Thursday Thirteen

Banner by Kelly
Thirteen Vacation Experiences I Don't Necessarily Have To Repeat
1. Camping on a beach during a torrential downpour. OH SWEET MERCY, the sand. OH SWEET MERCY, the sticky, wet sand.

2. Camping at a state park. Okay, technically that was a cabin and not a tent. But, you know, there was lots of nature there, and while I may not have told you this before, nature makes me itch.

3. A pesky little case of sun poisoning (remember, I have no melanin to speak of - the sun is not my friend) that caused me to throw up FOURTEEN TIMES on the van ride back home from the beach, and my youth group leader wouldn't pull over, so I had to get sick in Ziploc bags and paper cups. Which my friend Beverly then threw out the window as we traveled down the interstate at a high rate of speed.

OH YEAH. Put THAT in a brochure and watch the people flock to your advertised destination.

4. Seven college girls in a car designed to seat five (four comfortably). In New Orleans. In August. It was the hottest (and as a direct result, angriest) I've ever been in my life.

5. Sleeping two girls to a TWIN bed on that same trip. We were in college, had no money, and got the cheapest rooms possible. I slept for approximately 44 minutes that night (in all fairness, we still had fun - but my grown-up self doesn't know how my younger self did it).

6. Sleeping on a pull-out couch with a wafer-thin mattress and springs that were constructed from, as best I could determine, barbed wire.

7. A fourteen hour van ride with an unreliable air conditioner, an AM radio and a gaggle of junior high students.

8. A hotel room that was apparently rented by tobacco companies to test how many cigarettes it might take to make the smell of smoke linger FOREVER.

9. Y'all aren't going to believe this, but one time I got really sick from sun poisoning in Panama City, and my youth group leader would not stop the van for me to throw up! Have you ever heard of such?

10. Being spanked by my daddy on the front steps of the Oklahoma State Capitol. Don't worry - it wasn't recently. I was three. And we actually have pictures of me pouting afterwards.

11. Staying in a hotel room in Chattanooga with my parents and having to SLEEP IN THE TUB because Daddy was snoring so loudly that the tub was the only possible place to escape. And I still had to put a pillow over my ear. And shut the bathroom door.

Good times.

12. A sleepless night in a hotel in NYC with Sister and Paige. We had some foul-mouthed revelers next door - and in addition to screaming every cuss word known to man (as well as some original constructions that, while nonsensical, were equally as offensive), they seemed to believe that alternately beating on the wall and slamming the door were excellent outlets for drunken expression.

13. Did I mention the time my youth group leader wouldn't stop the van when I had sun poisoning and was throwing up many times consecutively in a row back-to-back without stopping?

By the way, fun side note: in betwixt my episodes of violent wretching, I could hear this guy in the back of the van say stuff like, "THAT IT SO GROSS" and "CAN'T SOMEBODY MAKE HER STOP?"

You will be delighted to know that Mr. Sensitivity is now my husband. Oh, the stories we'll have for our grandchildren.