Cape Cod Vacation Journal
Sunday, August 15, 2010

While I’m writing this on Sunday, our vacation really started on Friday, once we got over the stress of the Check Engine Light and the accompanying fireworks of Cruise, Brake and Vehicle Dynamics Control, which reared their ugly heads on Thursday afternoon on the way back from the Conference Swimming Finals. A little side note – seven year-old Katie McAteer was the first alternate for the Westwood 10 and under freestyle relay team, so she had to swim a fifty (not her customary twenty-five), including a flip turn (never before busted out in public) in front of the several hundred spectators at the meet. The team, with Katie in the second leg, finished only six seconds past their qualifying time. But I digress.

The presence of the Check Engine light was a nice blood pressure raiser for me. It turned out to be nothing – I need a new gas cap – but it forced us to head out of the house at 7:30 on Friday morning for a trip to Subaru of Stamford rather than having a nice leisurely packing morning en route to our 10:30 planned departure. All’s well that ends well, I guess.

We stayed in Plymouth on Friday, swimming at my sister’s pool, playing with cousins and cooking out. On Saturday, we had a veritable cousin fest, missing only Mallory and Hannah, as Christine and her family and Maureen and Gaby converged on Mary Katherine’s house for a day of frolicking. We boogied around 4:00, hoping to miss a lot of the Cape traffic, and we pretty much did.

I was happily surprised that our house is not located where I thought it was, off Crowell Road, but is instead right next to Pate’s restaurant and the New England Pizza House, and just across the street from a fish market and the Liquor Locker, an appellation featuring both alliteration and consonance (I know how much you like poetic sound devices, Lebron). After a delayed start and a heckuva lot of Connecticut traffic, Kathy finally found her way here at 7:15ish, and we were able to walk down to the pizza joint (New England Pizza House) for chow.

Kate and Emma and I were happy that we were able to spend the bulk of the day fun-having in Plymouth rather than doing all that getting-to-know-the-place-but-not-actually-doing-anything stage of one’s arrival in a new vacation destination.

This morning, there was a teensy tiny incident that might keep us from the beach, however, as Kate took a pretty big spill on her scooter and scraped up her right side from eye to ankle. Mommy healed her right up with a few gallons of Neosporin, but we may have to seek plans other than beaching it for today. Anyway, the clouds might be pushing us toward plan B even without accounting for a major child injury. I’m itching to do a little exploration in the car, but can’t convince any chil’ren to come with me.

That takes us up to lunch on Sunday. Look forward to more dry, factual updates as they occur. Ciao.

Now, as dinner nears, I have come to the conclusion that deveining shrimp so that you get the whole vein in one easy pull, without ravaging the shrimp or cutting your hand, is just as much a feat as getting the whole clementine peel in one peel. For dinner, we picked up some smoked salmon, swordfish, crab cakes and shrimp from the Chatham Fish and Lobster Company. This will hopefully redeem our lunch at the Kream and Kone, a fried fish place that would be more appropriately named Slow Death, a place whose signature meal – the fried fish buried under a mountain of French fries and onion rings – could be named the Not-So-Slow Death. You’ll be happy to know, Lebron, that I opted for the grilled chicken sandwich.

The girls are playing Mancala while they watch the US National Swim Championships on some channel that doesn’t come up on our regular TV listing, but is the only channel that plays on the upstairs TV.

The rest of our Sunday should find us home and chillin, something we ain’t done in a long, long time. Peace.