Code Brown

The whole process of a vacation is just miserable. Anyone who states differently is lying.

 
Parallel to woman who state that they loved being pregnant. I firmly believe that’s a fib too. Ever notice how they always say that after it’s done and over with? I’m sure I will be able to prove or disprove this theory, soon.
 
Between packing, catching a flight, sleeping on a trampoline, oops, I mean a bed, shopping for all the things you forgot to pack even though you made a list… while watching Idol, Harry, Idol, Harry …I realize where I went wrong with that one. Catching a flight home, getting your car out of lot B after a blizzard blew through the state the length of your vacation and your husband didn’t listen to you when you said park in the garage, unpacking…
 
I have a hand cramp. I mean that’s so much work. I am exhausted reliving it.
 
Because of getaway pre gaming, vacation fouls and post-game shenanigans I took to a new method for our short four day retreat to Florida. We were going away for my husband’s thirtieth and our friends ‘Valentine’s Day Wedding Feast Friday Extravaganza of All Stars’. If you imagined me saying all that in one breath you did good. 
 
For packing purposes I had a make believe list. It was imaginary because I started it: ‘underwear’, and then was completely blindsided by Harry Connick Jr and his baby blues on American Idol. If anyone knows me they will know I heart bubble him over rainbows to lazy Sunday afternoons. Due to this distraction I ended up packed in literally minutes prior to the flight. Method one: I just threw shit in the suitcase. Let’s go.  It was liberating. In the moment of course, when we actually landed and had to do things I felt very naked and afraid.  (If you never watched that show you should, it’s a riot.)
 
Typically, I pack for a month’s time when in reality we will be gone a week or less and I never need 75% of things I bring. This vacation I ended up needing all the 75% I didn’t bring.
 
Eddie on the other hand brought a wardrobe to last him a lunar phase. I probably ended up wearing half of his stuff. Did you really need to know that? I don’t know. I also have a stuffed animal of Donkey from Shrek and the Unicorn from Despicable Me. I mean if we are sharing enigmas. They should invent a ‘bring your stuffed animal to work’ day.
 
I absolutely loathe flying. I do not understand how a plane stays in the air. Eddie keeps telling me “..the jets, the jets do, planes have jet engines Hillary.” That means nothing to me. Eddie does this thing, he repeats points over and over again to me, and I stare back blankly. No matter how many times you say the same thing Eddie it’s not going to register. I need more than that. I need a picture diagram, some Dane Cook exaggerations, and cake.  I have seen a jet powered out house fly across a race track but it never actually lifted off the ground. So them jets; scam.
 
Because the thought of nothing keeping the plane in the air was so overwhelming, also due to a week before broadcasts of FBI issues with a flight from Bradley to Orlando on Jet Blue with no account. Either reason, for the first time I took advantage of the airport bar, on Eddie, since he had no better explanation of flying for me. This would be method two: airport alcohol. Now, I got pretty toasted, bare in mind the bar out looked into a valley of taking off and landing planes, adding fuel to my Final Destination flashbacks. Oh Devon, you were something once.
 
Our airline was JetBlue; it was our first time with these rude flight attendants. Also note we were not seated together. Automatic airline fail. When I fly who ever I am sitting next to never enjoys their flight. It’s for the good of the plane just to put me next to Eddie…
Thank goodness Jet Blue has a television to watch. I never knew. Jet Blue also happens to be very roomy. I am not going to lie I was very impressed. You even got better snacks.
 
Still, I didn’t know much of this upon sitting, so my first words to my plane pal: “If I pass out on you just push me to the other side.” She didn’t find it at all humorous. Actually, she put her head phones in for the rest of the flight.
 
Whatever unafraid flying pundit. I didn’t need you in my life anyway because I had Doritos. Two bags!!! And a TV. And my own headphones.  And triple axel lutz toe loops. #Olympics2014
 
Another thing we avoided to attempt to have a carefree vacation was a place to stay upon landing.
We landed in Orlando around 10PM; who wants to pay for a night somewhere to sleep? Method three: living by the seat of our pants. We are going to sell our oats for the last few hours of Eddie’s twenties and for the first few hours of Eddie’s thirties to warn his older self that his younger self will always be there to haunt him.
 
