Tomorrow morning, we’re going to Florida for Grandma Judy’s wedding. My mom’s been really stressed about it, so I tried to help out as much as I could. For instance, I packed my own suitcase, and when I realized I didn’t have enough clean socks for the trip, I did a load of laundry for myself.
I also threw my suit in there—it smelled a little musty because I haven’t worn it since my great-aunt Sophie’s funeral last year. It was a little wrinkly coming out of the dryer, but I’m sure if I hang it up in Florida, it’ll be fine.
I bet my mom’ll be really impressed with how self-sufficient I am.
So we flew down to Florida this morning. I got in trouble on the airplane because I was playing on my GamePort XL with my headphones on, and didn’t hear them telling us to shut off all our electronic devices. The flight attendant came over and said, “You need to shut that off! It’s very dangerous to have it on during takeoff!” And all I could think is, If it’s so dangerous, why on earth would you ever let someone bring one of these on a plane?
It’s nice to be here, though. We drove past a lot of restaurants with signs for “Early Bird Specials,” which is a weird thing for a restaurant to advertise, because the main thing I know about an early bird is, it eats a worm.
Anyway, we stopped by Grandma Judy’s retirement home to say hello, and she seemed really happy to see us. Her fiancé, William, was there, and some of his family, and Grandma Judy pointed to one little girl and said to Sophie, “William has a granddaughter, too! She’s four years old, and her name is Rose, and she’s also going to be a flower girl!” And Sophie said, “What do you mean? You can’t have two flower girls!” And Grandma Judy said, “Of course you can! And won’t it be fun to share?” And Sophie looked at Rose and mumbled, “She’s much cuter than me. No one’s even gonna notice me.” And then she didn’t talk for the rest of the afternoon. I realized after a little while that she was giving Grandma Judy the silent treatment, but Grandma Judy was too busy talking about her wedding planning to notice. It was actually kind of nice.
Well, this morning, Sophie woke up in a better mood than she was in yesterday. She came down to breakfast and said, “I shouldn’t be complaining so much. Tomorrow is Grandma Judy’s day, and I just want her to be happy.” And my mom said, “That’s really sweet. You should tell her that.” And Sophie said, “Besides, Grandma Judy doesn’t have that many days left.” And my mom said, “Leave out that last part.”
Meanwhile, the rest of my dad’s side of the family arrived for the wedding. My uncle Kevin and his partner Steven drove in together around lunchtime, and my aunt Stacy showed up tonight with my cousins Scott, Derek, and Rick. I don’t like my cousins—they’re triplets, and sixteen, and have buzz cuts, and are kind of jerks. (A few years ago, they came to visit us, and they sneaked into my room when I was sleeping and wrote BUTT on my face. Which would be bad enough, but they used permanent marker, and it wouldn’t come off. So I added ON to it, so it said BUTTON. It didn’t make sense, but I figured it was better to walk around with BUTTON on my head than BUTT.)
Anyway, I was hoping they’d forgotten, but the first thing they said when they saw me was, “Hey, Buttonhead!”
I hate them so much.
Today was Grandma Judy’s wedding. It got off to a pretty lousy start: I put on my suit for the wedding, and it didn’t really fit right.
Sophie saw me try it on, and she said, “You look like a sausage.” Which was sort of true.
And my mom said, “What did you do to your suit?” And I said, “Nothing! All I did was wash it!” And she sort of turned white and said, “You washed a wool suit?” And before I could answer, she just sighed and said, “Well, we don’t have time to get you a new suit. Go put on another pair of pants, at least, and we’ll go to the wedding.” And I said, “But I don’t have another pair of pants. All I brought were shorts.” And my mom looked at my dad, and he said, “Um, yeah, me too.” And my mom said, “Am I the only one who brought more than one pair of pants on this trip?”
So that’s how I wound up going to my grandmother’s wedding wearing a pair of my mom’s pants. They were tan, and made out of a silky material, and they didn’t have any pockets and fit sort of funny. I complained, but my mom said, “Honey, no one will even notice. From a distance, they look just like men’s pants.”
And I believed her. Right up until I walked into the wedding and one of my cousins shouted, “Hey! Buttonhead’s wearing ladypants!” And then they all high-fived.
They called me “Ladypants” for the rest of the day. I miss “Buttonhead” already.
Aside from that, it was a very nice wedding. Sophie did a good job as the flower girl, although she did seem to throw a lot of the petals directly into Rose’s face.
At the end of the night, we looked over and saw Grandma Judy, dancing cheek-to-cheek with William. They looked really happy—even my mom thought so. She turned to my dad and said, “Wow. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her this happy.” And my dad said, “Yeah. It’s sweet, isn’t it?” And then we went over to say good night, and we realized that they weren’t dancing cheek-to-cheek—Grandma Judy was whispering in William’s ear that he was dancing terribly, and that he should just let her lead. And my mom said, “OK, yeah, that’s more like it.” And my dad said, “Yup.”
We’re finally home from Florida. I’m glad to be home—it wasn’t a fun trip back. I couldn’t play on my GamePort, because the woman next to me was a very nervous flyer, and she was grabbing on to my hand for the whole flight.
I think it’s weird that there aren’t any holidays in August. Every other month has at least one, and February has three, probably because February sucks so much that’s the only way to get through it. It’s like, “Hey, it’s cold and dark and depressing, but here’s a groundhog! And presidents! And valentines!”
If I ever get to have a holiday named after myself, I’m going to have it happen in August. I know that usually, a holiday goes near the birthday of whoever it’s honoring, and my birthday’s in March. But I’m going to call it “Tad’s Birthday (Observed).”
