Puzzles, Sing-A-Longs, and Cape Cod
Summer vacation has always meant traveling to my family’s place on Cape Cod with my parents and, in recent years, my son. Due to many heinous experiences involving extended family, I vowed that last year was, well, my last year. But I caved-we all knew I would.
This year, however, was quite possibly the best family vacation ever-the usual eccentricity generously blended with plenty of alone time for the four of us. This alone time, unfortunately, came at the expense of one family member’s hospitalization and one’s new romance with the rather unstable next door neighbor. But, hey, you take what you can get.
Our first order of business is always shopping, so one afternoon my mother and I set off to a local specialty toy and puzzle store with my son, Jesse, in tow. I basically gave my kid carte blanche in a toy store, so I was somewhat dismayed at the cash register to discover that Jess had shown admirable restraint. I, on the other hand, ran around throwing games and toys into my shopping basket, thumbing my nose at the Visa gods. Shown up yet again by an eight-year-old.
I’m not big on puzzles-for me, they’re torture on par with fingernails on a chalkboard. But my family loves them, and since we needed something to do in the evenings (no one on Cape Cod owns a TV-really, you can check), I decided to pick out a puzzle that wouldn’t bore me to tears. I found a great puzzle dedicated to coffee, with the teeny tiny words connecting to describe details like how coffee was discovered and fun facts about brewing it. Since I’m a coffee nut, I was very excited.
Ten minutes into this 2,000-piece monster, however, and I remembered why I hate puzzles-even if they’re about coffee. My back hurt from bending over the table, my eyes were blurring together from trying to separate "edge" pieces from "non-edge" pieces, and my hand hurt from trying to make pieces fit together by pounding on them. I glanced up, expecting to see similar looks of pain and annoyance on the faces of my parents and son, but all three of them looked like they’d died and gone to heaven.
Finally, after three hours of puzzle merriment-okay, maybe it was more like 30 minutes of puzzle time and two and a half hours of me reading a book nearby-I grabbed Jesse and we dragged off to bed. I left my parents contentedly muttering threats to each other ("So help me God, if you took the squiggly piece with a chunk of white on the corner.")
I came downstairs the next morning to put the water on to boil (for coffee, what else?), and I found my parents exactly as I had left them-bent over the dining room table, muttering and cursing, and wearing the same clothes as the day before. They looked up as I approached, noting the suspicion on my face. There was a guilty look exchanged between my parents, followed by my mother saying, "We did go to bed last night. We just got up early and decided to keep working. Really."
Mmm-hmm.
The following day, we decided to be tourists and go to Plymouth Plantation (you know-where the pilgrims landed). The town of Plymouth is about 45 minutes from where we live on Cape Cod, and we had to find a way to entertain ourselves in the car. Since radio stations don’t come in very well there, and my parents’ CD collection consists of an inexplicable-and highly nauseating-mixture of Flamenco music and Peter, Paul and Mary, the only other option we could come up with was singing in rounds. Yes, rounds. As in "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" and "Frere Jacques."
But since those songs were for amateurs, according to my dad, he auditioned for us a few dozen rounds that he knew. Most of them spanned three octaves and were in Latin. Now, we’re all pretty good singers, but come on, this was vacation. Finally, he searched his memory and came up with a British round about trains, emergencies, and five-pound penalties. At least it was in English.
So there we were traveling down the Massachusetts highway, heading towards a huge tourist trap, and singing in rounds. I felt like the Griswold family from the National Lampoon’s Vacation movies.
At least it was better than the puzzle. TPW
This year, however, was quite possibly the best family vacation ever-the usual eccentricity generously blended with plenty of alone time for the four of us. This alone time, unfortunately, came at the expense of one family member’s hospitalization and one’s new romance with the rather unstable next door neighbor. But, hey, you take what you can get.
Our first order of business is always shopping, so one afternoon my mother and I set off to a local specialty toy and puzzle store with my son, Jesse, in tow. I basically gave my kid carte blanche in a toy store, so I was somewhat dismayed at the cash register to discover that Jess had shown admirable restraint. I, on the other hand, ran around throwing games and toys into my shopping basket, thumbing my nose at the Visa gods. Shown up yet again by an eight-year-old.
I’m not big on puzzles-for me, they’re torture on par with fingernails on a chalkboard. But my family loves them, and since we needed something to do in the evenings (no one on Cape Cod owns a TV-really, you can check), I decided to pick out a puzzle that wouldn’t bore me to tears. I found a great puzzle dedicated to coffee, with the teeny tiny words connecting to describe details like how coffee was discovered and fun facts about brewing it. Since I’m a coffee nut, I was very excited.
Ten minutes into this 2,000-piece monster, however, and I remembered why I hate puzzles-even if they’re about coffee. My back hurt from bending over the table, my eyes were blurring together from trying to separate "edge" pieces from "non-edge" pieces, and my hand hurt from trying to make pieces fit together by pounding on them. I glanced up, expecting to see similar looks of pain and annoyance on the faces of my parents and son, but all three of them looked like they’d died and gone to heaven.
Finally, after three hours of puzzle merriment-okay, maybe it was more like 30 minutes of puzzle time and two and a half hours of me reading a book nearby-I grabbed Jesse and we dragged off to bed. I left my parents contentedly muttering threats to each other ("So help me God, if you took the squiggly piece with a chunk of white on the corner.")
I came downstairs the next morning to put the water on to boil (for coffee, what else?), and I found my parents exactly as I had left them-bent over the dining room table, muttering and cursing, and wearing the same clothes as the day before. They looked up as I approached, noting the suspicion on my face. There was a guilty look exchanged between my parents, followed by my mother saying, "We did go to bed last night. We just got up early and decided to keep working. Really."
Mmm-hmm.
The following day, we decided to be tourists and go to Plymouth Plantation (you know-where the pilgrims landed). The town of Plymouth is about 45 minutes from where we live on Cape Cod, and we had to find a way to entertain ourselves in the car. Since radio stations don’t come in very well there, and my parents’ CD collection consists of an inexplicable-and highly nauseating-mixture of Flamenco music and Peter, Paul and Mary, the only other option we could come up with was singing in rounds. Yes, rounds. As in "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" and "Frere Jacques."
But since those songs were for amateurs, according to my dad, he auditioned for us a few dozen rounds that he knew. Most of them spanned three octaves and were in Latin. Now, we’re all pretty good singers, but come on, this was vacation. Finally, he searched his memory and came up with a British round about trains, emergencies, and five-pound penalties. At least it was in English.
So there we were traveling down the Massachusetts highway, heading towards a huge tourist trap, and singing in rounds. I felt like the Griswold family from the National Lampoon’s Vacation movies.
At least it was better than the puzzle. TPW