Wake up with a smile

I woke up this morning really angry. Early, and angry. This is not a good way to wake up, especially if you are me, who tends to run on the grumpy side of waking up as a general rule. (Tim is laughing now, I’m sure, as he knows exactly how grumpy I can be in the morning.

First off, I’m stressed about work stuff, just like every month around deadline time. But the kicker this morning was that I was incredibly angry about something family-related. Here it was, 6 a.m., and I was thinking about all the mean stuff I should say come Thanksgiving. Then I realized how completely sad it was that I was so angry that early in the morning over some silly thing that my stepmother told me this past weekend.

So I got my butt out of bed and went for a run. And I’ve been hobbling around and coughing up phlegm all day as a result. Super!

Anyway, Labor Day weekend was just full of new experiences. We went to Branson, which I’m sure you know is the “Live Music Capital of the World” (if you like that kind of music). Oh, the sarcasm and irony that veritably oozed from our pores as we drove around that town. We even disgusted ourselves with our unending cynicism!

I had to physically restrain myself from taking photos of some of the best sights: the live bait vending machine, the Yakov Smirnoff billboards, the “grand theaters” that were mostly metal warehouses with fancy facades, and all of the teeny-tiny motels along Branson’s strip, with their fabulous names and postage-stamp-size swimming pools.

No, we didn’t see any shows. Yes, we did eat at one of the worst Japanese steakhouses ever. Shogun! Where our sushi’s wasabi makes your nose hairs curl!

Auggie’s favorite thing all weekend was our visit to the trout hatchery. He is completely enamored of fish of all kinds. (Finding Nemo? Seen it twice. Mostly.) We swam in our resort’s postage-stamp-size pool, which was super-fun, as Auggie was having the best time counting to three and “jumping” into our arms in the water. Mostly, we just pulled him in on “three.” I’m telling you, the kid’s a natural swimmer.

On Sunday, we ended up at this lame little kiddie-ride place and Auggie was asking to ride the train ride. I was hemming and hawing about whether or not he would actually sit through the entire ride by himself, and Tim was just like, ‘Buy him a ticket. He’ll be fine.’ And he totally was. In fact, he was so fine, when the girl running the thing unbuckled his seat belt at the end of the ride, he immediately rebuckled it, refusing to get off. So I bought him another ticket. Needless to say, we have about 20 minutes of the most boring vacation video ever of Auggie riding in circles on this little choo-choo train, but it’s gold to us. By the time we were dragging Auggie away from the place, we were already brainstorming soundtrack ideas. Elvis’ “Mystery Train”? Yes, I think so.

The ride home on Monday was enough to make me swear off road trips on Labor Day for the rest of my life. It was completely miserable. Rain, traffic, jams, that point when you’re two hours away from home and you just want to cry because you were supposed to be two hours from home, like, two hours ago…

And then we were home. Sweet, sweet home.