing with. And as the light changes again and I floor my powerful, six-cylinder Toyota Sienna minivan and leave him as nothing but a distant, clearisil-scented memory...I just smile. Speed Racer camouflaged as a minvan-driving old lady...how VERY clever!

Something New I was busy registering my BLOG with a BLOG search engine today and trying to install a new-fangled comments section and stumbled across this very "Bridget Jones"-esque BLOG that I am sure my own readers will enjoy! Don't mention the skiing Take a look and see what you think!

My Sister and the Cat A few weeks ago my sister called me. It was early in the evening and I was busy making supper for my husband and my son. I didn't pay much attention as she rambled on about her beautiful white persian cat - Doodlebug. Apparantly, Doodlebug had taken to climbing out of the ripped screen window at the back of their trailer and carousing the 'hood in the after-dark hours. He particularly enjoyed curling up for an afternoon siesta on the next-door neighbour's patio chair. This neighbour, naturally, despised cats of any sort and it didn't matter that Doodlebug was the prettiest cat, by far, in the 'hood, this lady simply wanted to poison him. Well, one day Doodlebug wandered in, my sister said, and was collar-less. She noticed he was panting heavily and his head looked a little swollen but since she couldn't figure out why, she just went back to consuming her pack of cigs and watching the Cartoon Network. She was convinced the lady next door had attacked him. Two days later she called again. Only this time, they had discovered why the collar was off. There were four colourful Goody rubber bands tightly wrapped around Doodlebug's neck. "And who was the culprit...the lady next door?" I asked. No...apparantly their 8 year old had done it. He thought they made a pretty necklace and wanted to make the cat "purty." "I see..." I said, suddenly contemplating having that 8-year old spending the night with us when we visited my father and finding him in a Lizzie-Borden type pose at the foot of the bed as we awoke prior to our bloody and untimely demise. "So...after you beat the crap out of him, then what did you do?" I asked. My sister then told me how lucky they were to have discovered the rubber bands. How they cut them all off with her husband's pocket machete...er...knife. And how they both hoped there wasn't a white one there because if there was, well, Doodlebug was pretty much shit-out-of-luck because they couldn't see it. And she told me how PJ had broken into tears when they asked him about it and they took that as a sign of complete and full contrition on his part. He said he didn't mean to hurt the kitty. He just wanted to put a necklace on it. Uh-huh...and Eddy the Squirrel simply wanted to give Fat Bobby a new pair of shoes when he fitted him with the concrete loafers and threw him off the pier into the ocean. RIGHT! Maybe I should be a bit more compassionate to this small child with obviously inadequate parents but I don't buy it. The kid did what he did when they caught him spray painting their shower stall. He immediately did what any red-blooded, American kid would do when faced with the awful realization that he'd been caught trying to kill the family cat - he threw on the pitiful face and got all sad and started to cry. Don't get me wrong. I love my nephew and for the most part, when he shows up without underwear on and no socks and has the filth of the past seevn weeks caked onto his face...I do feel a great amount of sympathy for the kid. However...I also realize, there is a great likelihood he just tried to off the family pet. The next week 6-year old Trever's cast came off his leg without anyone else around. And I also have some swampland in the Florida Everglades you might be interested in for cheap! I reminded my sister a few days ago about the Triad which identifies serial killers. They wet the bed, they start fires and they take pleasure in harming small animals. She said she's pretty sure PJ doesn't exhibit any of those behaviours. In her opinion, he's just fine. Yeah, he tried to drown the baby once when they were in the tub together but hey, at least she came into the bathroom in time and Trever was only a little blue. Whenever I visit my father, we always stay at his "guest" house. This is another story altogether but the Evelyn Woods version is that he built this 10,000 square foot cedar chalet and does not live in it. It's like an enormous bed and breakfast for us when we visit once or twice a month. Since the house was basically built "for the grandkids" and my father makes sure I know this...I always make sure I invite PJ over to experience an evening of normalcy when we're there. Of course, now I am starting to feel sneakily suspicious that I do understand why my own son usually comes running in and jumping in bed with us at 3 in the morning saying PJ scared him. He probably did. In the meantime, Tom Cruise may buy the whole "Eyes Wide Shut" thing but I can assure you, I am not in the mood to become Mrs. Andrew Bordon, bludgeoned by my bedside. I'll be sleeping with both eyes WIDE OPEN from now on.

