'Tis the Holiday Season

Okay, so it’s not THAT holiday season. But everyone’s in the mood for a holiday (cue vintage Madonna song), and I’m going on holiday too! I AM SO EXCITED I can hardly contain myself. I’m telling you – my head is a veritable jukebox of happy-good times-party music. Let the Good Times Roll! Celebrate, Good Times, Come on! Yankee Doodle Dandy (it was recently the 4^th, after all).

I remember when my sister and I were very little girls we lived in a small town in central Texas. We were going on a family holiday to visit relatives in Denver. That is a looooong drive, fyi. Even longer when you’re 6 years old and sitting in the back seat with your sister means she MIGHT ACTUALLY BE TOUCHING YOU. Sheesh. Fortunately for us (at least on this occasion) the family car was a 1973 Delta ’88 chocolate brown Oldsmobile. The backseat was a bench seat so long and wide that our mom made us up a pallet to sleep on and it was so large that Kelsey and I could each sleep stretched out full length without touching each other. Ah the early 70s – when brown was everywhere and cars were ginormous. Seriously. It was a road yacht.

Another time I went on a ‘summer vacation’ with my mother and sister to Sydney – of course, going to Sydney in our summer means it’s winter there. But it was a nice mild winter, nothing like New England, so it was all right. That was the vacation Kelsey and I remember as the time our mother learned the word ‘wedgie’. Until that time Mom had usually only used the word to describe the little plastic pie pieces you win in Trivial Pursuit (upon answering the question correctly she’d yell, “Give me a green wedgie!” and we’d all fall apart). So Kelsey and I were getting out of the rental car in Sydney and we were talking about wedgies (I may actually have been doing so deliberately in an attempt to embarrass my sister, ahem) and Mom overheard us. She asked what we were talking about and Kelsey and I did our best to explain what the word really means. Just at that moment a Sydney Barbie Doll went by on her roller blades, blonde mane flying in the wind, wearing shiny blue spandex shorts and a shiny purple spandex leotard/thong thing over them. Mom noticed her, got a delighted look on her face, pointed at the Barbie’s butt (actually stuck her finger out at the end of her arm and did a full body point) and yelled, “Hey, that’s a WEDGIE! Like that, right?!” to confirm that she really did get the concept. Kelsey and I nearly melted away in mortification, but did nod wordlessly. She had clearly learned the word all right.

This year my vacation begins with a gigantic flea market – actually it’s an antiques market but since we’ll be shopping with flea-market budgets, it’s best to stick to that terminology. I have been shown Mom’s collection of tote bags – we may bring more than one. It’s a really big flea market.

Let the good times roll!!