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Okay.

I’m feeling much more better, much more like myself and much less cadaverous so I gotta crank this up. In the immortal words of Captain Ron “Let’s light the fires and kick the tires”

First some back story on the crew of our happy little boat:

THE SCHEDULE- this is an inviolate foregone conclusion guaranteeing the relentless pursuit of the sameness that is the cornerstone, the bedrock of the good vacation. Don’t fuck with it.

Queen Princess Cruise Director– she is the wife of Captain Mo and she makes all decisions regarding everything about our vacation. Her vacation vision is all-knowing, all-encompassing, unforgivable. To cross her is to incur sizzling wrath. We kinda knew this going in, but the sheer scope of her reign isn’t realized until we are aboard and far out to sea. The SCHEDULE is her personal bible. Did I mention don’t fuck with it? I think I did.

Captain Mo– husband of the Queen, he’s the most laid back, self-deprecating person I’ve ever met. The problem is that his self-deprecation doesn’t stop him from taking the helm.

Captain Ron– best friend of Captain Mo (together they’re referred to as Captains MoRon- not my nickname for them). Captain Ron this time around is kinda whiny and sickly. He’s old- empathize, okay?

Hennifer– one time girlfriend of Captain Ron, this is her first trip to the BVI’s. She is chirpy and sweet and just wants everybody to get along and have fun- a noble task.

Miss Carol and Me– as galley and deck niggers, we’re relegated to cooking when told to and pulling whatever lines need to be pulled. It’s Ok and expected. Honest.

DAY ONE.

Miss Carol and me fly into Tortola. On the way to the hotel our taxi driver takes us to a market for beer and vodka and proudly points out its newness. In typical island fashion it’s incomplete- rusty rebar shooting out every whichaway, optimistically heralding completeness that probably won’t ever happen.

The rest of the crew has picked up the boat and sailed to Willy T’s where they’ll party. Miss Carol and me check into a hotel in Nanny Cay for the night and get nekkid and have a blast.

Vacations could, and can be, fun.

At least at first.

Against all the odds, the playful travel gods, and my own personal predilection for vacation disaster we somehow, some kinda way, made it home late last night.

During the innumerable flights home yesterday I had high hopes of writing about our adventures. Hell, I even made some notes. But sadly, that ain’t gonna happen. It’s gonna have to wait a coupla days.

I’m strung out.

The countless beers I drank are sitting in my bloated belly waiting patiently to be churned out by my overworked kidneys, my liver feels like a wet towel, and my last sober brain cell is flickering and glowing uncertainly.

I haven’t shaved or showered in eight days so I’m prickly like Brett Favre, itchy from the saltwater, and smell like a three dollar hooker on dollar night.

I’m totally wiped.

But ya know what?- it’s sooooo nice to be home.

So.

That’s it- time has spooled out faster than I could grab it and hold onto it and now I gotta go.

Whether I want to or not, vacation is upon me.

Bright blue sky and wildly gin clear sea have converged and are pulling at me, tugging relentlessly and mercilessly so I’m headin’ off to become some kinda lame  Pirate of the BVI’s.

But, and yet.

i know in the deepest core of me that soon, too soon, I’ll be the drunk guy hangin’ out, bein’ the turd tourist.

I know it. I know where I’m goin’ and I wish it was different, but it’s not.

So as I strap myself in, I gotta wonder why I EVER go on vacation. I mean, I love my little life, I love our little home, and I love our little beach. So why go? Why ever leave?

Oh, wait.

I remember.

It’s ’cause Miss Carol makes me.

Later.

It’s gotta suck to be Stieg Larsson.

Here you do all the work writing a crime thriller trilogy. You put in all the long hours draining your creativity, writing your fingers to the bone. You somehow find an agent who believes in you and gets your book sold to a publisher, you go through re-write after re-write honing what you’ve wrought to a fine edge, you go through all the rigamarole necessary to get a book published (which I know nothing about, but, I assume it’s a pain in the ass), and a few weeks before your first book is published you drop dead.

Shit.

I feel for him. I do.

Anyway.

The Girl Who Played With Fire is Steig’s second book in the Lisbeth Salander series and it’s great fun. Lisbeth Salander is more heroine and more dark recluse and more morally right in everything she does in this book.

It’s way cool until the very end.

Without giving anything away, there’s a six or ten page scene right at the end of the book that could’a, should’a just been tossed. The story wouldn’t have suffered and Mr. Credibility could’ve lived to fight for another day.

Whatever dude.

It’s fun and it’s fast and I can’t wait for The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets Nest.

Just sucks to be Stieg.

So, get this- the ever lingeringly, tantalizingly, just out of reachingly song that I’ve been scraping my mind about and making myself psycho about for the last week bobbed back to the surface on Saturday, grinning up at me.

Only this time I recognized it and having recognized it, shuddered.

Sadly and amazingly, the song that’s been tormenting me for the last week or so, the tune thats played it’s self out over and over again in my mind with maddeningly almost clarity is/was- get this- Missundaztood by Pink.

I kid you not.

When I heard it I was, like, whoops.

How’d that happen? Here I’d thought I’m, like, Mr. Really Cool Rock Guy- I don’t listen to that shit.

I found it while scrolling through my iPod. I’d like to say I heard on a radio station or in a bar or blaring from the speakers of a daytripper’s car cruising by, but I can’t. It was on one of my playlists.

Dammit.

So. I ran upstairs and put on my panties and squealed like a little girl, and then I listened to it and it wasn’t nearly as good as my fragmented memory and I kept cutting it with REAL rock-and-roll so’s not to become a total pussy.

