Countdown to Vacation

The convening of glad faces and shared DNA is almost upon us.

It can't come soon enough. I am so ready.

The fun part is that middlesisguy is here early and she and mrfrenchieguy are using our house as home base. We went to breakfast and some estate sales yesterday. Today we flopped about like flannel-covered seals in our jammies and then dressed and went for brunch at the old Ford plant.

The sun is setting, mrguy is playing jazz almost imperceptibly, and it's pretty darned cozy.

So vacation is on its way and I just finished sending the last bit of housekeeping (emails re: kitchen and bedroom schedules) to the family. I debated about clarifying one item further. Then I decided not to. Then I realized that I forgot to take the word "clarification" out of the subject line.

Then mrguy teased me about this. Then I really had to clarify.

+++++++

O.K.

If you must know, the clarification was going to be about the email that Mom and I sent last week about bringing a beach towel and swimsuit for the hot tub.

SOME people have interpreted this as an edict from Mom that THERE WILL BE NO NAKEDNESS TOLERATED IN THE HOT TUB.

Hippies!

This is not the case. Mom asked me to remind you to bring beach towels. I put in the part about swimsuits because:

a) My days of public nudity are far behind me
b) I like to wear a swimsuit and I always forget there's a hot tub
c) I'm descended from old mrguy, who often forgot to bring his swim trunks when traveling to hot places
d) Therefore I, also, often forget my swimsuit. Maybe you do too.

MAYBE I WAS TRYING TO BE HELPFUL!!

I'm pretty sure that Mom doesn't care if you're naked in the hot tub. She's seen it, you know. If this nudity problem of yours is a daytime choice, everyone on the Russian River will see it, too. If it's a nighttime choice, your audience will be smaller. I leave it up to you.

Love,

mrsguy

PS [Adult nephew], I can hear you laughing. Stop that.

Princess Charlene

According to news reports this week, Princess Charlene of Monaco is not a runaway bride, made miserable by her marriage to loathesome Prince Albert.

She just has Bitchy Resting Face.

They didn't say that. I did.

I have long felt sorry for this poor woman. She never seems to look happy in photographs. People often compare her to Princess Diana, who made her misery abundantly clear in every photo opportunity at the end of her marriage to Prince Charles. 

But is it just BRF?

I leave it to you to decide.

Communing With Nature

Took a walk today with mrsguy and our neighbors. It's easy to forget that many acres of parkland are a two minute walk away. 

The crew dragged me hither and yon, which was awesome. Except for some tree rash (it kept me from sliding down a hill), I came away unscathed.

His & Hers

Great Uncle Joe, Updated

A few moments ago, the ice cream truck drove past, playing Camptown Races.

This reminds me that I wanted to update the story about Uncle Joe, the spitting Vaudevillian that I shared a few months ago.

When last I mentioned him, I declared that I'd try to pursue his story further. I kept hitting dead ends until I began researching Uncle Matt. Pop's story about Matt was that he was a concessionaire at the Finger Lakes, and that he might have bootlegged a bit. The bootlegging seems a bit exaggerated (although I found a rumor in print that his famous lemonade may have been spiked), but he did work the finger lakes as a well-known hot dog vendor.

In conjunction with Matt I found Joe. Turns out that he sometimes worked the summer season with his brother when he wasn't working elsewhere as a blackface minstrel. Ouch. You come here as an immigrant and your choice in life is to make fun of other people on stage?

So there you go. Knowing what I know now, I've been able to find traces of Joe here and there -- lamenting the fact that minstrelsy was falling out of fashion in New York in the early 1920s. Eventually he moved to Florida, where that form of entertainment continued to be popular. He ran a novelty amusement business, and I cringe to think what it might have consisted of.