He Said/She Said: Our Weekend Away (Again)

You may remember that some time ago, Paul and Anya both ended up on taking weekend trips to the exact same Resort Town on the same days...but not together. Lo and behold, lightning strikes twice. Last weekend, in grim anticipation of our impending move, our families dragged drove us to a small town in our state known for its boutique shopping and waterfront dining for some quality family time. Hooray!

While Anya’s family spent Sunday looking at overpriced jewelry, eating a delicious lunch, and seeking out gluten free ice cream cones, followed by antiquing and a farmer’s market, Paul’s family mostly focused on taking a lovely waterfront walk and craft beers. We all know who got the better end of that deal. Nevertheless, enjoy the rundown!

Actual thing Anya found antiquing. Why are they priced separately!?

HER
My weekend started with a delightful trip down memory lane in the form of a going away party thrown for a good friend from high school. Love her, excited for her, life is great. Life is less great when that party includes a lot of people that would have gone to the high school reunion that I’m purposely skipping because I don’t want to see anyone. That with our family day trip? Well...you’ll see.

THE OLD FRIEND: Are you still dating that...I don’t know how to say this. That Jew?
ANYA: Um, no. No? It’s fine. I mean he was Jewish.

THE SISTER IN LAW: Have you seriously not seen Magic Mike? It’s so great. And when I saw it, I was like literally before now I did not even know the human body was capable of that. Like I did not know that the male body could possibly do the things his body did. I couldn’t believe it. It was like, amazing. We can watch it right now, I have it on DVR. We can watch it RIGHT NOW if you want, just say the word. I have it on the tv, I can fast forward to that part. We don’t have to watch the whole thing.

Add “Magic Mike dick flopping gif” to our list of poor work Google choices.

NEVER GONNA HAPPEN: So you’ve been watching Buffy?
ANYA: Oh, yeah.
NEVER GONNA HAPPEN: Oh yeah that’s a great show. Who’s your favorite character?
ANYA: I mean I love Angel, he’s great. I like Giles a ton.
NEVER GONNA HAPPEN: What about Xander?
ANYA: Ugh, no I hate him. He’s so sad and boring and pathetic.
NEVER GONNA HAPPEN *literally backhands her arm*: No! He’s great! He’s the best!
ANYA: Jesus Heist, I should have seen that coming.

THE SISTER: I always say, if you don’t want to hold on to allllll this, you can get out! Big girls need love too! (She probably weighs 100 lbs)

ANYA: Oh my god, this tub is amazing! Take a picture of me in it for Paul!
THE MOTHER: I’m not sending nudies to your friends.
ANYA: Jesus Heist, I’m not getting naked in the yard of this antique shop!

It was truly a thing of beauty, even without me in it.

THE FATHER: Quoted the hit WE show, Marriage Boot Camp for the *entire* weekend, and has not stopped at the time of this writing.

It’s good to be us!

HIM
I spent a few nights in Artsy Summer Town with my parents and younger brother, spending most of Sunday with my godfather and his family at their cottage. The weekend was filled with fatty foods and the above-mentioned microbrews. Here’s the thing, I’m all for having a good time, but getting blackout drunk with my family was not something I ever needed to experience. And unlike when one (read: I) has hazy memories of an evening out with friends, whom you can ask and (hopefully) laugh with about the blank pages, these are chapters I have no access to. My mother is having a rough enough time with the upcoming move without adding “My son is an alcoholic,” to the mix. I spent Monday morning pretending like I remembered events after 8:00pm, deciphering texts sent to Anya, and secretly puking while showering.

THE GODFATHER: You definitely wanna have Chris Christie come to your Fourth of July party! Who the fuck would have wanted Romney at their goddamn anything!? Ah well, I’m probably going to vote for Clinton.

Never gets old.

THE FATHER: We're shopping for things to put in our summer house, which is currently still our winter house.

THE GODFATHER’S WIFE: Okay, this is going sound a little weird, but have you ever felt your grandfather’s spirit in your house?

PAUL (after ordering whitefish pâté): You guys have seen Heathers, right?
THE FAMILY: No.
PAUL: What are your lives!?

“Great pâté, but I gotta motor if I want to be ready for that funeral.”

THE GODFATHER: Get my godson another drink! (repeated line)

PAUL: Can you please be a little nicer to our waitress? Can’t you see that she’s been crying?
THE FATHER: Oh, I thought that was just her funny makeup. (which, in his defense, was red and yellow)

THE MOTHER: I was really afraid you were going to throw up in my car last night.
PAUL: Ha. Ha. Ha. I was fine, why would you think that?
THE MOTHER: Well, you weren’t exactly vertical.
PAUL: I was just really tired!

He Said/She Said: Our Weekend Away

Even apart, we’re together. Last weekend, we both had spontaneous and separately planned mini vacations to the same small resort town, Paul with his family from Thursday to Sunday and Anya for camping from Friday to Monday, because that’s just how melded our lives are. Welcome to He Said/She Said!