But, yeah. Missundaztood. Pink.

Jesus.

What’s happening to me?

She is cute, though.

Okay, let me try this again.

I realize now that I sounded pretty whiney in my last post about going on vacation and that maybe I hadn’t made myself and my thoughts clear.

If I see one more Waaah e-mail I’m gonna do what Dooce does, or used to do, and print it out and run it over with MR.GREENE.

I mean it.

Deep breath.

Ok. I’m lucky. I’ll be the first to admit it. Miss Carol and me aren’t rich, but we’re not poor either. We work hard and try and save and sometimes we can afford a vacation.

This is one of those years. We haven’t done a trip like this in seven years. We’ve been making payments for the last eight months leading up to vacation time. It’s not taken lightly.

But.

Unfortunately for Miss Carol, who loves travel, I’m really happy in our little life here at home. Sure, I bitch and moan about stuff, but overall?, I’m lucky to be living the life I live and I know it and I don’t mind just stayin’ put. I’m perfectly happy to watch Anthony Bourdain visit places I’ll never visit and eat foods I’ll never eat.

Hey. Living vicariously ain’t  but so bad.

And as vacation looms over me, it’s dark wings gently enveloping, I can’t help but already yearn for the things I’ll miss while we’re gone- ya know- like the twice daily walks with Cutter and Tug yanking me every which-a-way, and the endless work in the endlessly stifling heat, and maybe even, the Tourons.

So, ok, maybe I’m a retard.

But I’m a really happy and happy-to-stay-at-home retard and really, that was the only point I was trying to make.

OK?

Don’t make me run over your e-mail, bitches.

Miss Carol’s talked me into another vacation.

We’re gonna be going to the BVI’s and bareboat charter a big ‘ole catamaran and sail around and tan and drink and try not to be touron turds.

I’m sure it’ll be fun. I’m pretty sure I need a vacation. I’m sure it’s gonna be lots of stuff.

But.

I’m also sure I don’t want to go.

There. I said it.

I don’t want to go. It’s not the trip. It’s not the friends we’re goin’ with. It’s not like I won’t love the sun and the bikini’s.

It’s me.

I hate leaving.

I’m convinced each time we fly out that this time will be the last. That there ain’t no way I’m coming back. That the dog’sll just sit and wait, staring out the window and endlessly wonder where we went and why we didn’t come back.

So.

In the lead up, not that it helps, while I walk ’em I talk to ’em and tell ’em we’ll be back, that it’s just a week and don’t worry and then I’ll kiss Cutter and Tug goodbye and gaze up at our house wistfully and wonder why I have to leave.

And then I’ll head out.

It’s the first day of summer and just like last year and the year before we went from winter right into summer. From chilly and damp to hot and humid.

Way hot.

And workin’ outside in it is a lot like havin’ a hammer beatin’ down on you shattering your thoughts into splintering shards that scatter every which away.

Which’ll hopefully explain this post-

Firstly. The song is gone. It tucked it’s tail and crawled up somewhere in the dark and dead recesses of my brain, gave me the finger, and just disappeared.

I think I’ll miss it, for what it’s worth.

Secondly. We watched The Hurt Locker on Saturday. Miss Carol and me are really bad about keeping current with movies and even when we get them it takes weeks for us to watch ’em. But watch them we do.

And honestly? The Hurt Locker pissed me off. It made me wonder why the FUCK we’re over there throwing our kids up against the stone wall that is Iraq and, dare I say it?, the muslim religion? Whether you are for or against the “war”, get it and watch it. It made my poor heat splattered brain think.

Thirdly. Miss Carol and me spent the weekend up on the beach letting the heat hammer pound us into sunburnt, toasty, mind dead muffins.

So maybe that’s where the song went.

And maybe that’s what ticked me off about the movie.

And maybe that’s what made this post so disjointed- just little bits and pieces of nothing.

Maybe it’s the heat.

Or maybe it’s me.

Boy howdy, life is good.

Real good.

I’ve wanted one of these babies ever since I saw them at a boat show, like, four years ago.

It’s the new Hobie Adventure Island trimaran. It’s lightweight. It’s way cool and way expensive which is why I wouldn’t buy one. Four grand for a toy was not passing Miss Carol’s fun test.

So I started saving, putting away a little money here and little money there, thinking that if I bought one from saved funds it’d be different from just going out and buying one.

I was close three times. The first time I had $3500 saved and Miss Carol wanted the hot tub. Then I had $2500 and we needed it for bills. Then I had about $800 and had just about given up for this year when I did some work for an older, retired couple and noticed they had one under their house.

I asked them how they liked it and they told me they’d sell it to me for $1500. I asked if they’d accept $1100 and I’d do their work for free and they said yes and now I got me one.

Hobie calls it a sailing kayak but I call it a ton of fun and I think I’m gonna call her Skeeter.

Happy Birthday and Merry Christmas to me.

(And no, I STILL have not figured out what the song is running through my brain- it’s making me mental)

Ever had a song running through your head, chewing at you, and you can’t think of the title or even the artist so you’re stuck with the endless loop of it trippin’ around in your head?

That’s where I’m at.

I’ve got this song coursing through me. I can hear it crystal clear in my head and I want to download it and listen to it ’til the end of time but I can’t ’cause it’s right there, just beyond my grasping memory.

I know it’s a chick singing and I know it’s a pop tune and I know I want it desperately enough to try and hum it to Miss Carol while I was making dinner tonight in the hopes she’d recognize the song and save me.

Instead, she punched me and told me to stop making the funny noises.

Fuck.