This morning - I couldn’t be bothered to put on makeup. I could barely be bothered to get out of bed
and get dressed and head toward the return to real life. I was vehemently fighting letting go of
vacation mode.
People keep telling me how brown I am, which is funny. I tanned constantly in my early 20’s - before
I moved to Texas. So, I know how prone I
am to turning brown pretty quickly when exposed to UV rays.
I had a cancer scare when I was 25 and realized I’m not
immortal and completely stopped doing the tanning bed thing. I’m pale, pale, pale all of the time. I use my kids’ SPF 50 when we go to the pool
or the lake or whatever. It is a topic
of conversation frequently, actually. It
is all my Texas friends know.
And although I sunblocked like no one’s business in Florida,
the Florida sun burned me to a scary shade of red anyway. That is now turning brown, and it is blowing
minds apparently.
So, the trip…
We were eager to start our honeymoon and so left on Sunday
with plans to stay the night in New Orleans because neither of us had ever
really been there.
We arrived in New Orleans around 8:30 p.m. and Siri took us
to an area of the French Quarter where men were wearing thongs and suspenders on
the street (I later found out it was apparently Pride week) and the streets
were super narrow, and I was worried I was going to run a light or run over a
drunken partier. Finally, I pulled into
a gas station and made Jimmy drive. He
wound around and around and around and finally we made our way to Harrah’s
where we paid $20 to reserve a parking space for 3 hours.
Maybe it’s just me, but casinos are depressing places.
We switched from driving to walking in circles once we got
inside, and after about 30 minutes found a Fudruckers and had our first honeymoon
meal at a dirty table surrounded by casino sights and sounds. We were done
with New Orleans.
Jimmy volunteered to drive and told me to take a nap. When I woke up, he was pulling into the
parking lot of a cheap motel. We agreed
to pay the $60 for a room in order to keep from sleeping in the car.
The room was, um, interesting? The smoke detector was wearing a paper towel
necktie. We refused to sleep under the
covers or use the shower. Jimmy bought
me bottled water the next morning to brush my teeth after using the sink water
to brush his own and not wanting to subject me to it. I told him “we totally have cooties now” as
we made our way out the door in the morning.
He gave himself a cootie shot and declared us safe to continue on to
Destin.
We arrived a few hours before we were supposed to check
in. So, we made a trip to stock up on
essentials (like chips and booze) and then perused the Wharf and landed at a
bar called Rum Runners. We consumed
sandwiches, the absolute best French fries, beers, and shots, and then finally
made our way to our room.
It was beautiful. The
first thing I did was shower off the cooties.
Then (as I remember it) there was more drinking, ziplining, another trip
to the bar, a trip to the pool, and falling asleep.
The next day we spent a good chunk of time booking a deep
sea fishing trip and trying to figure out the tram system that would take us to
the beach. We boarded the tram for the
beach late in the day and had a good time after we arrived. Jimmy wanted to sit at the beach bar and have
a drink (despite the 400 pounds of beer in our cooler) because he’d never had
the pleasure of sitting at a beach bar before.
The bartender was incredibly sweet, and I got to try a beer that Jimmy
has been telling me about from his days living in PA. We avoided sunburns that day. We ate dinner at Bubba Gump Shrimp that
evening and met a couple of pretty cool locals who worked there. We got back to the room, and Jimmy asked if I’d
like to go walking around. That
translated to going back to Rum Runners and dancing while a guy covered fun
songs the crowd requested. Drinks were
had…
Wednesday, after missing our deep sea fishing boat by 10
minutes, I declared a day of rest. I
refused to drink and drove us to the beach where we got heinously
sunburned. We ate dinner at The Crab
Trap (omg, the best crab dip!!!) and then I made us go back to the room and
stay in for the evening and watch Forrest Gump.
Our server the night before had quizzed us on the movie and made us
nostalgic, and so we watched it, and it was still such an incredible
movie. It was different watching it as a
mother than it was the first time I watched it as a teenager.
The next day, I woke up bright eyed and bushy tailed. The plan was another day at the beach and
then an evening of partying like 21 year olds.
I was still abstaining from alcohol to prepare my liver for our planned
shindig and therefore drove us to the beach.
We had made a trip into town to procure a skim board and a wake board
and SPF 4 million. We rented beach
chairs and umbrellas to hide from the sun as much as possible.
We spent quite a bit of time wakeboarding. Then Jimmy decided it was time to break out
the skim board. He did it a few
times. I tried and fell on my face. In order to teach me how to do it, he came
over and tried to do a run in slow motion…and that is when he broke two toes. He hobbled to his chair, tried to stand again
to walk to the snack stand for ice, and fell back down and turned an eerie
shade of white. Having dealt with
exactly what he was enduring when I broke my ankle and when I was in labor, I
knew his blood pressure was low. I
called my mom and asked her for advice on what to do. She gave me advice, and we got Jimmy blood
pressure back up. Jimmy asked me to talk
to strangers and ask them for favors, and I sucked it up and did it since he
was clearly hurting and I felt it my wifely duty to take care of him.