Vacationing with family is always...something...but this weekend we got extra lucky with the straight up crazy being thrown our way. No amount of texting “save me!” in the world really made this okay, but we’re reunited and it feels so good. Also, ready to publish the notable quotables, because why else do we do these things if not for blog fodder? Also, we love our families. Usually.

Weekends with the family rarely end well.

HIM

My grandma is almost 93. She is deaf, mostly blind, barely able to walk, diabetic, and slightly demented. She is thus unable to care for herself, but thanks to a heaping dose of Catholic guilt, she goes back and forth between my parents’ house and my mother’s sister’s house, desperately avoiding being tucked away in “the home.” Last week my mother made the three-hour trek to my aunt’s in Small Resort Town to drop my grandma off at my aunt’s. Upon realizing that my aunt’s husband (AKA Universally-Hated Uncle) was out of town, she decided to stay for a few extra days and convinced me to drive up and visit. My aunt has a child who is six and a hyperactive Hell fiend. My mother does not often swear, but upon my arrival, I was greeted with:

MOM: Between the young one and the old one, it’s a fucking zoo.

Which accurately set the tone for the trip. Highlights include fixing the lawnmower from the at-home tune up the ever unhandy Universally-Hated Uncle attempted, listening to my grandmother’s half-assed threats of suicide (remember the Catholicism), and an in-depth discussion about my mother’s first period at my super foreign great-grandmother’s house when she was ten. Further points of amusement/contention/sadness include:

GRANDMA: Paul, while we’re alone, I wanna ask you something.
ME: Okay?
GRANDMA: How come you don’t have a girlfriend yet? I’m not being nosy or anything, but you’re old enough now that you should be looking for one!
ME: Haha...
Extra great because for awhile Grandma thought that Paul was sowing his wild oats with both Anya and Swiss Miss. We are discernibly different to her based solely on our hair color.

GRANDMA: Where’s my purse!?
MOM: We’re looking for it!
GRANDMA: I don’t see anybody moving!

GRANDMA: I didn’t bring my comb; I look like a wild (adjective as noun) from Borneo.
AUNT: Ma, it’s a casino, nobody cares!

I will close with the exchange that I can only imagine occurs biweekly:

COUSIN: Do you still love me?
AUNT: I don’t like you.
COUSIN: But do you love me!?
AUNT: Not right now.

HER

I love my boyfriend and his family, but sometimes they kill me. The family is this insane combination of the nicest, most giving and generous people you’ll ever meet, and a pervasive and willful blindness of their white privilege that I have never before seen manifested in person. Not to mention what I would call problematic political and religious views. You’ll find yourself nodding away in sympathy as they’re telling a story, and then it takes a sudden political turn that veers into the “holy shit stop moving your head in agreement territory”. Worst case scenario, it’s fucking offensive, best case scenario there is some serious oddity going on. We decided to take a camping trip up to Small Resort Town to visit with the family, where a lovely time was had by all, minus, of course, these moments:

THE UNCLE: I guess she still wants to be a doctor. I think she should do radiology, being a radiologist is a good career for a girl that’s going to get married and have kids, you can just work Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

All you can hope for a daughter...

THE MOTHER: Oh yeah, their milkshakes are really good but I think they cook with some kind of weird oil, because last time I went there it was...not...good...digestively you know? So I would stick to the desserts.

THE FATHER: Well, we have running water in here, but it’s a limited amount, so just don’t use too much of it?
THE MOTHER: Otherwise we have to go get some and we really don’t want to do that, so maybe just use very little.
THE LIBERTARIAN: I mean, I could go get some more.
ANYA: I’ll just use the showers that are like twenty feet away?

THE UNCLE: For the past ten or fifteen years the crops haven’t been ready at quite the right time. It’s always something!
*ten minutes later*
THE UNCLE: Yeah, I mean look at this weather! Ha, global warming...right.
ANYA: *under her breath* it’s called goddamn climate change.

Tell it to this guy, asshole.

THE UNCLE: I can’t believe that they never really released his birth certificate, and it just took so long. I think we should impeach him with two weeks left in his term, just to send a message, you know? That we’re not taking this crap.

I close with an excerpt from a typical conversation:

THE MOTHER: This woman worked with me, and she was just not quite right. Like during her second wedding. Third wedding? Second wedding, third long term boyfriend? Anyway, she like couldn’t walk she was so drunk. She used to put alcohol in her coffee every morning, but she worked with kids! And her license was always getting taken away. But then I drove her sometimes because I wanted to be nice, but she was like addicted to working out. Once I was on the treadmill next to her, and her mother was having surgery and there she was at the gym! And tanning. All the men liked her, but I think she started doing cocaine too. Where was I going with this?

Vacation, All I Ever Wanted

We’re failing to bring you our usual Mad Men recap this week, because we’re finally getting the vacation we so richly deserve! (Not that we get paid time off). We’re jetting off to visit Soul Sister for the next week, but we did our homework ahead of time and have some excellent shit scheduled for you this week.

Forgive us for our lazy Monday, wish us safe travels, and stay tuned this week for our debate on Robb Stark and our usual random shit talking. We’ll get back to you on this episode posthaste!

We leave you with this gem to get you through:

-Anya and Paul