So that’s settled. Now I just need to do something that’s worth getting a holiday named after me.
The Summer Olympics are on right now. My dad and I just spent an hour watching a shot-put competition. The Olympics are weird—it’s like, for two weeks every four years, everyone in the country has this mass delusion that stuff like track-and-field is really, really interesting, and then we all recover and go back to normal.
Still, I did figure out something that’d make me far more likely to watch shot-put competitions: What if, instead of throwing a sixteen-pound metal ball with their bare hands, the competitors had to catch one with their bare hands? I’d watch that any day of the week.
Awesome news! The people who live behind us, the Warrens, are going on vacation for the weekend, and they hired me to watch their dog, Virginia Woof! I just have to go over and feed her and take her for a walk every day, and they’ll pay me $20!
Bad news: I took Virginia Woof for her first walk today, and a police officer stopped me and told me I had to curb my dog. And I said, “You mean, like, walk her along the curb? That seems dangerous.” And he said, “No. I mean you have to pick up her poop.” And I said, “With my bare hands?” And he said, “No. You should have a plastic bag with you, or a newspaper, or something.” And I said, “Oh. I don’t have anything with me.” And he handed me a piece of paper, which seemed nice of him, until I realized it was a ticket for not picking up the dog’s poop. It’s a $25 ticket. So I’m going to lose money on this whole dog-sitting thing.
Plus, apparently, I’m going to need to handle poop, which is just gross.
If you think about it, firemen shouldn’t be called firemen. Arsonists should be called firemen. Firemen should be called antifiremen or water-men or fire-spraying-with-a-hose-guys.
So today, my family had a cookout on the patio. And my burger was kind of burned and I pointed it out as nicely as I could by saying, “Are you sure this isn’t just a piece of charcoal?” And at the same time, Sophie was poking at her potato salad, and said, “I’m trying to find the potatoes in all this mayonnaise. It’s like a ghost had diarrhea.”
And my mom and dad both looked at us, and my mom said, “Well, your dad and I worked really hard to make dinner tonight, but I guess it’s not up to your standards. So, tell you what: for the next week, you two are in charge of cooking dinner.” And Sophie said, “What?” And I said, “But we’re on vacation!” And my mom said, “Well, great! That means you’ll have plenty of time to plan menus and cook. I’ll take you to the store tomorrow, and starting Monday, you two can cook for the whole week.” And then she went back into the kitchen to get the brownies she’d made for dessert. Which were a little dry, but it didn’t seem like a good time to mention that.
Anyway, I think my parents are trying to show us that it’s harder than it looks, but I bet Sophie and I can prove them wrong. I’ve gone online and found a bunch of recipes—we’re gonna have an awesome week of dinners.
So tonight, Sophie and I made dinner for the first time, and we learned a lot. For instance: Did you know that a chicken’s heart and liver and neck are called giblets?
And that if you buy a whole chicken, the giblets can be found in a plastic bag inside the chicken?
And that if you roast the chicken without removing the giblets, you’ll find a mess of melted plastic and chicken organs inside it when you cut it open?
And that if that happens, your parents will insist that you throw the chicken away?
And that even if they made you throw the chicken away, your parents might still insist that cooking dinner is your responsibility?
And that if you can’t find anything else to cook, your whole family might wind up having PB&J sandwiches for dinner?
Well, they are, they can, it will, they did, they might, and we did.
Tonight, Sophie and I tried making spaghetti and meatballs. But we both found handling the ground meat kind of gross, and we didn’t have a lot of time, so Sophie said, “Instead of making lots of little meatballs, why don’t we just make four big ones, one for each of us?” Which seemed like a really good idea, right up until we served dinner and discovered that big meatballs don’t cook all the way through, so every meatball was raw in the middle.
They were like Everlasting Gobstoppers of salmonella. Anyway. We had PB&J again.
Every day, I learn something new about cooking. Apparently, when a recipe says “two tsp salt,” that means two teaspoons, and not two tablespoons.
Tried making something simple: soup. Didn’t put the lid on the blender right. Spent most of tonight scrubbing butternut squash off the kitchen walls. We’re running low on PB&J now.
So tonight, Sophie and I made cheeseburgers. And they looked awesome, right up until I realized she’d accidentally left the plastic wrapping on the cheese slices. My parents came outside and saw the plastic-covered burgers, and my mom said, “That’s it. I give up. I can’t eat PB and J again.” And my dad called for a pizza, and my mom said, “I hope you kids have learned your lesson from this.” And Sophie said, “What lesson was this supposed to teach us?” And my mom said, “I don’t even remember. But I hope you learned it, because I don’t want to ever go through another week like this one.”
They say that whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, but that doesn’t seem right, because wouldn’t elderly people—the people who’ve gone the longest without being killed—be crazy super strong?
It’s weird that, if you leave a grape out in the sun for long enough, it’ll turn into a raisin, but if you leave a banana out in the sun, all that’ll happen is it’ll become a brown, sticky mess and your dad will yell at you for attracting ants to the back patio.
My mom’s mad at Sophie and me. We all got kicked out of Bed Bath & Beyond today, but it’s not really our fault. The sign very clearly said “Throw Pillows.”
I was watching a TV special today about astronauts, and now all I can think about is how disgusting it would be to have a runny nose in zero gravity.
If you study the planet Uranus, you probably never tell people what you study without putting the words the planet in front of it.
I bet that when elephants laugh so hard that water comes out of their nose, it’s no big deal.