Then after our awesome pep talk, meeting said bride and groom at the airport by chance which enabled us to hear their awesome pep talk, then our pep talk to the pep talk, we are going to find a cheap ass motel. Eddie is too old now and this rent-a-car is so uncomfortable. Whose poor idea was it to not book a hotel? Eddie’s version twenty nine point nine, that’s who.
 
I am not going to bore you with diet fails, bad weather, bathroom beetles, wardrobe fails and extinct service… in a 4 point almost magnificent 5 star hotel.
 
Let me bring you to the day, the genuine purpose this vacation even happened. Our friends of feast we present to you: Eric and Stephanie. To be the Andersons. You see we took the red pill. We took this pill to join these two on one of the best days of their life.
 
One of. Their best days.
 
In reality their best day was when they got their dog Hugo. Who happens to look like a lamb?  Lamb dog. Super-secret alias Lamb Chop. No really, I will show you:
 

It’s perfect honestly since Charlie is Hugo a.k.a Lamb Chops mate, although Charlie looks nothing like the Charley Horse puppet, I don’t think.  I am not sure. I am in denial about how stupid this puppet looks.

Wow I got completely off task there.

We came to this quaint St Augustine to watch our good friends join hands in marriage.

 

In which we actually don’t know if their hands were joined.

 

Sadly we didn’t get to see this epic moment. Why you ask, or didn’t ask?

 

We went down to, the not very sunny at the time of our arrival, state of Florida with a friend and her husband. This friend we shall refer to as, ‘Code Brown’, as to not embarrass her when I blog the reception. Anyway, well I don’t want to name names or anything like that but ‘Code Brown’ brought her big raincloud of trouble with her.

 

It started earlier that Friday morning after we all went out to breakfast, her supernatural power to make everything fall apart around her killed the gas gage in her upgraded Mustang rental. On a highway. On a coastal highway. Lacking any gas station.

 

Whatever, that was the least of our worries that day. We survived; Eddie and I had a downgraded car that actually worked for getting place to place. As long as we didn’t need to stay the night in it we were all set.

 

We decided we would carpool with Code Brown and husband that way only one of us had to be coherent when it was go time to get us back to the resort.

 

The wedding was at 4:00 PM. It was about a forty minute drive. We told Code Brown to meet us in the lobby at 3:00 PM sharp.

 

Normal weddings typically run a little behind therefore you may be questioning our tight time table that we had created. You see Eric, our groom, who models himself off the late Steve Jobs, makes highlighted spread sheet time tables on the regular that shall never be unfollowed. I am one hundred percent sure this wedding started at 3:59:59PM per neon green notation.

 

Thus Code Brown, the notorious plan breaker, be downstairs at 3:00 PM. Not to be confused with any other time stamp in that hour.

 

3:09 PM.

 

Where is the dream team? Still in their room. Their safe is stuck. It won’t open. They need their check book. They need their checkbook to give the bride and groom some money. They need this check for another lamb dog.

 

3:14 PM.

 

They called an engineer. I don’t kid. LOL. Don’t text me LOL, this is not funny.

 

3:17 PM.

 

Fuck the check book, come down stairs now, they don’t need another damn sheep dog. Lamb.

And leave Eeyore’s shadow with your jammed safe. We don’t need any more of that either.

 

3:19 PM.

 

Code brown in gold sequins and all, husband in tow, finally piles in so we can leave.

We all may be very over dressed for this wedding that we will never make it too.

 

Magically not even ten minutes into the ride Eddie and husbands GPS tells us we are maybe fifteen minutes away. Wow, somehow we shaved time off without even trying. With this new found knowledge it is decided we need to stop at an ATM to get cash since the check book didn’t pan out. Hugo really needs a sister. (By the way that poor engineer is probably still trying to figure out where he is needed.)

 

We find an ATM.

 

Let me break this down for you. There was a square building that represented some second hand bank. Around this bank was a one lane moat that at some point had a drive up window that was closed and an ATM.

 

 

As we rounded the square nearing the ATM low and behold we had a senior attempting to … well we really have no idea what he was doing. It took him damn forever; we are talking sixteen slow drives around the trench. If we had to do any more rounds we would have probably needed a tune up, tire change, and some red bull. I mean good Christ Code Brown we had a time frame. It’s always her fault.