The Really Important Things It is that time of the year to start to think about the really important things. Oh, you say, school starting? No. Vacation. My vacation starts in one week and two days. In approximately 216 hours I will be sitting under the trees at our campground in Ocean City, Maryland, hopefully with a beer in my hand and my sun hat on my head - listening to absolutely nothing. It is so enticing to just sit here and fantasize about it that my head aches when I do. But fantasizing is NOT preparing. As I sat in a long and boring meeting yesterday in an overly hot and stuffy room, I began to prepare! I started my list of exactly what we should take with us. The games, the cards, and the videos for those long, rainy days that inevitably happen. The beach chairs and the beach blanket, a plastic tablecloth for an impromptu picnic when we drive to Assateague in the evenings to see the ponies. The shower pails to ferry our soap and shampoo to the bath houses and the twinkle lights to string from the canopy that extends from the side of our camper. The pizza maker and the George Foreman. All the little things that will make our week at the shore magical. The campground we stay at is sublime. Dirt roads wind through tree-canopied lanes with cute little names like "No Name Town" and "Dry Gulch Spur." Our camper sits on "Trail of Tears." Those "in the know" ride around in little golf carts. You can rent them at the store which is at the entrance to the park or if you're REALLY cool, you buy one and keep it there all year long. Some people string lights and hang flashing decorations from theirs so that they are the coolest of all as they ride around after dark. The rest of us just schlep along the dirt paths. We walk out to the pier and sit and watch Sinepuxent Bay as little boys and sometimes their dads sit on the edge of the dock and send down nasty looking pieces of chicken necks in hopes of catching a few Maryland Blue crabs. We walk to the camp store which, as the high point of the season last summer, burned to the ground. I actually am kind of excited to see the new store. I can't help but wonder if it will have the same j'nais se quois as the last one which sold pounds of bologna, souvenir trinkets and the aforementioned chicken necks. We walk to the pavillion as the sun goes down in the evenings - carrying our beach chairs and blankets to wrap up in as we watch the family movie on the big screen tv. And we walk back to our campers and tents and cabins in the dark with our little ones slung over our shoulders as the bigger kids swerve on their bikes and scooters in between lines of flashlit paths making their way through the camp. Then we sit. We all make camp fires in our fire rings and sit next to them as we sip our beers and sodas and listen to the sound of the teenagers who have come out in the darkness and who are gathering beneath the pole lights making calls on each others cell phones to civilization. At least until midnight when it's lights out and quiet begins to envelope Frontier Town like a mother pulling a blanket up on her sleeping child. The night gently fades to black - as do the campfires which will eventually be all put to bed. We sit under the stars and listen to the quiet. The morning will bring trips to the water park and camp bus rides to Ocean City to explore the boardwalk. We'll put all of our beach gear in the van and head down to Assateague, maybe, to be at the beach. There is miniature golf to play, stores to investigate, boat rides to take. But the real attraction, at least for me, is the dark, humid quiet spent contemplating the stars as I sit in my beach chair, under the trees and just relax.

The High Cost of Parenthood Cost of Gas to drive to Pittsburgh to have dinner with the in laws..... $2.40 Cost of Turnpike Tolls to drive to Pittsburgh to have dinner with the in laws.... $0.50 Cost of soda to drink while driving to Pittsburgh to have dinner with the in laws... $0.99 Finding your mother in law on the front porch intently combing head lice from your son's head (after he's spent 3 days with her and the sister in law that hates you AND playing with every child in the extended family).... PRICELESS.

Burnin' Down the House Since my last entry, I have had a lot of questions about what happened with the lighter that looked like a gun and Spud setting his father's bed on fire. This entry, then, is to set all rumours to rest and to set the story straight. I believe Spud was about three or four years old. Cute! He had golden blond hair, BIG grey eyes and wore little glasses which made him look , without a doubt, like the baby Chicken Hawk in Foghorn Leghorn cartoons. Everywhere we took him, people would stop and just be compelled to pinch his cheeks and comment on how cute he was. He was tall for his age, even then, but elfin in a way, and well, just CUTE! We live in what I like to call The World's Smallest House. It's probably about 900 square feet top to bottom. We have a living room, a dining room, and a galley kitchen that is so small you can't have the stove and the fridge open at the same time. The old saying is "too many cooks in the kitchen" and I can tell you from experience that they were talking about my kitchen! You get more than two people in it at the same time and suddenly you are consumed with claustrophobia and a sudden urge to just get the hell out of there. Upstairs we have two rather large bedrooms and a little bitty room we call the "nursery" but which in actuality is the boy's room. It's only about 8' x 6' and when we first bought the house it was painted this weird mustard yellow. The day we looked at the house there were bright red curtains in the window and as the sun came through them in the late afternoon, it took on this weird satanic glow. And yes, this is the room our son has occupied since he was about 10 months old. There is also a bathroom, for anyone still following along. Anyway, when Spud was a little guy, I went back to school and so I always seemed to be in an early class and hardly there when the usual hustle and bustle of the morning ensued between father and son. But on one particular morning I WAS there. I was sitting at our computer busily working on a test or something for one of my kick-ass engineering classes. My husband was in bed watching something intellectually stimulating like Springer or Maury or maybe even he was still napping since he didn't really have to be anywhere that morning. The next thing I knew, I heard him yell my name - Come here! I jumped up and ran in. The bed was smoking!!! I told him to quickly throw the comforter and a blanket, which was all that appeared to be burning, into the shower and to turn it on. In that situation, having such a small house was a good thing...he got the fire out pretty quickly. When the confusion had cleared up we sat back to figure out how it had happened. Had Spud REALLY tried to set his father on fire??? Were Italians REALLY so combustible? The answer lay in what is known now as a trigger lighter and which, these days, has a child guard on it. Back then, they didn't. In fact, we found out, a week earlier, a young boy in a neighbouring township had burned down his whole house doing just what our son had done. Playing guns with a lighter. We were lucky. My husband suffered a pretty nasty burn on his calf from which he sports a scar to this day. The bed itself didn't catch on fire and our house remained standing. About the only casualty that day was my son's yellow blanket. Now this blanket had reached legendary proportion and if you ask the now 10 1/2 year old child what happened to it he will tell you, it burned up. We chose NOT to replace the beloved blankey which had been clutched as he fell to sleep and coveted for its exceptionally soft silky since he was too young to talk. Instead we took him for a walk down the street to see a house which HAD recently burned and in which three people had died. We talked to him about it. And we explained what COULD have happened and what DID happen to that beloved blankey because he had made a bad decision. Even now, he still remembers the incident and mourns for that lost blankey. And as for us, we make sure that lighters are never left in a place that is accessible. Shame on the lighter companies for thoughtlessly making an instrument which can destroy look like a toy. I was really glad when they put the child lock on them. That should have been there from the beginning. And so, that is the story of the burnt bed. While we didn't count this incident toward the tally we mentally have been keeping to see if our son will grow up to be the next Ted Bundy, it remains in the back of all of our minds. Alls well that ends well huh?