I managed to get ice, get him a ride to the boardwalk from a
lifeguard, and get help from someone getting all of our crap back to the
boardwalk. From there, I said something
like, “I love you, but I have to get all of this stuff to the car, so park it
here, and I’ll be back.”
He doesn’t listen, so just as I got the 376 pound cooler
into the car, he came hobbling up. I was
sunburned, exhausted, worried, and my mind was going 100 miles an hour trying
to figure out the next step. So, I was
babbling away when I threw it in reverse and just hit the gas. I came to an
abrupt stop thanks to the bumper of the F150 behind us.
That is when I lost my cool and my poor, injured husband had
to talk me off the ledge so that I could track down a pen, leave a note, and
get back to taking care of him.
We got him doctored up, and he insisted on returning to the
beach. We did, and we enjoyed ourselves until our chair/umbrella rental expired.
We returned to the room where he took a nap while I embarked
on the journey that is getting ready to “go out.” There are flat irons involved in this, y’all.
He managed to get his boots on, and we walked/hobbled across
the property to have dinner at Acme Oyster House. The server was so great! She talked me into trying oysters for the
first time. She recommended chargrilled…and
I am now recommending chargrilled oysters to you. YUM!
We explored the rest of the Wharf but ultimately wound up
back at….you guessed it…Rum Runners.
This time there was a dueling piano show. Jimmy paid them $17 in the school fight song
contest and asked them to rep the Hogs.
I was the only person in the
bar who knew the fight song outside of the pianists. Don’t worry, Arkansas peeps, I did us
proud. I sang loud and called the
hogs! Unfortunately, they wound up
crowning Ole’ Miss the school with the most spirit. There were more of them, and they had fatter
wallets. (What I’m saying was the
contest was RIGGED).
That is one of the most fun evenings I have had in
years. We laughed and sang and
danced. Jimmy had decided early in the
evening he was going to tell people he got bit by a shark when they asked why
he was limping. We got a couple of
people convinced, and when he got up to dance with me at the end of the
evening, one of the women pulled me to the side and said, “Should ‘shark bite’
be dancing?!” I thought to myself, no, shark bite should probably not be
dancing. He should probably be at home
in bed.
Ah, but shark bite was in the spirit of things and imbibing
too many cocktails…as 21 year olds do.
Soon, it was time to amble back to the room. Except shark bite was sleepy and kept trying
to pass out in the flower beds, and on the concrete, and on benches.
Ok now I have to defend my actions here: I tried three separate times to
drag, plead, coerce, threaten, bribe him to go upstairs. Each time I’d get him a few yards closer, and
each time he’d go all dead weight and fall out in some random place.
So, I finally gave up and left him on the concrete and went to the room and went to sleep. (I know that is not a new wifey thing to do, but ohmygosh dead weight drunk people are just unreasonable and impossible to carry).
At some point I woke up in the middle of the night, and he
was there, so I didn’t have to wrestle with the guilt of leaving him and go search him out again. Whew!
The next morning I learned that after he had finally made it into the hotel and onto our floor and to the door, he had forgotten the code to
our room and so lay in the floor for an hour lightly knocking trying to get me
to get up and let him in….I never heard him, but he eventually figured out the
code.
Friday was our last full day.
We went and bought our own umbrella and headed once more to the
beach. We played in the water, and I
could barely stop thinking about how ready I was to see my kids. I was homesick basically from the start, and
as much fun as we had, I just wanted to see the smiling faces of my littles.
We tried to take up the pictures on our waterproof digital
camera and soak in all of the beach we could since we knew it would be the last
time we’d see it for at least a year.
That evening we went back to Acme Oyster House and then
returned to the room to veg out in our jammies and watch Netflix. That’s when I got him hooked on Orange is the New Black. (YAY!)
The drive home on Saturday was never ending. We rolled into our driveway around 9:30 p.m. When we walked into the house, there was
immediate evidence that my mom had gone out of her way to make our welcome home
special. She had created a “Wedding wall”
on our blank wall in the living room.
She had cleaned and finished our laundry and bought us new bedding and
bathed our dogs. She took care of all
those little odds and ends we hadn’t ever made it to like hanging valances and
such. I cried at how kind and thoughtful
she was to not only watch our daughter and our dogs but also spend her time
making life nicer for us in our home. My
stepdad fixed our fence and a broken doorknob and I imagine helped with all
manner of other projects she had taken on.
We are so lucky to have my mom and stepdad.
Sunday, we jumped out of bed and got showers. We ran and picked up Vivian who looked so
much older and so much bigger. She
accompanied us to the store for game day fixins, and then we headed to pick up
Gavin. Silas had already declared he was
watching football with his dad and would not be coming home. He did waiver for a while when he actually
saw me, and he required multiple rounds of hugs and kisses before I was allowed
to leave. He showed me in his own
independent/daddy’s boy way that he really missed me. It made me happy to know that he still needs
my hugs and kisses.
The game was terrible, but we enjoyed our Sunday anyway. We spent every minute we could with the
kids. After they were in bed, we cooked
together and sat on the back porch - which is so ridiculously “us” that it was
the perfect way to end our honeymoon.
It was all so imperfectly perfect, and I will cherish the
memories always!
Now it’s time to go back to being old and boring…and we will….gladly!
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