A sun glare and wind change later we get out of the ATM situation and reach our destination on left.

 

Or is it across the street on right.

 

Nope, let’s check back to the left.

 

Why is the correct address a bungalow versus castle?

 

This can’t be right.

 

Let’s go back to the right.

 

We were promised castles, noble steeds, cotton candy, pixie dust, balloons…

 

Oh, hey there mailman, its ten minutes to 4:00PM, we have a wedding to go to, let’s make this quick. Wait, we are lost? Say it isn’t so postman. You tell us we are on the wrong island. There is more than one island named Florida? Florida isn’t an island.

 

Mailman you’re talking in alarming circles, STOP PANICKING, that’s my job, tell us where we need to go, hello, shush, if you could just give us directions instead of echoing we are at the wrong place we can get there on time, even though you are telling us we are twenty minutes and two bridges away. I just can’t deal.

 

Eddie just drive, he’s blacking out in horror.

 

Let’s recalculate.

 

Since the postal service was of no help we then are trying to get a hold of a wedding guest, the groom, the castle owner. Anyone? Bueller.

 

But our irrational groom had put a no cell phone rule in place. I am not talking no pictures please or keep your phones on quiet. I am talking leave your phones in the car because I don’t want them in my castle regulation.

 

Which would have been understandable if we were in the castle but we were not; so we were using these amazing tools Steve Jobs invented banned from the Apple devotee wedding, make sense, nope.

 

Just sit right back

And you'll hear a tale

A tale of a fateful trip,

That started from this tropic town,

Aboard this tiny car rental.

The mate was a mighty drivin' man,

The Skipper brave and sure,

Four passengers set a GPS that day,

For a forty minute tour,

A forty minute tour.

 

Gold sequin started getting rough,

The tiny car was tossed.

If not for the courage of the fearless gang

The Nissan would be lost.

The Nissan would be lost.

 

The coach set ground on the shore

Of this uncharted desert isle

With Eddie Hohl,

The Siri too.

The millionaire

And his wife,

The movie star,

The mail man and Mary Ann?

Here on St Augustine Isle.

 

So this is the tale of our castaways,

They're here for a long, long time.

They'll have to make the best of things

Because they are fucking lost.

 

We finally make it to the castle, not bad timing, it’s about nine minutes after four. If the ceremony actually ran late we would have seen the whole thing. You would think we are in the clear.

 

Only not really. This castle was locked down like Normandy. Was Normandy locked down?

No, Invasion of Normandy, I lied, it was the opposite of Normandy. Basically we couldn’t get in. A Trojan horse couldn’t even make it into these castle grounds. This lockdown spanned time periods. To live in my brain is an adventure.

 

Remember how I told you we went circles around some thrift shop bank?

 

Now we were circling this fortress trying to find a way in, a gate that wasn’t locked, an usher. Anything.

 

With each circle Eddie’s anger increased, my depression deepened, Code Brown’s belief we still had time stayed on Mr. Rogers Trolley and husband probably wished he had a work thing avoiding this whole trip all together.

 

It was now about twenty after four and in one of our drive bys we saw people. Eddie flew into one of the dirt drives with a sand storm in his wake. He jumped out of the car and started to take out all his pent up frustrations of the last hour and twenty minutes out on the gate. I mean we flew all the way down here for this ceremony. One in which the bride and groom wrote their own vows about clowns and iPhones.

 

Eddie finally busted the gate open, we weren’t exactly quiet… the wedding guests leaving the castle were staring at us like we were circus extras Stephanie always wanted while we boorishly drove through the broken gate almost running over some man in a … bomber outfit? The guy was covered from top to bottom in overall puffy clothing. Crazy hair everywhere. He belonged to the mountains.

 

A few of our friends in the receiving line were giggling at us, waving, like this was some ambitious joke.

You’ve been PUNKED, you missed nothing, and this was all just a big put-on. Come join us.

 

What we caught of the ceremony was the absolutely gorgeous bride Stephanie and the brilliant groom Eric leaving their beautiful castle as happy as two newlyweds should be. It will go downhill with the second dog though.

 

I'm just joshin' ya.

 

To be continued…